In 1931, the young Hungarian fashion photographer Martin Munkacsi photographed Leni Riefenstahl for the cover of the Berliner Illustrierter Zeitung . In her late twenties, glamorous, muscular and severe, she seemed the epitome of the new German woman. By the end of the decade, she was Europe's most controversial film-maker. Though widely celebrated for her innovation, Riefenstahl became notorious as a propagandist, whose radical and seductive films gave power and credence to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl, film director, photographer and writer: born Berlin 22 August 1902; married 1944 Peter Jakob (marriage dissolved 1946); died Pöcking, Germany 8 September 2003.

In 1931, the young Hungarian fashion photographer Martin Munkacsi photographed Leni Riefenstahl for the cover of the Berliner Illustrierter Zeitung . In her late twenties, glamorous, muscular and severe, she seemed the epitome of the new German woman. By the end of the decade, she was Europe's most controversial film-maker. Though widely celebrated for her innovation, Riefenstahl became notorious as a propagandist, whose radical and seductive films gave power and credence to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

In her most celebrated film for Hitler, Triumph des Willens ( Triumph of the Will ), a documentary filmed at the sixth Nazi Party congress in Nuremberg in 1934, she created an image of the Nazi phenomenon which remains with us today. With its awesome combination of ritual, piety, hysteria and order, the rally at Nuremberg marked a watershed in German history. Riefenstahl, who had been trained to photograph the great heroic scenes of nature and the struggle of man to conquer the wilderness, was ideally suited to present National Socialism not as cruel Fascism, but as a deep and mysterious magic.

Triumph of the Will made Riefenstahl one of the most discussed directors in the history of cinema. Many later directors reinterpreted her style, her camera angles, her use of mass crowd scenes. "I am not looking for a newsreel," Hitler had told her, "but an artistic document." But Triumph of the Will and Olympia , her 1938 study of the 11th Olympic Games in Berlin, also made her an international pariah in the post-war years.

In the late Thirties, international sensibilities were not so fine, and Triumph of the Will won the international prize at the Venice Biennale in 1935 and the Grand Prix at the Paris Exhibition in 1937. Riefenstahl's old Berlin friends, many of them Jewish, looked on in horror from their adopted homes in Britain or the US as she made Hitler's Germany monumental. But many foreign commentators were deeply impressed by Riefenstahl's view of Hitler, including a journalist for The Observer , who wrote of "a national energy equally passionate and dynamic". Triumph of the Will seduced many wise men and women, persuaded them to admire rather than to despise, and undoubtedly won the Nazis friends and allies all over the world.

Helene Bertha Amalie Riefenstahl was born in Berlin in 1902 into a prosperous middle-class family. The Riefenstahls' fortunes revolved around her father Alfred Riefenstahl's heating and plumbing business; a forceful and domineering man, he won many contracts to equip Berlin's new buildings. Like so many of the upwardly mobile business class, the Riefenstahls were regular theatregoers, and it was with her mother Bertha that Leni had her first glimpses of the magical and fast-developing world of the cinema.

As a child, Leni Riefenstahl was fascinated by the physical. Swimming, gymnastics, skating were all teenage passions, pursued at a time when a woman riding a bicycle was seen to be daring and the female body remained covered. In a Germany still recovering from the depredations and humiliations of the First World War, young people like Riefenstahl must have seemed the embodiment of energy and revitalisation. Her independence and interest in the performing arts was, however, a cause of family conflict.

Her father disagreed with her decision (in 1918) to enrol at the Grimm-Reiter School of Dance, and she left to attend the Kunstakademie in Berlin, where she briefly studied painting. But the sedate pace of the traditional art school was too slow for her. In 1920, Alfred Riefenstahl yielded to pressure and Leni began to study dance again. Though she reluctantly agreed to work in the family firm, she continued to clash with her father. Eventually, however, she was allowed to study classical dance with Eugenia Eduardova as well as learning modern techniques at the more progressive Jutta Klamt School.

Photographs of Leni Riefenstahl in the early Twenties show a beautiful and elegant young woman, dressed luxuriously in fur and silk. She is mysterious in a deep-brimmed hat, light-hearted in a gypsy scarf, svelte in a swimsuit. Already adept at changing her persona through costume and clothes, she began an intimate relationship with the camera which would continue until the end of her life.

The proliferation of dance styles and techniques fascinated Riefenstahl, as she moved from one teacher to another, enlarging both her classical and modern repertoire. Soon she was choreographing and performing her own pieces, appearing in Munich and Berlin. She was noticed by the director Max Reinhardt, and undertook a much-praised tour in Germany, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia.

In the mid-Twenties, Riefenstahl saw her first mountain film. Directed by Arnold Fanck and set in the Dolomites, Der Berg des Schicksals ( Mountain of Destiny , 1924) perfectly combined Riefenstahl's fascination with drama and movement with her passion for daring athleticism. Fanck's films, photographed by cameramen who were also expert mountaineers, were high melodramatic adventures perfectly capturing the Teutonic spirit. Riefenstahl was entranced, and insisted on a meeting with her hero. Fanck was intrigued by the young dancer, casting her for the lead female part in his 1926 film Der Heilige Berg ( The Holy Mountain ). During filming in the winters of 1925 and 1926, Riefenstahl learnt not only the technique of film acting, but also became an expert mountaineer. But the process of film-making became her fascination.

During the making of The Holy Mountain , she learnt about lighting, photography and editing, and even directed some of the scenes in the film. She choreographed her own dance scenes and resumed her career as a dancer when the filming was complete, touring again throughout Germany. At the film's premiere, she danced on the stage of the UFA-Palast am Zoo in Berlin.

But this was to be her final dance performance. The film industry was booming, and mountain films, with their high drama and romance, had seized the imagination of the German public. She starred in Der Grosse Sprung ( The Great Leap , 1927) and, most famously, in Fanck's 1929 film Die Weisse Hölle vom Piz Palü ( The White Hell of Pitz Palu ). In 1928, Riefenstahl accompanied Fanck to the Winter Olympics in St Moritz, and observed the complexities of photographing athletes in action - important lessons for a fledgling film-maker who less than a decade later would be constructing her controversial documentary on the Berlin Olympics.

Riefenstahl was determined to direct her own films and, heavily influenced by Fanck, made Das Blaue Licht ( The Blue Light ), which premiered in Berlin in 1932. She had formed her own film company, Leni Riefenstahl Productions, and was director, producer and star of this mysterious story set in the Dolomites and in a rural valley in Switzerland. The film had a rapturous reception from the public, though the critics were divided. The Blue Light won the Silver Medal at the Venice Biennale and played to full houses in Europe and the UK. It was clear that a major new talent had emerged in the vigorous world of German film.

After the success of The Blue Light , Riefenstahl was assured of a career in Hollywood. But she resisted all invitations to move to the United States, despite the fact that many of her friends and collaborators were fleeing Germany. Although she insisted that she had no interest in politics, and indeed her mountain films removed her for months on end from the centres of political action, it would have been impossible for Riefenstahl to ignore the rise of Hitler when she returned to Berlin in the early Thirties. Even her prosperous family was experiencing problems as the economic crisis deepened.

In the spring of 1932, encouraged by the anti-Nazi journalist Ernst Jaeger, Riefenstahl joined the Berlin crowds at the Sportspalast to hear Adolf Hitler rally the audience in his bid to become President. She was mesmerised by Hitler, remembering later that: "It seemed as if the earth's surface were spreading out in front of me, like a hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet of water, so powerful that it touched the sky and shook the earth. I felt quite paralysed."

Just as she had sought out Fanck after seeing Mountain of Destiny , Riefenstahl requested an interview with Hitler. Only Riefenstahl's accounts of their meeting in 1932 exist, and they are highly dramatic. But it is not surprising to discover that Hitler was a long-time admirer of Riefenstahl. Her films embodied the heady mixture of romance, high drama and physical beauty that was Hitler's Aryan dream.

Riefenstahl left Germany immediately after her encounter with Hitler to star in Fanck's film SOS Iceberg (1933), a Hollywood co-production set in Greenland, which was to be her last appearance in a Fanck production. Again it was a stirring tale of adventure, with actors pitted against icebergs and deadly conditions. In Berlin, there was danger of another kind, as Hitler continued his ascent to dictatorship and the fanatical core of the National Socialist Party revealed itself.

Throughout the filming in Iceland, Riefenstahl had immersed herself in Hitler's writings; fellow actors observed her close reading of Mein Kampf , published in 1925. She was skiing at Davos when, in January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. By the time she returned to Berlin, the city was in disarray. Max Reinhardt, Riefenstahl's former collaborators Bela Balazs and Harry Sokal, Lotte Lehman, Richard Tauber, and the writers Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann were some of the many distinguished men and women to leave Berlin. But Riefenstahl stayed on.

Independent, wealthy and courted by Hollywood, Riefenstahl had many choices. That she chose Germany and Hitler remains a mystery. Perhaps the admiration and support of Europe's most controversial leader was too beguiling to resist. Perhaps she glimpsed an empty and opportunity-filled arena as most of her rivals departed. Perhaps, with her film-maker's curiosity, she simply wanted to be present to record events as this terrifying phoenix rose from the ashes of poverty and despair.

The new Nazi government was well aware of the power of film as an instrument of propaganda; Joseph Goebbels admired both Fritz Lang and Riefenstahl's old friend the mountain film-maker Luis Trenker. In June 1933, all Jews had been expelled from the film industry and, for the ambitious Riefenstahl, a large vacuum had been created. Her first film for the Nazis, made in Nuremberg and released in 1933, was Der Sieg des Glaubens ( Victory of Faith ), which documented the fifth party rally of the National Socialist Party.

Making the film was a frustrating and somewhat humiliating exercise, as Nazi officials and the SA (the stormtroopers) continuously obstructed Riefenstahl and her crew. Riefenstahl was not a party member, and remained ambivalent about Nazi policies; as a young and assertive woman in a position of power, she was anathema to the anti- feminist, anti-intellectual new guard. But her closeness to Hitler and Goebbels ensured her safety. The film became popular, but for Riefenstahl it was no more than a preparatory exercise for Triumph of the Will .

The making of Olympia , at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, was problematic. At times, Riefenstahl and her cameramen were ordered off the track by judges, and observers noted how domineering and publicity-conscious she had become. The film took over 18 months to edit and it was only Riefenstahl's skill and her capacity for unrelenting effort that assured its completion. When the film was released, it was a public sensation. After a rapturous reception across Germany and Scandinavia, it beat Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into second place at the Venice Biennale in 1938, and, predictably enough, won the Reich Film Prize back in Berlin.

Five days before Kristallnacht in 1938, the signal for the unleashing of great and random violence towards the Jewish population of Europe, Riefenstahl arrived in New York. Greeted enthusiastically at first, Riefenstahl found herself exposed to a hostile press when the news of Kristallnacht broke. Denying all knowledge of events and even protesting Hitler's innocence, Riefenstahl would be seen, from then on, not as a film pioneer, but as Hitler's elegant apologist. What should have been a triumphant publicity tour collapsed into chaos, as anti-Fascist leagues protested against her presence, prestigious invitations were withdrawn and Olympia became invisible.

With Germany at war, Riefenstahl's propaganda films were no longer central to Nazi politics. She worked on her last feature film, Tiefland ( Low Lands , which would not be completed until 1954), a familiar enough tale of physical strength and high romance and, like so many of her compatriots, tried to pretend that she knew nothing of Hitler's genocide, of concentration camps and mass killings. With the defeat of Germany, she fled Berlin.

Throughout the 1940s, Riefenstahl was frequently arrested and detained by the Allies. Shown photographs of the concentration camps, she expressed amazement and horror. To the liberators, she was a problem and an embarrassment. Guilty of no war crime and never a member of the Nazi party, she was still seen to be complicit in the promotion of Nazi dogma.

Proof of Riefenstahl's naïvety lies perhaps most convincingly in her inability to realise that she would find no friends in the post-war film industry, which, increasingly controlled by Hollywood, had become the creative arena for most of those who had fled the Nazi Germany which she had so assiduously promoted. Project after project was rejected by potential backers (she listed 15 unrealised film projects in her post-war filmography).

Those who had hailed Triumph of the Will and Olympia as masterpieces were strangely silent. Any attempts by Riefenstahl or potential backers and producers (of whom there were many) to revive her career were blocked by adverse publicity or industry pressure. In 1960, Riefenstahl tried, and failed, to prevent the director Erwin Leiser from juxtaposing footage from Triumph of the Will with scenes from the concentration camps in his film Mein Kampf .

In Europe and the United States, Riefenstahl was a cultural outcast. She began to visit Africa, where she began an extended documentary, in film and photographs, of the people of the Nuba tribe. It was with these photographs that Leni Riefenstahl reasserted her identity as an artist. For the new generation of the Sixties, she became an object of intense curiosity.

Young historians and curators began to seek her out, fascinated by the allure of this discredited legend. Her Nuba photographs, published in book-form as The Last of the Nuba (1974), were acclaimed, and were distant enough from the politics and society of the West to be thought of as quite distinct from her Thirties film-making. From pariah to exotic to celebrity, Riefenstahl's journey to respectability was long and sometimes painful, but she persevered, convinced of her innocence and of her worth.

She met Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol, she was even Guest of Honour at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. She took up underwater photography and published a substantial book, Wunder unter Wasser ( Wonders under Water , 1990), and a documentary, Impressionen unter Wasser ( Underwater Impressions , 2002). Ever energetic and adventurous, she travelled widely and never acknowledged that age could inhibit the freedom of either the body or the spirit.

Leni Riefenstahl will always be a subject of debate. Opinions will be divided between those who see her as a young, talented and ambitious woman caught up in the tide of events which she did not fully understand, and those who believe her to be a cold and opportunist propagandist and a Nazi by association.

Her defenders might insist that, as a prominent artist and as a woman, she was an easy target for her detractors, exposed and harassed while the real perpetrators of the Nazi outrage slipped away unnoticed or were assimilated quickly into German (and frequently American) society. Others say that her protestations of "not knowing" are impossible to credit and that, through her films, she created a glowing picture of Hitler's Germany which contributed significantly to Allied procrastination over the persecution of the Jews. What is undeniable is that Leni Riefenstahl's films changed the way we look at the world, and gave us a new understanding of the power and the danger of propaganda.

Riefenstahl herself claimed later in life that her greatest regret was having met Hitler: "It was the biggest catastrophe of my life. Until the day I die people will keep saying, 'Leni is a Nazi', and I'll keep saying, 'But what did she do?' "

Val Williams