SOURCE: Elsaesser, Thomas. “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman.” Sight and Sound 3, no. 2 (February 1993): 15-18.

In the following review of The Sieve of Time, Elsaesser explores Riefenstahl's film career within the context of German cinema during the 1930s.

Leni Riefenstahl at 90: photographed by Helmut Newton in a pair of rainbow-coloured leggings, stiletto heels, a fur-trim coat, leaning against a sports car parked on a gravelled driveway. The clash of associations, the campy bad taste, the sheer improbability of this apparition (fronting an interview with Riefenstahl in Vanity Fair, September 1992) is suitably disconcerting. Is this nonagenarian femme fatale still worshipping at the fountain of youth, or is this a pose to make her part as the fluttering butterfly of the Third Reich more credible? Either way, the butterfly Riefenstahl is clearly made of steel: a specimen from a period that does not seem to diminish in scale...