"Every woman adores a fascist," Sylvia Plath cried out in her poem "Daddy.

" "To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is without fault, so sim ple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength," Leni Riefenstahl told a Detroit News reporter in February 1937. Riefenstahl has often been called the greatest woman documentary filmmaker althoug h she would have bridled at the "woman." No feminist, she wanted nothing less th an her due as a great artist. In her masterpiece, "Triumph of the Will," her doc umentary film of the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi party rally, Hitler descends out of the clouds in his plane and down to earth. Riefenstahl's cameraman films Hitler sta nding in his Mercedes touring car, from behind, so that we are watching Hitler f rom the backseat of his moving vehicle as the dictator gives the fascist salute to crowds of yearning women clamoring for his attention. The documentary's famous low angle shots enhance Hitler's lofty presence he is Ger many's godlike savior. When he addresses the faithful, he urges them to be obedi ent, and they respond with joyful assent, affirming what Herman Hess, introducin g Hitler to the crowd, makes explicit: Hitler is Germany, and Germany is Hitler. Seized by the sheer visual power of Riefenstahl's work, viewers across the world surrendered to a spectacle of power, harmonization, and grace. The careful chor eography of the Nazi masses, the marching soldiers, the workers lined up with th eir shovels resting on their shoulders like rifles, reflects the director's danc e aesthetic. Never before in film had anyone made a mass political movement look and sound (the music was carefully recorded in a studio) so seductive. Biographers are perhaps better situated than film critics to fathom the Riefenst ahl paradox. New biographies by Jrgen Trimborn (Faber & Faber, 285 pages, $30) and Steven Bach (Knopf, 299 pages, $30) dismantle Riefenstahl's myth that she was a n artist innocent of political motivations. Mr. Trimborn had the advantage of ob serving Riefenstahl close-up during an interview and in subsequent correspondenc e with her. He found the director to be a consummate protector of her reputation , a careerist of the first order who never wavered in her self-promoting agenda. Meanwhile, Mr. Bach's chapters on Riefenstahl's early career are also valuable since he is the first biographer to have access to a cache of more than 70 inter views with Riefenstahl's friends and co-workers. Mr. Trimborn's chapter on her anti-Semitism is a shocker. An expert on films of the Nazi era, Mr. Trimborn shows how intricately involved Riefenstahl was not me rely with Hitler as he rose to power, but also with Nazis like Jules Streicher, who formulated the party's virulent anti-Semitic program. Mr. Trimborn's book ha s finally settled the issue of the Goebbels diaries, in which Riefenstahl figure s as an artist who understands the party better than anyone and who comes to Goe bbels's parties and attends the opera with him and his wife, Magda. Riefenstahl repudiated the diaries, pointing out that that by 1934 Goebbels resented her spe cial relationship with Hitler and tried to interfere with her work. True enough, Mr. Trimborn shows, but he also provides the circumstantial evidence that bolst ers Goebbels's portrayal of her as a Nazi enthusiast. Mr. Trimborn often writes as a film historian. He is primarily interested, for e xample, in exploring the "pre-fascist" elements of Arnold Fanck's 1920s "mountai n films," which featured stunning shots of Riefenstahl climbing mountain peaks i n her bare feet. Fanck's romantic exultation of the hero influenced Riefenstahl' s portrayal of a heroic Hitler. The Fhrer, so often at the apex of the crowd scene s in "Triumph of the Will," towers over his followers. Mr. Bach, on the other ha nd, presents a more dramatic and intimate view of the Fanck/Riefenstahl relation ship. His exclusive access to Fanck's own account (recorded by Peggy Wallace in 1974) shows how mesmerizing Franck found Riefenstahl. Her dancing revealed her c hildlike quality, her surrender to the moment, and this natural, nave quality made her the perfect heroine for his Alpine love stories. Riefenstahl was involved i

n a love triangle involving Fanck and her leading man, Luis Trenker, demonstrati ng, in Mr. Bach's words, "Leni's skill at dominating the exclusive male society in which she found herself now and for almost all the rest of her professional l ife." She was nave, in some ways, Mr. Bach implies, but rather cunning in others. Mr. Bach, who is florid compared with the trenchant Mr. Trimborn, provides more personal details and is just as good on Riefenstahl's politics. In the 1930s Riefenstahl won international awards, although, of course, there we re critics who resisted her siren song. As she continued to attract a new genera tion of film scholars and feminists in the 1970s, the influential Susan Sontag r epudiated her earlier endorsement of Riefenstahl and emphasized the director's d isturbing politics over her aesthetic: All of Riefenstahl's work celebrated powe r and elevated strength and the body beautiful over all other values. This "fasc ist aesthetic" permeated Riefenstahl's work as an actress in her popular 1920s f ilms and, most famously, in her documentary, "Olympia," about the 1936 Olympic g ames, hosted by Hitler in Berlin. And yet her film work remains a potent model. Mr. Trimborn, for example, points out that the "Olympic Portraits" (1996), shot by Sontag's life partner, Annie Leibovitz, reveals evidence of Riefenstahl's inf luence. Riefenstahl's own archive remains closed, and even though Mr. Trimborn believes it includes only self-serving material, that, too, may be more illuminating than Mr. Trimborn supposes. As good as these two biographies are, no one fascinated with Riefenstahl can forgo studying Ray Muller's revelatory film, "The Wonderful , Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl," which allows the director to make her case even as her behavior confirms her latest biographers' findings.