Leni Riefenstahl, the German filmmaker whose daringly innovative documentaries about a Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1934 and the Berlin Olympics of 1936 earned her both acclaim as a cinematic genius and contempt as a propagandist for Hitler, died Monday night at her home in Pöcking, south of Munich. She was 101.

After the defeat of Germany in 1945, she was pronounced a Nazi sympathizer by the Allies and never again found work as a movie director. But her revolutionary film techniques deeply influenced later generations of documentary makers and television commercial makers, keeping alive the debate over whether her talent could be separated from her prewar political views.

For many students of her life and legacy, Ms. Riefenstahl was both propagandist and genius. A popular dancer and actress before becoming a movie director in 1932, she enthusiastically put her talent at the service of the Nazis.

Yet, without her exceptional artistic vision, her two most famous documentaries, "Triumph of the Will" and the two-part "Olympia," would neither have caused a sensation at the time nor be considered classics today.

Ms. Riefenstahl never denied her early conviction that Hitler could "save" Germany. She also said that her idealized image of him fell apart "far too late," near the end of World War II. But, amid widespread skepticism, she insisted that she was never a Nazi and that "Triumph of the Will" and "Olympia" were apolitical, inspired only by her desire to create works of art.

Strangely enough, I was in the midst of writing about "Carmina Burana":

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In his review of the NFL-season-opening concert/extravaganza, Washington Post TV critics Tom Shales notes that aside from Pepsi Vanilla commercials

there was also a super-kinetic blitz of a commercial for Reebok Vector shoes, scored to the opening chorus from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana," one of the most frequently appropriated pieces of 20th-century classical music.

When Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini included a bit of "Carmina Burana" in his borderline-obscene film "Salo," he explained he did so because he considered it "fascist music." We just note that in passing.

So noted. (And also noted is Shales' sliminess in managing to slam Rebok for using "fascist music" for its commercial, while simultaneously not avoiding endorsing the idea that Carmina Burana is fascist music in the first place. Way to go, Shales, McCarthyesque technique at its best.)

Now, I happen to like "Carmina Burana", quite a bit, and a wonder what, exactly, qualifies a piece of music as being "fascist." What I mean is, it's difficult enough for political scientists to agree on a defintion of what defines fascism as a political system, so how can we possibly know what "fascist music" is?

So, curious as to what I'd find, I Googled "Carmina Burana" and "fascist music" to see what I'd find, but unfortunately nothing there shed any light on the subject. Several of the citations there did point out that "O Fortuna", the opening section of Carmina Burana, is a piece of music widely used for various purposes, and that material from Carmina Burana is frequently appropriated or reinterpreted by popular musicians, so if it is a piece of fascist music, there must be a lot of people who are drawn to fascist music.

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That's pretty much where I left off, except to ask the question: is a piece of music "fascist" if the composer is himself a fascist or has associated himself with fascists (or has been said to be associated with them by others), or is there some inherent quality in the music itself with makes it fascist? Does the fascism flow from the creator or from the music?

There's no question with Riefenstahl's work that both are true, but I somehow feel that the case is not so open-and-shut with "Carmina Burana" (despite this argument) -- at least, I hope that's the case.