OPINION: Will your next commercial change your life?

The "commercial" in question: Triumph of the Will. The "brand": Adolf Hitler. The young director: Leni Riefenstahl, arguably the most talented (and controversial) female cinema director of the 20th century. Riefenstahl died this September at 101, an unrepentant creative outcast condemned by the incredible images she created in 1935.

Today, her work should be essential viewing for every creative and for every marketer. Not to celebrate the twisted horrors of Nazism, but to appreciate just how powerful, how persuasive, how manipulative, film can be. Triumph of the Will contains some of the most dazzlingly beautiful film images ever crafted, their beauty rendering them all the more dangerous and insidious. According to critics, her film ranks as "the most masterly propaganda film ever made". Certainly, it is far more instructive than a year's worth of Shots reels.

The subject was a Nazi rally in Nuremberg. Riefenstahl assembled a crew of 120. She commanded 30 cameras, some mounted on special tracks. Every black and white frame is suffused with Aryan purity, the brand essence of Nazism. Hitler's Junkers descends the clouds, as though bearing a visitor from Valhalla. Massed banners rise aloft. Torches blaze through narrow medieval streets. An image of the sun rests on Hitler's palm. Her lens venerated Hitler. His strutting and posturing became something noble, in itself a remarkable achievement. Riefenstahl edited the 61 hours of film single-handedly. She conducted the score herself. Her next project, Olympia, was the even more technically dazzling celebration of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Her cameras were mounted on balloons and rafts. She eulogised the athlete's physiques. Divers resembled swooping birds. Footage of the marathon was slowed gradually to convey exhaustion. In what is regarded as one of the world's greatest feats of editing, Riefenstahl laboured alone for 18 months, distilling the 200 hours of film into a four-hour masterpiece. It wasn't until 1960 that Olympia was voted one of the 10 best films of all time.

By all accounts, Riefenstahl was a beautiful woman, even in extreme old age. She was a dancer first, until an injury led her to become a film actress. Ironically she lost what might have been her biggest role - that of a cabaret singer in The Blue Angel - to the unknown actress who lived in the flat next door, Marlene Dietrich.

When Riefenstahl turned to directing, her first film won a Silver Bear in Venice. But she will be forever remembered as the tainted Nazi film propagandist.

Interestingly, while she displayed no remorse for Triumph of the Will, she denied being a Nazi sympathiser. As she explained it, after witnessing a massacre of Polish citizens, she refused to make further films for the Nazis. As a result, her brother was sent to his death on the Russian front.

After the war, Riefenstahl spent four years under arrest. Twice she was cleared of being a Nazi. Yet controversy clouded the rest of her life.

Had she been Hitler's lover? Had she used concentration camp inmates as film extras? No, she said. She had merely shared a mistaken admiration of Hitler along with millions of other Germans.

But as one critic observed, "Had her cinema been less memorable, she might have suffered less". Which brings us back to my first question: how powerful will your next commercial be? Well, you've read the book.

Now go see the film.