JOINING NPR in the proud tradition of obituary relativism, the Philadelphia Inquirer offers up thoughts on the death of Elia Kazan–and his equivalency with Leni Riefenstahl. A Saturday feature, titled Kazan and Riefenstahl: Brilliant yet blemished, opens: “In an interesting coincidence, two artists whose private conduct marred their prodigious achievements died last month.” This sentence is the only direct comparison between the two filmmakers in the piece, but there’s lots to read between the lines. Kazan, we learn, was the Oscar-winning director of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” and “On the Waterfront.” Riefenstahl directed “Triumph of the Will.”

Then we get to Kazan’s “blemish”: “Testifying before a congressional committee, he revealed the names of colleagues who had joined the Communist Party and helped end their careers.” And as for his colleague? “Riefenstahl used 30 cameras and shot 61 hours of footage deifying Hitler and Nazism at the 1934 Nuremberg rallies. The film is a ghastly masterpiece.”