80
years ago on this date, March 28, 1935, The Nazi Propaganda Film, Triumph of
the Will, was released. I will post information about this film from Wikipedia
and other links. I do it for educational purposes and not because I am a Neo
Nazi.
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This is a poster for the 1935 film Triumph des Willens.
The poster art copyright is believed to
belong to the distributor of the film, Universum
Film AG, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist.
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Directed by
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Leni Riefenstahl
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Produced by
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Leni Riefenstahl
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Written by
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Leni Riefenstahl
Walter Ruttmann |
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Starring
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Adolf Hitler
Heinrich Himmler Viktor Lutze Other Nazi Leaders 30,000 extras |
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Music by
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Cinematography
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Edited by
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Leni Riefenstahl
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Production
company |
Reichsparteitag-Film
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Distributed by
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Release dates
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Running time
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114 minutes
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Language
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German
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Triumph of the Will (German: Triumph des
Willens)
is a 1935 propaganda film directed, produced, edited and co-written by Leni
Riefenstahl. It chronicles the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which was
attended by more than 700,000 Nazi supporters. The film contains excerpts from
speeches given by Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Adolf Hitler, Rudolf
Hess and Julius Streicher, interspersed with footage of massed Sturmabteilung
and Schutzstaffel troops and public reaction. Hitler commissioned the film and
served as an unofficial executive producer; his name appears in the opening
titles. The film's overriding theme is the return of Germany as a great power,
with Hitler as the leader who will bring glory to the nation. Because the film
was made after the 1934 Night of the Long Knives (on June 30) many prominent
Sturmabteilung (SA) members are absent since they were murdered in that Party
purge organized and orchestrated by Hitler to replace the SA (led by his rival Ernst
Roehm) with the Schutzstaffeln (SS) as his main paramilitary force.
Triumph of the Will was released in 1935 and became a prominent example of
propaganda in film history. Riefenstahl's techniques—such as moving cameras, aerial
photography, the use of long focus lenses to create a distorted perspective,
and the revolutionary approach to the use of music and cinematography—have earned
Triumph of the Will recognition as one of the greatest films in history.
Riefenstahl helped to stage the scenes, directing and rehearsing some of them
at least fifty times. Riefenstahl won several awards, not only in Germany but
also in the United States, France, Sweden, and other countries. The film was
popular in the Third Reich, and has continued to influence movies,
documentaries, and commercials to this day. However, it is banned from showing
in Germany owing to its support for Nazism and its numerous portrayals of the
swastika.
An
earlier film by Riefenstahl—Der Sieg des Glaubens—showed Hitler and SA
leader Ernst Röhm together at the 1933 Nazi party congress. After Röhm's
murder, the party attempted the destruction of all copies, leaving only one
known to have survived in Britain. This can be viewed at the Internet Archive.
The direction and sequencing of images is almost the same as that Riefenstahl
used in Triumph of the Will a year later.
Frank
Capra's seven-film series Why We Fight is said to have been directly
inspired by, and the United States' response to, Triumph of the Will.
Synopsis
The
film begins with a prologue, the only commentary in the film. It consists of
the following text, shown sequentially, against a grey background:
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Am 5.
September 1934
[On 5 September 1934]
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20
Jahre nach dem Ausbruch des Weltkrieges
[20 years after the outbreak of the World War]
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16
Jahre nach dem Anfang deutschen Leidens
[16 years after the beginning of German suffering]
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19
Monate nach dem Beginn der deutschen Wiedergeburt
[19 months after the beginning
of the German rebirth]
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flog
Adolf Hitler wiederum nach Nürnberg, um Heerschau abzuhalten über seine
Getreuen
[Adolf Hitler flew again to Nuremberg to
review the columns of his faithful followers]
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Day 1:
The film opens with shots of the clouds above the city, and then moves through
the clouds to float above the assembling masses below, with the intention of
portraying beauty and majesty of the scene. The cruciform shadow of Hitler's
plane is visible as it passes over the tiny figures marching below, accompanied
by an orchestral arrangement of the Horst-Wessel-Lied.
Upon arriving at the Nuremberg airport, Hitler and other Nazi leaders emerge
from his plane to thunderous applause and a cheering crowd. He is then driven
into Nuremberg, through equally enthusiastic people, to his hotel where a night
rally is later held.
Day 2:
The second day begins with images of Nuremberg at dawn, accompanied by an
extract from the Act III Prelude (Wach Auf!) of Richard
Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Following this is a montage of the attendees preparing for the opening
of the Reich Party Congress, and footage of the top Nazi officials arriving at
the Luitpold Arena. The film then cuts to the
opening ceremony, where Rudolf Hess announces the start of the Congress. The
camera then introduces much of the Nazi hierarchy and covers their opening
speeches, including Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank,
Fritz Todt,
Robert Ley, and Julius Streicher. Then the film cuts to an outdoor rally for the Reichsarbeitsdienst (Labor Service), which is
primarily a series of pseudo-military drills by men carrying spades. This is
also where Hitler gives his first speech on the merits of the Labor Service and
praising them for their work in rebuilding Germany. The day then ends with a
torchlight SA parade in which Viktor
Lutze speaks to the crowds.
Day 3:
The third day starts with a Hitler Youth rally on the parade ground. Again the
camera covers the Nazi dignitaries arriving and the introduction of Hitler by Baldur von Schirach. Hitler then addresses the Youth, describing in militaristic
terms how they must harden themselves and prepare for sacrifice. Everyone
present, including General Werner von Blomberg, then assemble for a
military pass and review, featuring Wehrmacht
cavalry and various armored vehicles. That night Hitler delivers another speech
to low-ranking party officials by torchlight, commemorating the first year
since the Nazis took power and declaring that the party and state are one
entity.
Day 4:
The fourth day is the climax of the film, where the most memorable of
the imagery is presented. Hitler, flanked by Heinrich Himmler and Viktor
Lutze, walks through a long wide expanse with over 150,000 SA
and SS
troops standing at attention, to lay a wreath at a World War I Memorial. Hitler
then reviews the parading SA and SS men, following which Hitler and Lutze
deliver a speech where they discuss the Night of the Long Knives purge of the SA
several months prior. Lutze reaffirms the SA's loyalty to the regime, and
Hitler absolves the SA of any crimes committed by Ernst Röhm. New party flags
are consecrated by letting them touch the Blutfahne
(the same cloth flag said to have been carried by the fallen Nazis during the Beer Hall Putsch) and, following a final parade in front of the Nuremberg Frauenkirche, Hitler delivers his
closing speech. In it he reaffirms the primacy of the Nazi Party in Germany,
declaring, "All loyal Germans will become National Socialists. Only the
best National Socialists are party comrades!" Hess then leads the
assembled crowd in a final Sieg Heil salute for Hitler, marking the close of the
party congress. The entire crowd sings the Horst-Wessel-Lied as the
camera focuses on the giant Swastika banner, which fades into a line of
silhouetted men in Nazi party uniforms, marching in formation as the lyrics
"Comrades shot by the Red Front and the Reactionaries march in spirit
together in our columns" are sung.
Hitler
Youth Speech - Triumph of the Will.
Uploaded on Jan 30, 2012
Hitler's
speech to the Hitler Youth in the Triumph of the Will video.
VIDEO SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8TUge4sKr4
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Poster for Der Sieg des Glaubens by Leni Riefenstahl in
1933
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Origins
Shortly after he came to power Hitler called me to see him and explained that he wanted a film about a Party Congress, and wanted me to make it. My first reaction was to say that I did not know anything about the way such a thing worked or the organization of the Party, so that I would obviously photograph all the wrong things and please nobody - even supposing that I could make a documentary, which I had never yet done. Hitler said that this was exactly why he wanted me to do it: because anyone who knew all about the relative importance of the various people and groups and so on might make a film that would be pedantically accurate, but this was not what he wanted. He wanted a film showing the Congress through a non-expert eye, selecting just what was most artistically satisfying - in terms of spectacle, I suppose you might say. He wanted a film which would move, appeal to, impress an audience which was not necessarily interested in politics.— Leni Riefenstahl
Riefenstahl,
a popular German actress, had directed her first movie called Das
blaue Licht (The Blue Light) in 1932. Around the same time she
first heard Hitler speak at a Nazi rally and, by her own admission, was
impressed. She later began a correspondence with him that would last for years.
Hitler, by turn, was equally impressed with Das blaue Licht, and in 1933
asked her to direct a film about the Nazis' annual Nuremberg
Rally. The Nazis had only recently taken power amid a period of political instability (Hitler was the fourth Chancellor of Germany in less
than a year) and were considered an unknown quantity by many Germans, to say
nothing of the world.
In
Mein
Kampf, Hitler talks of the success of British propaganda in World War
I, believing people's ignorance meant simple repetition and an appeal to
feelings over reason would suffice. Hitler chose Riefenstahl as he wanted the
film as "artistically satisfying" as possible to appeal to a
non-political audience, but he also believed that propaganda must admit no
element of doubt.
As such, Triumph of the Will may be seen as a continuation of the
unambiguous World War I-style propaganda, though heightened by the film's
artistic or poetic nature.
Riefenstahl
was initially reluctant, not because of any moral qualms, but because she
wanted to continue making feature films. Hitler persisted and Riefenstahl
eventually agreed to make a film at the 1933 Nuremberg Rally called Der Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of
Faith). However the film had numerous technical problems, including a lack
of preparation (Riefenstahl reported having just a few days) and Hitler's
apparent unease at being filmed. To make matters worse, Riefenstahl had to deal
with infighting by party officials, in particular Joseph Goebbels who tried to
have the film released by the Propaganda Ministry. Though Der Sieg des
Glaubens apparently did well at the box office, it later became a serious
embarrassment to the Nazis after SA Leader Ernst Röhm, who had a prominent role
in the film, was executed during the Night of the Long Knives. All references
to Röhm were ordered to be erased from German history, which included the
destruction of all known copies of Der Sieg des Glaubens.
In
1934, Riefenstahl had no wish to repeat the fiasco of Der Sieg des Glaubens
and initially recommended fellow director Walter
Ruttmann. Ruttmann's film, which would have covered the rise of the Nazi
Party from 1923 to 1934 and been more overtly propagandistic (the opening text
of Triumph of the Will was his), did not appeal to Hitler. He again
asked Riefenstahl, who finally relented (there is still debate over how willing
she was) after Hitler guaranteed his personal support and promised to keep
other Nazi organizations, specifically the Propaganda Ministry, from meddling
with her film.
Production
The
film follows a script similar to Der Sieg des Glaubens, which is evident
when one sees both films side by side. For example, the city of Nuremberg
scenes - even to the shot of a cat included in the city driving sequence in
both films. Furthermore, Herbert Windt reused much of his musical score for
that film in Triumph des Willens, which he also scored. Riefenstahl shot
Triumph of the Will on a budget of roughly 280,000RM (approx. $110K USD
1934, $1.54M 2015). With that said, there were extensive preparations
facilitated by the cooperation of party members, the military, and vital help
from high-ranking Nazis like Goebbels. As Susan
Sontag observed, "The Rally was planned not only as a spectacular mass
meeting, but as a spectacular propaganda film." Albert Speer, Hitler's
personal architect, designed the set in Nuremberg and did most of the
coordination for the event. Pits were dug in front of the speakers' platform so
Riefenstahl could get the camera angles she wanted, and tracks were laid so
that her cameramen could get traveling shots of the crowd. When rough cuts
weren't up to par, major party leaders and high-ranking public officials
reenacted their speeches in a studio for her. Riefenstahl also used a film crew
that was extravagant by the standards of the day. Her crew consisted of 172
people, including 10 technical staff, 36 cameramen and assistants (operating in
16 teams with 30 cameras), nine aerial photographers, 17 newsreel men, 12
newsreel crew, 17 lighting men, two photographers, 26 drivers, 37 security
personnel, four labor service workers, and two office assistants. Many of her
cameramen also dressed in SA uniforms so they could blend into the crowds.
Riefenstahl
had the difficult task of condensing an estimated 61 hours of film into two
hours.
She labored to complete the film as fast as she could, going so far as to sleep
in the editing room filled with hundreds of thousands of feet of film footage.
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Hitler congratulates Riefenstahl in 1934
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Themes
Religion
This morning's opening meeting... was more than a gorgeous show, it also had something of the mysticism and religious fervor of an Easter or Christmas Mass in a great Gothic cathedral.— Reporter William Shirer
Triumph of the Will is sometimes seen as an example of Nazi political religion. The primary religion in
Germany before the Second World War was Christianity.
With the primary sects being Roman
Catholic and Protestant, the Christian views in this movie are clearly
meant to allow the movie to better connect with the intended audience.
Religion
is a major theme in Triumph of the Will. The film opens with Hitler
descending god-like out of the skies past twin cathedral spires. It contains
many scenes of church bells ringing, and individuals in a state of
near-religious fervor, as well as a prominent shot of Reich Protestant Bishop Ludwig Müller
standing in his vestments
among high-ranking Nazis. It is probably not a coincidence that the final
parade of the film was held in front of the Nuremberg Frauenkirche. In his final speech
in the film, Hitler also directly compares the Nazi party to a holy order,
and the consecration
of new party flags by having Hitler touch them to the "blood banner"
has obvious religious overtones. Hitler himself is portrayed in a messianic
manner, from the opening where he descends from the clouds in a plane, to his
drive through Nuremberg where even a cat stops what it is doing to watch him,
to the many scenes where the camera films from below and looks up at him:
Hitler, standing on his podium, will issue a command to hundreds of thousands
of followers. The audience happily complies in unison. As Frank
P. Tomasulo comments, "Hitler is cast as a veritable German Messiah
who will save the nation, if only the citizenry will put its destiny in his
hands."
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Soldiers march past a saluting Hitler in
Riefenstahl’s film of the 1934 Nazi party rally in Nuremberg
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Power
It is our will that this state and this Reich shall endure through the coming millennia.
— Hitler
Germany
had not seen images of military power and strength since the end of World War
I, and the huge formations of men would remind the audience that Germany was
becoming a great power once again. Though the Labor Service men carried spades,
they handled them as if they were rifles. The Eagles
and Swastikas
could be seen as a reference to the Roman
Legions of antiquity. The large mass of well-drilled party members could be
seen in a more ominous light, as a warning to dissidents
thinking of challenging the regime.
Hitler's
arrival in an airplane should also be viewed in this context. According to
Kenneth Poferl, "Flying in an airplane was a
luxury known only to a select few in the 1930s, but Hitler had made himself
widely associated with the practice, having been the first politician to
campaign via air travel. Victory reinforced this image and defined him as the
top man in the movement, by showing him as the only one to arrive in a plane
and receive an individual welcome from the crowd. Hitler's speech to the SA
also contained an implied threat: if he could have Röhm, the commander of the
hundreds of thousands of troops on the screen, shot, it was only logical to
assume that Hitler could get away with having anyone executed."
Unity
As soon as our own propaganda admits so much as a glimmer of right on the other side, the foundation for doubt in our own right has been laid.— Hitler
It
was very important to Adolf Hitler that his propaganda messages carry a unified
theme. If a country isn't unified in saying the enemy is bad, the audience
starts to have doubts. Unity is seen throughout this film, even in the camps
where soldiers live. The camp outside of Nuremberg is very uniform and clean;
the tents are aligned in perfect rows, each one the same as the next. The men
there also make a point not to wear their shirts, because their shirts display
their rankings and status. Shirtless they are all equals, unified. When they
march, it is in unison and they all carry their weapons identically, one to
another.
Hitler's
message to the workers also includes the notion of unity:
The concept of labor will no longer be a dividing one but a uniting one, and no longer will there be anybody in Germany who will regard manual labor any less highly than any other form of labor.— Hitler
Children
were also used to convey unity:
We want to be a united nation, and you, my youth, are to become this nation. In the future, we do not wish to see classes and cliques, and you must not allow them to develop among you. One day, we want to see one nation.— Hitler
Triumph of the Will has many scenes that blur the distinction between the
Nazi Party, the German state, and the German people. Germans in peasant
farmers' costumes and other traditional clothing greet Hitler in some scenes.
The torchlight processions, though now associated by many with the Nazis, would
remind the viewer of the medieval Karneval celebration. The old flag of Imperial
Germany is also shown several times flying alongside the Swastika, and
there is a ceremony where Hitler pays his respects to soldiers who died in
World War I (as well as to President Paul von Hindenburg, who had died a month
before the convention). There is also a scene where the Labor Servicemen
individually call out which town or area in Germany they are from, reminding
the viewers that the Nazi Party had expanded from its stronghold in Bavaria to become
a pan-German movement.
The Party is Hitler - and Hitler is Germany just as Germany is Hitler!
— Rudolf Hess
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The Totenehrung (honouring of dead) at
the 1934 Nuremberg Rally. SS leader Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Hitler, and SA leader
Viktor Lutze (from L to R) on the stone terrace in front of the Ehrenhalle
(Hall of Honour) in the Luitpoldarena. In the background is the crescent-shaped
Ehrentribüne (literally: tribune of honour).
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Hitler's speeches
Among
the themes presented, the desire for pride in Germany and the purification of
the German people is well exemplified through the speeches and ideals of the Third
Reich in Triumph of the Will.
In
every speech given and shown in Triumph of the Will, pride is one of the
major focuses. Hitler advocates to the people that they should not be satisfied
with their current state and they should not be satisfied with the descent from
power and greatness Germany has endured since World War I. The German people
should believe in themselves and the movement that is occurring in Germany.
Hitler promotes pride in Germany through the unification of it. Unifying
Germany would force the elimination of what does not amount to the standards of
the Nazi regime.
To
unify Germany, Hitler believes purification would have to take place. This
meant not only eliminating the citizens of Germany who are not of the Aryan
race, but the sick, weak, handicapped, or any other citizens deemed unhealthy
or impure. In Triumph of the Will, Hitler preaches to the people that
Germany must take a look at itself and seek out that which does not belong:
"[T]he elements that have become bad, and therefore do not belong with
us!" Though within the context, he seems to be referring to the corrupt
elements of the power structure, it later could seem in hindsight to imply that
the elimination of the "inferior" people of Germany would, in theory,
return Germany to its once prideful and powerful former self. Julius Streicher stresses the importance of purification in his speech, a
direct reference to his own virulent anti-semitism.
Hundreds of thousands mentally sick and disabled would be murdered in the Action T4,
a programme run directly from Hitler's Chancellery (Kanzlei des Führers).
Hitler
preaches to the people in his speeches that they should believe in their
country and themselves. The German people are better than what they have become
because of the impurities in society. Hitler wants them to believe in him and
believe what he wants to do for his people, and what he is doing is for the
country's and people's benefit. Hess says in the last scene of Triumph of
the Will, "Heil Hitler, hail victory, hail victory!" Everyone in
attendance yells in support. This verbal sign represents their faith to their
leader and his most trusted advisors that they believe in the Nazi cause. This
is directly following Hitler's yell, "Long live the National Socialist
Movement! Long live Germany!" and the crowd erupts with cheering and the
fulfillment of pride for themselves and their political party.
In
the closing speech of Triumph of the Will, Hitler enters the room from
the back, appearing to emerge from the people. After a one sentence
introduction, he tells his faithful Nazis how the German nation has
subordinated itself to the Nazi Party because its leaders are mostly of
Germans. He promises that the new state that the Nazis have created will endure
for thousands of years. Hitler says that the youth will carry on after the old
have weakened. They close with a chant, "Hitler is the Party,
Hitler." The camera focuses on the large Swastika above Hitler and the
film ends with the images of this Swastika imposed on Nazis marching in a few
columns. His speech brought attention to the rally and created a huge turnout
in the following years. He attracted many people in the way that he addressed
the issues and his people. He spoke to them as if it were a sermon and engaged
the people. In 1934, over a million Germans participated in the Nuremberg
Rally.
Response
Triumph of the Will premiered on 28 March 1935 at the Berlin Ufa Palace
Theater and was an instant success. Within two months the film had earned
815,000 Reichsmark, and Ufa considered it one of the
three most profitable films of that year. Hitler praised the film as being an
"incomparable glorification of the power and beauty of our Movement."
For her efforts, Riefenstahl was rewarded with the German Film Prize (Deutscher
Filmpreis), a gold medal at the 1935 Venice
Biennale, and the Grand Prix at the 1937 World
Exhibition in Paris.
However, there were few claims that the film would result in a mass influx of
"converts"
to fascism and
the Nazis apparently did not make a serious effort to promote the film outside
of Germany. Film historian Richard Taylor also said that Triumph of the Will
was not generally used for propaganda purposes inside the Third Reich. The
Independent wrote in 2003: "Triumph of the Will seduced
many wise men and women, persuaded them to admire rather than to despise, and
undoubtedly won the Nazis friends and allies all over the world."
The
reception in other countries was not always as enthusiastic. British
documentarian Paul Rotha called it tedious, while others were repelled
by its pro-Nazi sentiments. During World War II, Frank Capra
helped to create a direct response, through the film series called Why We
Fight, a series of newsreels commissioned by the United States government
that spliced in footage from Triumph of the Will, but recontextualized
it so that it promoted the cause of the Allies instead. Capra later remarked that Triumph
of the Will "fired no gun, dropped no bombs. But as a psychological
weapon aimed at destroying the will to resist, it was just as lethal."
Clips from Triumph of the Will were also used in an Allied propaganda
short called General Adolph Takes Over, set to the British dance tune
"The Lambeth Walk". The legions of marching
soldiers, as well as Hitler giving his Nazi salute, were made to look like
wind-up dolls, dancing to the music. The Danish resistance used to take over
cinemas and force the projectionist to show Swinging the Lambeth Walk
(as it was also known); Erik Barrow has said: "The extraordinary risks
were apparently felt justified by a moment of savage anti-Hitler ridicule."
Also during World War II, the poet Dylan
Thomas wrote a screenplay for and narrated These Are The Men, a
propaganda piece using Triumph of the Will footage to discredit Nazi
leadership.
One
of the best ways to gauge the response to Triumph of the Will was the
instant and lasting international fame it gave Riefenstahl. The
Economist said it "sealed her reputation as the greatest female
filmmaker of the 20th century." For a director who made eight films, only
two of which received significant coverage outside of Germany, Riefenstahl had
unusually high name recognition for the remainder of her life, most of it
stemming from Triumph of the Will. However, her career was also permanently
damaged by this association. After the war, Riefenstahl was imprisoned by the
Allies for four years for allegedly being a Nazi sympathizer and was
permanently blacklisted
by the film industry. When she died in 2003–68 years after the film's
premiere—her obituary
received significant coverage in many major publications, including the Associated
Press, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The
Guardian, most of which reaffirmed the importance of Triumph of the Will.
Though the actual effectiveness of Triumph of the Will is hard to
measure in terms of numbers or statistics that actually state its
effectiveness, its response from the people is well documented with the amount
of views and the popularity of the movie during the time period.
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Julius Streicher in custody in 1945.
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Controversy
Like
American filmmaker D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, Triumph of the
Will has been criticized as a use of spectacular filmmaking to promote a
profoundly unethical
system. In her defense, Riefenstahl claimed that she was naïve about the Nazis
when she made it and had no knowledge of Hitler's genocidal or anti-semitic
policies. She also pointed out that Triumph of the Will contains "not one
single antisemitic
word", although it does contain a veiled comment by Julius Streicher, the notorious Jew-baiter (who was hanged after the Nuremberg
trials), that "a people that does not protect its racial purity will
perish."
However,
Roger
Ebert has observed that for some, "the very absence of anti-semitism
in Triumph of the Will looks like a calculation; excluding the central motif of
almost all of Hitler's public speeches must have been a deliberate decision to
make the film more efficient as propaganda."
Riefenstahl
also repeatedly defended herself against the charge that she was a Nazi
propagandist, saying that Triumph of the Will focuses on images over ideas, and
should therefore be viewed as a Gesamtkunstwerk
(holistic work of art). In 1964, she returned to this topic, saying:
If you see this film again today you ascertain that it doesn't contain a single reconstructed scene. Everything in it is true. And it contains no tendentious commentary at all. It is history. A pure historical film... it is film-vérité. It reflects the truth that was then in 1934, history. It is therefore a documentary. Not a propaganda film. Oh! I know very well what propaganda is. That consists of recreating events in order to illustrate a thesis, or, in the face of certain events, to let one thing go in order to accentuate another. I found myself, me, at the heart of an event which was the reality of a certain time and a certain place. My film is composed of what stemmed from that.
However,
Riefenstahl was an active participant in the rally, though in later years she
downplayed her influence significantly, claiming, "I just observed and
tried to film it well. The idea that I helped to plan it is downright
absurd." Ebert states that Triumph of the Will is "by general
consent [one] of the best documentaries ever made", but added that because
it reflects the ideology of a movement regarded by many as evil, it poses
"a classic question of the contest between art and morality: Is there such
a thing as pure art, or does all art make a political statement?" When
reviewing the film for his "Great Movies" collection, Ebert reversed
his opinion, characterizing his earlier conclusion as "the received
opinion that the film is great but evil" and calling it "a terrible
film, paralyzingly dull, simpleminded, overlong and not even 'manipulative,'
because it is too clumsy to manipulate anyone but a true believer."
Susan
Sontag considers Triumph of the Will the "most successful, most
purely propagandistic film ever made, whose very conception negates the
possibility of the filmmaker's having an aesthetic or visual conception
independent of propaganda." Sontag points to Riefenstahl's involvement in
the planning and design of the Nuremberg ceremonies as evidence that
Riefenstahl was working as a propagandist, rather than as an artist in any
sense of the word. With some 30 cameras and a crew of 150, the marches,
parades, speeches, and processions were orchestrated like a movie set for
Riefenstahl's film. Further, this was not the first political film made by
Riefenstahl for the Third Reich (there was Victory of Faith, 1933), nor
was it the last (Day of Freedom, 1935, and Olympia, 1938). "Anyone who defends
Riefenstahl's films as documentary", Sontag states, "if documentary
is to be distinguished from propaganda, is being disingenuous. In Triumph of
Will, the document (the image) is no longer simply the record of reality;
'reality' has been constructed to serve the image."
Brian
Winston's essay on the film in The Movies as History is largely a
critique of Sontag's analysis. Winston argues that any filmmaker could have
made the film look impressive because the Nazis' mise
en scène was impressive, particularly when they were offering it for
camera re-stagings. In form, the film alternates repetitively between marches
and speeches. Winston asks the viewers to consider if such a film should be
seen as anything more than a pedestrian effort. Like Rotha, he finds the film
tedious, and believes anyone who takes the time to analyze its structure will
quickly agree.
Wehrmacht
objections
The
first controversy over Triumph of the Will occurred even before its
release, when several generals in the Wehrmacht protested over the minimal army
presence in the film. Only one scene—the review of the German cavalry—actually
involved the German military. The other formations were party organizations
that were not part of the military.
The
opposition of the generals, was not simply out of personalized pique or vanity.
As produced by Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will, posits Germany as a
leaderless mass of lost souls without any organizing institutions, or antecedent
institutional leaders. And that the “new order” embodied by the Nazi Party and
Hitler, provides a both new, and a singular/saving leader and institutional
framework for the whole of the German nation.
However,
the Army had been, and had seen itself as being, an institution that held
shared responsibility for the leadership of the nation and state since at least
the time of Fredrick the Great. The leaders of that Army had also been viewed
throughout the history of the German speaking peoples as an integral part of
the leadership cadre. By omitting the Army (along with other institutions,
e.g., the nobility, the Church, academia, business), the film demonstrated that
the Army, as well as its leaders, was “disappeared” from what the Army
considered to be its shared leadership role in the state, National Socialist or
otherwise. The Army’s leaders vehemently disagreed with this implied assertion
of the film.
Hitler
proposed his own "artistic" compromise where Triumph of the Will
would open with a camera slowly tracking down a row of all the
"overlooked" generals (and placate each general's ego). According to
her own testimony, Riefenstahl refused his suggestion and insisted on keeping
artistic control over Triumph of the Will. She did agree to return to
the 1935 rally to make a film exclusively about the Wehrmacht, which became Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht
(Day of Freedom: Our Armed Forces).
 |
| Charles Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel in The Great Dictator |
Influences
and legacy
Triumph of the Will remains well known for its striking visuals. As one
historian notes, "many of the most enduring images of the [Nazi] regime
and its leader derive from Riefenstahl's film."
Extensive
excerpts of the film were used in Erwin
Leiser's documentary Mein Kampf, produced in Sweden in 1960.
Riefenstahl unsuccessfully sued the Swedish production company Minerva-Film for
copyright violation, although she did receive forty thousand marks in
compensation from German and Austrian distributors of the film.
In
1942, Charles A. Ridley of the British Ministry of Information made a short
propaganda film, Lambeth Walk – Nazi Style, which edited footage of
Hitler and German soldiers from the film to make it appear they were marching
and dancing to the song "The
Lambeth Walk". The film so enraged Joseph Goebbels that
reportedly he ran out of the screening room kicking chairs and screaming
profanities. The propaganda film was distributed uncredited to newsreel
companies, who would supply their own narration.
Charlie
Chaplin's classic satire The Great Dictator (1940) was inspired in
large part by Triumph of the Will. The film has been studied by many
contemporary artists, including film directors Sir Peter
Jackson, George Lucas and Ridley
Scott.
Leni
Riefenstahl - Triumph Des Willens [1935] [HD]
VIDEO SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4gVcHE2HcU
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