Triumph Of The Will (1935)

This one is definitely the elephant in the room, now that we know the real intentions of the people it is about. Although it is very difficult to find reviews of this film published when it was first released, before it was "tainted" by the outcome of WWII, the fact that it won the Best Foreign Documentary prize at the 1935 Venice Film Festival and the Gold Medal at the 1937 Paris World Fair can be seen both as a testament to the genius of its director, Leni Riefenstahl, as well as the kind eyes Europe as a whole was having toward German Nazism at the time.

Triumph of the Will chronicles the 6-day 1934 Nazi Party congress at Nüremberg, from Hitler's arrival in a jet plane, going over the Hitler Youth camp and then countless parades and salutes, intertwined with some speeches, up to the closing ones by Hitler himself and Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess. Given the movie is a documentary, there is nothing a director can do but to document what is going on (and no political rally is heaps of fun). What a director can do, however, is to repackage that series of events into something more interesting, and this is where Riefenstahl shines. It is impossible to talk about this movie without talking about its director, whose career it both launched and destroyed (topic beautifully explored in the documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life Of Leni Riefenstahl (1994), to which I make reference every time I state something mentioned by Riefenstahl).

Adolf Hitler (duh!)

Before talking about the film itself, I believe some historical context is needed. After being defeated in the First World War, with its factories destroyed and most of its able men dead, Germany laid in ruins. While still coping with the extremely harsh punishment of the Treaty of Versailles, it was hit by the Great Depression, to which widespread hunger and unemployment ensued. Desperate people cling to hope and, as Riefenstahl said herself, "Germans would be very enamored of someone they thought they could model themselves on; they're happy to let themselves be led". Enters a guy named Adolf Hitler, a decorated WWI veteran who, again paraphrasing Riefenstahl, "radiated something which had a kind of hypnotic effect [...]. It would paralyze one's free will". This man claims to have the answers to all problems plaguing the German people, while at the same time providing convenient scapegoats for the German frustration. Little by little, Hitler gains support due to his powerful rhetoric, to the point of being appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and, in that same year, establishing the Third Reich with nearly no national nor international opposition (despite some bad press, the great Western powers were happy as long as Hitler kept the Communists at bay). He also controlled every single vehicle of mass communication via his Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, which culminated in a huge support to his cause. A mass industrialization begun and, with it, a drastic fall in unemployment; German pride had been restored. It was in this context that Triumph of the Will was produced, in 1934-5, with Adolf Hitler seen by the German people as their savior and by the world as a great leader.

Hitler framed with both Nazi party symbols

In the making of this film, Riefenstahl wanted to make something very different from the newsreels that flooded German cinemas at the time, which were extremely static, with no moving shots. That led to her devising moving, rotating and suspended cameras, which, consequently, ushered in a plethora of points of view never before obtained on film, documentary or otherwise. Riefenstahl's camera is barely static, capturing its subjects with a sort of ballet-like quality. Furthermore, by aiming at distancing herself from newsreels even further, Riefenstahl completely abandoned the idea of the omniscient narrator, used by documentaries and propaganda films up to that point to explain the significance of every occasion. Instead, in Triumph of the Will, emotions are evoked via editing, sound effects and music. One of my favorite scenes is the SA Night Rally, with the entire SA corps singing while fireworks exploded in the night sky, all edited in the rhythm of the music. Other remarkable shots involve the framing of Hitler, the star of the event, speaking to the people: again Riefenstahl's moving camera makes every speech very distinct, and her framing of Nazi iconography is nearly flawless. The simple fact that many people still believe the entire rally was staged for her camera is nothing but an ode to her talent. According to herself, she was not a party member and, therefore, had no say in the organization of the event. Besides, the party didn't want her to make any movie about the rallies, reason why her first film chronicling the 1933 conference, Victory of Faith (1933), was a failure. It was though Hitler's intervention that this movie as well was not boycotted. Besides, the simple idea Hitler would take staging orders from her is simply ludicrous, IMHO.

Hitler receiving farmers in Nüremberg

If I were watching Triumph of the Will when it was released, prior to the Second World War, the Holocaust and the Nüremberg trials, due to the way it was edited I would have to say this movie is about two things: hope on the future of an ideologically unified Germany and the glorification of labor. This is quite obvious in the focus given to the Hitler Youth, as well as the scene in which some of the 52,000 Reich Labor Service men for review state their birthplaces, covering every corner of the country, and then recite in unison an oath of fidelity to their leader. Hitler then proclaims, "The time will come when no German can be admitted into the community of the people until he has first become a member of your group", that is, the group of laborers literally building the country. This scene is preceded by a procession of farmers in traditional garments, presenting their harvests to Hitler, again an exaltation to labor. Both themes are also alluded by Hitler in his closing speech, moving Hess so much he can barely contain his tears.

The theme of race is touched upon twice in the documentary, maybe because it was edited out (as Goebbels' The Racial Question and World Propaganda speech at the rally the year before was not present in Riefenstahl's Victory of Faith). Streicher's "a people that does not protect the purity of its race goes to seed" and Hitler's "[members of the Nazi party] are the racially best of the German nation [and therefore] can, in the proudest self-esteem, claim the leadership of the Reich and the people". Now that we know the extent to which the Nazis would go in order to apply their race theories, these statements do sound very ominous. But then again, seeing this in 1935 would not be so alarming, as politicians had been using this kind of rhetoric since politics came into existence, with the intent of making the people of their country feel "special". Even today, statesmen punctuate their speeches with phrases like "that is what makes us exceptional/special/different" (which reminds me of a recent rebuttal by Putin to Obama concerning this topic). It was not until the Kristallnacht, in November of 1938, that the European superpowers started to pay closer attention to the way Nazis treated so-called non-Aryans, but then it was already too late.

Nazi flags on salute

Even though this movie is considered on the best (if not the best) documentary in history, I feel it is a bit too long. I mean, there are just so many parades and hand-shakes on can watch in a row... but then again, this movie had been commissioned by Hitler himself, and I am sure he was very specific about what he expected... Besides, it would be nice to have some on-screen indication of who most of those people were and what their position inside the party was. Had I not been watching the annotated version of the documentary, I would have absolutely no idea of the importance of the people I didn't know. 

The big question is, does this documentary belong to the same vault as the despicable Erbkrank (1936), Victims of the Past (1937), The Eternal Jew (1940) and Jud Süß (1940)? I don't think so... (as a side-note, yes, I have watched them all to make this assertion -- it's incredible what you can find on Craigslist...). Those are movies whose content is based on lies which range from ludicrous to infuriating, while Triumph of the Will, on the other hand, is merely the account of a political congress seen though the eyes of an artist. Unfortunately, due to the unspeakable crimes the Nazis committed during WWII, everything produced in that era ends up being clustered together, and everybody in contact with them is Manicheanly labeled.

Leni Riefenstahl is a witness to the shooting of
Jewish prisoners by German Wehrmacht soldiers in
the Polish city Konskie on 12 September 1939

Leni Riefenstahl was found not guilty at the denazification trials in Freiburg, as the judges, after serious scrutiny of her past, found no political activity by her in support of the Nazi regime that would justify punishment. Does that mean she's innocent? Certainly not; it does mean that no evidence was found to prove without a reasonable doubt that she was guilty (after all, Fritz Hippler, the director of the repugnant The Eternal Jew (1940), was also found not guilty). It did not matter, however, as she had already been deemed culpable in the eyes of society: due to her prominent position in the Third Reich, she was blacklisted after the war was over, not being able to make another movie until 2002, when she was 100 years old. Had she really been guilty, she was punished throughout her entire life, deservingly so, by being forbidden of doing what she loved the most; had she been innocent, however, a heinous crime was committed against her, and the word has been robbed of her immense talent. Guilty or not, though, one thing is certain: Leni Riefenstahl will live forever though her work, and years from now, when we are all lying forgotten in our graves, people will still be talking about Triumph of the Will.

In the 1994 documentary about her life, when coerced about an admission of guilt concerning her past, she said:

I can and I do regret making [Triumph of the Will]; I can't regret that I was alive in that period! But no words of anti-semitism ever passed my lips, nor did I write any. I was never anti-semitic, and I never joined the Nazi party, so what am I guilty of? You tell me! I didn't drop any atom bombs! I didn't denounce anyone! So where does my guilt lie?

Summarizing it:

Liked	Didn't like
Inventive editing and camerawork, making two shots rarely look alike (which is extremely hard to do when one is filming a repetitive event like a political rally)	A little too long. There are just so many parades and hand-shakes on can watch in a row...

A beautiful shot by Riefenstahl (if you abstract its subject):

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Great Movie review by Roger Ebert here.

If you liked this movie, then I strongly recommend Ray Müller's The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1993).

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