81: Triumph of the Will

Triumph des Willens

GER  114m  Dir: Leni Riefenstahl

Triumph of the Will was a piece of Nazi propaganda directed by Leni Riefenstahl, with Hitler himself as an unofficial executive producer. The film depicts the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, attended by over 700,000 Nazi supporters and much of the staging of the event was designed with the film in mind. 

My initial thought when watching this film was how familiar it all looks. There's a big crowd standing at the side of the streets to see Hitler's motorcade, the Hitler Youth look like perfectly normal boy scouts and there's a parade in traditional dress. Even the conference itself is pretty normal, opening with a remembrance piece and then a succession of speeches about how successful the party has been and promoting policies including building lots of new infrastructure, employing people, helping farmers and ensuring that the legal system is fair. It felt to me that if you removed the Nazi iconography you'd have scenes that could be misinterpreted as a visit from the Queen of England or the US President. 

It's always felt to me like the Second World War and the time of the Nazi party was a very long time ago. But on this journey thorough 1001 films so far I've been thinking that many of the films still resonate as a 21st century viewer and that leaves me with an uncomfortable paradox- how can that world of 1930s cinema that I feel so close to be the same world where Hitler and the Nazi Party are in power?

I've certainly never seen as much footage of Hitler himself as I have seen here. He looks distinctly uncomfortable and awkward as he meets people in the crowds and even his speeches, of which there are many in this film, didn't portray him as full of personality. Apparently he found being filmed pretty uncomfortable which might be a factor but even so, it's still hard to understand why people viewed him so highly from this footage. 

There's a huge debate surrounding this film- is it simply a piece of propaganda or is it a historical documentary? Certainly director Riefenstahl later claimed it was the latter but clearly she wasn't going to come out and say how wonderful she once thought the Nazis were. She seems to have some talent as a director with some nice shots of the city and the whole thing filmed in an artistic way. Then again, it's been argued that any half-decent filmmaker could make a film showing this huge display, especially when everything was staged for the film, and that the edit of the film, cut down from 61 hours, is actually quite tedious (which I tend to agree with). 

It's notable that other than a couple of mentions of race, the film doesn't go into Hitler's genocidal policies. Riefenstahl claims she didn't even know about these policies but it felt to me that there is a deliberate effort from the Nazi's not to be too extreme in the film. Pretty much everything you hear is relatively mild and the sort of thing any political party conference on the right might include and more than anything the speakers' urge for the country to be united. From a propaganda point of view it feels like this is a film which exists to say "look at how wonderful we are" and keeps quiet about their intentions to kill millions of people who were not of the Aryan race for fear that it would lose the party support. 

It's really hard to make a judgment on this film. It is undoubtedly successful at showing the splendour and power of the Nazi Party but can you separate the art from it's subject? I think it's even more challenging as nothing within the film itself is abhorrent but we sadly know that Hitler and this party were behind the greatest atrocities in human history. It's perhaps easy to fall into the trap of the splendour and nice shots as many film critics have over the years but as I continue to think about it I'm leaning towards the view that anyone could have made this spectacle look good and the propaganda is pretty first base and does nothing very special. 

The thing that's going to stick in my mind most about this film is that it feels horrifically close to modern life in so many ways and that's a terrifying thought.