82. Triumph Of The Will (1934)
Directed By Leni Riefenstahl
Synopsis
It's Springtime for Hitler and Germany... well actually it was September, but it was a good joke... I'm going to my room now.
Review
Leni uses her gifts for evil in this most spectacular of propaganda films. We have had other propaganda films here, like Battleship Potemkin and we will have more, however this is probably the most famous of them all and with good reason. The direction is just spectacular, the innovation in terms of camera angles and techniques as well as great editing give this film its only plus points.
The film is however extremely boring, after the first hour you have kind of gotten the great tricks Riefenstahl is using, you don't care for the message, or at least you shouldn't and just spend the next hour think, "Wow, that's a lot of people... Hitler looks silly there... not another fucking regiment!".
I would like to be the one to burst Hitler's bubble but the Soviet influence in this film is more than obvious. Riefenstahl took a lot of pointers from Eisenstein from angles and editing techniques to an even identical shot of Nuremberg reflected in the water just like the factory is reflected in a puddle in Strike!, funny but true. Of course most people in Germany would not be aware of Eisenstein's films and therefore this must have been an extremely effective film. Its intention was to wow the German people with the might of the Nazi party, and it did that perfectly.
Another plus point here are Riefenstahl's amazing aerial shots. She had cranes and planes and cameras mounted on flagpoles, it was just crazy. Also her marriage of music and cinema, particularly in the fireworks scene is just impressive, no wonder Walt "Fantasia" Disney was such a Nazi supporter. This could only happen in a film with full state support, so if nothing else Triumph Of The Will gave us that. Get it from Amazon UK
or US
.Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Film critic Roy Frumkes has called Triumph "the antithesis of an objective work" and suggested that because of the special accommodations Riefenstahl received (one scene featured aerial searchlights requisitioned from the Luftwaffe) and because "the film was altered by practically every in-the-camera and laboratory special effect then known" the film can be labeled anything except a documentary. Ebert also disagrees, saying that Triumph 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?"
Susan Sontag considered Triumph of the Will the best made documentary of all time. Brian Winston's essay on the film in The Movies as History : Visions of the Twentieth Century, an anthology edited by David Ellwood (published by the International Association for Media and History), is largely a critique of Sontag's analysis, which he finds faulty. His ultimate point is that any filmmaker could have made the film look impressive because the Nazi's 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.
Mr. Hilter:
posted by Francisco Silva @ 2:57 AM
4 Comments:
At 2:26 PM,
Tisher said…
Animation historian and author of a forthcoming Disney biography, Michael Barrier, reviewing Neal Gabler's recent Disney biography (which he didn't like on the whole):
"He is admirably deft, however, in dismantling the loaded question of Walt's supposed anti-Semitism, a charge that Gabler himself casually endorsed in an earlier book. Thanks to his good work, we may not need to visit that charge again, although that may be hoping for too much."
See also:
www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdisneyfascist.html
The urban legend site Snopes.com commenting on a different urban legend regarding Disney:
"Disney certainly had his share of faults, many of which were glossed over in his lifetime (and to some extent still are), but in today's climate no beloved public figure is allowed to have minor faults -- he has to have major faults, even if someone has to invent them."
At 2:46 PM,
Francisco Silva said…
Tisher: The straightdope site seems to not give a definitive answer to it and Snopes doesn't even address it as an urban legend.
Disney was most likely not a Nazi, and I said that tongue in cheek, still he did sympathise.
Quoting from Straight Dope:
The German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, whose documentaries in the mid-30s had helped to glorify the Nazis, claimed that "after Kristallnacht [1938], she approached every studio in Hollywood looking for work. No studio head would even screen her movies except Walt Disney. He told her he admired her work but if it became known that he was considering hiring her, it would damage his reputation."
and:
On the other hand, there was a lot of antisemitic feeling in the Disney studio. While no one can specifically attribute bias to Disney himself, Jewish people were ready fodder for the animators' gags and Disney approved every scene in every short the studio made.
At 5:32 PM,
Tisher said…
I recognized that you were surely being a bit tongue in cheek, and I hoped I wasn't overreacting. Obviously Disney couldn't have been a Nazi in any real sense, and I imagined that you were being deliberately provocative. But this kind of stuff is so common in regard to Disney and seems to stick with people in a way that making jokes about, say, Chaplin being a Commie or pedophile doesn't. That's why I thought the Snopes quotation was relevant; Disney remains a pop culture figure more than most filmmakers whose careers began in the twenties, and people remain curious about him. Even in jest I think it's an unfortunate cultural pastime to discover, or create, methods of sneering at or feeling superior to historical figures.
As far as the Straight Dope article:
"He told her he admired her work..."
Your review indicates that you also admire her work. That was the source of your Disney reference to begin with.
As for the stereotypes in the cartoons: Racial stereotypes, including Jews, were common at all the cartoon studios of this era. Certainly this doesn't excuse their ugliness, but it's unfair to demonize Disney in particular for those larger cultural attitudes.
The only thing in the article which is dubious is Disney's association with the Bund. But this is all based on Art Babbitt (Jewish and employed by Walt) saying he "often" saw Walt there - when he himself (Babbitt) attended out of curiosity!
This is probably already too long, but although I couldn't find that "deft dismantling" of Gabler's, I did find him addressing the topic in the final question on this page.
I do, by the way, enjoy all three of your sites and check in with them regularly.
At 5:47 PM,
Francisco Silva said…
Tisher: I do admire her work, but watching it now 70 years removed from it, with Hitler dead, or screening it in 1938 is a very different thing.
I also agree that racist cartoons were Dish of the Day back then, and many films were also racist, with black-ups and such, and all studios were doing it.
We have to a bit culturally relativist here and what is wrong today wasn't necessarily seen as such then.
Walt was, however close enough to dodgy German dealings at the time to raise suspicion if nothing else. And even if it was just for business reasons he was still sympathising both with Leni's propaganda work and the Bund at a time.
Thanks very much for checking out the blogs! This type of discussion is what I need more here :)
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