Film Review: Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935)

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(source: tmdb.org)

History of cinema is full of dark ironies. One of them can be found in life and career of Leni Riefenstahl, German director who is both the best known and the most infamous female film maker that ever lived. Much of her infamy was due to her 1935 film Triumph of the Will, one of the most important documentaries ever made, known as the most influential piece of on screen propaganda in history.

The film depicts events that took place in city of Nuremberg in September 1934 when National Socialist Workers Party (NSDAP) held its sixth national congress. It was the second such event held since its leader Adolf Hitler came to power as chancellor in January 1933. Following the intertitles reminding audience how much time has passed since start of the Great War, Germany’s defeat and “German rebirth” brought by Hitler’s ascendancy, film starts with Hitler flying to the city and driving from airport to hotel, being greeted by tens of thousands of cheering citizens and Party members. In next day massive rallies, with hundreds of thousands of participants are held, which include reviews and parades of Party’s paramilitary forces from SA and SS, Hitler Youth, Reich Labour Service (RAD) and 18th Cavalry Regiment of Reichswehr, Germany’s regular military. Hitler and number of top Nazi leader hold speeches at night, concluding on the fifth day when Hitler claims that “all loyal Germans will become National Socialists” and “only the best National Socialists will become Party comrades”.

Triumph of the Will is the film that is always going to be burdened by the fact it advances the cause which is considered to be the vilest in entire history and praises the man who is considered to embodiment absolute and irredeemable evil. Even bigger problem for Riefenstahl’s film comes from such task being done so effectively. From today’s perspective Triumph of the Will, which like almost all films at the time was completed in black-and-white, might not look like something special, but for the standards of 1930s it represented quite an achievement. That isn’t that surprising, considering that Leni Riefenstahl was already accomplished film maker and had won Hitler’s favour with her mountain films like Blue Light. What Riefenstahl has achieved in this film was to use most of the technical resources of UFA, Germany’s formidable film studio, to fuse propaganda with exciting and breathtaking feature film. Riefenstahl’s main trick was to stage the actual happenings on the streets, halls, stadiums and exercise grounds of Nuremberg in such way that they look as impressive on screen as possible. In it, she had Hitler as her most valuable associate. Politician whose rise to dictatorial power was in many ways consequences of his charisma, rhetorical skills and meticulously practised stage appearances was nearly perfect star for Riefenstahl’s film. All this is achieved despite Hitler appearing relatively shortly in the film and having few and not particularly memorable speeches. They are overshadowed by the scenes of hundreds of thousands of Nazis marching, parading, singing and expressing their devotion to Führer and his New Order. The most impressive is the scene when Hitler, flanked with SS leader Heinrich Himmler and SA leader Viktor Lutze, lays wreath to Great War memorial in presence of 150,000 stormtroopers – an image of solemnity and power. Riefenstahl, on the other hand, allows some lighter tones at the very beginning of the film, depicting masses of Hitler Youth goofing around their tents and having time of their life, making those scenes not that different than those seen decades later in Woodstock.

Fun, however, was hardly at Hitler’s mind when he organised the rally and when he commissioned the film. He became chancellor recently and his grip on power wasn’t looking as strong as it would only few years later. The biggest challenge occurred only few months earlier with factional struggles within Party that ultimately resulted with Night of the Long Knives, bloody purge of SA leadership led by his old comrade Ernst Röhm, an event that is even indirectly addressed in the film. Reason for new film was also in Riefenstahl covering the previous rally a year earlier in The Victory of Faith, another documentary which quickly disappeared because of Röhm’s presence in it being rather embarrassing for the regime. That film, which was for decades considered to be lost, served as good template for Riefenstahl. A year later she would cover another rally in Nuremberg in the film called Day of Freedom: Our Wehrmacht, which, among other things, celebrated Hitler’s decision to defy arms limitations set by Versailles Treaty.

Riefenstahl’s film was quite a box office success in Germany and it helped maintaining Hitler’s cult of personality among Germans and perception of national saviour that ended violence and economic turmoil of Weimar Republic, restored order, erased humiliations of Versailles and was leading Germany into new glorious era of might and prosperity. Negative aspects of Hitler’s rule, like brutal secret police, concentration camps, racism and institutional anti-Semitism that would ultimately evolve into Holocaust, can’t be seen in Triumph of the Will. Riefenstahl was arrested and blacklisted as Nazi propagandist after the war, but she spent most of her life claiming that she knew nothing of atrocities against Jews. Her claims might be backed by the fact that the film doesn’t contain explicit anti-Semitic content nor are Jews mentioned directly (although Julius Streicher, the most notorious anti-Semite among top Nazi leadership who was after Second World War hanged at Nuremberg for inciting genocide, appears in the film). If Triumph of the Will is compared with The Birth of a Nation, another “problematic” cinema classic, D. W. Griffith’s work from two decades earlier looks much more dangerous with its openly racist attitudes and hostility towards “wrong” people. Riefenstahl was, in a way, fortunate to make those films in time when Hitler’s Germany was still relatively weak and still had to rearm before engaging in violent conquests. Third Reich still needed to reassure the rest of the world that its intentions were reasonable and peaceful, an effort that was two years later culminated with Berlin Olympics, covered by Rifenstahl in Olympia, another classic documentary, which, unlike Triumph of the Will, didn’t gain much infamy.

Although primarily made for German audience, Triumph of the Will was shown outside of Germany. There, for obvious reasons, it didn’t have the same propaganda impact, but it nevertheless proved to be quite influencing. Some of the people who took it very seriously were film makers, including those with reputation of staunch anti-Nazis. They recognised it as an effective and very dangerous piece of propaganda that they should try to counter in different ways. Some, like Charles Chaplin, used some of its iconography as inspiration to mock Hitler and Nazis in The Great Dictator. The others, like Frank Capra, were convinced that Nazi propaganda must be refuted with propaganda of its own, resulting in famous series of WW2 era documentaries Why We Fight. Rifenstahl’s film continued to influence film makers even with the end of Hitler and Nazism. Its narrative technique, editing, iconography and other methods of psychological manipulation were adopted by various film makers for various purposes, ranging from Hollywood directors in search of “cool” images to those trying to sell commercial products. Because of that, there are traces of Triumph of the Will in many things we watch and take granted today, but it takes a keen eye and good knowledge of history to be aware of it. Yet, it is almost certain that Leni Rifenstahl would have liked to earn her place in cinema history in a different way.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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3 comments
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Thank you for a very interesting and nuanced review of this infamous film. For anyone trying to understand the mass psychological appeal of fascism then this film is a must watch.

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One I have never seen. I'll have to check it out!