Nazi Germany in 1935 was under the influence of the authoritarian ruler Adolf Hitler. He recruited Leni Riefenstahl to make a movie on the Nuremberg rally. The film glorified the Third Reich and portrayed the army as a band of brothers. The way Hitler descends from the clouds with crowds, children, and cats adoring him leads the viewer to buy into his deity. There is Nazi at the end of the film who introduces Hitler but before doing he makes some remarks on the Reich “…the flags and standards of National Socialism. If their cloth ever rots only then will people understand the greatness of our time. And they will understand what you, my Führer mean to Germany. You are Germany. When you act, the nation acts.” The documentary pushed the idea of Germany’s eternal nature and how their progressive moves were all for the benefit of a great Germany. Nazism was the religion of Germany in the 1930s with all their hopes and dreams resting on Hitler’s shoulders after the embarrassment of World War I and severe unemployment consuming society’s conscious. Riefenstahl’s camera work as Germany’s god comes from the heavens to grace him with his presence. She chooses the moments that people look at him with adoration and he stops to touch a small child to convince us of his amiable nature.
Leni was a bombshell of a director, as she was a woman in a predominantly male powerful society. She was handpicked by Joseph Goebbels, the master of propaganda, along with Hitler, the tyrant himself because of the way she was able to move people through her art in film. She was able to pair excellent music and film technique to touch people’s hearts. The article “Triumph Des Willens (1935): Documentary and Propaganda” explores how Hitler had admired Riefenstahl’s work specifically Das blue Licht (The Blue Light, 1932). He is quoted to have said to her “Once we come to power, you must make my films.” (153). Together they did exactly that and made history.
As David B. Dennis, a professor of European culture explains: “As a forbidding Nazi eagle appears on the screen, swastika in its talons, and the camera pans to title and credits styled as if carved in stone, the music climaxes in a potent, martial theme…” (Dennis, 99). Every piece of the film is built on beauty and the humans in them being entrancing. The film’s message was carefully constructed by Riefenstahl under the influence of Hitler, just an art film is methodically thought out and put together in specific ways to be pleasing to the eyes with a specific experience for the viewer to experience. While a documentary is supposed to expose rather confuse or hide with less focus on camera angles and visual effects but the stories behind the character’s and their reality. The movie’s mass use of tremendous technology of the time allowed for dramatic and enthralling shots to be capture, all these rendered the grandeur of the Nazi party, the film was a paradox of beauty used for something grotesque.
Propaganda was famous for making people believe something different from reality. Riefenstahl use of the mass ornament and other techniques created a true piece of art for the German people to be proud of and escape into its illusion. As we the footage shown in the film is by no means chronological, rather it is over sixty hours of footage simplified and compiled seamlessly into one-hundred and fourteen minutes of beautiful propaganda. “What Riefenstahl instead hoped to capture was the essence of the excitement and ‘meaning of Nuremberg’ by structuring the film in a way that would lead viewers to ever greater excitement ‘from act to act, from impression to impression.’” (Hinton, 160). This quote proves that the director’s mission was to show a false version of reality that Hitler wanted rather than the reality of the situation. The film was the Classical Hollywood Cinema version of a documentary with real footage of real people but at the right moments with a happy ending.
Riefenstahl is extremely conscious of angles and facial expression in this project. We through the shots of the crowd and the footage of the German army that the people are only ever happy and laughing. “It is our wish and will that this State and Reich will endure for millennia to come….the magnificent, glorious army, those old, proud warriors of our Nation, will be joined by the political leadership of the Party equally tradition minded, and then these two institutions together will educate and strengthen the German Man and carry on their shoulders the German State, the German Reich.” Riefenstahl does not keep the camera on Hitler throughout the whole speech but rather she pans the audience actively listening, applauding, and nodding. This furthers the idea of support and not just support by some but the masses. She again zooms closely on individual’s faces to show their approval but then has deep shots where one can see a crowd adoring its god and his ludicrous decrees.
The Triumph of the Will was not a documentary on the German people of the 1930s but rather the image that the Nazis wanted the world to see. Riefenstahl was no doubt a genius used in the hands of devil. Her use of angles, mass ornament, and editing was revolutionary in the film world. The film sold the lies of unity, power, and manifest destiny to the German people and allowed them to believe that true peace, success, and favor was upon them.
Dennis, David B.. ““the Most German of All German Operas”: Die Meistersinger Through the Lens of the Third Reich”. Wagner's Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation. Ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi. NED - New edition. Boydell & Brewer, 2002. 98–119. Web.
Hinton, David B.. “Triumph of the Will": Document or Artifice?”. Cinema Journal 15.1 (1975): 48–57. Web.
“Triumph Des Willens (1935): Documentary and Propaganda”. “Triumph Des Willens (1935): Documentary and Propaganda”. A Critical History of German Film. NED - New edition. Boydell & Brewer, 2010. 151–165. Web.
As David B. Dennis, a professor of European culture explains: “As a forbidding Nazi eagle appears on the screen, swastika in its talons, and the camera pans to title and credits styled as if carved in stone, the music climaxes in a potent, martial theme…” (Dennis, 99). Every piece of the film is built on beauty and the humans in them being entrancing. The film’s message was carefully constructed by Riefenstahl under the influence of Hitler, just an art film is methodically thought out and put together in specific ways to be pleasing to the eyes with a specific experience for the viewer to experience. While a documentary is supposed to expose rather confuse or hide with less focus on camera angles and visual effects but the stories behind the character’s and their reality. The movie’s mass use of tremendous technology of the time allowed for dramatic and enthralling shots to be capture, all these rendered the grandeur of the Nazi party, the film was a paradox of beauty used for something grotesque.
Propaganda was famous for making people believe something different from reality. Riefenstahl use of the mass ornament and other techniques created a true piece of art for the German people to be proud of and escape into its illusion. As we the footage shown in the film is by no means chronological, rather it is over sixty hours of footage simplified and compiled seamlessly into one-hundred and fourteen minutes of beautiful propaganda. “What Riefenstahl instead hoped to capture was the essence of the excitement and ‘meaning of Nuremberg’ by structuring the film in a way that would lead viewers to ever greater excitement ‘from act to act, from impression to impression.’” (Hinton, 160). This quote proves that the director’s mission was to show a false version of reality that Hitler wanted rather than the reality of the situation. The film was the Classical Hollywood Cinema version of a documentary with real footage of real people but at the right moments with a happy ending.
Riefenstahl is extremely conscious of angles and facial expression in this project. We through the shots of the crowd and the footage of the German army that the people are only ever happy and laughing. “It is our wish and will that this State and Reich will endure for millennia to come….the magnificent, glorious army, those old, proud warriors of our Nation, will be joined by the political leadership of the Party equally tradition minded, and then these two institutions together will educate and strengthen the German Man and carry on their shoulders the German State, the German Reich.” Riefenstahl does not keep the camera on Hitler throughout the whole speech but rather she pans the audience actively listening, applauding, and nodding. This furthers the idea of support and not just support by some but the masses. She again zooms closely on individual’s faces to show their approval but then has deep shots where one can see a crowd adoring its god and his ludicrous decrees.
The Triumph of the Will was not a documentary on the German people of the 1930s but rather the image that the Nazis wanted the world to see. Riefenstahl was no doubt a genius used in the hands of devil. Her use of angles, mass ornament, and editing was revolutionary in the film world. The film sold the lies of unity, power, and manifest destiny to the German people and allowed them to believe that true peace, success, and favor was upon them.
Dennis, David B.. ““the Most German of All German Operas”: Die Meistersinger Through the Lens of the Third Reich”. Wagner's Meistersinger: Performance, History, Representation. Ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi. NED - New edition. Boydell & Brewer, 2002. 98–119. Web.
Hinton, David B.. “Triumph of the Will": Document or Artifice?”. Cinema Journal 15.1 (1975): 48–57. Web.
“Triumph Des Willens (1935): Documentary and Propaganda”. “Triumph Des Willens (1935): Documentary and Propaganda”. A Critical History of German Film. NED - New edition. Boydell & Brewer, 2010. 151–165. Web.
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