Triumph of the Will

Yesterday evening I completed reading Ian Kershaw’s monumental 2008 single-volume biography of Adolf Hitler, and it came as some relief to finally reach the bitter end - the closing years of the book, with the German people and Europe plunged into unimaginable misery and destruction, were particularly harrowing to read. The level of detail in Kershaw’s book is incredible, even in this abridged version of what originally came as a massive two-volume set, but I was a little disappointed that Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 propaganda film Triumph of the Will passed by with a mere sentence or two. Instead I turned to my Synapse DVD of Riefenstahl’s film, augmented by an authoritative commentary track by Dr. Anthony R. Santoro, who too often commits the cardinal sin of commentators by describing the events taking place on screen. Still, it’s probably the best way to watch Triumph of the Will, Dr. Santoro's voice is a far more pleasant alternative to listening to the interminable speeches of Hitler's cabinet.

I must admit I’ve had a thorny relationship with the film over the years. As a piece of Cinema, I find it impressively crafted, even visually striking - the sweeping aerial views of the beautiful city of Nuremberg, the wide angle shots of patterns of massed formations (which surely rival the record-breaking amount of extras seen in Gandi), and in particular, the night-time sequences which Riefenstahl stages with back-lighting and smoke, reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen. Indeed there are those who claim that George Lucas took inspiration from the film for the design of the victory celebration seen in the finale of Star Wars. The film is darkly fascinating too - in the sequence where Hitler offers a smile and a kind word to some farmers - a moment they surely cherished in the years ahead, I had to wonder what happened to those people as the war entered its final terrible days when their benevolent Führer effectively condemned them to death alongside Germany’s imminent destruction. But for all that, I can’t help but feel that the film has become little more than pornography for neo-Nazis and white supremacists, so much so that I’ve never included the Synapse DVD on my film list. To make some sense of it all, I hope to round out this encounter with Triumph of the Will with the 1993 documentary The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl…