Triumph of the Will

Saw Triumph of the Will, the Nazi propaganda film. It was #347 on a list of the top 1000 movies as aggregated across many critics, so this was bound to happen eventually. Let's get this over with.

The film is basically a documentary. It has no plot at all. It's essentially a 114 minute long military parade with a few speeches sprinkled throughout. It opens with an fly-over of some German city, with its high buildings and soldiers stretching off into the horizon. We see ancient grand buildings and flags of germany and of the Nazi party. This attempts the tricky association of the brand new and exciting Nazi party with the traditional glory of Germany. This bridge between the excitement of the new and the familiarity of the old is a running theme in the speeches and imagery.

Much can be gleaned from the state of the world at the time by listening to the speeches. They talk of mandatory work assignments and of weeding out the "weakness" of the country. Sure enough, the concentration camps had already been accepting prisoners for about a year prior to this film being made. We see the Hitler Youth being fed heaping plates of sausage and potatoes and hearty soups and we may conclude that they weren't out of their recession just yet. Indeed three square meals, the film seems to imply, are just a party registration away. There's also some weird business with farmers whirling their shovels around like guns, chanting about the soil and such. I guess there was kind of a militarization of agriculture (in addition perhaps to the militarization of all levels of society.)

They talk a lot in contradictory terms. As I said, they try to portray the Nazi party as both a new thing and as an extension of old things. They talk about how all people will be equal but also that they will remove the weak and corrupt elements of society. They talk about how they were a minority party at first, but only because they wanted it that way. This is an intentional effort to allow the crowd to hear what it wants and to avoid baldly stating their true ideology. Even the choice of a female director (Leni Riefenstahl) for this film was designed to indicate to the world that women were equal in this new German utopia (although of course these women must also return to their traditional roles for the sake of their own health and happiness. Of course.)

Credit where it's due: the rallies and parades are very grand and impressive. They fall a tad flat on screen but must have truly been something to see in person. At one point they have a trio of 100-foot-tall flags. Neat! Appart from the set design however, the film is sort of dull. It prominently features people that I know nothing about (Herr Todt anyone? Herr Lutze?) and endless self-congratulation and chest-puffery about how awesome the party is. I find that sort of thing fairly dull even when I'm on board with the message being delivered. Apart from that, there's a ton of shots of cute children, quaint old folks, and handsome soldiers - which was kind of nice. I kept myself awake by trying to read between the lines of their speeches. At one point Adolf himself says something to the effect of "we're all here because we want to be here! Other nations will only understand this as a government order, but we know better!" That was definitely the biggest laugh line in the film for me.