I've just finished viewing Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" (1935) for the second or third time, and it will be a Great Movie published June 27. Whether it is truly great or only technically qualifies because of its importance is the question. As faithful readers will know, I have been avoiding this particular opportunity with dread. I felt it would involve grappling with the question of whether evil art can be great art. Since moral art can obviously be bad art, the answer to the flip side would seem to be clear enough, but it took me a fearsome struggle to thrash out "Birth of a Nation," even though many more excuses (of time, place and context) can be offered for Griffith than for Riefenstahl.
As it turned out, "Triumph of the Will" turned out to be a relatively easy assignment for me. The film itself informed me how I was to review it, and this process took place during the act of viewing. What I wrote will have to await publication day of the article. But these are general observations:
I wrote about what I saw, and how I felt when I saw it. I decided not to devote long paragraphs to rehearsing the evils of Nazism, as if that subject was not already pretty well settled. I was not pious in my denunciations, as if I had something to prove. I simply wrote about the sounds and the pictures.
That's the approach I long used in the "shot-by-shot" film analysis sessions that I conducted annually for more than 30 years at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado, and also for many assorted years at the Hawaii, Virginia, and other festivals, and in classes at the University of Chicago. I recommend the approach to any film enthusiast. The film teaches itself to you.
I began in about 1970, on the advice of John West, a Chicago film exhibitor, teacher and historian. "You know how coaches use a stop-action 16mm projector to go through game films?" he asked. "Do the same thing with a feature movie. You don't stop after every frame, of course, but you stop at anything interesting, and discuss it, and you can back up and look at it a frame at a time."
This I did, to begin with, during U of C classes. The rules were simple: Anyone in the audience shouted out "Stop!" and we did, and discussed why they wanted us to stop. Beginning with Hitchcock, who remains the most fruitful director for such analysis, I worked my way over the years through the work of Welles, Bunuel, Bergman, Herzog, Truffaut and many others. I found that with a large group, there would always be one member with the expertise to settle the question at hand: A Hungarian speaker, for example, or a psychiatrist, or a specialist on Japanese medieval history. The Colorado groups often numbered 1,000 students and locals, and over the years we formed a community.
Of course the introduction of the laserdisc, and later the DVD, made this process infinitely easier.
When I was asked by Criterion to do a shot-by-shot commentary of Ozu's "Floating Weeds," I almost balked. (In his late work, Ozu's camera never moves. He always cuts between static set-ups. What would I analyze?) I had in fact between through the film a shot at a time at the side of Donald Richie, greatest English-language expert on the Japanese cinema, at Hawaii, but that had been years ago. All the same, I proposed "Floating Weeds" at Colorado one year, and the discoveries we made there were so fruitful that I modestly believe the resulting commentary track is superb. The greater the artist, the more deeply you can look, and the more you will find.
Viewing "Triumph of the Will" a shot at a time would be a relentless and harrowing experience, and that realization gave me my angle in writing about the film. I did not have to settle vast questions of good and evil. I simply had to look at what has been frequently called "the greatest documentary ever made." But to look slowly, and carefully, and at the screen, not the reputation.
I look immensely forward to reading your Great Movie essay on this film. You're a wonderful writer and your reviews, whether I agree with them or not, are always perceptive and intriguing.
And as a note to those readers who have not been able to locate a copy of Triumph of the Will (or at least, locate a copy at a reasonable price), one may view it on Google Video. It's a suitable, if not preferable, substitute to watching this rather difficult to locate film on disc or videocassette. As the film has fallen into the public domain, this is a perfectly legal activity. It's a film that should be seen.
Also, happy birthday Mr. Ebert; I sincerely hope it's been a good one.
Based on your blog entry I sought out a copy of "Triumph of the Will" in anticipation of your essay. I found no video, no DVD, no presentation at all (the same problem I had with Gates of Heaven) and out of frustration I searched for a segment of the film on YouTube and to my shock, someone had uploaded the entire film.
This is the filmgoing challenge of all time because in order to appreciate the technique you have to approach it in two ways 1.) you have to set aside your feelings and disgust of the Nazis and see the film on neutral ground and 2.) you have to keep in mind that this is propaganda, not a documentary. It was used to drum up spirited feelings of the German citizenry.
Personally I think it's more history than art. The images are chilling because they help us understand how a young person in Germany at that time might have been moved by the images. Not that I subscribe to them but again, I am trying to see the film on it's own terms.
If I go into the city I can get "Birth of a Nation" but it would be an ask to try and get Leni Riefenstahl's films; the best I could get is her work distilled through documentary, a safer and far less interesting way to approach the subject. I don't know why, Hitler is ever popular. Oddly it is easier to access her photography and you can find her work in your average bookstore.
Distribution (or lack thereof) is the real censor. There are books and films I want but can't have because they are out of print, not in release. Thank God for the internet! I await your review with enthusiasm.
Preparing my popcorn just for this review.
As I'm relatively new to the subject ... where might one find a copy of the movie that can be viewed at home? This, and the 1936 Olympics film, have been on my gosh-I'd-really-love-to-see list for a while now.
Dear Mr. Ebert,
You wrote, referring to the Nazi politics of the Third Reich, "as if that subject were not already pretty well settled." Well, I see at least two arenas where it is not settled, so I would urge you to make at least one unequivocal statement about your opinion on the subject in your Great Movie Review. The first arena will always be with us and that is the young. Unfortunately, we have to inform every new generation of not only the good but also the evil of which humans are capable. The second arena is one that took me by surprise a year ago as I had, like you, assumed the question well aired and settled. I live in Europe and the older generation here, depending on where they were in the 1930's and '40's experienced an information blackout and varying degrees of false propaganda. It is not everywhere known here that London was bombed during World War II. They do have personal memories of bombers flying over their homes. Who to believe? That is still a question. I heard one old gentleman say, "Hitler did some good as well". I was flabbergasted not only that he believed any amount of good could excuse the evil but that he felt comfortable expressing this view in public. I immediately assumed he had never gotten the full story or perhaps didn't know who to believe. Therefore, I would venture to say that the question seems to be far from closed. That makes it not unnecessary to reiterate what seems obvious.
Do you think Triumph of the Will is a dangerous film? I believe in your review of American History X you felt uneasy because the character played by Ed Norton was so clearly intelligent and persuasive that he could appeal to the vulnerable.
Roger may want to take a similar approach to Pasolini's "Salo: 120 Days of Sodom," which is even more notorious for its content, and is being released as a Criterion DVD in August, I believe. That film operates in basically the opposite way: It uses graphic and unwatchable violence and sexuality in a flat, almost neutral way, so as to further a noble message that absolute power is poisonous.
I have the Synapse special edition DVD myself. And I must admit I've only watched it once. But that single viewing was enough to leave me with a lasting impact.
What Leni Riefenstahl accomplished here is what I would call the perfect technical recording of a major historical event. And while the movie has been I believe rightfully accused of being Nazi propaganda, the movie also managed to document in incredible detail the emotional power as well as the collective insanity of what was once Nazi Germany. Tens of thousands of people deciding together, and with no second thought or reservation, that they wanted to conquer the world and rid it of what they believed were groups of individuals unworthy to exist. Total collective madness.
The movie was appropriately titled; it truly was a triumph of the will. And knowing what we know today, the movie sends chills up my spine every time I think about it. This collective madness already happened once. What's there to prevent it from happening again?
I have not seen "Triumph of the Will" yet, but DVD from some company is available in Korea at this time. I have been reluctant about watching this 'evil art', but, after reading your writing, I decided to see it as soon as possible. I hope it won't be worse than watching "Birth of a Nation". Even though I was absolutely horrified during the third act of "Birth of a Nation", I said to myself during the climax sequence: "It works, damn it!!".
Viewing "Triumph of the Will" a shot at a time may be harrowing. But, think about Ken Russell's "The Devils". I have seen censored version on TV last summer and seen uncut version this year. After 27 years, it is still supremely insane and evil, and taught me why "The Passion of Christ" is not a cheap exploitative movie. I doubt if shot-by-shot analysis of "The Devils" is okay for mental health of the audience.
I also doubt whether Michael Heneke's "Funny Movie" can be ideal for shot-by-shot analysis. It's 'well-made' cousin of "The Strangers"("Why are doing this to us?"- "Why Not?"), and was praised by some critics. However, it's so mean and nihilistic that I was very angry at the end of the film. Well, who can stand 109-min version of home invasion sequence from "A Clockwork Orange"? Maybe several stops during analysis will help the audience, who will probably shout "Stop!" more frequently than ever.
"Triumph of the Will" may be harrowing to watch, but I think it's better than some other movies. By the way, I know it's yesterday, but, Happy Birthday, Mr. Ebert.
I think it is instructive to take a page out of the Nazis' own game book with regard to art. They curated and toured a show called "Degenerate Art," to inform the German people what type of art should be condemned. If we wish to avoid walking in the Nazis' foot steps, then let us simply not judge the art itself at all.
Mr. Ebert:
Are there plans to publish "The Great Movies III"? I hope so. I've recently purchased both "Great Movies" books, as well as "Four Star Reviews". They're engrossing; I've been poring over them constantly for the past several weeks.
(My girlfriend loves "Raiders of the Lost Ark", so I read its "Great Movie" entry to her in bed one night. She loved it. Bedtime stories with Uncle Roger, it was!)
Thanks for all your great writing!!
Brian
I think there may be an omnibus volume of the first 300 Great Movies, sometime next year
My understanding is that Riefenstahl's work was stunning. I might understand the movie community's squeamishness about admitting that it was damned fine film-making more, were the film community so unsqueamish about praising so much else that is vile and vapid.
Adults -- grownups -- can handle the concept that Art can serve many masters, villainy among them. It shouldn't be too hard for many of us to appreciate Riefenstahl's craft, while finding the content (truly) pathetic or tragic.
I can name at least a dozen films that have been advanced as noteworthy in the last year or so that should have been flushed down the crapper well before TOTW.
"A History of Violence," for example. If the crtical community trusted adults to see beyond the surface of that screed, why not a film far more historically important? In the same way, Birth of A Nation is seen as historically important, and Fahrenheit 9/11.
What -- we're going to promote Fahrenheit 9/11 as a better and more relevant film than TOTW?
Imagine remaking "Triumph of the Will" in a modern context, based upon President Bush. Instead of the opening flight sequence of Hitler descending from the clouds, we have "Mission Accomplished." All of the Nazi propaganda of the Nuremberg rally becomes American Ultra Patriotic symbollism. In this imaginary script we are now faced with the paradox of time and space with our double feature: what has changed over time?
Strange reading "War of the worlds" (1898), to discover the theme appears strikingly like Nazi genocide. The aim of war for extinction, approached with complete coldness and intelligence is all there. What strikes me is the logic of the work, taking the ethics of colonialism to its natural conclusion - this is what makes it prophetic.
"And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?"
This is of course politically incorrect by today's standards but he makes a point. Whilst there are in fact Tasmanian Aborigines (half-castes - the implications of this fact being obscene) there is certainly a case to be made for a precedent in history for genocide. Australia did not become a federation until 1900, and this fact seems to obscure the tragedy of Tasmania by placing them into a larger pool of people, many more of whom survived on the mainland. The process we have of grouping people within borders or other definitions is strange. In the world today there are more people at risk of persecution than died in the Holocaust and yet this is somehow not so hurtful. Does the horror of the Holocaust come from the fact that particular minorities were hunted to extinction, that this was a threat to the diversity of life, like the loss of the Dodo? This doesn't seem ethically sound, since every individual has value independent of their group, and yet it has emotional force. Once lost, such diversity becomes irreplaceable. The refrain at the close of Schindler's list "There will be generations because of this." is not greatly comforting given the extent of the tragedy, but it averts the total emptiness we might feel had none survived at all.
That Wells predicted the second world war years before it happened, lived to see it and worked on creating our human rights infrastructure after its close is astonishing to me.
I had the same thought as Ebert about the Spielberg film: it ought to have been set in 1898. What is interesting about the tale comes from the period: what is it about that particular time seemed to foreshadow doom and destruction? Nazism did not come from nowhere, I am fascinated by the longer history which led up to it. Of course it had its roots in the first world war but it must have gone back much further than that.
I first saw Triumph of Will in Estes Park (about one hour from the University of Colorado) very late at night on TCM. I was amazed and this particular documentary came with an analysis and a commentary mixed in with a biography of the director. I was going to climb Longs Peak our only 14,000 ft. mountain up here but this movie was so magnificent that I could not tear myself away. This was about 6 yrs ago I have not seen it on TCM since. It went on about how she had the camera man on roller skates for certain shots and all sorts of tricks she came up with. But also it was interesting to watch the interview with the director. You could sense uneasy evil lurking beneath her denials regarding her relationship with Hitler. I urge you to use this documentary for you analysis it has it's own historian narrating that will answer some technical answers for you.
The confident report by a reader here that "Triumph of the Will" is in public domain is incorrect, though there have been bootleg versions for many years that have no protection. The film is under license from Transit Film in Munich, which is a part of the Friedrich Murnau Foundation established by the (West) German government after WW II for the distribution of films made during and/or in and for the Third Reich. It is available on an excellent DVD version available at all the usual sources - except in Germany, where it is legally restricted. You can read more in my biography of Riefenstahl, also widely available.
One question that's always bothered me is why Eisenstien gets a free pass. The regime he served was every bit as evil as Hitler's Nazi Germany. Is it because the subject matter of his movies is not as patently offensive as a Nazi rally? Or the fact that he ultimately turned on Stalin? Or do people just don't care as much about what the Soviets did?
I have always wanted to see this film, and you've managed to make me even more interested...
Bernie Durnham's comment above concerning "Triumph of The Will" remade in context of Bush: it's kind of a brilliant question, actually, in that we have already seen that film, and it's called Fox News. And no one mistakes that for art.
Personally, I never need to see an image of Adolph Hitler or the Nazi party ever again. However, if one must view "Triumph of the Will," then I feel it is a moral obligation to view "Night and Fog" directly afterwards.
Out of curiosity, I rented "Triumph of the Will" at the local Blockbuster (near SMU) many years ago. It was a memorable work with brilliant cinematography and imagery. Its portrayal of Hitler as the "second coming" was uncomfortable, and multiple scenes were obviously staged for the camera. This is not a documentary, per se. It's certainly propaganda, if not an outright advertisement for Nazism and Hitler. Scenes during the rally, where thousands of converts are standing in perfect formation like so many toy soldiers, are rather haunting. I could not help but feel a deep sense of sadness. I can't imagine even the weakest of minds being turned to Nazism after watching this film. I took a shower afterwards and opened the blinds.
Like Brian Goff above, I have recently purchased the Great Movies and the collective 4 Star Reviews and absolutely love them. It's great to read about movies that I love and discover more reasons to love them through your reviews. I've actually started a "Movies 101" class with my wife in the hopes that she'll love movies as much as I do and learn a little something along the way. While "Triumph of the Will" is a long way off in this "class," it tuly is a remarkable work of filmmaking. Like "Birth of a Nation," the material is not what makes it a great movie. It's the technical aspects of the film that help them to achieve their greatness. While the "Birth of a Nation" is the better film (in my opinion), "Triumph of the Will" deserves to be seated next to it in the conversation of "evil art." I'm glad to see "Triumph of the Will" will be a part of the Great Movies.
I, too, look forward to your full commentary on Triumph of the Will.
One point I would like raise, is one that was raised in a film course i took MANY years ago, and is directly relevant to this film. In discussing "documentaries", he was asking about the notion that, in looking at this film, and also from the history we now know, Leni Riefenstahl was allowed great access to all the athletes of the Olympics as well as Hitler himself and his entourage. This would seem to go against the idea of what is considered a "documentary." (As much of this film serves as a propagandistic take on the events of the time, this is not suprising.) The point our teacher was trying to make, and the one that I would ask you, is at what point does this cease to be a documentary? Certainly the director, even in a documentary has a vision and some control of the realization of that vision into film, but at what point does that cross the line?
Then with Leni Riefenstahl's work, and in our own recent history with Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, Farenheit 911 and even his first work Roger and Me, we have examples of films described as documentaries. But when a director has to manufacture his "events" to document, hasn't he crossed the line? Isn't he pushing his view, substantiated by his "images", and isn't this propaganda?
Some of the old nature shows of years past, used to have a disclaimer after the closing credits stating that while many of the events shown had been recreated, they depicted actual accepted events. Shouldn't some of these documentaries have such a disclaimer or is it assumed that all moviegoers know this?
Thanks for your time and reviews!
Russ
I'm puzzled at the comments about the availability of the DVD. I simply ordered mine from Amazon.com in April and a few days later there it was in my mail, just like almost any other film I want to own. It's still available on Amazon right now.
P. Chalmers wrote:
[i] "One question that's always bothered me is why Eisenstien gets a free pass.The regime he served was every bit as evil as Hitler's Nazi Germany." [/i]
P... my friend... honestly, if you think the Bolsheviks were "every bit as evil as Hitler's Nazi German", then you seriously need to read som history books before you speak.
The Russian Revolution was one of the 20th century's greatest moments in terms of the liberation of people and the restoration of human dignity. The soviet state eventually fell into the hands of a viscious dictator, but those events happened long after Eisenstein made his best Russian films. And, frankly, Stalin probably wouldn't have existed if it weren't for pressures caused by opposition nations like Germany and the USA.
Communism, an thoughtful and progressive ideology, has never had an easy time establishing itself because the capitalists are always trying to throw a wrench in their plans.
Taking the politics out of a film like "The Believer" it becomes a love story about two smart but troubled young people. Despite the violence of his character if you look at the way he handles his girlfriend's sexual provocations, passively and with a depth of understanding, you see what a remarkable film it is. Without it I wouldn't have read "Eichmann in Jerusalem", a masterpiece of ethical theory as much as history.
I was disturbed to find a little green poster advertising for a neo-nazi group on a bus stop in my own suburb some years ago. I went to their website and read some of their material. They felt left out because of multiculturalism and feel that all the attention goes to black lesbians. They also complained (as in the believer - the film seems to know what it is talking about) about perverse practices like "oral sex". They attributed this to homosexuals, as if heterosexuals don't actually do this as well. It makes me wonder if these things come from a kind of warped response to the hygiene faculty. Would we have invaded Iraq if there weren't threats of *biological* weapons? Howard Hughes.
There was also a mystical poem there about Knights and war and wanting to rape and kill without guilt.
The moral question of our own time is not "Were the Nazis evil?" but "Would I have recognised the Nazis as evil had I lived in the Germany of the time?". I am not so sure. I have always been vulnerable to ideology but also vulnerable to compassion. I can imagine myself sealed within a system of illusions for a time, but responding to horror directly if I encountered it. I don't know how much I would have done to prevent it; how much I could have done. That is the challenge at the end of "Schindler's list", when Schindler breaks down thinking how little it would have taken to save a few more lives. How high is the burden of an ethical person to mitigate the harm of evil?
Of course I don't like the word "evil" at all, it is a mystical word, a word beloved by the Nazis and other villains, a word I would probably not apply to anyone but for the fact that these people, if anyone deserves the label, have certainly earnt it.
The other ethical question I can see is: what events with the significance of the Holocaust are happening contemporary world outside my experience of what is right and wrong? People might look back on us as monsters for the things we've done, the things we didn't do.
Then there is you, Mr. Ebert, sweetheart, lovely old man, who would never want to kill or hurt anyone, who would simply want to talk and observe and refrain from judgement. When I read Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman" I used to think about our homosexual High Court justice Michael Kirby (equivalent to your Supreme Court) and his love for human rights. Perhaps it is appropriate to you too. "It is alright if a man doesn't look for his delight in tomorrow morning's jungle of blood/Man is able, if he wishes, to guide his desire through a vein of coral or a heavenly naked body/That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman, against the little boy who writes the name of a girl on his pillow."
I'm not sure why so many people consider this film a dangerous exercise in propaganda.
Has it ever succeeded in turning anyone around on the subject of Nazism? Has a single person -- in the 1930s or in the years since -- ever emerged from a screening with a improved opinion of Adolf Hitler?
My college buddies and I saw this film in the 1970s. We were bored by the interminable parade sequences. Nobody was converted to Hitlerism -- quite the opposite. The "human geometry" on constant display only made fascism seem like a robot factory.
Riefenstahl was given carte blanche to make this expensive production only because Hitler was her patron. She always denied sleeping with him; nevertheless, many historians think she did.
Josef Goebbels, who couldn't stand her, disagreed with her entire approach. He felt that an effective piece of propaganda should portray the Nazis as underdogs. The film-within-a-film in "Kiss of the Spider Woman" gives modern viewers a good idea of what most Nazi cinema was like.
"Triumph of the Will" gives a false impression of fascist movie-making, precisely because it strikes a note of triumph.
I am an American college student who spent five years of my childhood in Germany. I have taken German classes for 8+ years and have seen "Triumph" multiple times. But last semester we watched it in my Nazi Cinema class. This was a fascinating class that examined many of Riefenstahl's films and looked at the broader context. What I find perplexing is whether or not the film is a true documentary, as it is confirmed that many scenes were staged and re-staged for the film. Yet, even as a film student, I must admit that it was difficult to get through the film more than once, not because I was disturbed but rather because for me, it all begins to blur together. It is certainly a process.
On the other hand, I find Riefenstahl to be a fascinating woman, in particular because of the numerous ways she rewrote her own history. I think everyone should view this film, if simply to understand the immense powers of persuasian that were taking place in Nazi Germany, through the official Nazi filmmakers. The study of propaganda is absolutely mesmerizing.
nevertheless, many historians think she did [sleep with Hitler]
You are correct that most Nazi-era cinema was nothing like Riefenstahl's films.
But no reputable historian without an agenda can think she slept with Hitler. There is no real evidence of it; he never claimed it, and she always denied it; and Hitler wasn't known or even widely thought to be a "playa." Ultimately, there is only ill-motivated and often sexist gossip (either contemporaneous, inspired by Goebbels over the aesthetic differences you correctly note; or post-hoc, inspired by straw-grasping fury at her) and fancifully psychosexual "must-have" speculation.
Victor Morton,
I'm not sure you would consider Marcel Ophuls agenda-free, but he was pretty adamant that Adolf and Leni did sleep together. When he spoke at my college (more years ago than I care to think), he talked about her overnight stays at the Chancellery. As I recall, he added "Maybe they just played chess together." That got a laugh.
More seriously, Glenn Infield -- whom I do respect -- asserts this in a couple of books, including "Eva and Adolf." As I recall, he based this claim on interviews with SS officers who attended Hitler.
When the Americans debriefed Riefenstahl after the war, they were convinced that she was one of Hitler's lovers, and asked her if he was "sexually normal." (She tells this story in her memoir.) I think they were trying to confirm reports of abnormality received from another intimate. (See Walter Langer's book.)
It's not at all unlikely that the same SS men who later spoke to Infield had earlier talked to Riefenstahl's examiners.
I haven't read Steven Bach's biography of Riefenstahl (which may turn me around on this), but I understand that he says that, even though the relationship was platonic, she used then-current rumors of an assignation to her advantage.
Was Adolf a "playa"? Depends on how you define the term. I saw a film clip of Renata Mueller not long ago; she was really cute. The thing with Geli was ultra weird and would make for good film some day; I'm persuaded they did have relations. The stories of Hitler's masochism come from people who knew Geli and Mueller.
I'm also of the opinion that he slept with Winifred Wagner. It's said that he had an affair with Magda Goebbels before her marriage. There were others.
Looking at the list, Mel Brooks might say "It's good to be Der Fuehrer," but I would not dare.
Interesting point on Eisenstein and why he gets a free pass. Stalin was responsible for more deaths than Hitler; clearly only because he lasted longer. He was less evil by a pinch but there is no doubt about his soul; if there is a hell, he is there. The soviet army also helped defeat Germany, which is to their credit, though they didn't do much other good. Surely Hitler is more to blame for this than anyone else. The only rational study of the Holocaust leads to the conclusion that other such deaths are equally wrong and the need to do something about it.
Communist propaganda is less threatening and more able to absorb modern human rights and democratic discourse. As an ideology it has a longer history than soviet fascism and will outlast it. Nazism has nothing that can be salvaged: it is pure death fetishism, where as communism can discard state murder and retain its ethical system.
My own reaction to Eisenstein's work was that it was technically fascinating but its ideological points were so brazen and simplified as to be laughable.
With the question: why couldn't this happen now? The answer seems to me that it is happening right now, all over the world. It is happening in Sudan, North Korea, Iran, to name a handful.
On the other hand the world has worked very hard to try and stop this happening again, with the creation of the United Nations, the universal declaration of human rights, the constant efforts by many to remember and educate the world. This is a question the Jewish people evidently asked themselves and answered it by building their own country, with its own borders, its own army, its own trappings and dilemmas.
With the failure of the Evian conference of 1939 to provide adequate refugee migration of Jews, is evidence enough that the Jews couldn't always rely on charity of the world for their own security. The 1950 refugee convention tried to remedy this error and gave birth to our modern system, which says any political refugee cannot be re-fouled to a place where they might face persecution.
More than just fringe neo-nazis I've been disturbed by more subtle anti-semitism, the kind Dershowitz complains of, and which I see plenty of examples
of in my own country. How to account for it when you wake up to find your heroes reveal themselves as Holocaust deniers, or if that is not technically apt, something as unjustified and bizarre (I am reminded of Ebert's comment that anyone who is not technically a prostitute is a prostitute).
Australia is generally a peaceful and depoliticised country relative to other countries. It is bad form to talk politics, except perhaps in hushed tones, usually to your barber (a kind of confessional). The socially acceptable response to politicians is that they are all bastards and liars (which doesn't prevent you from privately voting for the devil because its in your best interests). It is offensive to our sensibilities that foreigners might import their conflicts on to our own soil. I think like much of the West live in a kind of protective ignorance of the world which says: I don't know who you are, I don't care what your grievances are but nothing you tell me is worth a single more life; I am not going to learn your language, I am not going to learn your history and I am sure as hell not going to join your cause. It makes us vulnerable to the dangers of individuals who have a little knowledge of the world.
America is better placed because it is more politicised and so has the infrastructure to engage in debate. Here we just seem to produce unbalanced, freakwater discourse which is difficult to counter because it proceeds from a bedrock of knowing nothing, but which is also treated with suspicion on the theory that the rest of the world is simply none of our business. The Iraq war was unpopular not for moral reasons but on the grounds that this country has nothing to do with us (which isn't technically correct, we sold wheat to Saddam despite UN prohibitions, and somehow this hasn't bruised the national conscience).
I am tired of hearing about Zionist manipulations, when it is clear enough that the West manipulates Israel far more than vice versa.
From my observations Jewish people have a lovely charm about them, a way of winning your sympathy and quietly turning you away from their enemies. Like any other people they lobby for their interests (there is nothing sinister about this) but this is (seen as) bad form in a place which distrusts lobbying for anything but localised interests. I can think of a structural reason why the Jews have been successful in discrediting their enemies and pursuing their interests: religion itself teaches you to work and study hard, be successful, judge the morality of your actions and defer to authority. History puts you at odds with authority and the friction this creates is a recipe for creating thoughtful and interesting people. A more compelling reason is that they are scared out of their minds and traumatised by history.
The correct response to this fear-and-love is to accept and engage with it, understand its sources and its consequences; if you are an unpopular and unloved politician like George W. Bush (or some of his Australian equivalents) in the West you can bask in it, encourage and manipulate it, and this is wrong. If you're a politician in the Muslim world you can exploit the underlying fear to your own ends, because of that peculiar blind spot in ethical thinking that excludes non-Muslims from the moral universe (Interestingly, Pakistan and Iran take more refugees than the rest of the world, including the USA).
This is the mess of a world I find myself in. Knowing more than I did before I feel like coming full circle and saying to the world: I don't know who you are, I don't care what your grievances are but they are not worth a single more life.
TOTW a "great" movie? I don't know. A technically well made film, the first of its kind and deeply influential, it's certainly earned its place in film (and world) history.
But "great?" To what end? Movies do not exist in cultural vacuums. Despite Reifenstahl's "doth protest too much" revisionism, the film was not just some formal exercise; it had a specific purpose. The subject was Hitler and the goal was to further the public image of the Third Reich. Imagine watching that film as an "ordinary German." Then imagine watching that film as one of the inferior peoples that Hitler wanted wiped from the earth.
This is no "great" film in the same sense that Citizen Kane is a great film. It was created with a purpose that went far beyond the on-screen aesthetics. Influential and important? Yes, but not something to point to without a thorough and complete context on the end of its means.
I respect your review, but I think I'll skip watching "Triumph of the Will," just like I skipped The Last Boy Scout based on your review years ago.
Was it easier to review Triumph of the Will or The Last Boy Scout? In your Last Boy Scout review, you wrote:
"I am a reporter. I must report not only the film's willingness to degrade women and children. I must also report the film's slick, clever professionalism. As I said before, this film works. Despite any objection I may have felt, it plays well with an audience (although some of the people around me seemed disturbed by an extended scene in which Willis and his child curse each other)."
You also wrote:
"The Last Boy Scout" is a superb example of what it is: a glossy, skillful, cynical, smart, utterly corrupt and vilely misogynistic action thriller. How is the critic to respond? To give it a negative review would be dishonest, because it is such a skillful and well-crafted movie. To be positive is to seem to approve its sickness about women. I'll give it three stars. As for my thumb, I'll use it and my forefinger to hold my nose. "
I will reserve judgment about whether "Triumph" is or should be judged as a great movie, until I see it. However, I think your (implied) logic is flawed, when you say, "Since moral art can obviously be bad art, the answer to the flip side would seem to be clear enough". The path to good art, while IMO not as thin as the razor's edge, is probably much thinner than the path to bad art. It's not illogical to declare morality a necessary condition for good art, even though it's obviously not a sufficient condition.
Roger,
I have never seen "Triumph of the Will", so I might lack some ethos here. But I find this post particularly interesting, maybe because I thought you'd eventually decide not to include the film. Maybe I'm a little amiss in your definition of a "great movie", when you've included films you felt had notably weak sections or attributes as well as films to which you morally object like Birth of a Nation. But by saying "Triumph" qualifies by default because it's an important movie raises the question of whether important art is necessarily great. Anyway, congratulations on having made a decision and I look forward to the review.
But I suppose the issue at hand is to what extent can we salvage Riefenstahl? Her motivating interest in life seems to be beauty more than death; her late work in Africa goes so far as to eroticise the human form, and you can trace the roots of this back to propaganda but also her own sensibilities. To quote Radiguet, only saints confess to such things.
You have to be dipped very deep in feminist thought to excuse Riefenstahl for the political context she operated in but consider that she neither chose nor created it - it was created by men, with all their violence and fetishism for war. It is more difficult for a male writer, even one as ungendered as Ebert, to excuse her complicity. It is why Pauline Kael can laud her but a male is placed in a more precarious position - the moral hierachy and thought process is different; a female is more inclined to see her as a victim of the male system than co-conspirator. The camp homosexual response that you find is Puig is beautifully rendered but avoids treating any serious element of the theme by its own satire.
Riefenstahl holds a similar fascination as Unity or Nancy Mitford, trapped in time, charming, attractive, essentially still children-at-play but with devestating views. They are trapped in time but you are not. The only way to understand and relate to them is to try and put yourself in a state of studied ignorance, to try and see them as they were without all your education, without your conscience and lessons learned. This has the value of any experimentation - perhaps a little dangerous, too. Your conscience will of course turn right back on again afterwards but you will be a little different after having seen it; if you weren't why watch it in the first place? Reading Nabokov didn't turn me into a pedophile and reading Easton Ellis didn't turn me into a serial killer, but I noticed small changes to myself - and I find those changes interesting, not damning.
As for my other point, the flip-side is that foreigners don't in fact import their conflicts on to our soil, rather, they get along in surprisingly dignified and civilised fashion. Taken out of a context of war and conflict, peace seems to beget peace, just as violence begets violence. One of the first people I met at university was a young Bosnian refugee; I was struck by how normal, beautiful and inconspicuous she was. She was just like any other young woman but with terrible stories. It broke my heart.
Beauty can be a defence mechanism. When I think of Middle-Eastern people I think of their doe-eyes. It doesn't make them more valuable from a human rights perspective but it has another kind of value.
In Israel I learn that they to quickly to Radiohead's "Creep" and helped make their career. A culture that can do that has everything it needs. This scrap of knowledge makes me feel more tenderly than I might have towards Israel. Diplomacy works best through the relationships formed by ordinary people with one another across borders.
An example: I spent some time in Paris last year, discovered the work of courageous Iranian photographer Shadi Ghadirian, memorised her name and later interviewed her by email. It makes a war with Iran, despite what I know of the regime, to seem morally impossible. That there is one single human being that I know of, can put a face and a name to, who I would be concerned about should war arise, would cause me to resist any calls for war. This is not rational but it is human. It is a kind of alliance.
I had a similar revelation watching "Schindler's List" in the moment in the film when the train is sent to Auschwitz by mistake and Schindler panics and tries to buy them back. The camp official tells him not to get caught up on names and offers him other people. Clearly one life is worth the same as another but I felt as he might have felt. Even more irrational was my feelings watching the scene where Schindler's Jews are led into the camps and we wonder whether these people will be gassed. Water comes down and it is only a shower. How dare I feel relief? How dare I feel suspense for something that has already happened? But I do. Spielberg encourages it in the film, just as he does on the companion documentary where he talks about the Shoah foundation and of young people "adopting" a Holocaust survivor. He works with human frailties, not against them.
The Holocaust retards the mind for exceeding perspicuity; it is too large to take in, and its companion tragedies, happening all the time, fail for the same reason. We feel more for one person than for many.
But this might still be an advantage. In her journals Sylvia Plath defeated the cold war with a single phrase "I could love a Russian boy". All we need is a single person on the other side to care for.
I, too, am looking forward to your Great Movie commentary on "Triumph of the Will." I first saw it as a college student more than 30 years ago and was transfixed by it--mostly because I had been breading about the Nazis, Hitler, World War II, and the Holocaust for several years thanks to a 7th grade world history project and it resonated with me siimply because I was mildly familiar with some of the material in it. I viewed it again a few years ago, and I was struck by the irony of the young boys at the Parteitag gathered around the vats of soup (reminding me of everything I had read about concentration camp inmates lining up for their "soup") and the homoerotic overtones of the play between these boys (in the virulently anti-homosexual Third Reich.) It struck me as a love poem to Hitler.
Thank you for tackling films with "evil content" that are nonetheless excellently made. I wrote you when you reviewed "The Birth of a Nation" as it was the first film that my father saw of any importance as a child, and one which I am convinced helped to fuel his own regrettably racist attitudes. Response to such films needs to be nuanced, as yours is. Film viewers need to be able to examine what they view on various levels--not just the "moral" level, and not just the technical and aesthetic ones. Thank you for promoting a "wide-range" view of film.
And happy birthday--and many more! I'm gushing here, but a highlight of my Friday's is reading your column online.
I too anxiously await your "TOTW" review. I also echo a post by another reader in that I'd be very curious to read your take on Pasolini's "Salo," a film that is equally called repugnant and brilliant.
I first saw TOTW at Cornell in 1962. My professor of documentary film set the room up with a huge, carefully lighted Nazi flag at the front. We entered the theatre during the lengthy walking in music and watched a sixteen millimeter print in fabulous condition. It was a dazzling display of emotional storymaking and technical skill. We watched it in the context of high propaganda paired up with Frank Capra's 'Why We Fight' series from our side. 1962 was a lot closer to the conflict than is 2008. Our professor had been in the service and in the concentration camps at the end and, as you might imagine, was given to a singular point of view on the matter. I look forward to your review of the film since my early, highly impressionable experience of it was completely a one-sided political and moral one.
I rented "Triumph of the Will" from Netflix a few years ago and was going to suggest this as a source for those who are having difficulty locating a copy. Mysteriously though I see it is no longer available through them.
I actually had to request it twice from Netflix as the first copy sent was lost in the mail. It remains the only Netflix film to have ever gotten lost on its way to me. I wondered then - and still do - if the DVD was deliberately hijacked by someone opposed to its distribution.
So Capra-cum-Roosevelt and Riefenstahl-cum-Hitler are the same? In watching this film, Jim Ewing, are you looking forward to empathizing with the Germans?
To R. Ebert, I gather that The Last Boy Scout-- a comic action movie-- was relegated from 4 to 3 stars stemming from moral disapproval. I gather that Birth of a Nation was excluded from the revered Great Movie trove for the same reason. Yet TOTW is embraced. Is anti-Black more pernicious than anti-Jew? Is teen profanity more pernicious than Nazism?
To contradictory George Lucas,
in Revenge of the Sith, the congressional dissolution is a clear condemnation of Nazism. Yet, I haven't missed the homage to TOTW in the original Star Wars coda scene.
Ebert responds: "Birth of a Nation" is indeed included in the GM collection, with much discussion of its racism. Not all films are "great" in the sense of being moral; I deal with this in my TOTW review.
One thing I found instructive in trying to gauge the tenor of the run-up to WWII in Germany was reading Christopher Isherwood. It's easy to put the Nazis in context from our vantage point, but Isherwood was there, and his impression of the Nazis in the 30s as misguided, kitschy soccer hooligans was really informative.
It's so easy to put devil horns on the Nazis and ask why no one saw the greatest evil of the 20th century, but when Isherwood describes his landlady's disdain for them in terms that make them sound like--well, like what? Cultists? Overgrown boy scouts, somewhat violent, with a boys-will-be-boys kind of shrug-and nod-acceptance?--it comes as a shock to the 21st century reader. But it doesn't sound like a lie.
Re-read Isherwood. See what you think. Then watch Triumph and try to imagine what it might be like to be 40ish, happy to see WWI go by, happy to see the economy back on its feet, and stuck with trying to explain who these gung-ho clean-cut men were, with all their fancy uniforms and goose-stepping and who the strange little man was screaming into those old carbon mics. I don't think I could explain it, if it happened right here in the US. The German responses I've heard, some from people who were part of the movement in some passive way, began to make a little more sense to me after reading Isherwood. No one wanted to look too close, if only because the Nazis were so weirdly anomolous to the German culture. The populace wanted to get by. Isherwood portrays Hitler as being the latest permutation of affliction the Germans had to suffer through after the war. My impression is that the middle class never expected him to last an entire term, and then they'd be saddled with something else. Why look too close? He'll be gone soon, with these crazy rallies and talk of the fatherland.
Thank god for Leni, for getting it all on film. A great film if there ever was one.
Good luck with this one, Roger. Careful. Remember Fred Leuchter.
Sorry, Joseph, but in the face of consistent denials from the principals in all fora, I take the old-fashioned view that gossip is gossip, whether from Arkansas state troopers or one's SS detail -- unless Monica has the blue dress or Michael X has the photo reel or Bendrix has given the sheets to Parkiss.
Re: my comment mistaking the inclusion of "Birth" among the GMs (to which Ebert responded):
I apologize for the error. In my first sentence I expressed a knee jerk reaction to another person's comment, but then went off on sardonic tangents throwing in the kitchen sink. Call it a bad day at the office. Respectfully, Anon-- a loyal Ebert reader.
"Triumph of the Will" is available for viewing or download at the Internet Archive in a variety of formats and sizes; it's listed under the Creative Commons license as public domain. I don't know whether this print is of acceptable quality or not (I have my own copy on DVD), but some people may find it worth investigating (www.archive.org/details/Triumph_Of_The_Will_1).
I'd recommend that anyone interested in the film and its maker view Ray Müller's exceptional documentary "Die Macht der Bilder: Leni Riefenstahl" ('The Power of the Image: Leni Riefenstahl').
Yes. A Guy Maddin film is a delight to experience. I had the pleasure when I first saw, Eye like a strange balloon. A short film. When U read your review od The saddest music in the world, I was blown away... I´m in charge of a little modest video theatre in Culiacán, Sinaloa. México. I select films in an independient movie club like the old days. Not exactly an art house, but, something like that, where you have a choice for those kind of pictures. I showed that pic. and a lot of people hated and some liked it. One of my friends, a film critic, said it was a lot of screwing aroud, not to mention worse things. I loved the film. So, when I say the still picture in your page from My Winnipeg, I had the same emotion I had when I first saw thw short I mentioned... Silent cinema. Silent cinema and something else like I´ve experienced before. Something´s very alive out there. Here´s a warm salute to the health of Roger Ebert. Get well and keep it comin´.
Overwhelmed a little by "Hotel Rwanda". Avoided seeing it because I thought it might be boring, lauded for moral reasons rather than because it is a good film, which might distract from a proper study of the issue. Then up to my eyeballs in international law for days and days; I love the universal declaration of human rights, stopped in my tracks reading it through for the first time this year: in the depths of your soul-sickness the occasional glimmer of humanity is like catching sight of an angel. Was up to my eyeballs in genocide this, customary international law that, and its over, in the sense that I wont be examined on it anymore, but it is not over: the world is still there, and there is still genocide, and I am still dimly conscious of the "Kingdom of night" Elie Wiesel spoke about, not in my own life (though I come face-to-face with refugees in my work) but as a distant observer, a correspondent from heaven (where we are not killed for our beliefs, our biology, our life-choices, for arbitrary geographic boundaries). So who am I to decline?
A million or so dead Rwandans and for what? The film is very good, better than anything that has been said about it, morally and as entertainment. It has a harder edge than I thought in its criticisms of non-intervention and kudos to it for that. International law is built on states reinforcing one another's power; I had to read through pages telling me humanitarian intervention is "controversial". I don't know where the controversy should lie about its existence, only its execution. What court do you think will convict you, should your case be justified, and why does that stop you, you coward? It is less a legal question than a cost-benefit analysis; though the choices are simply between lose and lose a little less.
Again I ask myself the same strange questions as in Schindler's List: what right do I have to feel suspense and relief over particular people as presented to me, when I know from history that many more have already died? Yes I am glad these people lived but the normal logic of a narrative fails here. This is not a fault of the film, which is irreproachable, but it was the question that presents itself to me. How can you approach a subject like this, with the weight of history behind it, without the usual film techniques? These two films do as best they can to make the craft so superb that it does not distract from the subject matter, and I guess that is all that it needs to do. The craft isn't the point, the point is to try and make the real world seem real, by focusing our attention on it for a little while. I still can't grasp the whole of it but I saw something a little more personalised than news broadcast after broadcast.
I loved it, it made me weep and want to cut my own throat. Then I listend to Beth Orton, folk-angel, and wondered how such a person can exist in the same world as someone who can cut up children with a machete. "Ooh baby, I wish I never saw the sunshine, and if I never saw the sunshine, I wouldn't mind the rain." Really, who am I to dare to think or feel anything?
Re: Mark's comment above:
It's naive to dismiss Nazism as the domain of a minority of "soccer hooligans" that just crept up upon the oblivoius Germans who were suffering their afflictions.
As demonstrated by racist legislation and a history of antisemitism, the intentions for WWII and the Holocaust had been openly broadcast by the Germans well before the war started. And the Germans had been Hitler's Willing Executioners. See Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's meticulously researched tome by the same name. It's more convincing than a guy's anecdotes about his landlady.
Thank you. It is so refreshing to finally see a respected film scholar call out "Triumph of the Will" for the collossal bore that it is. Had I been a blurbster in 1935, I believe my review would have been something like, "The biggest Triumph is of the Will to stay awake!"
I remember watching TOTW twice in college. The first time was in a film studies course where, if I recall correctly, the professor actually left out a reel because it was so long and boring, yet still proclaimed it to be the greatest documentary ever made. Perhaps that's TOTW's biggest achievement as a piece of propaganda: it has the power to make people believe it's a great movie.
I don't quite understand why you qualify Triumph of Will worthy to be part of your great movies list if it's such a flat, montonous film. I've seen the film 10 times, while attempting to write an undergraduate university paper on it, and frankly, it doesn't even get BETTER after multiple viewings like true great movies would. I think my viewings of the film were coloured by my fascination of Leni Reifenstahl as a person than the film alone, trying hard to find something interesting artistically about the film on its on merits, trying to pretend I wasn't watching hitler onscreen. But in the end, i think your review summed up what the film was, just a technical exercise in exulting a horrible dictator.
Outside of its context and its historical moment, it's a dull film. I don't quite feel the power of the propaganda, and at times i wondered if it was odd or unusual that i didn't feel the repelled and revulsed by these images. I get the opening sequence that implies Hitler as God descending from the heavens onto beautiful germany, and how Hitler is treated and filmed somewhere between a god, savior and a movie star. Many could disagree with me, but I don't think the film by itself holds the power it once had since hitler is dead, WWII has ended and Nazism isn't as big of a threat to the world now.
As a side note, can anyone tell me why it's so hard to find a real german propaganda film from the 1940s that were not documentaries? I've always been curious about them and something tells me that these films are being hidden away in archives so that only scholars can see them. I think it's because these fictional propapganda films are probably more meancing and and hurtful when they're disguised as light-hearted entertainment than some dull document of a rally that no one believes in anymore.
Dear Roger,
My old boss, who happens to be a very gifted sculpter and a rather eccentric intellectual, told me his opinion of what true Art is. He said, "In order for it to qualify as Art it has to communicate something. Otherwise it's just a decoration." He was saying this in the context of paintings and sculptures, but the principal of his definition of Art can be applied to all art forms, including film. I happen to think that his statement of what merits a work to be Art is about as accurate and concise as I've ever heard. I just read your Great Movies review of TOTW and then your blog post here and I find them both some of your more curiously bizzare essays. I don't mean that in a bad way, for it's these types of essays that really get my mental wheels spinning (something I get off on). One thing I found strange is that while you talk about whether or not something evil can be called great art, (an interesting question indeed) your Great Movie review showed no evidence that you thought TOTW was a work of great art. The only exception to this seemed to be your statement, "That TOTW is a great propaganda film, there is no doubt". However, this statement seemed very contradictory to me because you next said, "But I doubt that anyone not already a Nazi could be swayed by it." My question then is: How could this film possibly be art, let alone great art, if it by your own admission fails to communicate it's message to those who have not already recieved that message? If what my old boss said was true, and if we take your review at face value, then TOTW is not art but merely a decoration. A decoration worth looking at for its historical significance and as a spectacle. In this light I understand why you included it in your Great Movies category.
Question to Ebert: Now that I've read your essay on TRIUMPH OF THE WILL, I have to ask under what conditions you viewed the film. Did you see it on television, or in a theater? With an audience or without one? Having seen the first forty-five minutes of the film on the big screen with a large (and captive) audience, and having watched the rest of it years later on DVD, I can definitely state that what seems crude, flat and uninvolving on a television screen in someone's living room becomes perniciously oneiric in a proper cinema. (And from my first experience of the film in a crowded theater, I can answer the question of whether anyone has ever walked away from this film with an improved view of Hitler. Alas, I'm afraid the answer is yes.) This film depends on the psychology of crowds -- both in terms of what it depicts, and in terms of how it affects and changes an audience.
To Chalmers: Generally I agree with you about Sergei Eisenstein. The difference between Eisenstein and Riefenstahl, I suspect, is that when Riefenstahl made TRIUMPH she aided and abetted the rise of Hitler, whereas Stalin was an entrenched despot before Eisenstein made his first film. (Have you seen IVAN THE TERRIBLE I and II, Eisenstein's barely veiled attack on Stalin?)
Given WW II and Hitler's extermination of approximately 11 million, those associated with Nazi Germany understandably often have been demonized. However, I believe that Leni Riefenstahl and her documentary, "Triumph of the Will", needs to be seen in the context of the times, specifically 1934, when Hitler was adulated by many Germans, coming after the chaos of the Wiemar period and considerably before the atrocities of WW II.
Her demonization is similar to the treatment of conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler, as described in the stage play and 2001 film, "Taking Sides". After being cleared in post-war hearings, Furtwangler accepted the prized conducting post with the Chicago Symphony. His invitation was rescinded after a loud outcry. Art vs. politics; What are the ethical dilemmas of talented artists when politics approaches them? I shall let others speak to the issues of Furtwangler and Riefenstahl.
(Taking Sides is a) "tale based on the life of Wilhelm Furtwangler, the controversial conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic whose tenure coincided with the controversial Nazi era. One of the most spectacular and renowned conductors of the 30s, Furtwangler's reputation rivaled that of Toscanini's. After the war, he was investigated as part of the Allies' de-Nazification programme. An American major is given the Furtwangler file, and is told to find everything he can and to prosecute the man ruthlessly. Tough and hard-nosed, Major Steve Arnold sets out to investigate a world of which he knows nothing. Orchestra members vouch for Furtwangler's morality--he did what he could to protect Jewish players from his orchestra. To the Germans, deeply respectful of their musical heritage, Furtwangler was a demigod; to Major Arnold, he is just a lying, weak-willed Nazi. Written by Sujit R. Varma "
The propaganda value of Leni Riefenstahl films made during the 1930s repels most commentators but many film histories cite the aesthetics as outstanding. After her death the Associated Press described Riefenstahl as an "acclaimed pioneer of film and photographic techniques." Der Tagesspiegel newspaper in Berlin noted, "Leni Riefenstahl conquered new ground in the cinema." The BBC said her documentaries "were hailed as groundbreaking film-making, pioneering techniques involving cranes, tracking rails, and many cameras working at the same time." Reviewer Gary Morris called Riefenstahl "an artist of unparalleled gifts, a woman in an industry dominated by men, one of the great formalists of the cinema on a par with Eisenstein or Welles." In his book The Story of Film, film scholar Mark Cousins claims, "Next to Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, Leni Riefenstahl was the most technically talented Western film maker of her era."
Riefenstahl later published her still photography of the Nuba tribes in Africa and made films of marine life.
A great educational experience and a must see for any mature and concerned person....its the real thing ....even allowing for the "management"......its a frontal view of how it must have happened...a magnificent document on mass psychology...is the human mass not like putty?....Hitler is in turns comical,hypnotic,disgusting for the lack of restraint and quite deafening.....those kids with flowers,the boisterous,healthful youth......that lovely town and the legions thundering through the street......a heady intoxication....must have been the same in Japan......the swooping eagle,a charging lion....remember its only 1934.....we can put it besides the perspective of "Untergang" and Chaplin.....
A great educational experience and a must see for any mature and concerned person....its the real thing ....even allowing for the "management"......its a frontal view of how it must have happened...a magnificent document on mass psychology...is the human mass not like putty?....Hitler is in turns comical,hypnotic,disgusting for the lack of restraint and quite deafening.....those kids with flowers,the boisterous,healthful youth......that lovely town and the legions thundering through the street......a heady intoxication....must have been the same in Japan......the swooping eagle,a charging lion....remember its only 1934.....we can put it besides the perspective of "Untergang" and Chaplin.....
I have no problem with "Triumph of the Will" being added to the Great Movie series. It is important for people to view how the people of Germany fell under the spell of Hitler's mesmerizing personality. Most people who watch movies such as "V for Vendetta" would say that could never happen in a modern European country, but it did!
I also have no problem with "Birth of a Nation" being included as a Great Movie. We are far enough removed from those times for almost everyone to understand the ignorance and falsehoods that are displayed on the screen in this film. It is important for Americans to see the mindset of many people of that era, including President Wilson who was reported to have commented of the film that "it is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true".
My biggest problem in your Great Movie series is "Gone with the Wind" because unlike the other two movies listed above; most people viewing this don't recognize the evil propaganda that lurks under the beautiful Technicolor surface.
I think it is a disgrace for Americans for the AFI to have this listed as the sixth best American movie of all time. We are better than that. This is a movie that says blacks were better off in slavery. This is a movie that said that blacks would rather fight for the South than be "rescued" by meddlesome Northerners. This movie was a message to Northerners in 1939 that the blacks in the South were happy with the way things were in those separate but unequal days. This is a movie that helped perpetuate the Jim Crow laws for another twenty years. This was a movie evil in intent and in content.
What makes this movie so treacherous is that people don't see how evil and dangerous it is. If you asked 100 people to list their top 10 movies you would probably get 20 to 30 people having this insidious movie listed.
I really feel that you should drop this from your Great Movie series so that people can become educated about the evils that lurk within it. It can then be added to the category of great propaganda movies, like the two movies listed above, where it belongs.