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“Triumph of the Will,” directed by Leni Riefenstahl. NSDAP Reischpropagandaleitung Hauptabt Film, 1935, 120 minutes.
Ein Volk, Ein Führer by Gary Jason
The question is sometimes posed whether motion pictures have the same power as books to change history. The answer, prima facie, seems clearly to be “No.” Just consider the influence that the Bible or the Koran has had on world history. In justice, we might note that movies, especially widely distributed movies with sound, have existed for only a fraction of the time that books have existed. But factoring that in, just how historically powerful are movies?
| | Gary Jason is an independent scholar and university instructor. He lives in San Clemente, Calif.
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| I can think of no better place to start answering this question than with an old film now available on DVD. Synapse Films has released a newly packaged version of arguably the most powerful propaganda film ever made, “Triumph of the Will,” filmed in 1934 but digitally remastered just last year. This film was brought to my mind by the recent election, which featured some artful propaganda commercials that clearly influenced several races. None of the offerings on the little box, however, could have the forcefulness of “Triumph of the Will.”
In 1934, Hitler asked the young but already acclaimed German actress and director Leni Riefenstahl to film the big rally of his followers to be held in Nuremberg. It was a pivotal year for Hitler. With the recent death of President von Hindenburg, he was able to take the power of the German state fully into his hands. This film would be his way of presenting himself vividly and memorably to the German public. Riefenstahl took an immense amount of footage, and spent nearly a year editing it, producing a film that (much to the injury of her later reputation) did indeed help to cement support for Hitler.
There are two especially good things about the DVD. First, it has incredible picture quality — it is sharp, not grainy in the ways that tapes tend to be. Second, it has optional features, including a version with a voiceover by historian Professor Anthony Santoro. I suggest watching the film once without his narration, then once with it. You will find it a classic of effective propaganda.
| | We see Hitler in his plane, descending through the clouds like Messiah from the heavens, flying over the massed formations below.
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| A sketch of some of the scenes may convey its persuasive power. At the opening, the subtitles tell the viewer that this movie is to be an historical document, i.e., a historically accurate recording of a momentous event. Then we see Hitler in his plane, descending through the clouds like Messiah from the heavens, flying over the massed formations below. Next we follow his triumphant motorcade past adoring crowds, their arms outstretched in the Roman salute.
Riefenstahl’s cinematography is powerful: close-ups of women entranced by the Leader; Hitler featured in silhouette, cute blond children beaming at him. As Santoro notes, Hitler received something like ten thousand letters a week from adoring women. He also notes the clever association of the Nazi movement with the beloved historical monuments of Nuremberg, and the constant use of the very masculine imagery of the SS troops, Hitler’s bodyguard. Riefenstahl accompanies all this with a rousing musical score.
Another scene that must have played to great effect involves the massive Hitler Youth camp. Here you see handsome, wholesome, playful young men, washing, shaving, laughing, getting ready for breakfast. They engage in manly games while gathering firewood, as the cooks prepare sausages to be cooked. Santoro rightly observes that the scene is powerful because it evokes strong community feeling (in a nation that had witnessed much division), with hearty food being served (in a nation that had seen hard times).
The scene evokes something even more important. During the Weimar Republic that preceded the Nazi regime, the German people saw evidence of what most of them regarded as cultural degeneration — irresponsibility of financial institutions, open displays of sexual sophistication, strange new ways of dressing, dining, and dancing. Even the cinema was a strange and, to some, disturbing development. It must have been deeply reassuring to this audience to see wholesomeness and overt healthiness on the screen.
Several other scenes give a reassuring sense of national unity. There is, for example, a procession of farmers in traditional garb, presenting their produce to Hitler. Santoro points out how worshipful the women are as they perform this ritual. I would add that the political cleverness of the scene lies in its implicit message that the Leader values the farmers’ work, in its evocation of respect for the rural life.
Other scenes involve the cadets of the “Labor Front,” headed by Dr. Robert Ley. In the most striking scene, the young workers present their spades like rifles. A handsome worker asks, “Where are you from?”, and the cadets answer with the names of their various home regions. There is an important argument in these images. Hitler fought the communists for the support of the working class (remember, “Nazi” means the National Socialist German Workers’ party). Scenes like this reinforce what he says in his speech on the topic: we respect and value the German workers, who are a vital part of our new order.
| Riefenstahl uses the camera to reinforce the idea that all the surrounding people are insignificant compared to the Leader.
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| The Nazis are best described as pagan or atheist, but several scenes mobilize religious feeling and direct it toward the Party. In one of the most impressive moments of the movie, Hitler tells his young followers that they are flesh of our [German] flesh, blood of our [German] blood (compare Genesis 2:23). In another, Hitler — without question a good public speaker — invokes God directly: God ordained this movement: one empire, one nation, one people.
Essential to the effect is Riefenstahl’s artful use of the camera. She habitually arranged her shots to show Hitler as the largest figure in the scene, or to show him from the back facing the adoring crowd, or to show side images of his head as people praise him. These scenes reinforce the idea that all the surrounding people are insignificant compared to the Leader. In one spectacular scene (with sets designed by Albert Speer), you see an ocean of Nazi flags, with an immense tower of light illuminating a huge German eagle standard, as Hitler speaks from a gigantic elevated podium — literally from on high.
In another scene, one from a rally to honor the party members fallen in the fight against the communists during the decade 1923–33, Hitler, Heinrich Himmler (head of the SS), and Victor Lutze (head of the SA, the stormtroopers) march across a huge square flanked by enormous crowds holding flags. Again, the underlying appeal is one of unity, but this time directed to the middle class and business interests: we, in our strength, have kept the Bolsheviks from doing to you what they did to the Russian middle class and businesses.
Let me revert to the original topic. My point is that movies can and have had effects on history on the scale of books. The unique power of nonfiction books lies in their ability to set forth facts and reasoning to whatever degree of detail is required. The unique power of literary fiction lies in its power to drive the imagination, to create a possible world (again, in whatever detail is needed) and to make the reader imagine what the inhabitants of that world feel. The unique power of cinema is its ability to present images and sounds that work on the preliterate observational level. We see and hear things, including the facial and body language of the characters, and draw emotional conclusions in an especially intimate and direct way.
As I noted in an earlier review in Liberty (“The Lost City,” December 2006), cinema also works at the philosophic and literary levels, i.e., at the levels of ideas in dialogue, of plot and character. But in film, the presentation of philosophic ideas and literary forms is subordinate to that observational force. Filmmakers discovered early on that a stage play does not make a movie. You can’t just put a camera in front of a stage and turn it on while the actors run through a play. Early British films tried that, and they failed; they sounded insufferably talky and stilted. You need to let the audience do the observing, to let it see and hear. You need a screenplay, not a play.
Again, you can’t just film a lecture and have it succeed as a motion picture, not even as a documentary. While soaking in images and sounds, the mind can’t follow the complexity of argumentation. For that reason, no movie will ever change the world in the way that, say, Darwin’s “Origin of Species” did. Darwin succeeded (eventually) in convincing the vast majority of biologists (and the vast majority of educated laymen) that species evolve, and he did it by marshalling facts into one long argument to that conclusion. Movies can’t do that. But they can persuade at a powerfully subliminal, psychological level, and change history accordingly. The observational influence that any film provides is easily, even passively, accepted by the audience. Of course, when the film is based on nonsense, as was “Triumph of the Will,” the effect is malevolent. Yet the power is there.
| The audience easily, even passively, accepts the observational influence that any film provides. When the film is based on nonsense, the effect is malevolent.
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| Add to this another difference between books and film, one that again highlights film’s power to persuade: film reaches an immensely larger audience. In many societies to this day, large percentages of people are simply illiterate. They can’t read books, but they can and do watch movies (and TV) — forms of entertainment that give the illiterate masses their sole information about the world at large. The Germans, and the other Europeans who watched Riefenstahl’s film, were far from illiterate. But political illiteracy explains a lot.
“Triumph of the Will” premiered in Berlin in 1935, and was an immediate, huge hit. It was highly profitable, and won Riefenstahl top prizes at the film festivals in Berlin and in Venice that year, and at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937. It was recognized for its propaganda power, and motivated the great American director Frank Capra to film his response, the series “Why We Fight,” during WWII.
The mere fact that watching film requires far less work than reading a book also helps to explain its power to influence the public. In contemporary America, there are millions who can read, i.e., are in the technical sense literate, but never do so. Many of these people are “college educated,” but instead of reading books they watch movies every weekend and four or more hours of TV a day, including movies or movie-like shows.
In my decades of teaching introductory philosophy classes, I have routinely encountered student resistance to reading even very short selections of classic philosophic literature, because the effort to follow carefully reasoned argument is more than students are used to.
This problem manifests itself in the political ads we must endure: in the last election, two Senate seats switched hands with the aid of powerful ads starring the actor Michael J. Fox, who is afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. Fox presented a compellingly pitiable sight as he urged voters to choose candidates who would support publicly funded embryonic stem cell research. Viewers reacted viscerally in his favor. Few of them bothered to do even the slightest reading of the literature available on what such research has and has not accomplished, and few seem to have picked up any hint of the dispute over the use of tax dollars to support a type of research morally abhorrent to millions of taxpayers.
That’s one small instance of the force of visual effects. Since the power of film lies on the visual and emotional rather than the rational level, that power is more likely to be used for propaganda than for pedagogy. “Triumph of the Will” remains a classic illustration; others will be subject of reviews to come.
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