SOURCE: Hinton, David B. “The Nuremberg Trilogy.” In The Films of Leni Riefenstahl, Second Edition, pp. 25-62. London: Scarecrow Press, 1991.

[In the following essay, Hinton provides a detailed analysis of the structure, cinematography, and editing of Triumph of the Will, while offering additional commentary on Riefenstahl's short films Victory of Faith and Day of Freedom.]

The Blue Light brought Leni Riefenstahl to the attention of not only the international film world, but to someone whose admiration for her work would far outweigh the opinions of critics: Adolf Hitler. Known to be an insatiable moviegoer, Hitler saw and admired The Blue Light. Always looking for proof of the “superiority” of German art, Hitler was undoubtedly aware that The Blue Light had won the Silver Medallion at the 1932 Biennale in Venice and was receiving critical claim abroad. Although it is probable that he was aware of her career in Fanck films long before he saw The Blue Light, their first meeting did not come until 1932. Hitler's introduction to Riefenstahl is described in the memoirs of Fritz Hanfstängl, an early supporter of Hitler.¹ The meeting seemed to have made an impression on Hitler, since he was to remember Riefenstahl after his ascent to power the following year.

Throughout her acting and early directing career, Riefenstahl appears to have been totally unaware of, and uninterested in, German political affairs. Her late childhood years and early twenties were devoted entirely to her chosen career of dancing, a profession demanding endless hours of practice and exercise which left little time for anything else, particularly political activities. After leaving dancing for the film world, she threw into her new career all the energy that she had previously devoted to dancing. Her total devotion to her artistic concerns made her an accomplished artist but left her ignorant of the outside world.

At the same time that Riefenstahl was spending months on end in primitive mountain huts making films for Dr. Fanck, the Nazis were increasing their power in Germany. In 1933, they finally reached their goal with the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor. The Nuremberg Party Rally, which had been growing in size from year to year until it had become a gigantic extravaganza attracting hundreds of thousands of participants, assumed an additional importance in 1933. Under the theme “Sieg des Glaubens” (“Victory of Faith”), it was to celebrate the Nazis' coming to power. It was to be one of the most important gatherings in the history of the party.

Only a few days before the beginning of the 1933 rally (the rally was customarily held in early September), Riefenstahl was unexpectedly summoned to the Chancellery in Berlin for a meeting with Hitler. As soon as she was ushered into his office, Hitler asked her how her preparations for the party rally film were progressing. The question left Riefenstahl speechless. Although Hitler had ordered Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry to give the film commission to Riefenstahl, the Ministry had never informed Riefenstahl. The equally surprised Hitler then informed Riefenstahl that she must go immediately to Nuremberg and see if it was still possible to arrange filming on such short notice. The film was to be made under the direct auspices of the Nazi Party, with distribution by the Propaganda Ministry through government offices. Although the party already had its own film unit, Riefenstahl was given complete artistic freedom and was allowed to select her own crew.

With this strange beginning, Riefenstahl arrived in Nuremberg without any advance preparations to film a historical event that was to run for days and involve hundreds of thousands of participants at numerous locations scattered throughout the city. She was accompanied by three cameramen: Sepp Allgeier (Fanck's chief cameraman), Walter Frentz, and Franz Weimayr. The result of their hastily organized efforts was a short film, only 1700 meters in length, entitled Sieg des Glaubens (Victory of Faith). The title, like her two other party rally films to follow, was taken from the title of the rally.

The film disappeared in the destruction at the end of the war, and no copies have been discovered since. Riefenstahl's own opinion of the film is that it has little significance in her work, even though she does believe that under the circumstances, it was well-made. The main importance of Victory of Faith is that it introduced Riefenstahl to the unfamiliar documentary film form. For the first time, she was away from the organized shooting of a carefully scripted, planned feature film and confronted with filming events over which she had no control. The film also introduced her to the different editing style required for a documentary. To her surprise, she found that she took to the new form naturally.

Victory of Faith also marked the beginning of her long association with film composer Herbert Windt, who was to score most of her films.²

Following the completion of Victory of Faith, Hitler urged Riefenstahl to return the following year and make a feature-length film about the rally. Riefenstahl, however, was preoccupied with plans to make a film version of the opera by Eugen d'Albert, Tiefland, which had been a Berlin favorite in the 1920's. She was not interested in making another documentary and suggested that Walter Ruttmann, the maker of Berlin—Symphonie einer Grossstadt (Berlin—Symphony of a Great City), make the film instead. Ruttmann was a major film innovator and pioneer in editing concepts.

Her suggestion that Ruttmann make the film is indicative of Riefenstahl's lack of political sophistication at the time. Ruttmann was well known to have communist sympathies and was no friend of the Nazis. Riefenstahl was a good friend of Ruttmann but obviously had only concerned herself with his artistic beliefs and not his political philosophy. The same is true of her relationship with Béla Bálazs in The Blue Light; he, too was a very outspoken Marxist. Riefenstahl was an admirer of Ruttmann's kind of filmmaking, observing once, “What Fanck did with mountains, Ruttmann did with a city.”³

Equally as strange as Riefenstahl's suggestion was Ruttmann's willingness to make the film. Despite his own political sympathies, Ruttmann was enthusiastic about making the film as a documentary of an important event. But Ruttmann's ideas went further than merely recording the event. He wanted to make the film a history of the Nazi movement, from its earliest days to the present, with the rally serving as a backdrop. Ruttmann proceeded with his plans, and Riefenstahl left for Spain to begin arrangements for the filming of Tiefland.

After the collapse of her Tiefland project (see Chapter IV), Riefenstahl returned to Germany in the middle of August, 1934. When she returned, she was informed by Rudolf Hess that Hitler had demanded that she, not Ruttmann, make the film. Ruttmann's ideas about a party history film did not appeal to the Nazi hierarchy, who were oddly reluctant to have films deal with this subject.⁴ And furthermore, Hitler was anxious to have Riefenstahl expand on the work that she had begun with Victory of Faith.

What is known of Ruttmann's plans for Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will) reveal what the film would have been like had it been planned as a propaganda film rather than a documentary. Ruttmann's plan was to begin the film with a prologue which would dramatically reenact historical events from before the rally. The film was to open with shots of the frenzied German stock market in 1923, with rampant inflation driving stock prices to astronomical figures. The stock market scene would end with a trick shot of the market being flooded with a deluge of the worthless paper money of the Reich government. Then Ruttmann intended to show the other major event of 1923, Hitler's unsuccessful. “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich. The film would then be brought to the present with shots of Hitler in his airplane, on the way to the party rally in Nuremberg. A kaleidoscope of Nazi history would then be seen through Hitler's eyes, edited in the distinct Ruttmann style: the World War and the hated Versailles Treaty; unemployment and inflation, and scenes of economic misery; the unsuccessful Putsch and Hitler's imprisonment in Landsberg Prison; Hitler at his prison desk, writing Mein Kampf; the first copies of Mein Kampf rolling off the printing presses; and finally, the victory of the movement. With the victory, Hitler lands in Nuremberg.⁵

None of Ruttmann's footage survives, and it is not known how much he actually shot. But what he had filmed, Riefenstahl found unusable. As she described it:

It was a chaos. He evoked the historical by use of headlines and such. You cannot create with paper in that way. The wind blew paper—poof! And the headlines were revealed. I couldn't use a meter.⁶

She did use Ruttmann's titles, however, for the film's opening. “I am not gifted at writing titles and dialogue,” Riefenstahl notes. “I only do the visuals well.”⁷

According to Riefenstahl, she met again with Hitler and agreed to take over the filming from Ruttmann if Hitler would agree to three conditions. First, that the funds for the film be arranged by her private company rather than by the Nazi Party. Second, that no one, not even Hitler or Goebbels, be allowed to see the film before it was finished. And third, that Hitler never ask her to make a third such film.⁸ Hitler agreed to the conditions, and Riefenstahl left for Nuremberg to begin preparations for what would become another turning point in her career—the filming of Triumph of the Will.

At this point, several interesting questions emerge. The first: Why was Hitler so eager to have Riefenstahl make the film when the party already had its own film unit? The answer rests in Hitler's amateurish devotion to art (or at least his often misguided conception of it), a result of his own frustrated attempts at an artistic career in Vienna. Both Hitler and Goebbels had long hoped that the German cinema would produce a film to rival Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin in artistic importance. And in Riefenstahl, Hitler saw the makings of a German cinema artist. Hitler did not trust the party film unit to create a work of art; they were useful at newsreels, but not cinema classics. Hitler and Goebbels often differed on the nature of Nazi propaganda; Hitler felt that politics and art should not be mixed, while Goebbels felt that the two could be subtly combined. Goebbels did not like the idea of inviting a party outsider to film the party rally, but the wishes of Hitler prevailed.

The second question concerns why Riefenstahl was so interested in keeping the film production separate from the party. The answer rests in the nature of Riefenstahl's relationship with Goebbels. Goebbels resented Riefenstahl not only for her unwillingness to join the Nazi Party, but because of his sexist attitudes toward women. Throughout her career, he constantly attempted to thwart the work of Riefenstahl, the only woman director in German cinema. Goebbels could countenance actresses in their stereotyped roles, but a woman director was too great a step for the propaganda minister. In addition, Goebbels, always jealous of his own power and personal position, resented Riefenstahl's access to Hitler and her ability to influence his decisions. During an interview with the author, Albert Speer commented on the intensity of Goebbels' animosity towards Riefenstahl and noted that Goebbels' opposition was known throughout the filming of Triumph of the Will.

If Riefenstahl was to consent to make another film under the direction of the Nazi Party and the Propaganda Ministry, she would risk the artistic freedom she enjoyed with her own production company. Also, from The Blue Light throughout the rest of her work in film, she preferred to work with her own production company rather than for studios and government agencies. The problem was settled through the creation of an “Abteilung Reichsparteitag Film, Leni Riefenstahl Film” (Party Rally Film Division, Leni Riefenstahl Film Company), a division of the company she had originally formed to make The Blue Light. Later, she followed the same procedure during World War II when her company made films for the German government.

Riefenstahl arranged for Ufa, the German studio giant, to provide the financing for the film. In return, UFA had the distribution rights. Unlike Victory of Faith, which had been financed and distributed by the government, Triumph of the Will was produced along regular commercial lines.

Regardless of whether one accepts Riefenstahl's contention that the film is a documentary recording of an historic event, or, as some critics have charged, a deliberately conceived instrument of political propaganda, it is impossible to divorce the film from the historical events that occur in it. It is also impossible to understand the true importance of the film without understanding the historical background of these events. Provided with the necessary background information, certain sequences take on an added significance that would not otherwise be perceived during a viewing of the film.

The Nuremberg Party Rally of September 4-10, 1934, of which Triumph of the Will is the official document, occurred at a momentous time in the history of the Nazi movement. The importance of this period is emphasized in the opening of the film, with the only titles (done by Ruttmann) to appear in the film, thereby becoming the film's only explicit statement: “September 4, 1934. 20 years after the outbreak of World War I, 16 years after German woe and sorrow began, 19 months after the beginning of Germany's rebirth, Adolf Hitler flew again to Nuremberg to review the columns of his faithful followers.”⁹

Only nineteen months since Hitler's ascent to power in Germany, his hold on that power was yet to be solidified. Two events which occurred before the rally had a decisive influence on what would happen at the rally. First, Hitler recognized the necessity of making peace with the German military before his grasp of power could be complete and secure. He was only too aware of what had happened before when he reached for power without the support of the military, ending in the disastrous suppression by the armed forces of his famous “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich in 1923. Hitler's personal distrust of the German military, grounded in his dislike of the old German aristocracy which staffed the officer corps, was rivaled by the military's dislike of the Nazi S.A.¹⁰ It was well known that Ernst Röhm, the commander of the S.A., envisaged the S.A. becoming the sole military force of the land, replacing the Wehrmacht and the German High Command.

To consolidate his power, Hitler was not above striking a deal with the Wehrmacht at the expense of his old party comrades in the S.A. On April 11, 1934, five months before the Party Rally in Nuremberg, Hitler met with leaders of the German armed forces on board the cruiser “Deutschland,” and a pledge of support for Hitler was exchanged for a promise to eliminate Röhm, subordinate the S.A. to the army, and insure that the armed forces would remain the only military force in Germany.¹¹ The result of this agreement was the famous Röhm purge of June 30, 1934, only a little more than two months before the rally. Röhm and his top followers were assassinated in a wave of executions across the country, and Viktor Lutze, a previously unknown figure, was named to replace Röhm.

The second major event to influence the rally was the death of Reichspresident Otto von Hindenburg on August 2, 1934. Hindenburg's death allowed Hitler to consolidate the office of President, which had been held by Hindenburg, with that of Chancellor, already held by Hitler. With this move, Hitler became both the head of state and the leader of the government. Because of his previous pact with the military, there was no opposition to Hitler's consolidation of executive authority. Shots of military figures seen several times throughout Triumph of the Will indicate through their presence their support of Hitler and his party. In a hypocritical note, the rally itself was officially convened in memory of the recently departed Hindenburg, who had never been favorably regarded by the Nazis and who had been one of their major obstacles to power. It was not his memory but his death that the Nazis celebrated in their official eulogies.

With the army appeased and executive power now concentrated in Hitler's hands, the only possible threat to Hitler's power now lay within his own party. A purge on the scale of the Röhm purge could not help but have a major effect on the morale of the party, and no one knew what the aftermath might bring. With these events in mind, Hitler's address to the assembled members of the S.A., shown in Triumph of the Will, becomes a moment of great tension and high drama. William L. Shirer, an eyewitness, described the event:

Hitler faced his S.A. stormtroopers today [September 9, 1934] for the first time since the bloody purge. In a harangue to fifty thousand of them, he “absolved” them from blame for the Röhm revolt. There was considerable tension in the stadium and I noticed that Hitler's own S.S. bodyguard was drawn up in front of him, separating him from the mass of brownshirts. We wondered if just one of those fifty thousand brownshirts wouldn't pull a revolver, but no one did. Viktor Lutze, Röhm's successor as Chief of the S.A., also spoke. He has a shrill, unpleasant voice, and the S.A. boys received him coolly, I thought.¹²

It is ironic that one of the film's most visually exciting sequences filmed largely from a specially constructed elevator behind Hitler's rostrum, becomes also an emotionally charged sequence in which Hitler's life was believed to be in danger from members of his own party. But all that is revealed in the film of Shirer's remarks is the presence of the S.S. guard separating Hitler from the brownshirts.

Understanding the historical background of the film is necessary when approaching the film as a document, but it reveals nothing of the nature of Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker. For that, the film itself must be studied apart from its historical background.

Riefenstahl insists that she used no prepared script for the filming of Triumph of the Will but relied on her own intuitive editing style. In interviews, she has been quite explicit about her approach:

I didn't write a single page of text for either Triumph of the Will or Olympia. The moment I had a clear picture of the film in my head, the film was born. The structure of the whole imposed itself. It was purely intuitive. Starting from that idea, I sent the technical crew out on different tasks, but the true establishment of the form began with the editing.¹³

Despite its lack of written guidelines, Triumph of the Will lends itself to formal study. The film can be broken down into thirteen different sequences, with each sequence involving at least one event of the party rally, and sometimes more. This breakdown of sequences is not a purely arbitrary one; it is, rather, the manner in which the film divides itself, with the transitions between sequences discernible through the standard cinematic devices of fades and dissolves.

Though each sequence might be one event, that one event often consists of several parts. For example, the first sequence, “Hitler's Arrival,” has two parts: Hitler's arrival by plane at the airport, and his parade from the airport to his Nuremberg hotel.

The thirteen sequences, with titles for later references, are:

• I. HITLER'S ARRIVAL. Hitler's arrival at the airport and parade into Nuremberg.
• II. HITLER'S SERENADE. On the night of Hitler's arrival, crowds wait outside his hotel window while a military band plays marching music.
• III. THE CITY AWAKENING. An attempt to conjure the mood of the city of Nuremberg awakening in the morning. Also, a montage of scenes taken at the tent city which housed thousands of rally participants.
• IV. THE FOLK PARADE. A folk parade, and an inspection of flag bearers by Hitler.
• V. OPENING OF THE PARTY CONGRESS. Opening remarks by Rudolf Hess, and speech excerpts from other Nazi leaders.
• VI. THE LABOR CORPS. A flag ceremony in honor of the dead of World War I, and a speech by Hitler to the Labor Corps, which is making its first appearance at a Nazi Rally.
• VII. LUTZE ADDRESSES THE S.A. Viktor Lutze makes an evening address to the S.A.
• VIII. THE HITLER YOUTH. Hitler addresses the Hitler Youth.
• IX. REVIEW OF THE ARMY. Hitler and Göring review military maneuvers.
• X. THE EVENING RALLY. The approach of the spotlit flags and a speech by Hitler.
• XI. HITLER AND THE S.A. The memorial wreath ceremony, the advance of the flags, a speech by Hitler, and the consecration of the flags.
• XII. THE PARADE. Hitler reviews a parade in front of the city hall of Nuremberg.
• XIII. THE CLOSING. Entry of the party standards and Hitler's closing speech.

This sequential breakdown of the film facilitates the study of three of the most important aspects of the film. One is the actual chronological order of the events depicted in the film. Another is the relationship of the sequences to each other and with the overall editing pattern of the film. And the third is the internal editing pattern of each sequence, which can be approached independently as “mini-films.”

One of the most common errors made about Triumph of the Will is the belief that the film is a straight, chronologically ordered record of the Party Rally. One critic has observed that:

Triumph of the Will is structured straightforwardly enough, in the most literal documentary narrative tradition, events proceeding according to strict chronological order, starting with Hitler's arrival in Nuremberg, continuing through processions, rallies, and speeches in the order that they happened, and ending with the Führer's final address.¹⁴

By using source material available on the rally¹⁵, it is possible to compare the construction of the film with the chronological order of the events during the rally. Table 1 shows the relationship of each of the thirteen sequences to the chronology of the rally. It reveals that Triumph of the Will is not “in the most literal documentary narrative tradition” but almost totally ignores chronological order in its structure.¹⁶

If actual documentary chronology was not Riefenstahl's guide in constructing the film, then what were her guidelines? Her own remarks provide the most accurate answer:

If you ask me today what is most important in a documentary film, what makes one see and feel, I believe that I can say that there are two things. The first is the skeleton, the construction, briefly: the architecture. The architecture should have a very exact form. … The second is the sense of rhythm. … In Triumph of the Will, for example, I wanted to bring certain elements into the foreground and put others into the background. If all things are at the same level (because one has not known how to establish a hierarchy or chronology of forms) the film is doomed to failure from the start. There must be movement. Controlled movement of successive highlight and retreat, in both the architecture of the things filmed and in that of the film.¹⁷

Later, she becomes even more specific:

I made everything work together in the rhythm. … I was able to establish that with the same material, edited differently, the film wouldn't have worked at all. If the slightest thing were changed, inverted, the effect would be lost. … There is first of all the plan (which is somehow the abstract, the precise of the construction); the rest is the melody. There are valleys, there are peaks. Some things have to be sunk down, some have to soar.¹⁸

This concept of highlight and retreat, peaks and valleys, can be applied perfectly to Triumph of the Will through observing the arrangement of each sequence within the film. The film both begins and ends with a “peak,” sequences of pronounced emotional excitement, and the highlights and retreats throughout the film are distinctive.

It had been Riefenstahl's original plan to begin the film with the “City Awakening” sequence. In her early editing experiments, however, she found that the sequence lacked sufficient dramatic power for a film opening. The sequence of Hitler's arrival in Nuremberg, which records the emotions of the crowds greeting Hitler, was substituted, and the “City Awakening” sequence was placed later in the film as one of the “valleys.”

The first and last sequences, each of them a “peak,” serve as a frame for the film. Because of the editing employed, the subject matter, and the complete domination of both sequences by Hitler, they are the strongest emotional and visual sequences of the film.

Throughout Triumph of the Will, sequences of high intensity are usually followed by more restrained sequences, creating a rhythmic pattern between the sequences.

An in-depth analysis of each sequence reveals even further how the film works:

SEQUENCE I: HITLER'S ARRIVAL

If the viewer retains just one impression or distinct memory of Triumph of the Will, it will almost surely be the opening of this sequence. Almost all film history references to the film deal with this sequence, usually resurrecting Siegfried Kracauer's criticism of the mystical significance of Hitler's airborne arrival, which will be discussed later.

The film opens with Ruttmann's titles appearing on the screen to the accompaniment of heavy orchestral music, scored by Herbert Windt in true Wagnerian style. Riefenstahl made a wise decision to begin the film with the titles, since when combined with Windt's stirring music, they give the film a dramatic opening of their own.

The opening is a black screen, and then suddenly a statue of an eagle appears, clutching a swastika—the symbol of the Nazi Reich. Large letters spell out the film's title: Triumph des Willens. The next frames reveal “Produced by order of the Führer … Directed by Leni Riefenstahl,” and then continue with the Ruttmann titles.

Windt's music plays a key role in forming the audience response to the titles. Beginning with sorrowful, mournful notes that underline the message of the titles, “20 years after the outbreak of World War, 16 years after German woe and sorrow began,” the character of the music changes to an uplifting, triumphant nature with the appearance of the title “19 months after the beginning of Germany's rebirth.” This is the first indication of the important role to be played by Windt's music throughout the film.

After the titles, the mood changes again with the appearance of the visuals. The music becomes subdued, and shots of cloud banks taken from the air appear. The effect of these cloud shots is dreamy, and as some have suggested, mystical, because of the slow speed in which the viewer is transported. The cloud banks are of the steep and billowy kind perfect for such scenes. The audience is rarely aware that the shots are filmed from a plane.

In his book From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer compares a still of cloud formations taken from Storm over Mont Blanc, the Fanck film in which Riefenstahl acted, with a still of the cloud formations from Triumph of the Will to demonstrate that “emphasis on cloud conglomerations indicates the ultimate fusion of the mountain and the Hitler cult.”¹⁹ He also observes, “The opening sequence of Triumph of the Will shows Hitler's airplane flying towards Nuremberg through banks of marvelous clouds—a reincarnation of All-Father Odin, whom the ancient aryans heard raging with his hosts over the virgin forests.”²⁰ This “Hitler arriving as a God from the heavens” interpretation has become the standard critique of the opening sequence, unfortunately to the point of cliché. While the artist is not always capable of controlling the response of the audience to a film or what impressions the film might create, intended or not, it is certainly possible to say that Kracauer's reading of the sequence attributes to it far more symbolism than it deserves. As observed earlier, the cloud shots were standard stylistic devices of the mountain films, originated by Fanck and continued by Riefenstahl in The Blue Light. By the time of Triumph of the Will, this was already one of Riefenstahl's established compositional devices. It is not unusual to expect that she would use it in Triumph of the Will, particularly since she was striving to make the film on an artistic, stylized level rather than as a simple newsreel recording. Olympia also begins with the same traveling-through-the-air device in its prologue, with the audience being projected through the skies of Europe until a descent, similar to Hitler's descent to Nuremberg, is made into the Berlin Olympic Stadium.

In Triumph of the Will, the clouds suddenly part and the medieval city of Nuremberg appears below. With the appearance of the city, the accompanying music becomes “Das Horst Wessel Lied,” the anthem of the Nazi Party. The complete plane is shown for the first time. Succeeding shots alternate between shots of the plane and of the city directly below, establishing a rhythm of shots. The shots of the city show long columns of troops marching through the streets below, reemphasizing the titles “Adolf Hitler flew to Nuremberg again, to review the columns of his faithful followers.” The shadow of the plane is seen reflected on the marching columns below.

Throughout this sequence, the editing pattern is highly visible. From the emergence of the plane to Hitler's entry into his hotel, the editing is a measured, rhythmical alternation of object-spectator, object-spectator, a one-to-one rhythm that flows throughout the sequence. The object is either the plane or Hitler, and the spectator is either a close-up of one particular member of the crowd or a shot of the crowd itself. As an example, the following is an abbreviated shot log of the first eight shots of the parade:

1. Parade starts, long shot (LS) of car leaving.
2. Medium shot (MS) of Hitler in car.
3. MS of crowd.
4. Close-up (CU) of Hitler.
5. MS of crowd (from left).
6. MS of Hitler (from behind).
7. MS of crowd (from right).
8. CU of Hitler.

This same rhythm was also used in alternating shots of the plane in the air with the city of Nuremberg below. The editing of this established rhythm is fast-paced throughout the sequence, with each shot being roughly the same length. The fast-paced editing adds to the emotional intensity already inherent in the sequence.

The camera point-of-view in this sequence is also noteworthy. The camera point-of-view makes this sequence unique, since it changes repeatedly between that of the camera and the subjective viewpoint of Hitler himself. Throughout the scene of the plane landing, the camera viewpoint is objective third person, recording both the spectators and Hitler. But with the beginning of the parade scene, the viewpoint suddenly shifts to that of Hitler. The parade is seen through the eyes of Hitler; the car passes under a bridge and the view looking up at the bridge is Hitler's viewpoint. The parade route is seen through Hitler's eyes, particularly when viewing non-human or inanimate objects, such as the tracking shots of a statue, a fountain, and a cat perched on a window ledge. They are the fleeting glimpses a person sees of an object while passing by.²¹

Just as in the editing, the selection of camera angles calls attention to itself. Every possible camera angle is used: aerial shots, eye-level, ground-level, and overhead shots. There is always movement as the camera tracks or pans the event.

Critics have often observed that the use of close-ups in the film is an insidious propaganda device. It has also been implied that these close-ups were staged to achieve the greatest effect. In reality, however, Riefenstahl used telephoto lenses that were capable of putting one face in close-up out of a crowd at a distance of thirty to forty meters, allowing her to record unnoticed the emotional reactions of members of the crowd. The fanaticism evident on the faces was already there; it was not created for the film. The film merely recorded existing reality. The medium should not be judged guilty merely because of what it records.

Riefenstahl does use close-ups for more than cinema verité. At the end of the sequence, close-ups are used in a consciously artistic rather than documentary style. Here, they are of the S.S. bodyguard, lined up outside Hitler's hotel. In close-up study, their faces appear to be those of statues rather than living beings; they are reminiscent of the heroic faces found on the statutes of the favorite Nazi sculptor Arno Breker. Like a sculptor using clay, Riefenstahl molds reality on film until it becomes more than reality, a technique best described as “statues on film,” which will not only recur throughout Triumph of the Will but will also become the major motif for the prologue of Olympia.

Another editing trait of Riefenstahl's already apparent is the technique of “dissection of detail.” Following a shot of uniformed S.S. men standing in a row, there is a tracking close-up down the row with the S.S. men interlocking their hands on each other's belts to form a human chain. The close-up is of the hands gripping the belts. This attention to the details of an object, rather than to the object as a whole, is a Riefenstahl trademark. While the technique, thus explained, might not seem very significant, it is one of the many artistic devices that separate Triumph of the Will from mere newsreel footage.

SEQUENCE II: HITLER'S SERENADE

This sequence must be regarded as one of Riefenstahl's deliberate emotional valleys, following the emotional intensity of the previous sequence. A crowd is standing outside Hitler's hotel, waiting for a chance to see their Führer. Torches and spotlights are everywhere, and a band is playing martial music.

It is one of the scenes in which Riefenstahl utilized the aerial searchlights that had been requisitioned from the Luftwaffe for her use. At that time in the history of filming, techniques for shooting at night were still to be developed and refined, and Riefenstahl depended on these powerful searchlights to provide the lighting for her night shots. The light from the searchlights, many of which were directed upward into the sky, plus the light and smoke from the torches held by the crowd, lend an eerie effect to this sequence. It is very reminiscent of the spectacularly filmed scene in Fanck's The White Hell of Piz Palü, where the rescue party descends into a glacial crevice and the entire scene is filmed with the light from hand-held magnesium torches.

SEQUENCE III: THE CITY AWAKENING

A lyrical attempt to convey the feeling of the city of Nuremberg awakening in the morning, this sequence is heavily influenced by Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, a film Riefenstahl admired. The sequence opens with a shot of church spires silhouetted against the dawn, then an indoor shot of a window being opened to show the city below, and a swastika flag unfurling in front of the window. The sequence continues with slow tracking shots of the city coordinated with equally slow and dreamy music, underlining the sleepiness of the dawn hours. To make known the time of day in a film that otherwise knows no time, there is a shot of church spires along with a bell striking seven on the soundtrack. Ruttmann used a clock face in similar fashion throughout Berlin to show the day's progression in time.

The rhythm of the “city awakening” shots is very slow, and the editing almost invisible. The tracking shots of the city are taken at the angle and speed of a person casually strolling along the sidewalk, and with the exception of a brief glimpse of a few human heads at the bottom of a frame, there is no human presence.

The sequence then changes mood, as aerial shots of a huge tent city are seen on the screen to the accompaniment of martial music, laughter, and voices on the sound track. Masses of people are seen on the ground, in contrast to the preceding city scenes. The tent city awakens and commences the morning chores.

Because of the preoccupation with what the film reveals of Nazism, an important feature of the film is often overlooked. Triumph of the Will is more than a document of the 1934 Nazi Party Rally; it is a document of the city of Nuremberg. The viewer is given a sense of the historic beauty of this medieval German city—an important contribution in view of the city's near total destruction in World War II. In several instances, the film rivals the so-called “city symphony” films in catching the atmosphere and flavor of a city at a given historical moment. In an interview, Riefenstahl revealed that when Hitler was trying to convince her to make the film, one of his selling points was based on his awareness of her interest in the old city, and particularly her fascination with the poetry of Heinrich von Kleist, Nuremberg's famous poet.²²

SEQUENCE IV: THE FOLK PARADE

Lasting five minutes, this sequence contains no significant events. It involves a parade through Nuremberg of peasants in their native folk costumes, then ends with an inspection by Hitler of a group of flag-bearers and Hitler's departure by auto.

The editing of this sequence differs from that of the first sequence because it lacks the central subject of Hitler around which to construct the editing. Without Hitler's presence for most of the sequence, the editing is slower-paced. Close-ups are used extensively to capture the flavor of the parade.

Following the folk parade, the folk music in the background changes to the Nazi anthem, the Horst Wessel Lied, and Hitler enters to inspect a group of flag-bearers. Close-ups of the flag-bearers follow, done in the same “statues on film” style used in the first sequence. In an excellent example of Riefenstahl's well-constructed editing, a shot of Hitler raising his hand in the “Heil” salute is followed immediately by a close-up of a flag-bearer jerking his head to attention.

Following the inspection, Hitler makes a grand exit by car. Succeeding shots show other Nazi leaders also departing in their chauffeured limousines: Rudolf Hess, S.A. Chief Lutze, Goebbels, and Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach. Differences in the crowds and location indicate that the shots were not made at the same time or place, but were merely edited in at this point for no obvious reason.

SEQUENCE V: OPENING OF THE PARTY CONGRESS

This sequence contains the first words to be spoken in the film, those of Rudolf Hess as he opens the party congress. In each of Riefenstahl's films, she deliberately delayed narration and dialogue for at least the first ten minutes of the film, establishing the dominance of the visuals. Besides Hess's opening, the sequence also contains a succession of edited excerpts from the speeches of other Nazi leaders.

Considerable confusion has arisen concerning the brief speech excerpts at the end of the sequence. Writing in his memoirs, Albert Speer, the architect and chief planner of the party rallies, noted that during Riefenstahl's 1935 party rally film (Tag der Freiheit, or Day of Freedom), certain footage was accidentally spoiled and was reshot in a studio reconstructed to look like the Kongresshalle, where the original footage was made.²³ The spoiled footage described by Speer sounded very much like the excerpted speeches in the 1934 Triumph of the Will, since Speer describes Hess, Streicher, and Rosenberg having to redeliver their lines. Speer also notes that Hess revealed true acting abilities when he was able to repeat his introduction of Hitler in the empty studio just as he had done in front of cheering thousands during the actual rally.

Riefenstahl, who was a close friend of Speer, challenges his memory on this point, noting first that Speer's date is wrong, and that the film was the 1934 Triumph of the Will and not the 1935 Day of Freedom. Furthermore, Riefenstahl states that only a short amount of footage of Julius Streicher was reenacted and refilmed, and not the flamboyant introduction by Hess that Speer described.²⁴

According to Riefenstahl, all the speakers except Streicher were filmed during their actual appearances at the rally. But when Streicher gave his speech, the cameraman ran out of film and Riefenstahl was left without footage of the Nazi Gauleiter of Nuremberg, one of the most important men present. Realizing that she dare not leave Streicher out of the film, Riefenstahl decided to restage his address and had the Kongresshalle podium rebuilt in a Berlin studio. Streicher appeared, redelivered his lines, and the reshot footage was inserted into the film. It is an inconsequential addition, since the footage lasts for less than a minute in the film and cannot be seen as any different from the other excerpts.

But how could Speer make such a great mistake about the introduction by Hess? Riefenstahl's gentle correction of Speer is supported by other witnesses and photos in her private collection. During the preparation for filming in the Kongresshalle, Riefenstahl asked Hess to stand at the podium while she made adjustments in the footlights needed for filming indoors. Hess was asked to tell Riefenstahl when the heat of the lights became unbearable for a speaker at the podium, an important consideration when filming the fiery orations of the Nazi leaders. Hess took his assignment seriously and added his own dramatics. Riefenstahl recalls that Speer was present at that time and must have incorrectly concluded that she was filming the incident. Hence, the faulty recollection in his memoirs.

The opening shot of the sequence is a night shot of a flood-lit eagle grasping a swastika, one of the emblems used on the rally grounds. Since the opening of the Congress occurred during the morning, this shot must be regarded as a symbolic establishing shot having nothing to do with the events to follow. Riefenstahl chose to open several other sequences with similarly symbolic shots.

There is no discernible editing pattern in this sequence, which actually contributes little to the film and only demonstrates the fine line between art and tedium in documentary filmmaking. The speech excerpts are so short they are meaningless, and it has been suggested that their only purpose was to introduce the nation's new leaders to a pre-television society.²⁵

SEQUENCE VI: INTRODUCTION OF THE LABOR CORPS

This sequence presents one of the most difficult questions of the film. Although Riefenstahl denies that any of it was staged for her film, it presents some scenes that seem so obviously done for the camera, rather than for the crowd participating in the scene, that the appearance of staging, intended or not, is given. The dramatic devices used are interesting but detract from the documentary quality of the rest of the film: a “Sprechchor” for orchestrated crowd chants, a central narrator leading the Sprechchor, and well-orchestrated ordering and shouldering of spades and raising and lowering of flags.

The sequence opens with a close-up of the Labor Corps flag fluttering in the sky. The Labor Corps, Hitler's solution for the German unemployment problem, is making its first public appearance at this rally. Then follows a series of shots using the “dissection of detail” technique mentioned earlier. A medium shot of four Nazi standards against the sky is followed by a close-up of one of the standards. Not content with a mere parade of details and objects, Riefenstahl feels compelled to examine them more closely. With her, filming is more than a question of recording on film; the recording must be artistic. Another example in this sequence is a scene with the Labor Corpsmen standing in a row with their spades resting in front of them. A series of shots shows a close-up of the corpsmen's boots, then another close-up of hands folded on the spade handles, and then a medium shot of two rows of men with their ordered spades. The montage is typical of Riefenstahl's conscious attempts to establish a rhythm of editing.

Hitler is introduced to the Labor Corps by Konstantin Hierl, the leader of the Labor Corps, with the statement that “52,000 men are awaiting the orders of their Führer.” As the figure is mentioned, there is a long shot of the crowd to stress the size of the crowd. Later, when Hitler makes reference to “millions of our comrades,” the same device is used.

Following Hitler's introduction is a scene using the orchestrated narrator-respondent routine. With one very “Germanic”-looking young corpsman as the “narrator,” the scene shows close-ups of the narrator standing within the ranks, asking of his other corpsmen, “Where do you come from, comrade?” A series of close-ups shows other corpsmen responding “From Silesia,” “From Bavaria,” and so on, until virtually every significant area of Germany has been named, indicating the national support of the Nazi movement. The gestures of the participants, and especially those of the over-enthusiastic narrator, are overdone and make the sequence one of the film's weakest.

Next, the Nazi slogan of “Ein Volk, Ein Führer, Ein Reich” (One people, one leader, one nation) is shouted by the crowd and illustrated by the film. The crowd chants “Ein Volk!” and there is an accompanying shot of a Labor Corpsman holding a flag, with columns of Labor Corpsmen standing behind him. Then “Ein Führer!” and a close-up of Hitler taken in the familiar low-angle against the sky style. And finally, “Ein Reich” along with a shot of a large mounted eagle clasping a swastika, indicating that the German state is now the Nazi state.

Suddenly a voice starts calling out the major battles of World War I, against a shot of a row of flagbearers. As each battle is called out, the flags are lowered even further until they touch the ground, visually symbolizing the disgrace of Germany with each defeat. The voice then cries out, “But you are not dead—you are still alive—in Germany!” and the flags are quickly raised into the air. The sequence concludes with Hitler's speech to the corps.

SEQUENCE VII: LUTZE ADDRESSES THE S.A.

The new S.A. chief, Viktor Lutze, addresses a night gathering of the S.A. Use is made again of magnesium torches and searchlights, making the sequence an interesting fusion of light, darkness, and smoke. Judging from Shirer's remarks about Lutze being coolly received by the S.A. men at the rally, it is interesting to note the end of this sequence, with Lutze's car being enthusiastically surrounded by S.A. men trying to shake his hand.

SEQUENCE VIII: THE HITLER YOUTH

This entire sequence is constructed around the person of Hitler, using his entrance, his speech, and his exit as the dramatic loci. It is the anticipation and then realization of Hitler's presence by the assembled thousands of Hitler Youth that gives the sequence its high emotional intensity.

As in so many other sequences, this one opens with a symbol, a close-up of the bell of a bugle playing a fanfare. Succeeding shots of members of the Hitler Youth pounding fiery cadences on drums set the tempo of the sequence. Even when he is not present, Hitler dominates the action, as the opening shots of Hitler Youth standing on their toes around the entrance reveal. As the crowd strains for a look, the noise level on the soundtrack increases and reaches its height with the appearance of Hitler. Riefenstahl is not merely a master of film editing but of sound mixing as well.

Shots of Hitler are always cross-cut with close-ups of members of the audience, taken with telephoto lenses. There are never two consecutive shots of Hitler in this sequence; each shot is cross-cut with a crowd close-up.

The sequence ends with Hitler's departure by car, with the crowd singing “Unsere Fahne flattert uns voran” (Our flag waves before us), the official Hitler Youth song written by their leader, Baldur von Schirach.

SEQUENCE IX: REVIEW OF THE ARMY

Although not the last of the film, the events in this sequence were among the last of the rally. The significance of the sequence is that it contains the only footage not taken by Riefenstahl's own camera crew. It shows army maneuvers performed under Hitler's watchful eye, and it was raining at the time. Riefenstahl later learned that the footage shot by her crew was completely spoiled and unusable, so she assembled this short sequence from footage taken at the same time by a UFA newsreel crew. Considering the nature of the footage and its rather unexciting content, it is a wonder that Riefenstahl bothered to include it at all.

SEQUENCE X: THE EVENING RALLY

This sequence begins and ends with Nazi pageantry, from the entrance of thousands of flags in the beginning to the torchlight parade at the end. Searchlights are again used to illuminate the night action. The story behind this sequence is related by Albert Speer in his book, Inside the Third Reich.²⁶ The event is a rally of the “Amtswalter,” the party bureaucrats whose overweight, middle-aged physiques did not fit Speer's carefully planned rally aesthetics. As a solution to their physical presence, Speer suggested having the “Amtswalter” march in at night carrying thousands of flags, thereby hiding their appearance. The searchlights were trained on the flags and on the great eagle which overlooked the podium. The cameramen were able to overcome the lighting handicaps, and the results are impressive as the flood of flags advance on the podium and the spotlit eagle.

Following the entrance of the “Amstwalter” and the flags, Hitler addresses the crowd. In a departure from previous editing style, there are no close-ups of anyone in this sequence but Hitler, obviously due to the inability to use telephoto lenses at night in an unlit crowd. This absence of inserted close-ups gives the sequence a unique aspect, however, since Hitler is the only human being seen. In previous sequences, while the crowd was faceless, it was nevertheless visible. But here people are so hidden by the thousands of flags that they are rendered faceless, literally as well as figuratively. While everyone else is hidden in flags and darkness, Hitler stands alone on the podium, bathed in the light of the searchlights.

SEQUENCE XI: HITLER AND THE S.A.

This sequence can be divided into four sections: the wreath ceremony, the flag entry, Hitler's speech, and the flag “consecration.”

An opening shot of a giant stone eagle and swastika dissolves to a long shot taken from the elevator which had been installed on one of the giant flagpoles behind the podium. The long shot is of Hitler, S.A. Chief Lutze, and S.S. Chief Himmler walking down the large empty aisle in the middle of the parade field, with thousands of S.A. men gathered on both sides of them. The soundtrack is noiseless, with only somber and muted music to establish the funereal mood. The long shot from the podium is replaced by a long shot from the opposite end, and the three men are seen approaching the columns of the War Memorial. They pause before a large wreath resting in front of the memorial. They bow their heads in silence, and the music stops. They salute, there is a quick insert of a swastika, and they turn and leave as the music resumes.

The composition of the above scene emphasizes the enormity of the Nuremberg rally. The men massed on the parade ground number in the tens of thousands, yet the scene owes its effectiveness to the three solitary figures walking in complete silence through their midst. It is a very moving scene and illustrates the flair for dramatics evident throughout the rally. The photographing of the scene also reveals Riefenstahl's uncanny ability to select the ideal camera location to capture the action in the most dramatic way possible. For this scene, the camera had to be apart from the crowd and the three figures; Riefenstahl's decision to build the elevator to film extremely high angle shots reflects her film background. In Fanck's films and in The Blue Light, it was always possible in the mountains to film from any elevation to obtain the best composition within the frame. In her elevated shots, low-angle shots, and use of elevators, firetruck ladders and rooftops, Riefenstahl was only applying a fundamental practice of the mountain films to the documentary.

Although Riefenstahl's fame rightfully rests on her ability as a film editor, her striking composition within the frame should not be overlooked. Her cameramen relate the zeal with which Riefenstahl would tell them how she wanted each scene filmed and from what location and what angle. By the time of Triumph of the Will, she had reached that state of mind that all film directors must someday reach, seeing the world in terms of the camera and the frame instead of through one's own eyes. Her ability to compose within the frame can be seen most strikingly in this sequence. Following the wreath scene, there is a parade of flags into the stadium similar to that in the previous scene, only more visible since it was filmed in broad daylight. There is one continuous shot in which the frame is filled completely with flags. Nothing can be seen but the flags, which move up, down, and forward as if they had lives of their own. Although something of the beauty of this composition can be seen in a still, its true beauty is revealed through the animation of the flags within the frame.

The sequence contains an important address by Hitler, during which he refers to the Röhm affair as “the shadow that spread over our party,” and then absolves the assembled S.A. men of any responsibility for the shadow. As was done with the “Ein Volk, Ein Führer, Ein Reich” scene in the Labor Corps sequence, visuals are used to pictorialize Hitler's words. Hitler tells the crowd, “Our party stands like a rock,” and the accompanying shot shows Hitler standing alone in the center of a massive stone podium. In the composition of the shot, Hitler appears to be a statue growing out of the rock of the podium. Taken together with the statement of Hess in the last sequence of the film, that “Hitler is the party, the party is Hitler,” the allegory becomes obvious.

The final section of the sequence is the “consecration” of the flags, which Hitler performs by pressing the Nazi “blood flag” (the name given to the Nazi flag that was carried during the Beer Hall Putsch, during which several Nazis were killed) against other flags held by S.A. men. Often overlooked by film observers who are not familiar with Nazi mythology, this act was one of the many quasi-religious acts performed by the Nazis as party ideology became gradually elevated to religious status.

SEQUENCE XII: THE PARADE

More than any other sequence, this is the filmed record of an event (the parade of September 9, 1934), and to film it, expansive and imaginative camera angles were employed. Given the monotony of a parade of uniformed men lasting over five hours, it was necessary to seek out as many different camera angles as possible to avoid transferring the monotony to the film itself. There are shots from rooftops and towers, from within the marching ranks, and shots that are framed in the window arcades of some of Nuremberg's oldest pieces of architecture.

The sequence begins with a low-angle tracking shot down a row of huge, unfurled flags along the parade route. Through the use of unusual camera angles, such as this low-angle shot, Riefenstahl calls the audience's attention to the beauty of detail which may not be observed by the unaided eye but which is accentuated through riveting the audience's attention to the frame. Her style is to go deeper into objects than any casual observer would; not content with the spectator's long shot, she explores the object closer, with a medium shot and finally a close-up. And sometimes the pattern is reversed, with surprising results. A shot shows a close-up of a hand outstretched in the Nazi salute. The camera pulls back, and the hand is revealed to be Hitler's.

Again, Riefenstahl's attempts to liven up a monotonous event yield pictorially pleasing results. With proper composition, a beauty can be created that exists only by virtue of its spatial relationships within the frame, a beauty not to be found in the unbounded reality outside of the frame. S.A. men march into an empty frame, with the combination of their ranks, columns, and projected shadows before them forming a striking pattern that gradually fills the frame as they march forward. Just as the artist composes within the limitation of the canvas, Riefenstahl composes within the frame and adds the extra dimension of film movement.

SEQUENCE XIII: THE RALLY CLOSING

Consisting of two parts, the entry of the party standards and Hitler's speech, this sequence ranks with the first in establishing and reflecting high degrees of emotion and enthusiasm. Opening with a shot of an eagle and a swastika, it then shows Hitler entering the Kongresshalle to the accompaniment of cheers and martial music. Following Hitler's entrance, the party standards are paraded into the hall. The standards are patterned after those of Imperial Rome, with town names placed where the Roman standard read “S.P.Q.R.” Two columns of standards proceed down the narrow aisle and then diverge at the location of the camera. The standards are shown in close-up when they reach the camera placement.

Hitler's speech is his last to the 1934 rally, and he uses a prepared text. While the other Hitler speeches in the film are more interesting from the standpoint of observing the reactions of the crowd (his speeches to the Labor Corps and the Hitler Youth), or in an examination of the speech's content (the speech to the S.A.), this speech is most important as a character study of Hitler himself. The cool, composed Hitler that has so far been seen throughout the film suddenly gives way to an intensely animated Hitler, whose excitement feeds on itself. His gestures become dramatic, interpretive flourishes and facial expressions those of a seasoned actor. The editing of the speech does a masterful job of conveying the mounting excitement of the event. The crowd's enthusiasm increases almost in direct proportion to Hitler's, and the alternation of shots shows this reciprocal relationship between Hitler and the crowd. Whenever Hitler makes a point that arouses a great cheer from the audience, there is always a cut to the audience. At one point the enthusiasm and shouting of “Sieg Heil” becomes so great that Hitler cannot continue, and the camera trains itself on the agitated Hitler waiting to resume speaking.

In several instances, the editing becomes very expressive. Hitler asserts, “This racially best of the German nation demanded to be the leaders of the country and the people,” and the statement ends with a cut to Julius Streicher, the party's leading racist nodding his head in agreement. Hitler refers to the “old fighters” of the party, and the statement is followed with shots of Hess, Goebbels, and Goering, the leading “old fighters” of the party.

Both the sequence and the film end on a mystical note. There is a long shot of the hall, showing the crowd and the standards. The crowd begins singing “The Horst Wessel Lied” and the standards are raised, appropriately enough since the actual title of the song is “Die Fahne Hoch” (Raise the flags). Then there is a long tilting shot upward to a large swastika on the wall, and a close-up reveals marching S.A. men superimposed on the swastika. The shot is a low angle one showing the marchers against a cloud backdrop. The film that began with Hitler coming from the clouds ends with the men of the S.A. marching into them.

Much has been said about the making of the film, and most of what has been said is incorrect. Errors range from the number of cameramen used to the extent of the preparations made for the film in conjunction with the planning of the rally. Some of the errors are insignificant historical mistakes; it is of little real consequence whether thirty cameramen were used²⁷ or 18, which was actually the case.²⁸ But the question of advance preparations made for the film, and their effect on the rally itself, is a question of crucial critical importance.

In his book From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer says:

… the Convention was planned not only as a spectacular mass meeting, but also as spectacular film propaganda. Leni Riefenstahl praises the readiness with which Nazi leaders facilitated her task. Aspects open here as confusing as the series of reflected images in a mirror maze: from the real life of the people was built up a fake reality that was passed off as the genuine one; but this bastard reality, instead of being an end in itself, merely served as the set dressing for a film that was then to assume the character of an authentic documentary. Triumph of the Will is undoubtedly the film of the Reich's Party Convention; however, the Convention itself had also been staged to produce Triumph of the Will, for the purpose of resurrecting the ecstasy of the people through it.²⁹

It is this critical observation by Kracauer that has repeatedly damaged the film's reputation as a documentary, yet the observation is riddled with inaccuracies and mistaken conclusions based on faulty facts.

First, there is the historical fact that Riefenstahl did not arrive in Nuremberg until approximately two weeks before the rally began. With such timing, it is difficult to say that the rally was planned with the film in mind. Kracauer's reference to Riefenstahl praising the cooperation of Nazi leaders for “facilitating her task” actually refers to the thanks Riefenstahl gave to those who helped her after her arrival in Nuremberg for making arrangements for the quartering of her camera teams and other trivial matters hardly worthy of the importance Kracauer attaches to them. The book Kracauer refers to at other points in his criticism (Hinter den Kulissen des Reichsparteitag Films, which credits Riefenstahl as its author) is full of references to the difficulties she encountered in making the film, difficulties which would never have arisen if there had been careful advance planning. For example, it was difficult for speeches in the hall to be recorded, since only one row was made available for the sound equipment.³⁰ Other references are made to film towers that were not completed until halfway through the rally.³¹ For many overhead shots, cameramen had to balance themselves precariously on the rooftops of the old houses of Nuremberg. There were other, more serious difficulties that were not reported. When Riefenstahl tried to engage one of Berlin's major cameramen to work on the film, he refused to work with her. When pressed for a reason, he stated that he “would not work under the direction of a women.”³²

There are other reasons to doubt Kracauer's critical premises. His argument is supported by only one sentence taken from the Riefenstahl book: “The preparations for the Party Convention were made in concert with the preparations for the camera work.” This one sentence is not taken from the body of the text but from a caption for a photo, and photo captions, since they are usually tailored to fit the photo, are notoriously unreliable sources of information. There is the additional fact that since Kracauer wrote his criticism, it has been learned that Riefenstahl did not actually write her book. It was ghostwritten for her by Ernest Jäger, a German film magazine editor who had been commissioned by the publicity department of Ufa.³³

An even more substantial question must be posed: is it really logical to presume that the rally, and the architecture designed for it, would have been any different without the presence of Riefenstahl and her camera crews? The history of the Nuremberg rallies indicates that, even though their filmic value was later appreciated, the rally was the central event of the party and was staged for the benefit of those hundreds of thousands actually in attendance. The film could only attempt to show the fanaticism that was evident at the rally; that Riefenstahl was able to capture these feelings on film as effectively as she did, particularly through her use of the telephoto lens to record reactions unnoticed, is a tribute to her abilities as a documentary filmmaker.

Also, it is not logical to presume that Albert Speer, the architect of the rally, would have altered his architectural plans for the one-shot benefit of Riefenstahl and her film crew. Riefenstahl filmed just one rally in its entirety, while the buildings were designed to stand for centuries. Speer's own memoirs point out that the raison d'être of Nazi architecture was quite independent of its cinematic possibilities.

As a final comment on the question, Speer denied in an interview with the author that the film and the rally were planned hand-in-hand. Terming Kracauer's statements “non-sense,” Speer noted that whenever he was approached to make an alteration or change in his plans in order to accommodate the film, he strenuously opposed it, since it might either change the harmony of his architecture or alter his central plans for the rally. He stated that he consented to only the slightest concessions for the filming, such as allowing more room on a platform for a camera, which were of such a trivial nature that they did not actually constitute concessions. The only notable concession that he did agree to was the placing of an elevator on the giant flag pole so that Riefenstahl could obtain the overhead shots that she desired, and even that concession was arranged only shortly before the beginning of the rally.

Even today, more than fifty years after the making of the film, the controversy continues.

The only thing conceded by all sides is the film's importance in film history; otherwise, critical opinion goes from one extreme to the other. The most dangerous error is to approach Triumph of the Will as either pure propaganda or pure documentary. It must be viewed as somewhere between the two. Perhaps the best definition of the film is that offered by Richard Corliss, who wrote that Triumph of the Will is “a sympathetic documentary of a propaganda event.”³⁴

There is no doubt that at the time of the making of the film, Leni Riefenstahl was attracted to Hitler and the Nazi movement. She has never denied that fact. Triumph of the Will was made at an early moment in the history of the Nazi rule: the notorious Nuremberg race laws had not yet been passed, and even countries that were later to become enemies of Germany were represented officially at the Nuremberg rally by ambassadors and diplomats. The most conclusive evidence on Riefenstahl's behalf is the Gold Medallion awarded Triumph of the Will at the Paris World Exhibition in 1937. Had the film been regarded as pure Nazi propaganda, it would never have received such an award just two years before the outbreak of World War II.

In her attempts to enrich the film artistically and avoid newsreel reportage, Riefenstahl often took steps that will forever be open to critical interpretation. An artist's true intentions can never be fully understood, not at the time, and not many years later. But a work can and should be examined against the maker's previous works in an attempt to ascertain whether certain features are established stylistic traits of the artist and if they have a significance that can only be determined through an examination of the artist's total work. In the case of Leni Riefenstahl, such an examination reveals that the cloud motif at the beginning of Triumph of the Will is more of a stylistic device inherited from the mountain-film genre than a specifically intended “Odin descending from the heavens” theme.

The third member of Riefenstahl's trilogy of films for the Nazis is the short film Tag der Freiheit: Unser Wehrmacht (Day of Freedom: Our Army). Like Victory of Faith and Triumph of the Will before it, the heroic-sounding title is taken from the name the Nazis gave the party rally of that year (1935).

According to Riefenstahl, she received bitter complaints from leaders of the German army after the filming of Triumph of the Will. The generals felt that the army had been overlooked in favor of the party throughout the film. Indeed, the army appears only in a short sequence of the film (Sequence IX—Review of the Army) and even then, as observed earlier, only in newsreel footage edited in by Riefenstahl.

The wrath of the generals was so great that they brought their case directly to Hitler, and the result was Riefenstahl's first disagreeable words with Hitler. At a meeting with Riefenstahl at Rudolf Hess's Munich home, Hitler attempted to suggest an “artistic” compromise to the problem. His proposal was that Riefenstahl line up all the overlooked generals in a row and then have the camera slowly track down the row so that each general would be seen in the film and his ego placated. To make matters worse, Hitler suggested that this shot be used as the opening of the film. Riefenstahl turned down both proposals immediately; the proposed shot was precisely the kind she had tried to avoid throughout the film, and besides, she had already decided on how she wanted to open the film. When she refused the proposals, Hitler looked at her very coldly, remarked, “You are very obstinate. I only wanted to help you,” and left the room. But keeping his earlier promise to Riefenstahl, he made no further attempts to interfere with the film.

After this event, Riefenstahl resolved to try to soothe the ruffled feathers of the Wehrmacht generals. She agreed to return to the following party rally in 1935 and make a film exclusively about the Wehrmacht. She honored the promise and returned the next fall with six cameramen. Her heart was not in the project, though, and she was determined to make the film as quickly as possible. The film was financed by the party through Riefenstahl's own film company and was distributed to German theaters as a short by Ufa.

Day of Freedom was lost at the end of the war and remained lost until the mid-1970s when an incomplete print was discovered in the United States. It is an unexciting film, and the viewer can see immediately that Riefenstahl was only fulfilling a commitment and not trying to make a cinema classic. Only the very beginning of the film is worthy of note. It opens with a shot of marching soldiers, obviously filmed in a set, marching through foggy darkness. Then a distorted wall, done in true expressionistic style and reminiscent of the sets of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, is shown, with a soldier standing in front of two windows in the wall. The dark silhouette of the soldier is shown looming against the sky. This staging is a significant departure from Riefenstahl's documentary style in Triumph of the Will but is an indication of what is to come in the prologue of Olympia.

The rest of the film could have been taken directly from Triumph of the Will. As Riefenstahl herself admits, the style is identical. There is a sequence of a tent city awakening in the morning and people performing their morning chores, just as in Triumph of the Will. There are also numerous low-angle shots of marching soldiers framed against a backdrop of clouds. A soldier blowing a trumpet turns until the horn of the trumpet completely fills the frame (also as in Triumph of the Will); this is followed by a dissolve to the Speer-designed eagle, rows of swastika flags, and then a final settling on an iron cross flag, representing the Wehrmacht. One pan shot across a large stadium audience gives the only indication (in the surviving print) that the film was made at the party rally. The rest of the film is devoted to scenes of war maneuvers involving light artillery, machine guns, tanks, and smoke bombs, all performed under the watchful eye of Hitler. The final shot of the film shows planes flying overhead in a swastika formation, which is then superimposed on a swastika flag.

What survives of the film is of little interest after the accomplishments of Triumph of the Will. The central part of the film, which Riefenstahl claims is the only interesting part, is a speech by Hitler and it is missing from the surviving print. Day of Freedom is precisely what Riefenstahl admits it to be: a minor film made to satisfy the petty jealousies of German generals.

Notes

1. Fritz Hanfstängl, Hitler—The Missing Years (London, 1956).

2. The Blue Light was scored by Giuseppe Becce, and Day of Freedom by the famous German film composer Peter Kreuder.

3. Herman Weigel, “Interview mit Leni Riefenstahl,” Filmkritik (August 1972), p. 396.

4. Only three German feature films dealt directly with Nazi Party history, and all three were made in 1933, the Nazi's first year of power. They were S.A. Mann Brandt, Hitlerjunge Quex, and Hans Westmar.

5. Herman Weigel, “Randbemerkungen zum Thema,” Filmkritik (August 1972), pp. 427-428.

6. Ibid., p. 428.

7. Remarks made by Leni Riefenstahl during an interview with the author, August, 1975.

8. Robert Gardner, “Can the Will Triumph?” Film Comment (Winter 1965), p. 29.

9. Museum of Modern Art film print, Triumph of the Will. All references to the film itself refer to this complete print. For information on how this print was preserved through the war, see comments by Eileen Bowser, Museum of Modern Art Curatorial Assistant, in “Leni Riefenstahl and the Museum of Modern Art,” Film Comment (Winter 1965), p. 16.

10. The S.A., or “Sturmabteilung,” were the so-called “Brown-shirts” of the Nazi Party. Besides being responsible for maintaining order at party meetings, they were the Nazi's street brawlers against rival political parties. They were in organization and purpose different from the S.S., or “Black-shirts.”

11. Hamilton T. Burden, The Nuremberg Party Rallies: 1923-39 (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), p. 77.

12. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary (New York: Popular Library, 1940), pp. 20-21.

13. Michel Delahaye, “Leni and the Wolf: Interview with Leni Riefenstahl,” Cahiers du Cinema in English (No. 5), p. 54.

14. Ken Kelman, “Propaganda as Vision—Triumph of the Will,” Film Culture (Spring 1973), p. 163.

15. Burden, op. cit.

16. The dates for the “City Awakening” sequence cannot be determined, but since they record no significant events, dates are not important. The remarks made by the various speakers in Sequence V, “Opening of the Party Congress,” were made on many different occasions and locations, and edited together for this sequence.

17. Delahaye, op. cit., pp. 51-52.

18. Ibid., p. 54.

19. Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1947), illustrations 59-60.

20. Ibid., p. 290.

21. To obtain these shots, Riefenstahl had to make a personal appeal to Hitler for permission to have a cameraman ride with him in the automobile during the parade. (Comments by Riefenstahl to the author.)

22. Kevin Brownlow, “Leni Riefenstahl,” Film (Winter 1966), p. 18.

23. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970), p. 62.

24. Remarks made by Leni Riefenstahl during an interview with the author, August, 1975.

25. David Stewart Hull, Film in the Third Reich (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), p. 75.

26. Speer, op. cit., pp. 58-59.

27. Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, The German Cinema (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), p. 78.

28. Leni Riefenstahl, Hinter den Kulïssen des Reichsparteitag Films (Munich: Franz Eber Verlag, 1935), p. 9.

29. Kracauer, op. cit., p. 301.

30. Riefenstahl, op. cit., p. 20.

31. Ibid., p. 24.

32. Correspondence between Emil Schunemann and the Reichsfachschaftfilm e.V., (Berlin Document Center, Berlin).

33. Riefenstahl has denied in an interview (Herman Weigel, “Interview mit Leni Riefenstahl,” Filmkritik, August 1972, p. 400) that she wrote the book, and says that it was written by Ernst Jäger. Her claim is substantiated by a receipt for Reichsmarks 1000 written by Jäger to Riefenstahl for the writing of the book, which can be found in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. Further, the former publicity director of UFA has sworn in an affidavit that Jäger was the author.

34. Richard Corliss, “Leni Riefenstahl: A Bibliography,” Film Heritage (Fall 1969), p. 30.