Triumph of the Will (1935)

  And now we have moved from the progressive, inclusive, social flowering of the Weimar Republic to the Nazi regime. 

This is considered one of the greatest propaganda films to have ever been made.  Leni Riefenstahl was hand-selected by Hitler to be the National Socialist party's filmmaker of record.  It's supposed to be a documentary, in that it shows the massive citizen turnout for the 1934 Nazi Public Congress, but Riefenstahl staged and rehearsed a lot of scenes for maximum impact, which is not what documentaries do.

Parts of this film are intensely creepy, even without the historical knowledge of what this party did to scar the face of humanity forever.  The Congress was held in Nuremburg, and Hitler was staying in what looks like an honest-to-God castle.  It's 1934 so outside electricity is still hard to come by, so a lot of the night scenes are of people holding torches and milling around outside the castle.  But they're not there to destroy the monster, they're there to worship it.

The rest of the film, unfortunately, is just tremendously boring.  It's two hours of marching, which is impressive I guess because of the number of people involved and the organization it took to manage it, but it's a bunch of identically dressed people moving at the same time.  After the first formation, you've seen it all.  Yes, there are speeches given by famous Nazi leaders, including Hitler, but they are short and interspersed with the miles and miles of marching soldiers.

It is a notable film for the deft use of camera work.  Film is still in its toddler years here and cameras have only just been designed that are able to be moved with the cameraperson.  In a lot of previous films we covered in class, the camera was a heavy, static thing.  You kind of just set it up and had your actors move in and out of frame, like a stage play.  By 1934, the camera was unchained, so here you get aerial shots, pans, moving up and down, from a motor vehicle, and a lot more work with different lenses.  Now, we kind of take all that stuff for granted but this was revolutionary at the time.

I can't recommend this film, really, because of its horrible boringness, and also Nazis.  Be glad I watched it for you so you don't have to sit through it yourself.