Triumph of the Will
Triumph of the Will is the infamous (propaganda) documentary by director Leni Riefenstahl about the Nazi Party Rally of Unity and Strength held September 1934 in Nuremberg1Wikipedia, Triumph of the Will. Triumph of the Will has been acknowledged as the greatest advertising film ever made. While its apparent subject is the Nuremberg Nazi congress, its true purpose was to mysticize Hitler and show him as the savior God of the German people2Michael Rabiger, Directing the Documentary Chapter 2, Focal Press. It is an abiding discomfort to many film historians that great cinema art should eulogize such a monstrous figure as Adolf Hitler.
Leni Riefenstahl
The Nazis more than any other power group realized the unlimited potential of film in a generation addicted to the cinema. In addition to propaganda films using carefully picked actors to show Aryan supremacy and the superiority of Hitler’s policies, the regime produced two epics so accomplished in the compositional and musical elements of film that they undeniably belong with the greatest films of all time. Director Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938) built the 1936 Olympic games into a paean to the physical being of athletes and Triumph of Will (1937)3Michael Rabiger, Directing the Documentary Chapter 2, Focal Press.