Triumph of the Will / Triumph des Willens (1935)
Reichspropagandaleitung der NSDAP, Leni Riefenstahl-Produktion

Description

This documentary of the Sixth Nazi Party Congress at ironically enough Nuremberg is a frightening example of powerful film propaganda. It helped launch Hitler into power and its sweeping style was later used by American director Frank Capra for his war documentaries.

Tags

1930s, Germany, Nazism

Collected reviews and ratings

10 Amazon user reviews

Riefenstahl's masterpiece--and it is a masterpiece, politics aside--combines the strengths of documentary and propaganda into a single, overwhelmingly powerful visual force.
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10 dvdmoviecentral.com | Michael Jacobson

Without historical perspective, one can appreciate the power and the seduction these images had. It’s no wonder Triumph of the Will ran in full and in parts in theatres across Germany until the end of the war. But with the perspective of the Holocaust, the fall of many European countries, and the near successful run at world domination by a maniacal leader, we can really comprehend the dangers of oppressing a people to the point where A) they have nothing left to lose, and B) they will latch on to anything in order to rise again.
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10 DVD Talk | Glenn Erickson

Lenin may have declared the motion picture as the most powerful propaganda tool of the state, but it was Leni Riefenstahl who created the masterpiece of the genre, and this is it. Every film technique known in 1935 was used at its highest level, but for a supremely negative purpose.
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7.0 filmcritic.com | Christopher Null

It's a reminder of the past and of the power of the moving image, for sure, but more than anything we look at the Nazis and roll our eyes, content that we're seeing a bygone era of loonies.
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6.0 DVD Journal | D. K. Holm

Even before you get to its political aspects, the film shows its age because it fails to overcome its primitive technique and melodramatic narrative structure, rendering it a document of solely historical and sociopolitical interest, a movie not at all tolerable in even the conventional sense.
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