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Propaganda

Triumph of Will ( Triumph des Willens, German; 1935)

The Godfather of propaganda must have realised early in his career that visual representation of a lie, often repeated will eventually be the accepted truth. This, coming from a person who almost made it to the Academy of Fine Arts of Vienna, must be true.

Thanks to a party member, a certain Elisabeth Nietzsche, he gained access to the mind of one the greatest 20th-century thinker, Frederich Nietzsche, her brother. His unpublished book, 'Will of Power', which Nietzsche thought was too controversial to man, was made available to him. Many of his ideas are starkly portrayed here in this propaganda film.  

Like Zarathustra, in Nietzsche's book,  Hitler appears from the clouds and disembarks the plane to present his good news to the people. If Zarathustra brought in the news from the mountains, that God is dead, this time, it is at the Nuremberg, and it is the Social Democrat party assembly. He is welcomed like a demi-god by floods of youths, farmers, women and looks like everybody in Deutschland! Happy faces are seen everywhere. Everybody goes overboard to express their pleasure to partake in a huge street parade. On exhibition are the various movements, governmental, army, youth movements, farmers' groups and much more.

Also seen in the documentary are the members of the Nazi circles of who and who, all ashamedly showing their allegiance to Hitler and the Party. New speeches are spoken. Hitler's speech sounds like many of the rhetorics that we hear today about making the country great. The emotional theatric display of party members ends with one by Deputy Fuhrer with a phrase, "The Party is Hitler, but Hitler is Germany as Germany is Hitler. Hail Victory.

In this documentary, we are showcased the greatness of German cinematography. It must have been quite a feat to do an outdoor shooting of a street parade involving a mammoth crowd. Aerial shots, both of a flying plane amongst the clouds and of marching bands from atop a building must be avant-garde. The Germans who introduced the genre of noir film with its typical long shadow shots show their prowess at night filming.
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