soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Don Phillipson wrote:
>
>
> Well, they may have been, if not by Leni Riefenstahl.
> (Directors seldom want to refilm the same theme again
> and again.) Triumph of the Will (1935) presented the 1934
> Nuremburg party rally and was Riefenstahl's second such
> film. She also filmed the 1933 rally, the first after Hitler came
> to power (and, memory suggests, the first staged by Albert
> Speer): the earlier film was released and is in the movie
> libraries, albeit (rightly) eclipsed by Triumph of the Will.
> As soon as this movie was finished (which took more than
> a year) Riefenstahl was hard at work on her Olympic Games
> movie (1936) which took two years to complete to her
> satisfaction. This left no time to consider repeating
> something she had already done, with no particular
> ideas how to surpass her achievement.

Yeah, tough act to follow. But it seemed like the kind of thing the
Nazis meant to have done every year, year after year. And it would be
odd that no aspiring artiste decided to try his or her hand at a
Second Act.

I still don't understand the obvious continuity issues, though. Or
maybe film was just so spanking new at the time that audiences did not
mind.

> Have a look at the Wikipedia article on Technicolor.
> Colour movie technology was hardly mature by 1934:
> and required special cameras and lighting (i.e. was
> then unsuitable for filming outside the studio.) German
> black and white movies already had their own "expressionist"
> style, widely admired, cf. Riefenstahl's mountaineering
> movies. (She began in films as a showgirl, later actress
> specializing in mountaineering flicks.) Secondly, German
> studios were still grappling with sound-on-film (another
> new technology that they handled well.)

Hmm, it was that "unsafe" for so otherwise bold a visionary? Though,
as you suggest, it may have been principally for aesthetic reasons as
well (black uniforms look more striking in B&W, naturally!).

> Mussolini, apparently not:

That's amazing!!

And that reminds me...both Mussolini and Hitler were fond of grand
gestures and dramatic poses, but their repertoires feel different to
me....

> Stalin -- yes indeed: the USSR
> laid on even more parades than the Italian and German one-party
> states, and filmed them enthusiastically, for distribution to the
> (Russian) masses through special state agencies, an early feature
> of the Bolshevik propaganda system. Later the USSR developed
> its own colour film process, to make its newsreels more attractive.
> Not many parade pictures were exported because they were made
> principally for Russian audiences.

But were none any good? How come we don't see them? I don't mean
just video records of a parade or some-such; I mean a "music video"
like how "Triumph of the Will" was....

> Goebbels was in charge of the film project and (so far as we know)
> delegated all artistic responsibility to Riefenstahl. (Remember, this
> was their second collaboration, the earlier one being the 1933 rally.)

So I wonder why she decided to highlight certain leaders...telegenic
reasons only?

She showed some goofy woodchuck-lookin' Jung Volk...and Goering got
face-time only twice!

> Heydrich was in 1934 not a figure of national importance. (He was
> then police chief for either Munich or the Bavarian state (Land),
> and had no function in Nuremberg: but rose fast and was by
> about 1936 (after the SS displaced the SD) head of the Gestapo,
> thus a personal of national importance.)

Hmm, I thought I saw him once during the film, off to the side next to
Hitler's car....

> --
> Don Phillipson
> Carlsbad Springs
> (Ottawa, Canada)