vendredi 1 août 2014

Poisoned film

I watched yesterday a very well shot documentary, by a female director with a great sense of image and editing.
This documentary is called Triumph des Willens and the director is Leni Riefenstahl. It is about the 4th Nazi Party congress in Nuremberg, it was made in 1934 and it is probably the most intelligent, the most impressive and the most efficient propaganda film I have seen in all my life. And the most dangerous one.













After about 25 minutes filming the arrival of Hitler in Nuremberg, the show begins with Rudolf Hess introducing Hitler and from this point you can almost feel in all your body the communion between a people and its leader.

I couldn't tell what frightened me more... The glorification of some kind of barbarism, with the recurrent scenes showing fire or the virile songs? Hitlerjungend proud of being part of the revival of Germany, whom Hitler exhorts to sacrifice and obedience? The thousands of people shouting "Heil!" with their arms rised? The parades walking to the sound of fifes and drums, the streams of nazi flags? Maybe the scenes showing the enthusiastic crowds in the city of Nuremberg and the women at their windows... Or the Horst Wessel Lied at the end of the film...













I thought of Miguel de Unamuno and his speech in Salamanca during a great francoist ceremony (the day of the spanish race celebration) when he answered the francoist slogan "Viva la muerte!" saying "I have just heard the necrophilous shout Long live death that sounds at my ears like Kill life!"
Even if in 1934 the nazis hadn't begun to mass murder in Europe, Leni Riefenstahl is guilty of having showed the magnificent exhibition of a fascist power.








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