Some films are highly problematic as entertainment. For instance, Oliver Stone’s JFK. As entertainment, that movie strives for historical authenticity, yet contains only two historical facts: Kennedy was assassinated and Jim Garrison’s case was laughed out of court. Where JFK fails as entertainment, it soars as a sublime expression of the art of filmmaking. Ironically, a strong argument can be made that Oliver Stone should have won the Oscar for Best Director for JFK while the film itself should have won the Razzie for Worst Movie. Not since Triumph of the Will has a major production demonstrated such a wide gap between cinematic technique and narrative content.
Leni Riefenstahl’s utilization of associational editing in Triumph of the Will may well represent its greatest achievement. From a strictly mechanical perspective, that is. Associational editing is simply the art of editing images and sound to create associations in the mind of the viewer. Triumph of the Will is propaganda, pure and simple; intended to situate a maniac named Hitler into something very close to a god. Propaganda is usually associated in people’s minds with political ideology, but it is usually only after a viewing that most people realize that the one thing subtly missing from the film is overt imagery of the Nazi Party’s fascist policies.
Instead, Nazi Stormtroopers in their now-notorious uniforms are associated through editing with equally familiar and recognizable traditional German attire. The linking of traditional with the “New Order” of the Third Reich creates a psychological implication of natural evolution and progression. Riefenstahl’s ultimate aim is to reveal the Reich as an inevitable and utterly natural stage in a pre-constructed German mindset of superiority too long unrecognized and too successfully undermined by non-German influences. Her genius lies in directing and editing these associational images in such a way that they don’t seem like an aim much less like a tightly constructed message. The directorial influence here is to allow viewers to believe they are making these associations on their own by making a concerted effort to not hit them over the head with more obvious techniques of propaganda.
The same holds true for her treatment of Hitler. Because it is a technique that is so pervasive it inevitably comes to be normalized, Hitler is almost in every shot he’s in filmed from a low angle. This decision may likely have been stimulated by the fact that Hitler was at best two or three inches below six feet in height, but the choice also works psychologically. Forcing an audience already seated below the large cinema screens to continually look up at Hitler shot from a low angle subtly coerces several associations: Hitler as benevolent father figure, Hitler as supreme commander and, ultimately, Hitler as god-like savior of the Germanic people.
Associational editing continues with the constant equating of Hitler the man with the thousands in the crowds gazing at him with love more than verging on the threshold of worship. If Hitler himself hardly looks the part of the blond Teutonic savior, one cannot deny the power of thousands of more appropriately Aryan citizens united in their collective acceptance of him as that very thing. The association between Germanic superiority and Hitler is made with such an elemental force that it becomes easy to forget that central casting could not have sent a more inappropriate actor for the role. Hitler no longer becomes Hitler; he becomes the Nietzschean Superman alluded to in the film’s title which is a perverted appropriation of the philosopher.
