The next film Riefenstahl directed after The Blue Light was not "a documentary on the Nuremberg Rally in 1934"—Riefenstahl made four non-fiction films, not two, as she has claimed since the 1950s and as most current white-washing accounts of her repeat—but Victory of the Faith (Sieg des Glaubens, 1933), celebrating the first National Socialist Party Congress held after Hitler seized power. Then came the first of two works which did indeed make her internationally famous, the film on the next National Socialist Party Congress, Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens, 1935)—whose title is never mentioned on the jacket of The Last of the Nuba—after which she made a short film (eighteen minutes) for the army, Day of Freedom: Our Army (Tag der Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht, 1935), that depicts the beauty of soldiers and soldiering for the Führer. (It is not surprising to find no mention of this film, a print of which was found in 1971; during the 1950s and 1960s, when Riefenstahl and everyone else believed Day of Freedom to have been lost, she had it dropped from her filmography and refused to discuss it with interviewers.)
Check out those titles! I'm noticing a trend here. Obviously I have not seen all of these films, but I wonder how connected they are in terms of message, feel, and intention.
And just FYI (because I wouldn't know this if I hadn't taken German), The Genetive form is the German conjunction of the article "the" - "der" "die" and "das" to be used as the phrase "of the". ie; Triumph OF THE Will
ReplyDeleteTHE will is originally "DER Will." "Will" is an "N" noun, which means when it is used as an indirect object or a direct object, you must add "en" to the end of it. In the Genetive case, DER (the masculine form of the word "the) is changed to DES, and the noun takes on an "s" at the end. So now we have "Triumph DES WillENS."
Just in case anyone was interested. :)
And also PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong on something. It's been a year and a half since I was learning German grammar.
No, you're totally right! We actually just went over that today in class haha.
ReplyDeleteThat is super interesting though. All of the titles are super patriotic and project a sense of pride in one's country, honor, bravery, etc. It makes me a bit wary of ever wanting to watch the rest of the films on the list, simply because they seem as if they would have literally the exact same repetitive, nationalistic vibe, and that no new themes would even be introduced.