Rallying

What you might think of as a rather specialist evening's film viewing at the National Film Theatre, with a rare big-screen outing for evil Nazi film-maker Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda film, Triumph of the Will:

Despite its fearsome reputation as a propaganda work of towering genius, it is, in fact, an immensely dull film, enlivened only by intermittent sparks of cinematic genius.

At 1 hour forty minutes long, it's about an hour too long. Endless processions of goose-stepping Nazis are frankly just not that interesting -- by definition, really, they're all pretty uniform. Which doesn't make for exciting viewing.

But as a historical document, as a re-imagining of what Nazism was all about after the mass killing of the SA earlier in the year followed by the fortuitous (for Hitler) death of President von Hindenburg, the Nuremburg Rally was the big set-piece opportunity to show that Hitler was now the one and only man in charge, with a unified party, military and civil establishment underneath him.

Ironically, given her role as one of the most influential women film-makers of the twentieth century, women barely figure in this film, other than as occasional adoring fans in the crowds. This is a man's movie, with men in uniform, men with guns, men marching purposefully, and men playfully rough-housing with each other, sometimes semi-naked. It's that kind of film.

Leni gives us Hitler as Messiah descending from the clouds in his cutting-edge three-engined German Dornier aeroplane, and Hitler the man -- first seen from behind, giving us the chance to empathise with him, then seeing his extraordinary connection with the German volk as he works the crowd.

For most sane people this carefully crafted illusion is shattered when the evil Nazi opens his spittle-flecked mouth and disgorges foaming rants which make no sense whatsoever (and it really isn't the translation that's been screwed up).

Almost every frame, though, emphasises Hitler's otherness, his apartness from the heaving mass of humanity (that's the rest of us, in case you were wondering). Leni spent the long post-War years of her very long life denying that she was a Nazi or a sympathiser, or that her film was a political statement rather than a documentary.

Nonetheless, just a few years before her death this evil Nazi threatened to sue the Imperial War Museum (which held copies of her film under the Enemy Property Act, granting custody to them of the dozen or so prints seized by British forces and waiving all copyright).

Leni wanted to exert her "moral" rights as the author of the work to get copyright royalties. Quite rightly the Imperial War Museum told her to fuck off, although in much politer language than I would have used.

A glance at the fanfare given by the Nazis when the film premiered tells you all you need to know about the central importance to them of this frankly rather dull movie.