Product Description
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DVD SPECIAL FEATURES
Four Interactive DVD Slideshows: * Historical Background; Making
of the Film; Personalities and Locations.
* SA Historical Background.
* Original Promotional Materials and Media Articles with
Interactive English Translations.
* Original Third Reich Photo Book: "NURNBERG 1934" on the Reich's
Party Convention. Digital Audio/Visual Book with English
Narration. [9 Min.]
Two Bonus Shorts:* DAY OF FREEDOM: OUR ARMED FORCES (Tag Der
Freiheit: Unsere Wehrmacht), Leni Riefenstahl's complement to
Triumph of the Will. NOW COMPLETE AND UNCUT! Restored with a
recently discovered 10 minute middle reel, which includes,
according to Riefenstahl, one of her best filmed Hitler speeches.
[26 Minutes].
* GENESIS OF TRIUMPH, A new IHF featurette overview of the events
leading to Hitler taking power and the significance of the
Nuremberg Party Convention. A comprehensive look at precisely
what takes place in Triumph of the Will, including novel facts
about Riefenstahl's film editing. [23 Minutes]. Other DVD
Features:* Interactive Scene Selection
* Accurate Switchable English and Spanish Subtitles
* Digitally Restored from Original 35mm Film Elements using
daVinci Revival tm Technology.
* Optimal DVD-9 Dual Layer Edition
Review
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The greatest propaganda film ever made. Banned for more than 30
years, Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl generated perhaps
the greatest moral and legal controversy in the history of
cinema. It is now available, complete and uncut from
International Historic Films. The subject of the film is the 1934
Nazi Party convention. Staged annually at Nuremburg, the
convention was a series of speeches by Nazi leaders, reviews of
their uniformed followers, and mass rallies involving thousands
of people. Although Riefenstahl's work has been labeled a Nazi
propaganda film, it is actually the filming of a propaganda
subject by a non-Nazi, a woman whose appointment by Hitler to
make the film was resented by the propagandists in the Nazi
hierarchy. The result is a fascinating expression of one
individual's impression of the Hitler movement. Riefenstahl's
film pioneered many dramatic techniques of film direction and
editing which have effectively translated to the screen all the
paganistic joy, the unrestrained emotion, and the awesome power
which characterized the Nazi rallies. The complete dominance of
one man's personality throughout the film, as well as over an
entire nation, is more forcefully conveyed to the viewer's
awareness in Triumph of the Will than in any other film or book
about the Third Reich in existence. Even today, Triumph of the
Will is considered a masterpiece - an extraordinary blend of
inspired art, direction, and cinematography. --International
Historic Films, Inc.
Leni Riefenstahl s directorial debut in Das blaue Licht (The Blue
Light, 1932), a stunning ain picture in which she also
starred, was seen by an entranced Adolf Hitler, who, after
becoming Chancellor, asked her to direct a feature-length
documentary on the 1934 Nazi Party Rally in Nürnberg. Riefenstahl
demanded and obtained complete artistic control, including the
final cut of the film. Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will,
1935), one of the most polemical pictures ever made, was awarded
a gold medal at the 1937 Paris International Exposition as best
documentary film. From the moment the Führer makes his Wagnerian
descent into Nürnberg, one is aware of the film s sheer
immediacy, its harmonies and rhythms, and its stylistic
innovations: from the cloud motif of the opening sequence to the
constant, rhythmic montage of faces; from vertiginous aerial
s to low-level s of Hitler that transform him into a
virtual god; from abstract patterns of untold thousands of
humanity to restless, constantly moving cameras that track and
dolly and swoop and soar; Riefenstahl creates a stylized,
idealized worldview a disoriented, disorienting place apart that
she would perfect in Olympia (1938). Its lasting influence on
other filmmakers Mikhail Chiaureli s The Fall of Berlin and
George Lucas Star Wars, for instance and even commercials
continues into the twenty-first century. Documentary or
propaganda? The director always maintained that the picture was a
documentary record of an historic event, while the Nazis
exploited it as potent propaganda. Riefenstahl s conception of
reality is that of the heroic ideal (present in all ain
films) and physical beauty. Triumph of the Will is a personal
vision and a visual poem to the idealism of National Som.
If this ideal represents fascist aesthetics , it is also as old
as the Greeks. Riefenstahl remains the most controversial
director in motion-picture history. She was an assertive,
outspoken, determined woman in a male-dominated industry. She has
been called an artistic genius, the foremost innovator of the
non-fiction film, one of cinema s most innovative artists, and a
vicious propagandist. To some, her very name is synonymous with
film poetry; to others, she was a gifted artist who prostituted
her talents to glorify the Third Reich. Together with Sergei
Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, and Ingmar Bergman,
Leni Riefenstahl is one of the cinema s finest pictorial
stylists. --Dixon Smith
