Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I had seen TotW in the theatre (Anthology Film Archives, NYC), on video and I could feel the power, in spite of the jumpy images, splotches of darkness, scratchy prints. The DVD transfer is magisterial. Clean, sharp, the underlying visual rhythm clearly discernible, the structure of the work exerting its magic without restraint. And, as good a sound as one can ever expect. The transition between pompous nocturnal nazi party celebrations to a misty dawn progressively clearing to reveal air views of Nuremberg's ancient rooftops, with the lens coming to rest fully sharp on row upon row of simmetrical white tents, where party members are waking up, all set to the quiet prelude to the third act of Wagner's Meistersinger (a piece in itself celebratory of German art and set in medieval Nuremberg), is pure cinema magic. And it establishes visual continuity (ergo historical?) from the traditional Germany of Hans Sachs to its 20th century flowering under Adolf Hitler...... not a small feat to accomplish within less than a handful of cinematic minutes. Like magic, there is technique behind it. This is not a news-style documentary but a film constructed flawlessly in the editing room. Leni had full control of the editing and supposedly did most of it herself. The result is mesmerizing. One can understand how an unthinking populace could fall for it, and how keen an intellect and great an artist Riefenstahl is (I gather she's still active at 90+). This is not just a nicely crafted collection of pretty pictures of an old city and massive nazi spectacle. Everything is calculated to evoke an emotional response helping consolidate the identification of Germany as Hitler and Hitler as Germany. Yet, it is also a beautiful film. It is frightening for its lack of human ambiguity, for the willful surrender of a people to a master. There is a lot of "joy" portrayed in the film (perhaps of the "strength through joy" kind) but after seeing it this time, I realized there is not a single funny moment in it. Placing myself in 1935 Germany, and erasing from my mind everything that subsequently happened, I was comfortably glad to realize that, temperamentally, I would have had a hard time with the nazis, indeed would probably have reacted to all things around me by becoming an anarchist or some such thing. But ... who knows? Films like this are made to seduce. The DVD comes with a short documentary of German military maneuvres also from 1935. It still amazes me that the French and the English, seeing these two films, not to mention taking into account other German actions in the Ruhr, etc., did not commence rearmament sooner or would not have been so duped at Munich. If you feel it is immoral to watch this movie .... get over it. Anyone with a serious interest in film needs to see this. Anyone interested in seeing how visual imagery can be structured to propagate a faith needs to see this. For that matter, all our contemporary putative manipulators: marketeers, political consultants, advertising executives, TV and movie producers ought to see this. Citizens who want to remain informed and self-determinating ought to see this. Most immediately, anyone who wants to put together a beautiful, masterly structured film from tons of negative reels needs to see this.... and I don't think anyone born after the war has seen it better than in this DVD.