Triumph of the Will Movie Review

For all its beautiful scenic shots of old Germany, Leni Riefenstahl's controversial documentary features an awful lot of sequences of Nazi talking-heads speechifying to the troops. And if you've seen one long tracking shot of the rank and file, you've really seen 'em all. Propaganda films don't get much more enthralling than this, but that doesn't mean Triumph of the Will is all that interesting in the 2000s. It's a reminder of the past and of the power of the moving image, for sure, but more than anything we look at the Nazis and roll our eyes, content that we're seeing a bygone era of loonies.

The DVD features a stuffy historian's commentary, droning on and on about why the Hitler Youth (for example) are collecting wood. (He says it's to cook sausages and sauerkraut, in case you're wondering.)

Aka Triumph des Willens.