Triumph of the Will/Night and Fog Questions

For Wednesday, (for full credit) I want you to: 1) do one of your own posts; and 2) comment on at least one other person's post.

Your blog posts for Wednesday should touch on one or more of the following questions:


How do the film techniques in “Triumph of the Will” differ from the techniques used in the making of “Night and Fog?” “Night and Fog” was the film that we watched during the second class.

Specifically, how do these films employ the use of music, camera angels, edits?

How do the objectives of the films differ?

Some people argue that “Triumph of the Will” is a propaganda film while others argue that is a documentary because it was made up of “actual” footage of the Nazi Nuremburg rallies. How would you categorize it and why?

If you argue that "Triumph of the Will" was a propaganda film, then what could Leni Riefenstahl have done differently in order for this to be a documentary? Would it have been possible for this to be a mere documentary and not a propaganda film?

Many people argue that “Triumph of the Will” aesteticized politics: it made the Nazi movement look beautiful. Does “Night and Fog” de-aesteticize politics and, therefore, war?

Feel free to draw on this passage of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin.

“All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula for the situation. The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today's technical resources while maintaining the property system. It goes without saying that the Fascist apotheosis of war does not employ such arguments. Still, Marinetti says in his manifesto on the Ethiopian colonial war: "For twenty- seven years we Futurists have rebelled against the branding of war as antiaesthetic.... Accordingly we state: ... War is beautiful because it establishes man's dominion over the subjugated machinery by means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metalization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others.... Poets and artists of Futurism! ... remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new literature and a new graphic art . . . may be illumined by them!"”

--Walter Benjamin, 1937

For you own edification, I highly recommend you reading this entire article. It’s a difficult read, but very influential. The article can be found here:

http://web.bentley.edu/empl/c/rcrooks/toolbox/common_knowledge/general_communication/benjamin.html

Feel free to use excerpts from the following video about Leni Riefenstahl:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5E36mdHE3w