Rating: 
Summary: Clean up the Classics!
Review: There are some irritations involved with spending a deal of money on a DVD which contains a classic film, and then finding out once it is in your possession that the ultimate which might have been done to restore it to full satisfaction, has not been done. After having watched the restoration and resulting clarity and pristine quality of the film "L'Avventura" using the MTI Digital Restoration System, I have become a fanatic in advocating that those who release a classic film should submit it to that process first. I looked at a DVD version of "Frankenstein," a short time ago...and the blotches and streaks which appear even more irritatingly because of the nature of the DVD make the viewer wonder why they cannot give us an excellent, restored print of every classic film. While the visual nature of this film is enhanced by the DVD process, still there are the white blotches here and there. And the SOUND on this (Special Edition) version is tinny and wobbly...very irritating. I do not know if the more expensive version has better visual and sound quality, or not. As for the nature of the film itself, I do not find it to be "an assault on the senses" as the add-on audio commentator claims. It is too often static, slow-moving pageantry. It does not excite or thrill or fill with awe...it simply is huge, and ponderous, and long. The best thing about this edition, though, is the add-on audio commentary. It is interesting, informative, and in synch with what one is watching on the screen. What they really need to put on DVD, after they clean up the print with the Digital Restoration Process, is Reifenstahl's "Olympia" -- now that is a work of grandeur and sheer visual poetry, beauty, and power.
Rating: 
Summary: Captivating - but disappointed (?)
Review: I purchased the VHS version of this incredible film. I saw it twice in the past. One time was in college, as part of the curricula was to show students in advertising some of the basic principles that can be applied to the present. However, I must ask this question. Am I mistaken or has this film been edited? I seem to remember a different beginning: Hitler was standing alone at the doorway to the plane,looking out with a dreamlike visionary expression on his face. In addition, I seem to remember footage of that awesome rally at night with the beacons on either side of the audience (was it Nurenberg?), a greater amount of people in traditional German costumes and a display of the "classic" Aryan faces and bodies marching to the music. If I am not mistaken, it is a shame that these scenes were excluded, as it took away from my expectations of a more impressive version of the film. Is it ever possible to purchase an uncut version?
Rating: 
Summary: "Triumph" gets the A-List Treatment for DVD.
Review: I viewed the 2001 DVD release of "Triumph of the Will," and I must say I am not disappointed in the least. The pictures are crisper than the VHS copy I own, and this version has the added benefit of an audio commentary and a Leni Riefenstahl short film called "Day of Freedom." The audio commentary is like a historian sitting with you and explaining all the idiosyncracies of the featured members of the Nazi Party. He tells you who the key players in the film are, what they did during the war, and how they died. Some from old age, and some through execution or suicide. It is truly an educational experience for the dedicated film fan, and one that you should not miss. I must say that if you are hesitating to purchasing this film due to its subject matter, fear not. While the film is propagandist garbage, the cinematography is the real reason to buy it. Maybe most important of all, portions of each DVD sale go to the National Halocaust Museum in Washington D.C. That may ease your mind a bit, but I thoroughly encourage you to buy this document of Nazi propaganda. Let the Jewish words of, "Never Forget," remain in our collective consciences forever.
Rating: 
Summary: Truimph of the Will
Review: Overall, the picture was somewhat of a disappointment. While much of the footage is interesting from a historical point of view,the photography has not been digitally remastered. As for content, a more descriptive title my be "Hitler Goes to a Parade." It becomes repetitive for the length of the film. The narration, does nothing to enhance the film. "Hitler put himself on a pedestal." We know that. What we want to know is how does a tryant like Hitler take control of a couple of million people and bring them and himself to total destruction.
Rating:
Summary: Splendid transfer of a beautifully malevolent film
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: "Know thine enemy."
Review: This infamous documentary has for some become the filmed equivalent of evil personified. Perhaps it is. But for that reason, it deserves to be preserved and studied -- not merely as an example of how propaganda can be seductive and commanding, but as a textbook case of fine filmmaking despite the cause it served. "TOTW" has been lovingly and painstakingly restored here in a digital edition that should be a staple of any serious movie library or classroom film course. For years the only way to see the movie was in blotchy, multiple-generation interpositives that reduced the film's compositions and shots to mud. The veneer of decades of abuse and age have been removed with this edition. This is the first time the film has been seen anywhere nearly close to its original condition in a long time. For that reason alone this disc gets five stars. "TOTW" was originally conceived as a filmed tribute to the 1934 Nurenberg rally, and it does more than pay tribute to Nazi Germany, it encapsulates it. We see things that today strike us as astoundingly naive, but which then were a breath of fresh air for the participants. (Being a Nazi at the time was like being the only man in a corduroy suit at a black-tie ball; it was the cool thing to do.) What the film understands, and radiates, is the charisma of power: how it is used to seduce and mesmerize, and how it can be made palatable. Leni Rienfenstahl (who later made a half-hearted attempt to disown her Nazi past) was an immensely talented woman -- and what irony that she was only to come to the full flower of her talents under the yoke of Nazism. (She went on to make a few more documentaries decades later, but nothing she did subsequently even came close to this film.) Another irony, as it were: she was the exception, not the rule, when it came to women in the Third Reich. The best way to see this film is to watch it uninterrupted, without commentary -- and then switch on your cable box and watch some commercials. The similarities between the two should prove quite educational. To say that we are no longer susceptible to propaganda is dangerous, and presumptive.
Rating:
Summary: Tells Its Tale Well But The Eyes Glaze Over After An Hour
Review: I am glad I've seen this film. Apparently what Lili R did was let her camera run and "play it like it was." You are thus absolutely overwhelmed by Hitler's adulation in Nazi Germany and his flood of followers with their ardent approval of his war machine. Lili R was on the "inside" being a friend to Hitler but I got the feeling that her number one commitment was to her art. After an hour of being barraged by these images, you feel that you would have been compelled to swiftly exit Nazi Germany to another land to not be swept up in this tide of National Socialism. Its pervasiveness is so claustrophobic that you either flee or become enfolded within it. My eyes glazed over after that astonishing hour and I'd seen more than enough of the Nazis. I wouldn't want to own my own version of this film for that reason. Did Lili R realize that this film was a scathing indictment of Nazi Germany while making it? That we will never know.
Rating:
Summary: Triumph of the Will
Review: This movie was fantastic! It highlights what the nazis and Hitler were really like. Hitler cast a spell on me and his speeches were absoloutly mesmerizing. When you watch this be prepared to witness history as you take in breathtaking scenes of the power this man had on his nation. Truly a masterpiece and in my opinion the greatest movie of all time.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: "Triumph of the Will" is Leni Riefenstahl's infamous propaganda masterpiece that has been both applauded and condemned -- misunderstood and manipulated. Despite the attempts by politically correct film critics to simply dismiss Riefenstahls work as "fascistic crap" - Triumph Of The Will remains a beautiful, poignant dedication to what could be best described as the "last gasp" of classical Europe. The photography is simply stunning and the fluid-like movement of the various sequences provides a sense of continuity rarely paralleled in modern film. One of the reasons Riefenstahl's work has simply not "faded away" like the dozens of other German and Italian propaganda films of the era, is because Riefenstahl had an acute, sensitive understanding of her subject matter. She tackled her work as an artist, not a politician. Without the trappings of an agenda, Riefenstahl allowed herself to explore on film the hopes and aspirations of her country - who after losing almost 2 generations of men during the First World War and suffering a decade of humiliation and economic deprivation, saw itself as a phoenix rising from the ashes to reclaim its past - a past that had produced Goethe and Nietzsche, Mozart and Wagner. Although not a member of the Nazi Party, Riefenstahl was one of many European artists of the era who embraced the National Socialist ideal of "cultural regeneration" - or, a rejection of modernism in favor of a return to the values and ideals of classical Europe. Riefenstahl realizes these ideals in her film by subtly juxtaposing National Socialist Germany with the pageantry and heroism of ancient Greece and Rome (with flavors of Germanic mythology). By and large it would seem that most members of the public and self-proclaimed "film buffs" have never actually seen this film or at best only viewed portions of it. Why is Triumph of the Will important? Not because it is a "bizarre" cinematic look at totalitarianism, but because it is the only occasion in the history of film that Western civilization was captured AS it was actually changing - as desperate and as painful as that process was. That said, Riefenstahl proves herself a masterful director with a flair for cultivating and building upon abstract and larger-than-life themes. She is at once experimental and bold, technique-driven and sensible. Like her contemporary, the classical sculptor Arno Brecker, Riefenstahl allows herself to celebrate the future with a colorful eye on the past. Watch this film and you are watching history.
Rating:
Summary: Leni is a genius
Review: Leni is a genius, no doubt at all about that. The way she captured the endless ranks of uniformed marching Nazi party faithfuls is little short of, well, fascinating (pardon der pun!). She pioneered many cinematic techniques in this film about the Nazi Party Day in Nuremberg, and the movie is brilliant from a technical point of view. The fact that it was about the Nazis was purely an incident of history - she could have easily made the movie as a commission by the Republican Convention in the US had she been in the States at that time! It is a case of towering talent harnessed by a political force which then turned out very very badly and then failed. Watch this movie, no doubt about it, you will feel viscerally the elemental force of Leni's genius on screen. This documentary's near-myth-like greatness is only matched by the notoriety of the cause it mistakenly championed (but that's only with the benefit of 20/20 eyesight retrospect - at the time this film was made, could anyone say for sure Hitler was going to turn out so monstrously disasterous for the German people and the world at large? Can anyone honestly?) The most eerie and poignant part of the film was when it introduced the Nazi party luminati on stage one by one with sub-titled names:- to reflect on their eventual fate with the knowledge which we now do of course, and to see a filmatic record of them at the zenith of their highly charismatic careers and the height of the seductive powers of Nazism, truly brings home the Taoist truism that everything is ultimately futile, not to mention the the proverb that the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions. A must watch! A unique historical record, which captured the sound and fury, fervour & fanaticism of mankind's more innocent days.
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