shbarbosa@hotmail.com

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the symbolic images – and clearly inspired by the mythologies of the West and the East – inserted at crucial moments in the narrative of the most important political documentary in film history, Triumph of the Will, directed by German film maker Leni Riefenstahl.

Symbols of power of ancient civilizations are reworked by Nazism, as the spread-winged eagle, representing the Roman Empire, and at the same time so many other peoples and civilizations, which now appears holding a swastika.

The most important Nazi symbol, adapted from Hindu and Buddhist mythology, is also a divine representation: stylization of sunlight expanding symbolizes the divine power itself. Carl Jung distinguishes natural from cultural symbols and both are present in this documentary, which combines ancestral myths – Pagans and Christians – as the Messiah to the figure of the protagonist of the movie: Adolf Hitler.

Key words: Mith, symbol, cinema, documentary, Leni Riefenstahl

1. The Myth in Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens) – An analysis of the symbolism used in the audiovisual narrative of Leni Riefenstahl

"... My film is just a document. I showed what everyone witnessed or heard about. And everyone was impressed. I was the one who set this impression, who recorded it on film. "(Leni Riefenstahl)[1]

00:03:04 – Scenes of clouds. Not seen from below, as we are accustomed, but there – beside us – as if we were floating with them. Yes, we are in the sky, flying with the imagination and through the lens of Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler's favourite film maker. She was chosen by him to create the most important audiovisual narrative of Nazism, recording the most crucial congress of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) from September 4th to 10th, 1934, in Nuremberg. [2]

For one minute and nine seconds we admire the sky and we can define inside the clouds, right beside us, a plane… an aircraft with the insignia of power; the plane of the Chancellor Adolf Hitler.

00:04:13 – Now, our visual focus changes. We fail to look at the sky itself and come to see what is on the ground. The old city of Nuremberg, founded as a castle in the 11th century arises; a city with almost a thousand years and with a strong symbolism for the Nazi Party created itself in that same state, Bavaria. It is there that the congress of the National Socialist Party happens since its embryonic stage in 1927, repeating in 1929 and then – with Hitler in power – annually from 1933 to 1939, when the Second World War begins. Nuremberg, reminds Germans the promise of Adolf Hitler: to build a new Reich, an empire to last for another thousand years.[3]

For one minute and 16 seconds, we see the city from above and at a certain moment, the plane casts its shadow over the historic buildings. The shadow of Hitler's plane, for only nine minutes, brings us to some important myths.

The format of the plane reminds the shadow of a large bird, referring Germans to the image of the eagle, the symbol of the Roman Empire, an animal that represents the Divine Being in different cultures because it can fly close to the sun. And which is now adopted as a symbol, next to the swastika, a swastika of Nazism.

The eagle rests on another Nazi symbol: the swastika

But how this eagle, which appears in many other moments of the show-documentary, which is a symbol of power in so distant civilizations, can lead us to associate it with the Divine in the contemporary world? It can because the myths are present and are picked up by our unconscious. The symbols come from what Carl Jung called the "collective unconscious", ie the part of the psyche that retains and transmits the common psychological inheritance of mankind. [4]

Eagle, symbol of strength and beauty, which circulates between heaven, abode of the gods, and the Earth, where we live, sometime back there, in pre-history, conquered the position of divine spokesman. And it kept it during kingdoms and empires, in various cultures, from the prairies of the American West to the Siberian steppes.[5]

The image of the eagle, in my view lies in Jungian definition of natural symbol, which we can decipher drawing the most archaic origins, "that is, ideas and images that we find in the earliest records and in the most primitive societies" (Jung, 2008: 117).

Carl Jung distinguishes the natural symbol of the cultural symbol, used to express "eternal truths and which are still used by religions, having gone through numerous transformations and more or less conscious elaboration process, thus becoming collective images accepted by civilized societies" (Jung, 2008: 117).

1.1. The return of the Messiah

Hitler greets followers in Nuremberg

"Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him; and all kindred of the earth shall wail because of him. Yes Amen. ". Revelation 1: 7

Overlapping the divine image represented by the shape of the eagle, which appears as a natural symbol, though it has been rescued from the history books and brought to Nazi flags and banners, there is an even more pronounced presence of a cultural symbol, this still alive in memory and in the religious traditions of the Germans. The shadow on the historic buildings of Nuremberg remembers the most important reference of the dominant faith of Germany. The open wings of the plane of Hitler cast a shadow over Nuremberg in the cross shape, symbol of suffering, martyrdom, but also the victory of life over death.

The risen Messiah, says the holy book of Christians, will return to the world of men to rid them of injustice, suffering, and finally, from all evil.

As Wilkinson and Philip (2005: 3), the myths "are ambiguous and subtle, and have several meanings. They are not fixed, but flexible: they adapt themselves to changes and new knowledge."

Leni Riefenstahl knew how to manipulate these myths in her audiovisual narrative – the two symbols, pre-Christian, represented by the eagle, and the Christian one, by the cross – got movement. As the eagle of the pagans, the cross of the Christians also speaks strongly to the German people. And both indicate the same thing: the Divine Being, the Messiah returns from heaven to end the suffering of the people, with the shame of defeat in the 1st World War, with the division of weak and corrupt parties, with the social chaos, economic crisis and unemployment, and the fear of a Communist uprising on Germany. Adolf Hitler, who embodies this Messiah of the German people deserved to be portrayed as the Messiah in the eyes of the director.

And last but not least, the eagle is never represented alone. The bird flies to the sun, the greater symbol of divinity, and it takes at his feet the swastika, an ancient representation of the solar myth, the divine force that makes life flow through the universe.

There are only nine seconds of shadow over the beautiful city and then we lost that divine image of the Christ or of the eagle, depending on who reads it, and then we can see from above the perfect military parade.

Few seconds, 33 to be precise, and we exchanged the sky and what we can see from there by the ground.

00:05:29 – The camera filming the sky finally leaves us and we can see the world now through the eyes of those who have their feet on the ground. These are scenes, at the aerodrome, of clearly excited people with the approach of the leading aircraft… joyful and beautiful faces, happy faces, of men, women and children, many children. A selected audience, hand picked as the cheerleader of a game show.

00:05:57 – The long awaited leader has not yet appeared. But there are plenty of arms raised in the new greeting that the whole country is taking. New greeting? The raised arm and the cry ofHeil is nothing new. The greeting is actually in the Roman Empire. The Caesars were well greeted by the population when appearing in public. The Hail Cesar has a distinctly religious connotation. Caesar is the living representation of the gods. He is a god that must be worshipped with its human form. Therefore, the Ave in Latin wins the connotation of a salute with a sacred tone.

Likewise in German, heil has a clear religious significance; the Ave Maria’s preach in German means Heil Maria. Man welcomes, therefore, the new Messiah just as Catholics pray in German to the mother of God, or as the other Christian denominations refer to acts of God.

00:06:03 – Finally, the first apotheosis in the film. He, who comes from heaven through the clouds, appears in the door of the plane. Nods… smiles… The Messiah is among his people. He follows, cheered, the aerodrome to the city centre, in a long motorcade, in an open car, shot by every possible angle: the right, the left, the front, top, and even by an unseen cameraman positioned right behind him. Invisible because disguised as a Nazi officer, in uniform as all other 44 cameramen and assistants, a crew of 170 people, perhaps the greatest in film history.[6]

00:07:33 – Amid the procession, which lasts almost four minutes, and in which all eyes are on Adolf Hitler, the invisible becomes visible for the first time, not by Leni carelessness at the time of editing the film, but for the lack of option in the cut images. A cameraman appears in a quick picture on the left corner of the screen, in a scene that if was cut by the perfectionist director, would take away the sense of continuity offered by the numerous angles at which the parade happens. Something that surely went unnoticed by the crowd, who saw the film in the aters in the 30s, but with the help of slow motion or pause, does not escape from the watchful eye of most observers.

00:08:02 – The smiling leader, hailed by jubilant crowd that packs the streets, is surprised by a woman and a child, disregarding the safety cords that prevent people of approaching him, appear conveniently in front of the procession. The car of Adolf Hitler stops and he gets from the child a bouquet of flowers.

Mother and daughter, deeply grateful for the kind gesture of Germany's most powerful man,smile and make the Nazi salute as the car part again. With this simple picture, Leni Riefenstahl sets the standard that charted all political marketers from the 30s of the last century to now. Since she immortalized the affective gesture of people’s father with his children, it has become the rule to associate the loving image of the candidate to small. It is a dominant thought that someone who cares about children, worries about the future and the continuity of our name, our family, our tribe, clan, state, country, empire, civilization, species... Anyway, this man may be someone devoted only to the good things.

"As vegetarianism and habits of not smoking and not drinking and refusing to marry projected an increase of image above the normal human being", says Richard Evans, professor of history at the University of Cambridge.[7]

An attempt, perhaps, to achieve the definition of Nietzsche's Superman, the Übermensch, the Overman, as says SOUZA (2014: 104) "is the Auto Suppression of man... Because he would have the same characteristics of the previous God, now designed in himself... as a superman. "

00:08:38 – The procession follows and the documentary wins appearance of a tour into the medieval centre of Nuremberg. The camera stops in palaces, houses, monuments that speak of a glorious past, a past idealized further given the serious economic crisis facing the country since the defeat in the First World War. These are images that seek to neutralize the bitter taste left by the recent years of hyperinflation.

And the show comes to an end with the entry of Hitler at the hotel. Amid new ovations, more happy faces, keen eyes, the leader appears in the window of the balcony to greet his people once more before the rest.

00:11:15 – Night falls on Nuremberg, but the show must go on. Nazi formations lit by torches parade to the sound of brass bands, a military serenade throughout the city. The fire shining, again,refers to the symbolism, this time the German, also called Scandinavian or Viking. Fire with their aggressiveness is also builder of civilization. The fire is the power of the pagan gods, like Odin and Thor. For the Greeks, Prometheus stole it from the gods and gave it to the men, allowing the progress of our species. The fire heats food, helps to forge the weapon and the plow, brightens the night and keep away predators and the enemy.[8]

00:14:00 – Two minutes and 45 seconds later, and we have the dawn of a city still sleepy. The windows are opened and reveal the day being born with Nazi flags fluttering in medieval buildings.We have a sequence that resembles a sightseeing tour, in channels and beautiful buildings facades.

00:15:54 – And it is around Nuremberg that the movement is really happening. The huge camp of Hitler militants awakens. Tents lined up like a military camp. They are the whitest of whites, smarter and stronger among people. The intended, according to Adolf Hitler, to lead the reconstruction of a white Europe, free of inferior peoples, as Slavs, Jews and Gypsies, racially inferior immigrants who came from distant Asia to steal space of legitimate people that shall dwell there. "The nation that does not value their racial purity will perish", says the leader in the bedside book of the Nazis, Mein Kampf, and also the leader of the Labour Fronts, Robert Ley, in the speech he will make in next day (00:31:34).[9]

00:20:17 – The streets are crowded again to attend another ceremony in honour of Adolf Hitler.As a Carnival parade, German peasants dressed in costumes of all rural areas of the country, walk through the streets to the sound of folk music... a profusion of short images, close-ups of children and young people. In each group, there are those who carry baskets of food. We have a minute and20 seconds of parade, with healthy, beautiful peasants, Aryans, according to the Nazi design and, of course, happy with broad smiles, especially when positioned in front of Hitler to greet him. And then again the myth is reused, it is retold and inserted into the audiovisual narrative of Leni Riefenstahl.

Hitler receives the offerings of peasants

00:21:55 – Amid the greetings with the raised right hand, farmers offer to Hitler the fruits of the harvest. Is it a meaningless scene? No, actually, it is the restoration of paid traditions linked to the cycles of the planet. The Earth provides the food. Gods who take care of the seasons, the rain,the sun, the fertility of the land itself, at last, deserve a thank you. And human communities, from the Neolithic, offer to the gods these fruits of the first harvest. The German tradition, lost with the rise of Christianity is now resumed. The many pagan gods are incorporated now by the Übermensch, the Nietzschean overman, in the Nazi point of view of Nietsche’s philosophy.

He, who at the beginning of the documentary, comes from heaven bringing hope, receives the offerings of its believers.

00:22:30 – After being welcomed by the people in the streets, it is the turn of Hitler to meet his personal army, which officially is an army of workers, which form the German Labour front.Workers wearing military uniform and that have, in the shoulder, not the German flag, but the swastika.

Hitler says goodbye to the streets to address the opening of the congress. And gets in front of the departure from the hotel, the smiles and of course, many greetings with arms raised, adults and children, workers and peasants, shown in open images interspersed with close-ups that illustrate the feeling of joy.

00:24:38 – The eagle, the party symbol, appears illuminated with a single light, in a dark environment; the legend tells us this is the room where happens the congress of the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The eagle with open wings is resting on the other party symbol, the swastika. The second apotheosis of the documentary happens in this palace, attended by the diplomats of the allies of Germany, representatives of the party, military and the main German churches, less Jewish, for obvious reasons. The speech of Rudolf Hess, Hitler's right hand, begins.

00:28:20 – A succession of apologetic phrases of party representatives, interspersed with constant applause and standing ovations, culminates in the salute to the leader, seen in close-ups at different moments of the speeches: Sig Heil, Sig Heil, Sig Heil, says Rudolf Hess looking to Hitler, that immediately raises to receive also with the right arm raised, the greetings of a delirious crowd.

1.2. Triumph of the Will

Hitler comes to the Grand Finale, the parade at Nuremberg aerodrome

The spectacular staging should cause the same feeling of monumentality of Nazism to the public and to those who could watch at the cinema this official document of disclosure of the party,the documentary that Hitler ordered to Leni Riefenstahl.

The actress who decided to direct his own films won Hitler and the German audiences with success Blue Light (Das Blaue Licht), becoming a professional with direct contact with the power and direct access to Adolf Hitler to discuss his shooting script and the perspective under which should immortalize Hitler on the film.

Leni Riefenstahl (right) and Hitler during the meeting with peasants

A vision, as noted, mythical, which explores the symbols of Germanic cosmology and Christian cosmology, showing Nazism as the force that restores the pre-Christian past glories to lead Germany to its great future.      

00:35:50 – "One nation, one leader, one Reich, one Germany" – With this sentence, the German workers greet Adolf Hitler and summarize the future of all under his command. The event brings together 52,000 men from the labour force created by his government to reduce unemployment in the country. Workers use uniform and the swastika on their shoulder. They carry shovels but manipulate them like weapons. An army of workers that in a few years will be revealed to the world as the most effective fighting force in history.

Workers of the labour force

00:45:31 – Young people, the future ... Hitler now has his encounter with the Hitler’s Youth, thousands of boys who greet him with the right hand raised.

00:50:20 – "We want you to be obedient and you must practice obedience," Hitler speaks to the young people. In the new society that is shaping, Hitler wants order and obedience above all!And at the end of this speech, the leader, as always, is applauded and welcomed. The cameras behind the crowd show Hitler leaving the area in an open car, being intensely cheered, while the Nazi anthem is sung with arms raised in the Nazi salute.

00:57:27 – Night. The show now takes the size of an overproduction, of a carnival choreography, complete with title: Seas and flags, and signed by Hitler's architect Albert Speers.Acting as a choreographer, he creates the parade of thousands of Nazi banners at the Zeppelin field.As a Brazilian samba school, the wing has its own theme: Seas and flags, toward apotheosis, a huge vertical structure, illuminated by spotlights and named Cathedral of Lights. A pagan cathedral,where instead of Christ on the cross is the enormous eagle with open wings welcomes pilgrims resting on the swastika.

On stage, or pulpit of the fake cathedral, the preaching is not done by a religious leader, but by the nations’ own spiritual guide, the Fuhrer.

01:04:00 – Day. The giant eagle is shown in a horizontal movement, from head to foot, holding the swastika. A merger takes of the Nazi symbol and creates the image of three men crossing an ocean of carefully lined up soldiers. A new reference to the Jewish-Christian myths, the scene immediately takes us back to Moses, who opened the Red Sea, allowing the passage of his people to freedom in the Promised Land.

The ceremony is a tribute to the late President Hindenburg. At the sound of the funeral march, Hitler approaches the pantheon flanked by leaders of its two paramilitary forces, the SA and the SS. As there were no nearby buildings to make this the images, Leni creates the first effective crane in film history, holding a small lift in the Nazi flag mast.

01:07:26 – The lift goes up and down allowing perfect and large images, movements up and down, recording the sea of Nazi flags moving, as if on their own, towards the podium where the leader is. Close-ups show the black soldiers (SS) running, in tune. It is a carefully rehearsed ballet.

01:11:25 – In the first reference to the massacre of opponents and leaders of the SA, Hitler states that are losers those who bet on the division of the Nazi movement. "It stands firm as this training today." In this ceremony, which takes almost 11 minutes in the documentary, there is no room for demonstrations of joy. Hitler is serious while he greets dozens of soldiers of the SS and SA.

01:15:42 – Fade out from the Nazi flags. Fade in. And the day breaks with Leni cameras again showing the flags. And the wind takes care to show, behind the flag fluttering, Hitler approaching open car saying goodbye to the people of Nuremberg.

There are thousands of people in the windows, side walks and bleachers watching the parade of the new flags presented by Hitler to the paramilitary formations. In close-ups, Leni shows and identifies with credit caption one by one the Nazi leaders.

This is a great show, as in the carnival, with the different wings marching to Adolf Hitler Square, in the centre of Nuremberg. Leni shows the parade from many angles, with her cameras positioned in buildings everywhere and also spread at ground level, near the public.

In an especially happy angle for a director, the camera can capture the SS, Hitler's favourite troop, marching under sun rays illuminating the black men, giving them a sacred appearance. The Black Guard brings the personal banner of Adolf Hitler and is euphorically acclaimed by the people who squeeze in the square.

01:34:40 – Hitler and his commanders are entering the final scenario of the show. The palace where the Congress was opened, now attends the closing speech. The eagle, until now viewed over the swastika, changes position. It decorates the podium just below the leader. And back there, on the wall, and above all, is the swastika. In an unprecedented scene throughout the documentary, you can see beads of sweat on Hitler's face, exclaiming greatness and superiority of the Germans:..."who knows that he is the holder of the blood better and consciously use it to achieve leadership and never give up! "

01:44:15 – And as if explaining the title of the film, Triumph of the Will, Hitler says: "It is my will and desire that this State and this Reich can withstand the millennia to come. We can be happy knowing that this future belongs to us completely. "

01:48:04 – After the endless applause and shouts of Heil! (Hail), Rudolf Hess takes the microphone and says, summarizing the goal of the congress and the documentary itself: "The Party is Hitler! But Hitler is Germany, as Germany is Hitler! Sig Heil" (Hail Victory).

The party anthem is sung by all present, while Leni intersperses images of people with a fusion to the swastika and to her marching soldiers, as in the lyrics. Final scene... Fade Out.

1.3. CONCLUSION

Leni, hailed as one of the most important film makers in history, did not escape the judgment of history itself, getting the rest of her long life the taint of Hitler film maker. She met with absolute technical rigour in order to portray the grandeur of the Nazi regime and to enhance the figure of Hitler.

Defending herself of her many accusers during the second half of the 20th century, Leni said that her work was merely a document of what everyone has witnessed or heard, in an attempt of explaining that in ours days find some concordance in the opinion of the documentarist Bill Nichols that states "the documentary (audiovisual genre) restates the historical world, making it an indexed record; it represents the historical world, shaping its record of a prospect or a distinct point of view. The evidence supports the argument of the restatement or the perspective of representation. ”[10]  

According to Josep Catala: "the image becomes the most genuine representation of social reality, the reality as it is imagined and, therefore, as it is lived and used." [11]

"Taken without ideological prejudices, documentaries Riefenstahl are obviously exercises in style, research techniques, lighting and angles" says Hugo Estenssoro.[12]

Leni faithfully fulfilled his duty to his patron that, beyond this documentary, will finance other works signed by the director, as the double documentary Olympia, the first full audiovisual coverage of the Olympics in 1936 in Berlin, and the novel "Lowlands "(Tiefland). Recorded during the war, this movie used slave labour of Gypsies borrowed by her production from concentration camps and was finished only in 1954, after she paid the penalty of three years in detention decreed by the denazification tribunal created by the allies.

In 2002, at one hundred years old, Leni reached an agreement with representatives of the German Roma Gypsies admitting what she had denied until then: gypsies were persecuted and exterminated by the Nazis during the war.

Ideological issues that have always defined the analysis of her work, little by little, lose influence on our academic studies. However, from an ethical point of view, we will never understand how the quest for technical perfection may have taken her to forget so many moral issues so relevant to humanity.

Bibliography:

BACH, Steven. 2007. Leni, Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl. São Paulo: Casa das Letras.

CAMPBELL, Joseph. 2007. The Power of Mith. São Paulo: Palas Athenas.

CATALÀ, Josep. 2014. Problemas de la representación del espacio y el tempo em la imagen. Portalcomunicación.com.

DIEHL, Paula. 1996. Propaganda and Persuasion in Nazi Germany. São Paulo: Annablume.

ESTENSSORO, Hugo. 2001. The Interpretation of Leni. In: Revista Bravo! Nº. 44. São Paulo. 26-34.

HITLER, Adolf. 2001. Mein Kempf, Minha Luta. São Paulo: Centauro.

JUNG, Carl. 2008. Man and His Symbols. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira.

NICHOLS, Bill. 2005. Introduction to Documentary. São Paulo: Papirus Editora.

O’CONNELL, Mark e AIREY, Raje. 2010. The Complete Encyclopedia of Signs & Symbols. São Paulo: Escala.

RIEFENSTAHL’s site. 2014.  http://www.leni-riefenstahl.de

RODRIGUES, Ana Elisabeth. 2008. Triumph of the Will: the cinema working for ideology. In O Olho da História, n 11, dezembro de 2008.http://www.oolhodahistoria.org/n11/textos/elizabethfaro.pdf

ROTHER, Rainer. 2001. Simbology of Guilt. In: Revista Bravo! Nº. 44. São Paulo. 35-37.

SOUSA, Mauro Araujo. 2013. Soul in Nietzsche: the design of mind to the German philosopher. São Paulo: Leya.

WILKINSON, Philip e PHILIP, Neil. 2009. Zahar Mythology Illustrated Guide. São Paulo: Zahar.

Filmography:

RIEFENSTAHL, Leni. 1936. Triumph des Willens. Alemanha.