The Greatest Trick

In this day and age most of us are not used to black and white. Some of us are not used to watching films in another language, or documentaries in the cinema. There are almost none who are used to seeing bare-faced propaganda, and this film is a combination of all four, which was clearly designed to impress the German cinema-going public of 1935. And while jarring and disturbing to watch what would become one of the most evil regimes of the 20th Century promote itself so openly, I must confess to falling slightly asleep at certain points…

Hitler appointed director Leni Riefenstahl (personally, apparently) to document the Nazi party rally of 1934, so it is unsurprising that the film has a distinct political bent. What you get to see goes as follows: ranks and ranks of the amassed, newly-fortified German army, displaying both numerical and technological readiness for the years ahead (of course, watching this in hindsight must be a very different experience to how the original viewers saw it); speeches from the Nazi top brass - Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, Hess and several you won’t have heard of unless you’re a historian all get their time in the limelight; endless shots of marching and motorcades (the afore-mentioned napping opportunities); Hitler, specifically, being treated like a superstar by all and sundry (which, of course, he was - viewers must remember that this was the man who had been vital in the re-building of Germany, and that the people he was leading had no reason at this point to suspect him of tendencies towards dictatorship - he had only been Chancellor a year in 1934) - you start to think “if only they knew” over and over again; swastikas hung liberally over every possible building; and most troubling, the Hitler Youth being instructed in the ways of the party and intoning a kind of call-and-response liturgy detailing their unwavering loyalty to country and Fuhrer.

Most reviewers give the film very high ratings, because it is done beautifully - hence its power and terrifying nature. But among the glorious overhead shots and sweeping vistas of the German army in all its glory, there were moments of boredom for me. The IMDb review says that the film defies a star rating; I can agree with this, but not for quite the same reason - what you are watching is history playing itself out, and yes, it’s been shot and edited in a certain way to make the audience feel or think a certain thing, but nothing here is fake. And if nothing else, the film is important because if we ever see a regime displaying this kind of self-promotion again, we know to be extremely mistrustful. From a Christian point of view, there are none of the usual things that would upset viewers (sex, violence, language) - but don’t expect to watch this film and not be disturbed by it to some extent.