Tim Kerr-Thomson The quality of this film for its time is fantastic and for those reasons alone it is worth a watch. However, it can never be separated from the fact that it is a propaganda movie for arguably the most murderous regime the world has ever seen. The people who made this move, whilst technically talented, were Nazis and supporters of Hitler and his genocidal crimes. It is a piece of history and can not be destroyed. But it should never be watched or admired without it clearly being in the mind of the viewer that those who made and appeared in it were responsible for the deaths of twenty three million people. The movie deserves the lowest possible rating, not for its technical quality, but rather the purpose for which it was made.

kijii Triumph of the Will is a filmmaker's masterpiece in almost every way— especially cinematography and symbolism. You are not likely to see one Aryan in this film without a happy and proud smile on his face. It was made that way, don't you see? It's very likely that every frame of this film was edited and then approved by Hitler, himself, for tone and content. I'm also quite sure that many scenes of the film were added after the Nuremberg Rally had finished. Most of the crowd scenes were, no doubt, taken in real time. But the little determined drummer (@ 41:50") and that overjoyed lady running--with the little blond girl in her arms--to give flowers to Hitler (@ 6:21) were probably staged. (Does anyone notice that the woman is just giving those flowers to a German soldier's arms as he is riding in a car? Those arms could have been anyone's.) And, what about those cutaway shots to those "bright young faces"? I'm sure that, during the last 80 years, this propaganda film has been deconstructed and analyzed many times, as the technology for such analysis has become available. It seems as though almost everything in the film could have been re-created after the actual rally. What does that leave us that we can trust—the flags and banners being marched into the rally?

Eric Stevenson Well, what can you say about the most infamous person to ever exist in real life? It's hard to review a documentary, but I certainly can. Anyway, it was weird to have a documentary without narration. Then again, you know how those wacky Nazis were! Rudolf Hess was featured the most prominently next to Hitler. Hermann Goering seemed to only appear briefly at the end. Is it sad that I am so familiar with how the most famous Nazis work? The strangest thing might be that this movie does not contain a single anti-Semitic line. There are a few quotes where Hitler mentions the Germans being a superior race but even then, the term "Aryan" was never once used. Everyone now views this as an historical documentary, even though it obviously wasn't. Hitler has become such a staple of pop culture I recognize a lot of stock footage came from this movie.Photographs of him in general seemed to have originated from here. A lot of documentaries exaggerate or simply outright lie to their viewers. I guess I have to give the creators credit for being honest. There were segments showing a Nazi's name before a brief speech. I only seemed to recognize Alfred Rosenberg and Joseph Goebbels. Guess I DON'T know my Nazis that well. What's also weird is how you would think that the whole movie would just be one big speech or a series of speeches. There were a lot of times where there was no talking whatsoever. It was just showing young people training or people heiling Hitler in general.This was before World War II and the Holocaust so it might not be as historically significant as you would think. Of course, it's something every historian should look at just to have the best movie depiction of the real life Adolf Hitler. I guess modern documentaries that chronicle his atrocities are technically more entertaining, but this is great to watch in its raw form. Hitler has been depicted more times than any other historical figure, so he's practically become a myth in himself. It's all the more powerful to see him as his actual self.Some people might compare this to "Birth Of A Nation" in that it's a movie people are ashamed of but is still technically a great movie. I personally found this better than that. BOAN did in fact depict the Ku Klux Klan as suppressing blacks, but this did not show depiction of Nazis oppressing Jews or really anybody else. Now, it's really hard to compare fiction to real life, but obviously a documentary comes off as more authentic. Don't worry, you won't be supporting genocide by loving this. Perfect ****.

brower8 Before I get to my assessment of this cinematic work, let me remind you of my bias: I hate Nazism, I hate fascism in all of its forms (and I would hate an American fascism, so it is not a matter of hating fascism because of its ties to some foreign culture), I consider Hitler and all of his associates pure evil. Even if I fit all the criteria for being a perfect Aryan by Nazi 'racial' criteria, I would rather become a Jew than a Nazi. At least as a Jew I would be able to maintain my current moral and cultural values.Yes, it is an infamous piece of propaganda showing how completely and quickly Hitler took complete control of Germany, offering himself as a focus of national unity. Riefenstahl shows some of the best camera work to its time, advancing the great achievement of German cinematography that before Hitler rivaled anything else -- even Hollywood productions. It is worth watching as a depiction of Nazi Germany as the purest despotism that has ever existed. Much of this staging is choreography showing the extreme regimentation already in effect in Germany roughly a year after the Devil Incarnate took power. But such, alas, is now educational -- a study of Nazi propaganda, and that is the cause of my mediocre rating.Hitler already gets treatment that rock stars of our time get even if the lyrics are banal and the music is shallow. Even if Hitler manages to avoid the infamous denunciations of foreign powers and especially the Jews -- even the arch-bigot Julius Streicher is shown calling only for Germans to protect their 'racial purity', which is no nastier than the racist rhetoric in the USA at the time. If Hitler is not responsible for the music, the music (which is the choice of Riefenstahl) is uniformly banal -- unison brass over pounding drums. The great irony is that this bad music comes from the country that gave the world Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn (excuse me -- the Nazis banned his music!), Wagner, Brahms, and Hindemith (oh, he fled!). Needless to say, any value as entertainment is sparse at best.The choreography within the rally site is clearly the doing of the Nazi Party and its subsidiary organizations. It does with people what Hitler's paintings do -- trivialize everything human. It is hard to imagine that Riefenstahl could make any mistakes with that except to use too few camera angles. That, of course, she commands masterfully. Of course some of the regimentation looks ludicrous -- the farmers and construction workers marching with the tools of their work as if they were soldiers. But such is my contemporary bias against military-style discipline where it serves no obvious purpose other than to obliterate individuality. Much is made of ceremonies at night, with fire taking a prominent role... I can think of some American fascists who typically have their rallies at night and heavily use fire to 'illuminate' their ceremonies.This is a Party Congress... and one must admit that it is more impressive in its pageantry than any party convention, Democratic or Republican, in the United States. Of course, in American political conventions, words and policies are not preset pablum. But that is a valid comparison -- something like the Republican National Convention of 1980 or the Democratic National Convention of 2008, both of which had far more wit and wisdom than did speakers at the 1934 Nazi Party Congress. We get a unique insight into Adolf Hitler as a speaker -- and how fit his prose is for infantile, obedient simpletons. We get to see his pious lies about the Night of the Long Knives, a series of murders against rivals and old enemies. Hitler is not John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, or Barack Obama. If you were looking for something as profound as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address or Churchill's "Finest Hour" speech, you will be terribly disappointed. Heck, the speech of Charlie Chaplin's "Jewish barber" impersonating "Der Phooey" at the end of The Great Dictator (which spoofs Hitler) has richer rhetoric. Hitler has learned nothing from Goethe or Schiller. Hitler is introduced flying into Nuremberg as if a god -- consider that Hitler could exploit the novelty of flight to impress people who thought that fliers were gods. He leaves the venue by automobile. The adulation of the closest person ever to being the Antichrist is genuine enough; people are making the Nazi salute with no obvious prompting or staging. As Rudolf Hess put it, Hitler then is Germany, and Germany is Hitler on the days of the 1934 Party Congress.