Fascist Film and Socialist Film

At a recent screening, our class watched the full Triumph of the Will (many of us had seen clips, but never the entire film). Reaction to the film was mixed, with several individuals mentioning their surprise at how Hitler was depicted. He was not physically impressive, and sometimes even appeared sickly and weak (to our audience at least). Shots of Hitler did not seem particularly suited to glorifying the Fuhrer. However, by focusing on one specific sequence of shots, our post-viewing class discussion demonstrated some of the hidden effectiveness of editing/montage. In the sequence, we see unrelated shots of women and children edited together, each raising their eyes to see something. Then, as the music changes to a more majestic score, we see Hitler moving across the screen. Though the individual images of Hitler may not have been particularly powerful, the editing techniques of Riefenstahl promote the Fuhrer’s strength. Hitler’s image is not special on its own - but the audience is slowly directed by the film to perceive it as such. We see men and women looking, then we see an image of Hitler. We are trained to follow their gaze as they look up to him. As they view Hitler admiringly, we subconsciously ask ourselves - why are we not gazing admirably ourselves? This effect occurs even though the shots are not actually related. It is unlikely that the filmed observers were really looking at the Hitler shown in the final shot of the sequence. Still, we do not question it as viewers.

Another film that we screened in class was Man with the Movie Camera, a Soviet film directed by Dziga Vertov. On first viewing, I didn’t really understand the purpose of the film. To be honest, I was rather bored and struggled to stay awake. But after studying story/discourse and re-reading Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” I’m taking another look at the film - this time, in terms of the film’s enunciation (see Christian Metz). Man with the Movie Camera was made in 1929, but I wonder if it serves Benjamin’s purpose of politicizing art, in a way that counters Fascism's aestheticization of art. Writing in 1936, Benjamin ends his essay with a warning about politics and art. Film, in service of the government, can make Fascism beautiful in a way that other mediums cannot. Films make war beautiful, and assist regimes in furthering their domination of the masses (Benjamin was a Marxist). Triumph of the Will, made around the same time as Benjamin’s film, is the culmination of this phenomenon.
In Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl took great pains to hide the means of the film’s production. The cameras are usually concealed by placing them outside the shot. Camera operators wear military-type uniforms, making them part of the Third Reich, rather than recorders of it. A large amount of simultaneously recording cameras are required, since they are filming a live event. Nevertheless, the cameras are rarely visible. Whenever a Nazi leader is speaking, or Nazi soldiers are marching, we are meant to forget that the camera is doing the viewing. There are frequent cuts to the faces of observers. These observers can be men, women, or even children. Ordinary Germans are sutured into the film, replacing the camera that is really doing the looking. Though the repetition was mind-numbing for us, Riefenstahl is making Fascism beautiful; the order and greatness at Nuremburg might have been appealing to citizens who had lived through Weimar instability.

In contrast to Triumph of the Will, Man with the Movie Camera deliberately exposes the means of film production. Within the shots of the film, we see the cameraman himself filming a scene. We see the camera mounted on a moving car, revealing the process by which a moving car sequence can be filmed. The audience is even given a glimpse into the editing of the film itself. Vertov’s wife is seen physically editing clips together, revealing the extent to which the filmmaker can control exactly what the audience can see. The fact that different shots are being stuck together demonstrates the essential arbitrariness of the editing process - we see only the reality that the filmmaker has chosen to construct for us. Man with the Movie Camera is an extreme - it has no narrative, it is all a demonstration of film’s discourse. With no story, the film makes no effort to camouflage its enunciation. Unlike most mainstream films, it cannot be criticized by Metz for masquerading discourse as story. Using Metz’s terminology, I would say that the film is fully exhibitionist - it knows we are watching it and does not try to hide this fact.
In laying bare the processes of film, Man with the Movie Camera is a direct challenge to the fascist art that follows in the 1930s. The film politicizes art, revealing the mechanisms by which a fascist film would try and control our perceptions, making us vulnerable to its message. Editing tricks and the malleable nature of film itself are used as tools. After watching Man with the Movie Camera, the audience learns that the order and beauty of Triumph of the Will is just an artificial construct of these tools, in the service of a particular ideology.