On Wed, 22 Jun 1994 06:32:08 EDT Stephen Brophy said: > Cal, could you go into in a little more depth the ways _Triumph of >the Will_ addresses "the Night of the Long Knives?" The Nuremberg Rally in TRIUMPH OF THE WILL occurred early in September 1934. Such rallies were a regular occurance (the film notes that the 1934 rally was the sixth). The Nazi drive for power was aided in large measure by Storm Troopers, an organized body of street fighters who numbered 300,000 by 1934. The SA (acronym by which they were widely known) were led by Ernst Roehm, a charismatic figure who posed the only credible threat to Hitler's complete control. During the Spring of 1934, Hitler arranged a political detente with the Wehrmacht and the Junkers (that is, the formal military and the industrial base). Roehm and his allies opposed these arrangements. "The Night of the Long Knives" at the end of June was a coup which executed all of the top leadership of the SA, including Roehm. The political task of the 1934 Rally was to placate the SA rank and file who were still bitter over the coup. The situation was delicate since 300,000 fighting men could pose a serious threat. An obscure regional SA gauleiter, Viktor Lutze, was appointed as head of the national SA. They had to reach far down into the ranks to find somone who was loyal to Hitler. Throughout TRIUMPH OF THE WILL there were comments such as Hitler's during his climactic speech toward the end: "I am an SA and will always be an SA." The only individual Nazi leader who has a sequence to himself is Viktor Luzte who is seen addressing a supposedly friendly crowd (toward the end, just before the fireworks display). These and other similar emphases on the importance of the SA occur throughout TRIUMPH OF THE WILL. My argument is that only a politically sophisticated filmmaker could have shaped the film so precisely to fit the immediate political agenda. In other words, the film itself puts the lie on Reifenstahl's claims to have been politically naive. There are two books I know of which deal with these matters. Gallo: NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES and Glenn Infield: LENI REIFENSTAHL: THE FALLEN FILM GODDESS Reifenstahl made films about the two rallies which bracket the date of the Night of the Long Knives. TRIUMPH OF THE WILL (1934) and VICTORY OF FAITH (1933) are examined in Martin Loiperdinger and David Culbert "Leni Reifenstahl, the SA, and the Nazi Party Rally Films" in HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION 8(1988)1:3-38 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Cal Pryluck, Radio-Television-Film, Temple University, Philadelphia <[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]>