assignment: compare and contrast

I watched Comedy Central's The Daily Show Wednesday night. The host (Jon Stewart) talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger .. paraphrasing: "he appears to have the will ... to triumph" which was a reference undoubtedly lost on 99.376% (!) of the audience. Schwarzenegger was born in Austria, as was Adolf Hitler.

Stewart's reference was to Leni Riefenstahl's classic Nazi propaganda film: Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will). Riefenstahl died (in 2003) at age 101.

Stewart's comment piqued my interest enough to finally watch this DVD, but I'm not recommending you do this the same week that the Republican National Convention [RNC] is held, because it became near-impossible not to mentally compare-and-contrast the two productions.

The Triumph des Willens DVD has an option for an audio commentary track, atop the 2-hour epic (I found it difficult to view this in a single sitting, so I made liberal use of the [pause] button). I may watch it later with only the English subtitles, now that I know the background (this was filmed 70 years ago, so the commentary was useful to put things in the perspective of that time).

Both are trying to articulate a point of view, and everything cinemagraphic -- camera angles and locations, lighting, close-ups -- is manipulated. And then there's the content -- the goal of the film (shown in German theatres from 1934-1944) was to introduce the National Socialist (Nazi) party to the population, and it covered most of the leaders of the Third Reich, with Adolf Hitler getting the most footage (of course).

Like I said - do NOT watch this while the politicians are Doing Their Thing because you won't be able to stifle your laughter as the Political Parties are manipulating public opinion. I am convinced that they took lessons from Leni Riefenstahl.