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6. The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema: Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will
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Chapter 6 The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will Frank P. Tomasulo Most of the scholarly literature on Leni Riefenstahl’s mammoth spectacle Triumph of the Will (1935) deals with the hoary questions of whether or not the film’s director was a Nazi, supported the National Socialists, or had an affair with Adolf Hitler. Over the past sixty years, these biographical issues have been addressed by many cinema critics, a series of postwar “denazification ” boards, the filmmaker’s autobiography, Leni Riefenstahl: A Memoir, and, most recently, in the documentary film The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl (1994). The purpose of this essay is to refocus the discussion on Triumph of the Will by examining the text of the film, its cinematic imagery and “political” content, and the psychological context in which it was made—the 1930s historical conjuncture of the German masses with fascist ideology. Synthesizing the three modes of analysis—the ideological, psychological, and cinematic—is crucial because, as Siegfried Kracauer has said, “What films reflect are not so much explicit credos as psychological dispositions—those deep layers of collective mentality which extend more or less below the dimension of consciousness” (6). To explore the nexus between ideology, psychology , and cinematic style in Triumph of the Will, the ideas and writings of a contemporaneous thinker, Wilhelm Reich, will be recruited in an effort both to understand the fascinating appeal of fascism to the German volk 82 F R A N K P . T O M A S U L O of the period and to analyze how Riefenstahl’s film style, even in the documentary mode, appealed to and positioned spectators (socially and psychologically ), and thereby transmitted a meaning beneficial to the Nazi cause. Wilhelm Reich: The Mass Psychology of Fascism Wilhelm Reich, who combined psychological insight with sociopolitical analysis, offers a historically contemporaneous explanation of the mesmerizing way in which Triumph of the Will interpellated viewers.1 His classic study, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, is a unique Marxo-Freudian contribution to our understanding of fascism as a crucial phenomenon of modern life. Reich repudiated the idea that fascism is an ideology or an action of a single individual or nationality or of any ethnic or political group. As he put it, “Fascism is not a political party but a specific concept of life and attitude toward humankind, love, and work” (xxii). So, for Reich, fascism is an expression of the irrational character structure of the average human being whose primary biological needs and impulses have been suppressed by the authoritarian patriarchal family and the Church for thousands of years. According to Reich, “The abominable excesses of the capitalist era . . . were possible only because the human structure of the untold masses had become totally dependent upon authority, incapable of freedom and extremely accessible to mystification” (xxvi–xxvii). Thus Reich perceived fascism to be more than a mere epiphenomenal “false consciousness,” more than a befogging or deception of the masses; instead, Reich argued, the masses were fully accessible to the “Nazi psychosis” and hence responsible for every social process: “Fascism is to be regarded as a problem of the masses, and not as a problem of Hitler as a person or the politics of the National Socialist Party” (98). Reich studied the 1932 voting statistics in Germany and learned that “it was precisely the wretched masses (i.e., the lower middle class) who helped to put fascism into power” (10). But why would millions of people affirm their own suppression? The answer lies in what Reich called “complete identification with state power” (46). In short, feeling at one with the authoritarian father figure makes a person feel at one with the fatherland. Such emotional identification with the stern and decisive father produces “the self-confidence that the individual derives from the ‘greatness of the nation’” (Reich 63).2 How does a fascist film position its viewers, according to the Reichian model? One has to start with the subject because “every social order produces in its masses that structure which it needs to achieve its main aims” (Reich 23). And one must begin before the person ever sees a film because [3.142.197.212] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 14:46 GMT) Triumph of the Will 83 “the structural reproduction of society takes place in the first four or five years of life and in the authoritarian family” (Reich 30). Three other factors in Reich’s teachings are significant to his...