The Icy Summit of Torre Egars Synthesis Paper One

Robert Stam posits the question, "What is the relation between film technique and social responsibility?" (11). It is a question of particular importance with regard to German film maker Leni Reifenstahl (Stam 11). Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will has been relentlessly subjugated to this question: is it a documentary, or is it propaganda? This elusive word has been described many ways. Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary describes propaganda as "ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause" (942). Reifenstahl believes that a propaganda film is one with a narrator voice over explaining the intent of the film. Regardless of the film’s genera, the question still remains, "Can beauty be separated from social use and function?" (Stam 11).

Both Sontag and Rich address Reifenstahl’s classical cinema, calling it, Fascist, and Romantic, respectively. However, these are idioms for time specific popular ideologies, not necessarily technique per se. But when technique is coupled with content, the result is an understanding that involves both structure and content. It is because Reifenstahl’s techniques are highly developed that comparisons can be made with the those of the Formalists, the Prague School, and the soviet montage-theorists, most notably, Eisenstein. Both Eisenstein and the Formalists exult "a kind of ‘techicism’, a preoccupation with the techne, the materials and devices, of the artist/artisan’s "craft" (Stam 48). Formalists stressed the notion of art for art’s sake which lead to "an understanding of art as a system of signs and conventions" (49).

Similarly, Eisenstein’s film theory, characterized by praxis, considers "each fragment of film as part of a powerful semantic construction based on the principles of juxtaposition"…that "could shape thought, affect the senses, and even convey abstract or recondite forms of reasoning, consciousness, and conceptual analysis" (Stam 43). In comparison, the Prague School (a cognate to Formalism), concerned themselves with the function of aesthetics. Mukarovsky, a Prague School member, "outlined a semiotic theory of aesthetic autonomy, whereby two different functions, communicative and aesthetic…coexist within a text, but where the aesthetic function serves to isolate and ‘foreground’ and ‘focus attention’ on the object" (Stam 52).

Eisensteins emphasis on the power of pictorial compositions has lead Stam to compare "Eisensteinian ‘associatonist’ montage" to that of the "commodified ideograms of advertising" (41). Internal dissent among the Formalists, montage-theorists, and the Frankfurt School (with it’s critique of the "culture industry") has placed emphasis on the phenomenology of ideology. "An analysis of Triumph’s incorporation of the tenets of romanticism provides the basic training to understand the ideological nature of cinema in our society today" (Rich 205). With this critically introspective lens it becomes possible for ideology to be a tool in and of itself, a technique. It is this ideological technique that "appropriates the rhetoric of art" as Sontag suggests (41). It could also be suggested that the rhetoric of art usually appropriates the rhetoric of ideology. It is dubious what is to be achieved by deciphering whether or not it is possible to separate beauty from social function. This is the epitome of the post-modern million dollar question. Either alternative could be argued effectively.

With the revisionist’s quest to bind form and content, vitually everything could thus be construed as propaganda, no matter how subtle. It is important to keep in mind that the impulsive combining of form and content is just as restrictive as the exclusivity of form and content If the film maker has an ethical responsibility, so to does the viewer have a responsibility. Furthermore, the freedom to explore these issues should be approached responsibly; the greater the freedom, the greater the responsibility (Hegel).

"If you are an idealist, you will see idealism; if you are a classicist, you will see in her films an ode to classicism: if you are a Nazi, you will see Nazism" -Jonas Mekas

Nazism" -Jonas Mekas