Triumph of the Will (1993)

Commissioned by der Fuhrer himself, Leni Riefenstahl took her cameras to Nuremberg for the 1934 Party Convention and filmed the glory of emerging might. Viewed in retrospect (and with modern Germany in mind), Triumph of the Will remains one of the most frightening films of all time. An exercise in exaltation, it shows, with the help of music that brings a catch in the throat, Hitler in a nimbus of light and his well-scrubbed followers, young and old, nearly beside themselves with enjoyment of his avuncular nature. The film is history's best-crafted — and worst-wrought — advocacy ad.

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