A curious parallel - I just watched a 16mm print of the abridged version of
Triumph of the Will, and though the majority of the film was subtitled, and
the titles themselves were given in English (presumably an alteration from
the German release print), at least one fairly lengthy speech by Hitler had
no subtitles whatsoever.
Is there an assumption here (and in the unsubtitled songs people have
mentioned) that the content is less important than the affect associated
with the untranslated material - which implies a purely _formal_ affect,
somehow built into the rhythms and tones of music (or in Hitler's case,
rhetoric)?
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