Olympia (1938 lm)

Olympia is a 1938 German documentary lm lm written, directed and produced by Leni Riefenstahl, documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic
Stadium in Berlin, Germany. The lm was released in
two parts: Olympia 1. Teil Fest der Vlker (Festival
of Nations) and Olympia 2. Teil Fest der Schnheit
(Festival of Beauty). It was the rst documentary feature lm of the Olympic Games ever made. Many advanced motion picture techniques, which later became
industry standards but which were groundbreaking at the
time, were employed including unusual camera angles,
smash cuts, extreme close-ups, placing tracking shot rails
within the bleachers, and the like. The techniques employed are almost universally admired, but the lm is controversial due to its political context. Nevertheless, the
lm appears on many lists of the greatest lms of all-time,
including Time magazines All-Time 100 Movies.[1]

best lms of all time. The Daily Telegraph recognised the

lm as even more technically dazzling than Triumph of
the Will.[3] The Times described the lm as visually ravishing...A number of sequences in the supposedly documentary Olympia, notably that devoted to the high-diving
competition, become less and less concerned with record
and more and more abstract: some of the divers hit the
water, as the visual interest of patterns of movement takes
over.[2]
Noted American lm critic Richard Corliss observed in
Time that The matter of Riefenstahl 'the Nazi director' is
worth raising so it can be dismissed. [I]n the hallucinatory
documentary Triumph of the Will... [she] painted Adolf
Hitler as a Wagnerian deity... But that was in 193435.
In [Olympia] Riefenstahl gave the same heroic treatment
to Jesse Owens...[1]
The lm won a number of prestigious lm awards but
fell from grace, particularly in the United States when, in
November 1938, the world learned of the pogrom against
the Jews. Riefenstahl was touring the U.S. to promote the
lm at that time and was immediately asked to leave the
country.[4]

Olympia set the precedent for future lms documenting

and glorifying the Olympic Games, particularly the Summer Games. The 1936 Summer Olympics torch relay was
devised by the German sports ocial Dr. Carl Diem for
these Olympic Games in Berlin. Riefenstahl later staged
the torch relay for this lm, as with competitive events of
the Games.

2.1 Awards

The lm won several awards;[5]

Versions

National Film Prize (19371938)

Olympia was made in three versions: German, French and

English. There are slight dierences between each version, extending to which portions were included and their
sequence within the entire lm. The French version is
known by the alternate title Les Dieux du Stade.

Venice International Film Festival (1938) Coppa

Mussolini (Best Film)
Swedish Polar Prize (1938)
Greek Sports Prize (1938)

It appeared to be Riefenstahls habit to re-edit the lm

upon re-release, so that there are multiple versions of each
language version of the lm. For example, as originally
released, the famous diving sequence (the penultimate sequence of the entire lm) ran about four minutes. Riefenstahl subsequently reduced it by about 50 seconds. (The
entire sequence could be seen in prints of the lm circulated by the collector Raymond Rohauer.)

Olympic Gold Medal of the Comit International

Olympique (1939)
Lausanne International Film Festival (1948)
Olympic Diploma

3 Re-release

There had been few screenings of Olympia in Englishspeaking countries upon its original release. In 1955
Riefenstahl agreed to remove three minutes of Hitler
The lm had an immensely strong reaction in Germany footage for screening at the Museum of Modern Art in
and was received with acclaim and accolades around the New York. The same version was also screened West
world.[2] In 1960, her peers voted the lm as one of the 10 German television and in cinemas around the world.[6]

Reception

References

[1] All-Time 100 Movies. Time. 12 February 2005. Retrieved 2010-05-20.

[2] Leni Riefenstahl (obituary) The Times. 10 September
2003
[3] Leni Riefenstahl (obituary) Daily Telegraph. 9 September
2003
[4] Stern, Frank. Screening Politics: Cinema and Intervention. Georgetown Journal of International Aairs. Retrieved 5 November 2011.
[5] Leni Riefenstahl Olympia
[6] Bach, Steven (2006). Leni- The Life and Work of Leni
Riefenstahl. Abacus.

Further reading
Rossol, Nadine. Performing the Nation: Sports,
Spectacles, and Aesthetics in Germany, 19261936, Central European History Dec 2010, Vol. 43
Issue 4, pp 616638
McFee, Graham and Alan Tomlinson. Riefenstahls 'Olympia:' Ideology and Aesthetics in the
Shaping of the Aryan Athletic Body, International
Journal of the History of Sport, Feb 1999, Vol. 16
Issue 2, pp 86106
Mackenzie, Michael, From Athens to Berlin: The
1936 Olympics and Leni Riefenstahls Olympia, in:
Critical Inquiry, Vol. 29 (Winter 2003)
Rippon, Anton. Hitlers Olympics: The Story of the
1936 Nazi Games 2006

External links
Olympia 1. Teil - Fest der Vlker at the Internet
Movie Database
Olympia 2. Teil - Fest der Schnheit at the Internet
Movie Database
Olympia at AllMovie

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

7.1

Text

Olympia (1938 lm) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympia%20(1938%20film)?oldid=633034288 Contributors: Danny, Gsl, KF,

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7.2

Images

File:Olympic_rings.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Olympic_rings_with_white_rims.svg License:

Public domain Contributors: Drawn by User:Pumbaa80; dimensions and colors taken from http://www.southyorkshire.nhs.uk/london2012/
resources/LDN2012%20Brand%20Guidelines.pdf Original artist: Original author: Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937)

7.3

Content license

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