| Olympia | |
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VHS cover art |
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| Directed by | Leni Riefenstahl |
| Produced by | Leni Riefenstahl |
| Written by | Leni Riefenstahl |
| Music by | Herbert Windt Walter Gronostay |
| Editing by | Leni Riefenstahl |
| Studio | Olympia-Film |
| Distributed by | Tobis Müller Taurus (video) |
| Release date(s) | 20 April 1938 (Nazi Germany) |
| Running time | 126 minutes (part I) 100 minutes (part II) 226 minutes (combined) |
| Country | Nazi Germany |
| Language | German |
Olympia is a 1938 Nazi propaganda film by Leni Riefenstahl documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany. The film was released in two parts: Olympia 1. Teil — Fest der Völker (Festival of Nations) and Olympia 2. Teil — Fest der Schönheit (Festival of Beauty). It was the first documentary feature film 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 film is controversial due to its political context. Nevertheless, the film appears on many lists of the greatest films of all-time, including Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Movies."[1]
Olympia set the precedent for future films documenting and glorifying the Olympic Games, particularly the Summer Games. The "Olympic Torch Run" was devised by the German sports official Dr. Carl Diem for these 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. Riefenstahl later staged the torch relay for this film, as with competitive events of the Games.
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Olympia was made in three versions: German, French and English. There are slight differences between each version, extending to which portions were included and their sequence within the entire film.
It appeared to be Riefenstahl's habit to re-edit the film upon re-release, so that there are multiple versions of each language version of the film. For example, as originally released, the famous diving sequence (the penultimate sequence of the entire film) ran about four minutes. Riefenstahl subsequently reduced it by about 50 seconds. (The entire sequence could be seen in prints of the film circulated by the collector Raymond Rohauer.)
The film had an immensely strong reaction in Germany and was received with acclaim and accolades around the world.[2] In 1960, her peers voted the film as one of the 10 best films of all time. The Daily Telegraph recognised the film as "even more technically dazzling" than Triumph of the Will.[3] The Times described the film 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 never hit the water, as the visual interest of patterns of movement takes over."[2]
Noted American film 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 1934–35. In [Olympia] Riefenstahl gave the same heroic treatment to Jesse Owens..."[1]
The film won a number of prestigious film 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 film at that time and was immediately asked to leave the country.[4]
The film won several awards;[5]
There had been few screenings of Olympia in English-speaking countries upon its original release. In 1955 Riefenstahl agreed to remove three minutes of Hitler footage for screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The same version was also screened on West German television and in cinemas around the world.[6]
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