Olympia is a 1938 film by Leni Riefenstahl documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. The movie was produced in two parts: Olympia 1. Teil — Fest der Völker (Festival of the People) and Olympia 2. Teil — Fest der Schönheit (Festival of Beauty). It was the first documentary feature film on the Olympic Games ever made. Many advanced motion picture techniques, which later became industry standards but which were gro...
more
Olympia is a 1938 film by Leni Riefenstahl documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. The movie was produced in two parts: Olympia 1. Teil — Fest der Völker (Festival of the People) and Olympia 2. Teil — Fest der Schönheit (Festival of Beauty). It was the first documentary feature film on 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, setting the railway tracks on the stadium to shoot the crowd and the like. The techniques employed are almost universally admired, but the film is controversial due to its political content. Nevertheless, the film appears on many lists of the greatest films of all-time, including Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Movies."
There has been much discussion of whether this film should be classified as a Nazi propaganda film like her earlier Triumph...
less
