| Olympia | |
| Director: | Leni Riefenstahl |
| Producer: | Leni Riefenstahl |
| Cinematography: | Paul Holzki |
| Editing: | Leni Riefenstahl |
| Studio: | Olympia-Film |
| Distributor: | Tobis |
| Runtime: | 226 minutes |
| Country: | Germany |
| Language: | German |
Olympia is a 1938 German documentary film written, directed and produced by Leni Riefenstahl, which documented the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin during the Nazi period. The film was released in two parts: Olympia 1. Teil — Fest der Völker (Festival of Nations) (126 minutes) and Olympia 2. Teil — Fest der Schönheit (Festival of Beauty) (100 minutes). The 1936 Summer Olympics torch relay, as devised for the Games by the secretary general of the Organizing Committee, Dr. Carl Diem, is shown in the film.
Olympia is controversial due to its political context and propaganda value. However, the techniques Riefenstahl employed are almost universally admired and had a lasting influence on film and television coverage of sport events. Olympia appears on many lists of the greatest films of all time, including Time magazine's "All-Time 100 Movies".
The Nazis planned on using the 1936 Summer Olympics as a piece of propaganda. Riefenstahl claimed that the film was commissioned by the International Olympic Committee, but it was financed entirely by the government using a company named Olympia Film GmbH. The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda oversaw the production of the film. Olympia prominently depicted the Nazi idea of Strength Through Joy.
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 and placing tracking shot rails within the bleachers. Although restricted to six camera positions on the stadium field, Riefenstahl set up cameras in as many other places as she could, including in the grandstands. She attached automatic cameras to balloons, including instructions to return the film to her, and she also placed automatic cameras in boats during practice runs. Amateur photography was used to supplement that of the professionals along the course of races. Perhaps the greatest innovation seen in Olympia was the use of an underwater camera. The camera followed divers through the air and, as soon as they hit the water, the cameraman dived down with them, all the while changing focus and aperture.[1]
Walter Frentz and Hans Ertl were among the film's camera crew.
Riefenstahl edited the film over the course of two years.
Olympia was approved by the censors on 14 April 1938, and released on 20 April, Adolf Hitler's 49th birthday. It had a profit of RM 114,066.45 by 1943.
Riefenstahl toured the United States, during which she met Henry Ford and Walt Disney, in an attempt to distribute the film there. However, Kristallnacht and protests from organizations including the Jewish Labor Committee and Hollywood Anti-Nazi League doomed her efforts. Olympia was given an English-dubbed American release by Excelsior Pictures after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.[2]
There had been few screenings of Olympia in English-speaking countries upon its original release. It was re-released in the United States in 1948 under the title Kings of the Olympics in a truncated version acquired from Germany by the U.S. Office of Alien Property Custodian and severely edited without Riefenstahl's involvement.[3] In 1955 Riefenstahl agreed to remove three minutes of Hitler footage for screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The same version was also screened on West German television and in cinemas around the world.[4]
The reaction to the film in Germany was enthusiastic, and it was received with acclaim and accolades around the world. In 1960, Riefenstahl's peers voted Olympia 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.[5] The Times described the film as "visually ravishing ... A number of sequences in the supposedly documentary Olympia, notably those devoted to the high-diving competition, become less and less concerned with record and more and more abstract: as some of the divers hit the water, the visual interest of patterns of movement takes over."[6]
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."[7]
The film won several awards;[8]