Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

Olympia - Fest der Völker (original)

7.7

/10

2h 7mDocumentary History Sport

More has been written about Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia than about any other sports documentary in history. Well, “documentary” is inaccurate, for a start. Dissatisfied with the light or other conditions in the stadia, Riefenstahl prevailed on certain athletes (including some gymnasts and her inamorato Glenn Morris, the U.S. decathlon champion) to return when the crowds had dispersed, so that she could film them reenacting their winning leaps. Transcending indeed the bounds of documentary, Olympia apotheosizes athletic endeavor in the same way that Riefenstahl’s earlier film Triumph of the Will, even more infamously, recorded Adolf Hitler’s sublimation before the vast crowds at the Nuremberg Rally of 1934.

Spoken language: de

Starring David Albritton, Jack Beresford, Henri de Baillet-Latour, Philip Edwards, Donald Finlay, Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Heß, King Umberto II, Theodor Lewald, Luz Long

Watch "Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations" from streaming services Flixfling, Amazon released in 1938. It's a documentary and history movie, and has a rating of 7.7 out of 10 from Imdb which is usually fine for this kind of movie.