Intcatinfo A Masterpiece!

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Keira Brennan The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

ElMaruecan82 Watching "Olympia: Festival of Nations", Leni Riefenstahl's documentary of Berlin's Olympic Games, I was amazed at how the world changed in 80 years but not much for sport. But had sport changed much from the Antiquity to the 20th century? Sport is one of these elements of timeless and universal appeal that best characterizes humanity, and Leni Riefenstahl understood before any other director that motion pictures were the best vehicle for the extraordinary thrills and emotions sports provided.Thrills, emotions… so many inspirational words immediately tarnished when put in Leni Riefenstahl's framework. The pioneer director had already proved her utility to the Third Reich by making "Triumph of the Will", and the film was no less loaded in 'thrills and emotions', so when we put our hands in something as historically loaded as the two-parter "Olympia", we're never sure we won't get a few fingers dirty. It is its misfortune to have its reputation soiled by the infamous predecessor. Now, is "Olympia" a propaganda film? No and Yes. It is not propaganda because the film fulfills its basic mission as a documentary, which is documenting. "Triumph of the Will" was more of a glorification of the Third Reich and the exhilaration of the communion with the people. I can hear the counter-argument already: but so did "Olympia" by exalting the beauty and strength of the human body and the popularity of sports on a scale even superior to the Nuremberg conference. Yes, but we've just went through a European cup and the Olympic Games of Rio: aren't we seeking the same enthusiasms than the crowds cheering in Berlin's stadium in 1936?This disturbing question touches the very essence of sport, as a mass entertainment translating the antagonism between people from the brutality of war to the peaceful nobility of competition. The Olympic Games are a sublime heritage of the Ancient World, a period of truce where athletes could fight with the same chances. That's the essence of sport, it can be brutal but it's always a fair play. Yet are we cheering for these values or because our team or our country won? Weren't the spectators of 1936 as joyful as the people in Rio? And who can predict our reaction if a worldwide conflict started in 2019? So, maybe "Olympia" IS a propaganda film, but just as any film that tries to stir some specific emotions can be perceived as propaganda, just like "Chariots of Fire" or "Saving Private Ryan" or "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial". I recently read in an article that compared the opening of "The Lion King" to "Triumph of the Will", I never thought about it, but I can see the similarities. Any film that aims to arouse a specific set of emotions to a wide audience can be propaganda, but only in the name of common sense, we'll never compare the moment with Rafiki raising Simba to Hitler's arrival in Nuremberg. In the name of the same common sense, we can't blame "Olympia" for inspiring emotions we all respond positively to."Olympia" opens with ruins, the remains of the Antique Age, destroyed and devoid of human presences, as to emphasize their coming resurrection, from the statues to the athletes. We're not fooled of course, but the magic of the camera and the photography is so breathtaking that the eyes precede the mind. The statues become the embodiment of a vision of the human body that doesn't necessarily imply the Aryan race. The use of lighting and shadows makes all the athletes look oddly neutral, closer to the Mediterranean type actually. And then we get to the magnificent ellipse, the resurrection, from the iconic statue of the discus thrower to a real athlete who executes the movement as if he was animated by a genetic symphony, inherited from the Antique age.This is not a political film; this is a hymn to sport. And halfway through the opening ballet, there's a tall naked woman executing a magnificent luscious dance, and this is Leni Riefenstahl, doing more than a simple cameo, being part of this adventure as a former athlete and dancer. This is not the work of a propagandist, but a woman who knows the value of sport, not about the Olympic Games, not even about the Nations, but their athletes whose paradoxical nature is to represent countries while transcending the cultural barriers, being different but similar, universal is the word. What a strike of luck that she couldn't film the original flame moment because the running and the excitement made it impossible to have a cinematic shot, so she had to reinvent the scene and came up with one of the most memorable opening sequences of cinema's history. The Gods of Sports were behind her.And all the directing talent of the world couldn't affect the results, so after the iconic opening, we get to the sporting events and Riefenstahl couldn't cheat and pretend Jessie Owens didn't win, and we've got enough of Owens not to label the film as propaganda. And while Hitler's present, his screen time is limited and he's only shown as the leader of the country that organized the games, but the movie is far from putting him on a pedestal, again, the hero is the athlete, the modern gladiator, and the fans of supporting countries from all over the world: America, England, Canada, Japan, Turkey, all acting as if no war would happen three years later, like normal people, joking, enjoying their time.Maybe the best response against the propaganda allegation is that Riefenstahl couldn't paint a more flattering portrait of the Aryan athletes even if she wanted to. The very universal essence of sports is that the best one wins the game, with a fair play. And this is the antithesis of all the values the Nazis stood for, as Hitler wasn't much a fan of the games anyway. "Olympia" couldn't, by essence, be a propaganda movie.

chaos-rampant The bulk of the film is dry, sometimes dramatic sports coverage. It must have been spectacular at the time, remember this was the first time that millions of people all over the world had the chance to witness the Olympics on a screen, and the first time the Olympics were the kind of lavish spectacle we have now, but yes, this aspect of it is mostly dull. You have to appreciate why this is so; Riefenstahl practically invented sports coverage with this film, the angles, the slow motion (a favorite 'replay' shot), the panoramic aerial views, all of it is common vernacular these days. All of it frees the viewer from a fixed place in the audience and allows him to float, to survey. All of it comes from the cinema.No, if this is worth it, it's because of this woman. The debate continues unabated, morally complicit or not, but obscures a simpler truth: she was a fascist in the most pure, most artistic way possible, fascinated by strength, youth, harmony, disciplined body. I thrive in the exact opposite sensibility, but have to admire her conviction in bringing it all alive.She was a dancer before making her transition to film, and this is her dance film. All of her films are about choreographed sculpted form in motion and Part II of this is the most pure, but this is worth watching. You just need to see the opening and marathon sequence.Glistening bodies dance, contort, spin, writhe, glide. The camera dances. Her vision swirls, teases, dissolves in dreamlike flow. She's over the top trying to evoke this business of a beautiful spirit, but in the way dancers usually are, trying to act out feelings. It's beauty that borders on caricature. Near the end, we see marathon runners give up from exhaustion, but a young boy goes on steadfast. He runs shirtless, ergo the shot is staged and was not part of the marathon, staged to give a glimpse of the bare Ideal; the sculpted young body shining with perspiration. But it's a Latin boy of dark skin, which is perhaps Riefenstahl's fascism on the most simple level; nothing racial, just this near-comically spiritual libido for vigor.And something else. Following Riefenstahl's cinematic dance from one film to the next is a valuable exercise in itself.In Daus Blaue Licht, it was a dance between her as brave mountain climber that fate beckons to and a mystery that existed to unveil itself as refracted light from the heavens. The valley people were fearful and duplicitous. In Triumph, it was between herself and the people she sculpted to be the mountain, the mountain flattened before a master, the soul sculpted to be resolute, immovable.Here the body is free again, free within confines of the sport, the mood is solemn but spontaneous, the same with the people. Once more we descend from the skies to watch a show that celebrates virtue and power. But this is much more subtle than Triumph, this impression of spontaneity. The crowds cheer freely. Blacks win. Jesse Owens is shown several times and in closeup. The Germans win again and again, but only because they did. Others win. A Japanese man triumphs in the marathon. The American flag waves frequently. The Nazi flag much less so. The Fuhrer nods and claps, pleased with all. It's all about sports and people celebrating. It never feels like you're watching a state-sponsored film.Don't you see? Everything is fine in Nazi Germany, everything normal and civilized. The summer of the previous year had seen the Nuremberg Laws on German purity of blood. Nazi signs against Jews in '36 had been carefully removed in anticipation of visitors.The Nazis, masters of the sensual and overblown, invented the Olympic torch-relay for the Games. They made sure these were the first Games to receive televised coverage. They directly financed the film about them, a prestigious production. It was all staged for everyone to see the image they wanted to broadcast.The following year, Charlie Chan at the Olympics showed the shrewd detective helping out Berlin authorities against a ring of enemy spies. Nazi paraphernalia were carefully expunged from the picture. See, nothing was wrong in the country except enemy spies trying to steal a gizmo.

Chris Burin This is a brilliant sports documentary - the experimentation with camera angles was revolutionary at the time and the pole vault sequence at night is one of my favourite sequences in a film ever. The athletes are portrayed as superhuman, so in this sense the film is elitist and Nietzschean, but this is certainly not a racist film, politics does not play an explicit role, although one could argue that the deification of athletes (they are shown in close-up, alone, to contrast with the watching masses) promotes the idea that some men are greater than others. A fascinating film, and a definite progression from the standard documentary format of Das Triumph des Willens.

hhighstone The readers of other reviews of this film may get the impression that every frame of Leni's notorious documentary is a profound lesson in vibrant film technique. This is not entirely true.One of the creakiest elements in "Olympia" is the distorted, pseudo-real-time presentation of the majority of the events, which are described by a plummy-voiced British narrator who was obviously working in a studio long after the actual competition took place. We are rushed through most of the events at warp speed, and apparently we are supposed to believe that this presentation represents an authentic description of what happened. Once you start to question this bizarre cinematic device, it becomes almost intolerable, and one wishes that the fruity-voiced narrator had been the first victim during the Night of the Long Knives.During the progress of the Olympic torch through the various nations to Germany, the figures holding the assorted national flags were apparently animated by about five drawings or "cells" apiece, which makes a bizarre impression of cinematic incompetence. Surely Leni could have filmed actual people instead?About the sound quality, especially the music, one gets the impression that many dubs through many generations were used to produce the final sound track. The resulting bad audio quality is a definite handicap. Since this film has passed through so many hands, any search for the "definitive" version is probably futile. It would no doubt be interesting to see the German language version with accurately translated subtitles. The English language version was probably "sanitized" ideologically to make it more palatable to non-Germans. This was typical of the Nazi method, as exemplified by carefully "sanitized" English translations of Mein Kampf, which omitted Hitler's most outrageous rants concerning the Jews.This movie is propaganda-- a masterpiece of propaganda, perhaps the most artistic and wonderfully filmed propaganda that was ever created, but still propaganda for an incredibly evil regime that murdered incredible numbers of people. You must never forget this as you watch "Olympia."