Is Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia Nazi propaganda – or the greatest film about sport ever made? The two-part documentary has been acclaimed as a masterpiece that revolutionised the way sport was depicted on screen.  This epic record of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games attempts to combine sporting reportage with a celebration of physical beauty and the spectacle involved in this uniquely unifying event. And what cinema historians still debate today is whether Riefenstahl was defying Goebbels and Hitler all those summers ago, or whether she was doing exactly what they wanted. 

Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty (Olympia 2. Teil-Fest der Schönheit) | ( Click here to watch )
(90 min; 1938; b/w/; German with English subtitles)
Director: Leni Reifenstahl     

Recipient of the Mussolini Cup for Best Foreign Film, Venice Film Festival 1939

Part Two features the track and field events. Riefenstahl captures the grace of athletes during field hockey, soccer, cycling, equestrian, aquatic and gymnastic events. Riefenstahl celebrates the human body by combining the poetry of bodies in motion with close-ups of athletes in the heat of competition. The production tends to glorify the young male body and, some say, expresses the Nazi attitude toward athletic prowess. Highlights are the Pentathlon and the Decathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris; it ends with the triumphant conclusion of the games.