Olympia (1938)
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In the latter half of the 1930s conflict was beginning to
brew in Europe with the unsettling rise of a political force led by a
charismatic politician, but for two weeks in 1936 the world would focus on
athletics played in the heart of the very country that would one day attempt to
rule them all. The summer games of the eleventh Olympiad hosted in Berlin
Germany would be a controversial contest overseen by Dictator Adolf Hitler, and
during its run was recorded by the country’s most visionary director, Leni
Riefenstahl. With the same creativity of her previous propaganda piece for the
3rd Reich, Triumph of the Will,
Olympia would encapsulate these games
with a majestic halo, giving a near divinity to the sports, its athletes, their
performance, the city of Berlin, and the dictator that watched them closely.
Its result is an excellent capturing of the theme of the Olympic Games and its
results, but conversely creates yet another feature that was meant to evoke praise
for the National Socialist Party and its enigmatic leader, giving cinema one of
its greatest films, at the same time steeped with controversy.
Olympia is a
documentary of the 1936 Olympic Games hosted in Berlin, Germany, recording the
games pageantry, and many of the events that take place throughout this global
celebration of the world’s greatest athletes at the time playing in the heart
of Nazi Germany. The film is actually presented in two parts. The picture opens
with visions of ancient Greek architecture and sculpture of the human form
followed by visions of nude athletically fit bodies, meant to evoke the origin
and heart of sport, manifesting a majestic sentiment toward the games and the
film. Next follows the grandiose pageantry of the opening ceremony, including
the lighting of the Olympic flame, overseen by Adolf Hitler himself. The first
full length section to the documentary “Festival of Nations” follows the
pageantry with the track and field events, where Germany can be seen as the
focus, but the young American Jesse Owens comes through as a victory in a
number of events.
The second portion “Festival of Beauty,” it too being long
enough to be a full length feature at a running time of over an hour and a
half, begins with more dramatized scenes of athletes preparing for events first
in ancient times then in the 1936 Olympic village, as if they had a nights rest
and now prepare for their own section of the games. This section covers a
gambit of events, from soccer, field hockey, and equestrian events to aquatic competitions.
The diving sequences are grandly presented as the sport is not portrayed in the
same manner as the others throughout the feature where there are winners and
records. Instead the dives are presented in a montage portraying its beauty of
the human form flying through the air, rarely watching past where they meet the
water. Filled with extraordinary new photographic techniques, including
underwater cinematography, this is perhaps the most artistic visions of the
documented events of the games. The competitions conclude with a magnificent
closing sequence, once again evoking a divine-like vision to the games and the
place where it was held.
Never had audiences seen such a vast assemblage of the
Olympic Games in the motion picture medium. Leni Riefenstahl and her army of
cameramen capture the events and nuances of the games as never manifested on
screen before. To put into context, audiences to this point would have only
seen images of the games in snippets in a newsreel from time to time, but here
the German filmmaker tries to capture all of the grandeur of what goes into
this large gathering of world’s greatest athletes. With wide use of close ups,
angular shots, majestic aerial views, long dolly tracking shots, and angles
that seem to be coming up from the ground, Riefenstahl brings audiences closer
to the games than they could have ever imagined. It allows people to see the
men and women focused, perspiring, conquering, failing, evoking that these
athletes are almost gods among men; the finest specimens of the human body.
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| The Parade of Nations are presented with countries saluting Hitler. |
Very much in the same manner Leni Riefenstahl had an idea of
capturing majesty in Triumph of the Will,
here she uses the same creativity to capture the historical events of the
Olympiad. The film induces the theme of the games to its core as a time of
world piece for two weeks that the summer in friendly competition. With all the
nations flags and many of the winners’ national anthems playing interspersed
the grand visions and even more imposing score, the film makes the games more
than just a singular event, but makes the film a capsule for all time, that of
an age of greatness that took place in Berlin, when in fact things were not so
great in the world. Of course, being a picture aided by the funding of the
National Socialist Party and filmed by a German filmmaker, the feature makes
Germany and its Fuhrer the shining center of the features. Hitler watches from
on high as the athletes of the world perform to his pleasure, saluting him in
victory as if he is the harbinger of peace in a world. This portrayal of the
German dictator would bring the picture under great scrutiny.
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| Jesse Owens won four gold medals in Berlin |
Moments of special note seen in the picture were that of the
nineteen year old track star from the United States, Jesse Owens, turn himself
into an Olympic champion, winning multiple events in front of a German crowds,
including Adolf Hitler. It was known that Hitler and his white supremacist
beliefs tried to keep Jewish and black athletes from competing in the games
until the Olympic Committee threatened to take the games away from Berlin. Here
Owens would outrun and out-jump his German counterparts, making a statement
that minorities could be as good as or even better than any man of a pure white
race as Hitler had envisioned. Not pictured is how disgusted Hitler was at his
German athletes losing to black man.
Staged in stadium that sat over 100,000 spectators, meant to
overshadow the grandeur of Coliseum in Los Angeles where the previous Olympic
Games were held in 1932, Riefensthal would make the most of her creative
freedom with the Olympic setting, planning shots months before the events,
paying off with views of the sports unseen previously, accented by the splendor
of her filmmaking. Many aerial shots of the Olympic ground and creatively new
techniques in slow motion and even underwater photography would bring the games
to an art form instead of just competition.
1936 would introduce a new element to the Olympic Game
opening ceremony that continued for every games since, the Olympic torch relay.
Hitler was known for being a student of religious visions and making himself
seem ever more splendid, almost to that of a divine man himself. With that in
mind, to plan a section of the ceremony that connected Germany under his power
being connected to the games overseen by Ancient gods of Greek mythology would
be an idea Hitler would have reveled in. Riefenstahl would be able to
accomplish the look that made Berlin and its Olympic Stadium the celestial
center of the world, home to the greatest specimens in the world. Much of the
torch relay seen in the feature would be staged, recreated with the perfect
cinematography the filmmaker would have wanted, but ends with the actual
ceremony that makes the Olympics look like a holy event.
Riefenstahl would be commissioned by the International
Olympic Committee and would begin the process of planning to chronicle the
games for 1936 with the aid of the Nazi party financially. In attempt to find
financial help Riefenstahl would find a snag as the picture would be too large
of a production for even for the country’s largest studio, Ufa. After the
conclusion of the games Riefenstahl’s own production company would receive
added funds from another studio for distribution in Tobis, taking two years for
the filmmaker to finish that final masterpiece.
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| Riefenstahl produces a majesty to the Berlin games. |
The final product would be a master of presentation for
sports. Released in 1938, Olympia
would be praised wildly by German audiences and critics. International audiences
would share the same enthusiasm with artistic vision of the picture, but would
find complications with the political setting of the picture as a propaganda
piece for Nazi Germany. Subsequent versions would be made for French and
English speaking audiences. In these versions Riefenstahl would trim off fragments
presenting Adolf Hitler as a major figure in the film and present a narration
that focused less on the German athletes. Riefenstahl would find limited
distribution internationally and when she tried to find an American studio for
distribution she would be denied with American knowledge of Nazi views and exclusion
of Jews.
As generations passed, World War II came and went, and time
would begin to heal deep wounds for Europe, Leni Riefenstahl’s work on this
picture would find a new and different outlook. Her cinematography and
chronicling of the games would inspire the future of covering sports,
continuing to be the source of inspiration for athletic coverage in the future
generations of media. Her filmmaking in Olympia
would be hailed as cinematic beauty and make listings on many top lists of all
time motion pictures.
Olympia leaves a
legacy that continues with every passing generation, serving as a time capsule
of a historic event, a propaganda piece from a troubling time, and as
stimulation towards countless filmmakers in vision of how the medium of motion
picture can be used as an art and a stirrer of emotions. Taking all politics
away from the film, Olympia by all
right should be looked at as a groundbreaking picture, a peak of the cinema
world at its time forever capturing brief moments in the world that can be long
remembered as nations seemingly at piece would be on the brink of war.
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