Customer Reviews

Olympia Part 1 - Festival of the People [VHS]

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a landmark in sports documentary films. It is over-long for today's taste (115 mins) - one tires of watching the heats of the decathlon - but this is balanced by many superb moments.

Unfortunately the version available here omits many of the classic sequences mentioned in reviews and monographs. The arrival of the Olympic torch in Berlin and its stunning entrance into the stadium is nowhere to be seen. Neither is the footage of the Hindenburg airship passing over the stadium during the opening ceremony.

It seems to me that the source film print used for this video has been tampered with, and many of the key sequences removed, perhaps by a selfish individual for personal use at some point during the history of the print. These sequences certainly wouldn't have been removed by a competent editor familiar with the full original version.

Bud Greenspan, the Olympic documentary-maker, called this movie one of his great inspirations. "Olympia" is in the same vein as Greenspan's films, but far better. The triple jump scene is the greatest treatment of the event I have ever seen.

Greenspan said that when he was in West Germany premeiring his 1964 film "Jesse Owens Returns to Berlin", Owens called Reifenstahl the woman who made him famous, thanked her, and called her up on stage. The audience was dumbfounded and did not know how to respond until Owens' wife began a standing ovation. Such was the attitude towards Reifenstahl: the Germans knew she was a national treasure, yet they were very uncomfortable with some of the things she put on film.

I just watched this video with my family and we were truly amazed by its cinematic artristy and beauty. It was very interesting and educational as well. I have always enjoyed classic film, and wanted to see Riefenstahl's work. I have always been interested in WW2 as well, and for this reason was also interested in Riefenstahl's films. I was finally able to get copies of Triumph of the Will and Olympia thru interlibrary loan. We watched Triumph first, for it arrived first. We liked it well enough...a very effective propaganda piece, but it was tiring after a while to just keep seeing scene after scene of the German people worshiping Hitler as their god. So we hoped Olympia would be a bit better, and we weren't disappointed...it was GREAT!! Riefenstahl's film genius shines throughout the film. Its photography is amazing. She began each part in a very artistic way. One note of caution: if you have children please note their is both male and female nudity in these beginning sequences that are not part of the actual Olympic games. You definately should allow your children to see the game part for its beauty in filming and for educational/historical reasons. But we chose to not have the children see the nudity in the beginning. Once the actual games begin, all is okay. Yes, this is a long film but we watched both parts in the same day and totally enjoyed it all. Especially funny was watching the horse riding events, where many horses just refused to go thru with the jumps, and in the water jump we were quite entertained with how many participants fell in the water!! It was of interest that the Germans had no problems with either of these...wonder if they got to practice on this very course over a long period of time before the games, and so their horses thus knew it very well and were not afraid like the others? The diving finale was amazing and beautiful (my husband likened it to the grand finale of a fireworks display),as was the closing with the stadium surrounded by search lights shining up into the sky. I have enjoyed sports in my life, esp. when I was in school, but I am not a sport nut or anything. Still, to watch the Olympics is always exciting, to see the amazing skills and talents some people have with their physical bodies. It was interesting to see how things were done in the Olympics way back then, to see Hitler and his top men spectating, to see the crowds all dressed so nicely in good dress clothes! (Oh, I wish I lived back then when people wore nice clothes! To see something besides t-shirts and sweatpants would be so refreshing!) It also made you think as you watched the people there, what happened to them in a few short years when war began. What happened to those German athletes, esp. the men...did they all end up in the army and did many die in battle? It is sort of sad as you see everyone smiling and happy at the games, knowing they were not aware of the grim future that was soon to arrive in Europe and upset the whole world.On a different note: the sports commentator speaking in English throughout was very nice to listen to as well, for people seemed to have more intelligent and creative vocabularies back then, and he didn't just jabber on about nothing. All in all, this is a film we enjoyed so much we plan to add it to our personal film collection. And I recommend it much more than Triumph of the Will, in beauty and enjoyment. Try and see this important work of cinema, I think you will be glad that you did.

Olympia is split into two films. The first one - Festival of the People - accounts for the opening ceremony, the track and field events, and the marathon. The second one - Festival of Beauty - concerns itself with the gymnastic and diving events, cycling, boating, horse events, cross-country-running, and pistol shooting, etc.

Overall image quality was quite good, but some of the darker scenes were almost too muddy for clarity. Nevertheless, the camera work was much smoother than that in Triumph of the Will. The parading of national flags was identical to the earlier film, and the music from its cavalry event appeared just before the opening scene to the officers' pentathlon. Such re-use of material and ideas is a trademark of Leni Riefenstahl's.

What struck me greatly about the film was the amount of sound overdubbing, footfalls, pistol-cracks, hoof beats, and many other background sounds mixed in with the music score and crowd response. Aside from the music, many of these sounds were simply repeats of one master element reintroduced again and again. The pistol cracks, for example, were identical -as far as I could tell - no matter what the model of pistol used. And the horse sounds in the cross country events were pretty similar, too.

This technique carries over to her use of a linking scene. For example, in Triumph of the Will she uses the same shot of Hitler surveying the crowd, three times, instead of using the ones that would have been there in reality. In Festival of Beauty, for the sail- boat race, she twice uses the same few frames of the signal ball dropping.

Slow motion is used a great deal in both Olympia films, where its use is very effective, the viewer being able to see the athlete's motion in great detail, without the effect seeming to be simply a cinematic stunt, as such an effect can be. Another interesting idea is her use of inserting a few frames of reverse motion into some of the men's diving sequences in order to make the dive look more flowing. One of them looked a bit weird as the diver momentarily seems to be hovering yet coming towards you. Another had a few too may twirls to be possible. It's as if Leni were having a couple of fun moments after such a huge editing and composition job. The cameraman clambering out of the pool with camera in hand at the end of the men's swimming race made me smile.

The only real gripe I have with this set of VHS videos is the packaging, which proclaims Olympia to the a disturbing piece of Nazi propaganda, and reiterates this in the opening commentary for the video. Okay, we do see a few shots of Hitler and some of his officers - and I mean a very few in proportion to the film's six hour length - but for 95% of the time there is hardly anything shown that could be directly linked to the host nation. Anyone trying to preach that this film is a masterpiece of Nazi propaganda is bloody-mindedly digging very, very deep, to make a case. And I don't recall the International Olympic Committee being blamed for giving Germany the games in the first instance.

Leni Riefenstahl will soon turn 100 years and is not forgotten by those who love filmmaking. She carries the stigma of being the most celebrated filmmaker of the Nazi regime but this doesnt obscure her merits. She never belonged to the party and was always candid about politics. "My films are aesthetic not ideological", she once said. She was a wholesome artist.
In this movie she stood against Goebbels, who wanted Jesse Owens performance deleted from the film, and won. She went to Hitler himself with her refusal and got away with it.
In this historical document of the Berlin Olympic games she employed 150 collaborators and even invented a catapult-camera. She made many films but this is her finest and although it can be purchased in VHS it should be released in DVD, specially now that the lady turns 100.

If schools (and much else besides) throughout the South can be named after people like Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest, then people can at least try to open up their minds and see this obvious masterpiece of twentieth century art. Riefenstahl's work on this thing is simply awesome. You're left weak and breathless in spots, watching this simultaneously powerful, sensual, artistic, ridiculous, and somehow weird paen to the human body and biokinetic aesthetics. It's all here: art deco, bauhaus, Hitler, Owens, and much else besides.

Yes, Riefensthal's questionable association with the Nazis has colored her career; justifiably so. As have her "quasi-racist" African safaris (can anybody find fault with her late-career underwater photography?) But dammit, look at the stuff honestly and try to open your mind. Can you honestly say that you're not looking at genius (however flawed) here?

"Olympia" is a documentary with innovative film techniques, despite the fact that it's over 65 years old, it's easy to recognize the influence that "Olympia" had not only in the documentary genre, but in the movies and TV transmissions as well.

The opening scene could be considered as an art film scene because it has many camera angles, slow motion, beautiful photography and background music. After this scene, the narration of the 1936 Olympic Games begins, and it's impressive to see how many swastikas were at sight in the games, it's in flags and in the uniforms of the german athletes.

One might think that the athletes in 1936 were very inferior to the current athletes, but "Olympia" shows how great those athletes were, in most of the disciplines they look as impressive as the current athletes. The use of different camera speeds and angles, can make you feel very close to the athletes. You can see their effort and competitive spirit thanks to the excellent use of the cameras.

Definitely "Olympia" is one of the best documentaries ever made. Absolutely recommendable.

Riefenstahl's triumphant masterpiece celebrating the human body, the spirit of competition and the appreciation of beauty. Vividly depicted, perfectly captured in splendid, groundbreaking photography. Arguably her best work and a timeless joy to watch again and again.

Timeless Video should be ashamed of itself, putting out such a poor version of this classic documentary film. Another reviewer notes it has been "tampered" with; long sequences apparently have been removed for some reason and the visual quality of what's left is very poor overall. I was not bored by this film, as was another reviewer, because I couldn't watch it for very long. Do not buy it.

This actually a review of the PAL DVD that I purchased from Amazon-DE.

Leni Riefenstahl did a triumph with this series: slow motion photography mixed with standard speed shots to blend into a rich mixture for the eyes. Her editing is topnotch, scene after scene blend into the next.

Adolph is there. Jesse Owens is there. The Olympians are great. There is the hammer throw, discus, shotput. Where are ping pong and beach volley ball? This is classic Olympics, the real games are played.

OK, so this PAL DVD is in German with no subtitles, no English dubbing. It is not necessary for English dialogue, as the spectacle speaks for itself.

I had been using my computer for watching this Region 2 DVD, but found a firmware hack for my CyberHome DVD player. Very simple to perform, and I now can watch DVD's from any region!

Larry