Olympia (1938 film)

Olympia is a 1938 German documentary film written, directed and produced by Leni Riefenstahl, documenting the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany. The film was released in two parts Olympia 1. Teil Fest der Vlker Festival of Nations and Olympia 2. Teil Fest der Schnheit Festival of Beauty. It was the first documentary feature film of the Olympic Games ever made. Many advanced motion picture techniques, which later became industry standards but which were groundbreaking at the time, were employed including unusual camera angles, smash cuts, extreme closeups, placing tracking shot rails within the bleachers, and the like. The techniques employed are almost universally admired, but the film is controversial due to its political context. Nevertheless, the film appears on many lists of the greatest films of alltime, including Time magazines AllTime 100 Movies.

Olympia was made in three versions German, French and English. There are slight differences between each version, extending to which portions were included and their sequence within the entire film. The French version is known by the alternate title Les Dieux du Stade.It appeared to be Riefenstahls habit to reedit the film upon rerelease, so that there are multiple versions of each language version of the film. For example, as originally released, the famous diving sequence the penultimate sequence of the entire film ran about four minutes. Riefenstahl subsequently reduced it by about 50 seconds. The entire sequence could be seen in prints of the film circulated by the collector Raymond Rohauer.citation needed ........

Source: Wikipedia