Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations

1938 · 127 min · DE · NR · 6.9 (128 votes)

Dir. Leni Riefenstahl · Starring David Albritton, Arvo Askola, Jack Beresford, Erwin Blask, Sulo Bärlund, Ibolya Csák · Music Herbert Windt · Olympia Collection

Documentary

Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.

VIBE

A monumental, visually stunning, yet unsettlingly nationalistic spectacle. It captures the grandeur of the Olympics through a lens of idealized human form and national pride, tinged with the ominous shadow of its era.

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