Rating: 
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST DOCUMENTARIES OF ALL-TIME.
Review: "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.
Rating: 
Summary: Bud Greenspan and Reifenstahl
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Bud Greenspan and Reifenstahl
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Bud Greenspan and Reifenstahl
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The photography lures you, action holds you.
Review: I can not speak for other versions for this is the one I saw. As you can see from the front cover that this film has been digitally remastered under the supervision of Leni Riefenstahl. The film opens up with a film tribute to the history of Greece and the games. We get to see the names of the nations at the time that the torch passes through as it reached Berlin. A much more realistic torch than today's is ran into the stadium with a few pauses to let everyone see just before the final dash to the to Olympic torch at the stadium. It would be great to recapture this in the present day. Some of the tribute leads me to believe that our athletes are overly clothed for the sports. It may be unique reasons that brought you to this point such as Leni or photography, or interest in history, or, or, or. But once the action starts you feel that you are there and get lost in the "who will win what and how. " Even being aware of the outcome does not prepare you to "not bite your nails" as you watch each athlete barley besting the next until it is over too soon. I noticed that instead of placing medals over the winners, they used laurel wreaths. Any way you cut it, this movie is worth watching.
Rating:
Summary: Really Amazing!! Good for whole family , but note caution...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: 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?
Rating:
Summary: Coming of Age
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Prodigious, genius, logistic marvel etc. Yes. But tiring.
Review: Leni Riefenstahl's record of the 1936 Berlin Olympics is not really a sports film. The movie's best and most exciting moments are those that simply focus on the events as any TV coverage would do. Sport is ideally suited to the film medium - there is no need for psychology, setting, background: pure action has its own intrinsic momentum, fascination and metaphorical power. But too often Riefenstahl botches or fragments these sequences - the soccer episode is particularly inept. Or rather, her interest isn't in sport and competetion, and the individual prowess they favour. She is interested in the body, as a mythical, eternal essence. The actual, astonishing achievement of any athlete putting in years of training, mastering and trascending his or her body, performing with it miraculous feats, is irrelevant to Riefenstahl. Here, the power is snatched from the athletes and given over to Riefenstahl's vision. By slow motion especially, but also heightened staging and lighting, she disengages the individual body from its context, and turns it into variations on geometric patterns: the body and its movements through space all part of an epic choreography. Sometimes this can be amazing to look at, such as when the camera's focus on running track athletes turns the stadium into a giant spinning top. But over three and a half hours, the effect can be enervating, and serves, paradoxically, to demythologise the athlete - it looks as if it is the camera and editing, and not his or her prowess, that is defying gravity. Riefenstahl's films are often compared to those of musical maestro Busby Berkeley's - both 'dehumanise' the body, make it subservient to larger designs. But whereas Berkeley's choreography wittily and subversively uses the means of mass industrialisation to express the desire unspoken in a puritanical culture, Riefenstahl's patterns reinforce the cult of the pliable body at the service of the dominant ideology, in this case Nazism. 'Olympia' is on the surface a less fraught film than the notorious 'Triumph of the Will', her record of the Nuremburg Rallies. Much of what is filmed here would have been pretty similar in any other culture (given a director of this talent, of course!). If the film is fascist, it is a meritocratic fascism - great athletes of every nation are given the full idealising treatment. But we can't forget that this is propaganda, that what is said (including the absurd, kitsch-Wagnerian sequences of fire, water and nature, purification and immolation, that punctuate the film, linking the Nazis to the glories of Greek civilisation), serves to conceal what isn't (domestic terror, concentration camps, book-burning etc.) We may feel, as we watch, nostalgia for a time when sports wasn't emasculated by corporate greed and drugs scandals, but this salute to Nazi greatness and magnanimity is even more objectionable, with the mere presence of the 'Free World', never mind the horrifying Nazi salutes of countries like France, legitimising the regime. The dominating achievement of Jesse Owens is marginalised, as you'd expect. The commentary is often 'casually' racist (the 'amazing Negros' are like 'black panthers...swallowing up' their opponents). Ironically, the Germans themselves have an inglorious Olympics, although they do win a curious event involving wearing uniforms and shooting pistols. On a progressive note, it is nice to see the male body subjected to the unwavering female gaze for once (Riefenstahl's women athletes are frumpy compared to her bronzed male warriors), with one daringly homoerotic sequence beginning Part 2, an all-male shower idyll that would be invoked ironically by Visconti for the SA massacre in 'The Damned'.
Rating:
Summary: A huge achievement.
Review: 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.
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