Rating: 
Summary: Breathtaking Classic!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking Classic!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The Olympiad
Review: The Olympiad DVD ~ Leni Riefenstahl is an oustanding documentary movie from the best documentary movie makers of all time. This is documentary film making at its outmost and best. Riefenstahl has been copied and re-copied many times, but one still can never come close to the original master.
Rating:
Summary: Leni does it again
Review: 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
Rating:
Summary: Little Known Facts
Review: This film as Triumph of the Will was ahead of its time. At any rate, I find it interesting that it seems everytime this film
comes up people almost invariably love to talk about how Jesse
Owens "proved" Hitler wrong by winning Gold several times.
However, They almost never mention the Fact that Germany won
more Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals that Any other Nation in the 1936 Olympics!! Second point, Armchair historians who really
know Hitler not very well, misquote his views and real ideas
about race. Hitler never said or claimed that the Germans(or Germanic peoples) were Always superior, All the time. He believed they were "Generally" superior; their great contibutions
to culture, science, art, music, technology and the modern world in general. Moreover, How many people would have said "Hitler was right!" if Owens had lost??? The old cliche is Right > "People tend to only See what they want to See" and ignore or forget what does suit their preconceived notions....
Rating:
Summary: landmark film
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: "Olympia: Oh how film becomes reality!" by RexCurry.net
Review: This is a show stopper. Olympia (1938) is from Leni Riefenstahl, and also see Triumph of the Will (1935). In fact you should view these four films also: the American "Ben-Hur" (1907), the Italian "Nerone" (1908), "Spartaco" (1914), and "Cabiria" (1914). Those films were the origin of the "Roman salute" myth because these films show examples of a straight-arm salute. The "Roman salute" myth is the myth that the straight-arm salute was an ancient Roman custom, later borrowed by Mussolini and the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The myth arose because of the made-up Hollywood-style portrayals in those films. Those films are notable also because they led to the historic discovery by the journalist and historian Rex Curry that the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance was the origin of the salute of the monstrous National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party). The "Roman Salute" myth grew because the viewing public forgot that the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance originally used the straight-arm salute. The creator of the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance was a National Socialist in the U.S. (Francis Bellamy). The salute is not in any Roman art or text. Dr. Martin Winkler of the American Philological Association has written that in imitation of such films, self-styled Italian "Consul" Gabriele D 'Annunzio borrowed the salute as a propaganda tool for his political ambitions upon his occupation of Fiume in 1919. Earlier, D'Annunzio had worked with Giovanni Pastrone in his colossal epic Cabiria (1914). Mussolini worked with D'Annunzio. Even so, evidence shows that the National Socialist German Workers' Party officially adopted the salute before Mussolini did, not vice versa. For example, "Triumph of Will" is in 1935 and Carmine Gallone's film "Scipione l'Africano" uses the raised-arm salute as one of its chief visual means to turn Mussolini into a new Scipio. Dr. Winkler didn't know about the original U.S. flag salute (1892) that inspired the films, and that the National Socialist German Workers' Party was inspired by the films and by the Pledge of Allegiance. The U.S. changed the salute during WWII.
Rating:
Summary: "Olympia: Oh how film becomes reality!" by RexCurry.net
Review: This is a show stopper. Olympia (1938) is from Leni Riefenstahl, and also see Triumph of the Will (1935). In fact you should view these four films also: the American "Ben-Hur" (1907), the Italian "Nerone" (1908), "Spartaco" (1914), and "Cabiria" (1914). Those films were the origin of the "Roman salute" myth because these films show examples of a straight-arm salute. The "Roman salute" myth is the myth that the straight-arm salute was an ancient Roman custom, later borrowed by Mussolini and the National Socialist German Workers' Party. The myth arose because of the made-up Hollywood-style portrayals in those films. Those films are notable also because they led to the historic discovery by the journalist and historian Rex Curry that the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance was the origin of the salute of the monstrous National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nazi Party). The "Roman Salute" myth grew because the viewing public forgot that the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance originally used the straight-arm salute. The creator of the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance was a National Socialist in the U.S. (Francis Bellamy). The salute is not in any Roman art or text. Dr. Martin Winkler of the American Philological Association has written that in imitation of such films, self-styled Italian "Consul" Gabriele D 'Annunzio borrowed the salute as a propaganda tool for his political ambitions upon his occupation of Fiume in 1919. Earlier, D'Annunzio had worked with Giovanni Pastrone in his colossal epic Cabiria (1914). Mussolini worked with D'Annunzio. Even so, evidence shows that the National Socialist German Workers' Party officially adopted the salute before Mussolini did, not vice versa. For example, "Triumph of Will" is in 1935 and Carmine Gallone's film "Scipione l'Africano" uses the raised-arm salute as one of its chief visual means to turn Mussolini into a new Scipio. Dr. Winkler didn't know about the original U.S. flag salute (1892) that inspired the films, and that the National Socialist German Workers' Party was inspired by the films and by the Pledge of Allegiance. The U.S. changed the salute during WWII.
Rating:
Summary: A little behind-the-scenes trivia
Review: Though "a viewer from the United Kingdom" grew "[tired] of watching the heats of the decathlon", Riefenstahl probably did not. While filming the Olympics, she had an affair with Glen Morris, the American who won the Gold in that event (and to whom I am related).
Rating: 
Summary: A Masterpiece Reduced to Junk
Review: 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.
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