Olympia. [Part I]

Part one from Leni Riefenstahl’s “Olympia”, a record of the Berlin Games of 1936 and an elegy on the youth of 1936, dedicated to the highest ideals of sportsmanship. Riefenstahl picked a crew of 100 cameramen who shot over a million feet of film which she worked on for 18 months, selecting shots for their beauty rather than for a documentary record. The film focuses essentially on the main stadium track and field events with emphasis on the brute physical competitiveness between the athletes. For Part two of this film see Title Code 507315.