Olympia

Hosted by Nazi Germany, the 1936 Summer Olympic games are today best remembered for the spectacular performance of African-American track star Jesse Owens. Leni Riefenstahl's legendary two-part documentary of the event opened in 1938 to enormous acclaim except in the US and England, where anti-Nazi sentiment delayed the film's general release until after WWII, although in 1940 it did enjoy a limited run in German-American urban neighborhoods.

Part I of OLYMPIA ("Festival of the People") begins in fog, which dissolves to reveal the artistic marvels of ancient Greece: friezes, pillars, statuary, the Parthenon, etc. All is beautifully photographed and edited in a s...