Olympia

Leni Riefenstahl started something that we all take for granted nowadays when we watch sports.From the following camera in the 100 meters to slow motion action to the build up of tension(start with lesser athletes and end with the winning performance).All this is combined with some beautiful shooting of both the athletes as of the crowd together with the impressive Berlin Olympic Stadium.

OLYMPIA is not a propaganda movie like Riefenstahl's magnum opus TRIUMPH DES WILLENS but it still shows hitler and his gang plus the swastika flag several times(but hey,why is the waving swastika flag propaganda and the waving stars and stripes in SAVING PRIVATE RYAN just a flag).Anyway,it isn't so much about the nazi's,it's about the Olympics and Riefenstahl gives us a journalistic report of it.

Highlight to me(and probably to everybody)is the winning performance of Jesse Owens,one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century.

The second part of the documentary is the lesser of the two with too much emphasis on the diving,but it has got a comic sequence with the Militry.

A good documentary with high historical interest,but I would rather recommend TRIUMPH DES WILLENS.It is more shocking but it gives a better view of the nazi's. 7/10