Joseph Garncarz
Olympia ­ Teil 1: Fest der Völker, Teil 2: Fest der Schönheit (Olympia ­ Part 1: Festival of the
Nations, Part 2: Festival of Beauty, Leni Riefenstahl, 1938)
The XIth Olympic Games of 1936 in Berlin were a media event. For the first time the Olympic
Games were broadcast on the radio internationally, with live comments by 105 reporters. It was
also the first time that TV participated: the moving images were transmitted live to 28 public TV
rooms in Berlin, Potsdam and Leipzig, for around 160,000 spectators. However, film was still the
dominant medium for moving images at the time, with approximately 33,000 cinemas in Europe
alone.
Before 1936, most reports on the Olympic Games in the form of moving images were
integrated into newsreels, but in 1936, a feature-length, two-part documentary film was made:
Olympia, directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Olympia cost 2,8 million Reichsmark, which was eleven
times the average budget of a German production of the time. With an enormous investment in
labour and logistics, 240 hours of film were shot, mostly during the 16 days of the Olympic
Games, and it took 1 1/2 years of post-production to assemble the 217 minutes of the finished
film.
Olympia was realised upon Adolf Hitler's personal request, financed with public funds
and produced by the Olympiade-Film GmbH, which was founded in 1935 to cover up the Naziregime's
backing. Hitler allowed Riefenstahl total artistic and organisational control, which
already during shooting she exploited for her self-presentation as artistic genius. She suggested
that the film should premiere on Hitler's birthday, 20 April 1938, in Berlin; subsequently, it was
distributed in Germany through 120 copies, a very large number at the time. Riefenstahl had
established herself with the Nazi regime through her films of the Parteitage der NSDAP
(`conventions of the Nazi party'). Especially Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will, 1935) on
the convention of 1934 in Nuremberg demonstrated that she knew how to film a political mass
event in accordance with the regime's concepts and aims.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had chosen Germany as site for the XIth
Olympic Games in 1931. The Nazis, who came to power in 1933, passed more than 50 laws that
eliminated Jews from Germany's public sphere, before the systematic genocide was begun in
1941. Hitler recognised the Olympic Games as an opportunity to `raise foreign currency as well
as our international standing' (Picker 1993: 305). At the Olympic Games Nazi Germany
presented itself as a cosmopolitan and peaceful country, e.g. some Jewish-German athletes were
allowed to participate, and anti-Semitic propaganda temporarily disappeared from public view.
Victor Klemperer, a professor for Romanic languages and literature, who had lost his position at
the Technische Hochschule Dresden due to his Jewish background, recorded in his diary on 13
August 1936: `[T]he silver medal in fencing that went to Germany was won by a Jew, Helene
Mayer (I do not know where the greater shamelessness lies: in her appearance as a German of the
Third Reich or in the exploitation of her achievement by the Third Reich). ... Nazi chants are
forbidden (for the duration of the [games of the] Olympiad) and agitation against Jews,
warmongering, everything offensive has disappeared from the newspapers until 16 August; but
also until that day, everywhere, day and night, swastika-flags are hissed. In articles written in
English it is endlessly pointed out to "our guests" how peaceful and joyous our country is, while
in Spain "communist hordes" commit robbery and manslaughter.' (Klemperer 1999: 122-3).
For the Nazis the Olympic Games of 1936 were a major political event. A film of the
Olympic Games that explicitly transported the Nazi's ideology by glorifying the `Aryan race' as
superior to others would have been detrimental to the aims described above. Instead, the film's
propagandist function would be furthered by depicting athletes of all nations and ethnicities in a
free and fair contest. And the more this was elaborated aesthetically, the more culturally civilized
the `new Germany' would look, and the more prestige it would acquire.
In Germany, Olympia became the second most successful film of the 1937/38 season (the
top hit was the comedy Der Mustergatte [Model Husband, 1937], with one of Germany's top
stars, Heinz Rühmann). Olympia was banned in the USA and GB for reasons external to the film,
after the so-called Reichskristallnacht on 9 November 1938, when the Nazis destroyed
Synagogues, robbed Jewish shops and murdered many Jews. However, in the countries in which
the film was shown, it was seen by large audiences and favourably received by many critics. In
the foreign market it made more money than all German films of 1938 in total. International
critics celebrated it as a `masterpiece' and as the greatest sports film of all time (Trimborn 2002:
267). It won many international awards - in Fascist countries such as Italy (Coppa Mussolini at
the Venice film festival) as well as democratic countries such as Sweden (Polar Prize). How can
this international success of a film that was financed by the Nazis and that celebrated an event
that was of great political significance be explained?
Concerning the basic understanding of documentary filmmaking, Olympia does not
significantly differ from other documentary films of the 1920s and 1930s. Like Robert Flaherty
with his films Nanook of the North (1922) and Man of Aran (1934), Riefenstahl was not a
distanced observer, but a creative constructor of reality. `Legitimate' devices included staging of
events as well as post-produced sound. For example, Riefenstahl used material filmed during
training for the representation of competitions, such as the shots of the rowers from the
perspective of the coxswain. With the exception of Hitler's opening speech, the film's voices and
sound effects were completely dubbed in the Berlin sound studios. Two of the best-known
German radio reporters of the day, Paul Laven and Rolf Wernicke, commentated. The music by
Herbert Windt is in a style between late romanticism and early expressionism, which dramatises
the events.
The film is formally divided into clearly separated segments. Most of the segments
present competitions of the various Olympic disciplines. Others visualise concepts, such as the
prologue of Part One on the origin of the Olympic idea and the apotheosis of Part Two on the
beauty of athletic achievement. The film only presents a selection of the official 19 sports and
119 disciplines. Significantly, this selection is not based on representing the countries according
to their rank in the medals table. Germany was the top-ranking country, followed by the USA,
Hungary, Italy, Finland, France, Sweden, Japan, the Netherlands and the UK. The selection is
based on the principles of showing the `classic' disciplines, e.g. the 100-metre-sprint, the
marathon and the decathlon, as well as those disciplines that particularly display the beauty of
athletic bodies. The order does not follow the chronology of the Olympic Games, but is an
arrangement according to aesthetic and dramatic principles.
The aesthetic innovations of the film can be more fully understood by comparing it with
previous newsreel reports. Newsreels only showed a selection of competitions in static shots,
because there was no material available with which to represent the drama of the events. The
main reason for this was that before 1936 only a few cameras were allowed on the site of the
Olympic Games, and their positions were strictly regulated. According to the official report on
the Olympic Games of 1932 in Los Angeles, only `[f]our News Reel concerns were permitted to
have one motion picture camera each on the fields or platforms of the various Stadiums where
competitions were being held. Inasmuch as most of the motion picture film was taken in sound,
and the necessary equipment could not easily be moved from place to place, these pictures were
mainly taken from fixed positions agreed upon in advance of the Games.' (Xth Olympiad
Committee of the Games of Los Angeles 1933: 172).
In contrast to the feature-film on the Olympic Games of 1936, which was shown 1 1/2
years after they ended, the newsreel films reported on the events contemporaneously. However,
on the order of the Ministry of Propaganda, the newsreel companies accredited for the Olympic
Games, Ufa, Tobis-Melo and Fox, were supervised by Riefenstahl - and of course she privileged
her own camera-team in the competition for the best positions. Riefenstahl did everything to
obtain a myriad of extraordinary images. She shot almost all of the scenes without sound so that
she could use light, mobile cameras. She demanded the development of new devices, e.g. a
camera on tracks for parallel movements along with athletes, a tiny hand-camera for shots from
the perspective of athletes, and an extreme telephoto lens for unobtrusive filming of athletes and
spectators. Furthermore, Riefenstahl chose a multitude of highly unusual camera positions, for
which she often fought bitterly with the IOC and the local organizational committee. She used
steel towers, cranes, captive balloons, and zeppelins for shots from above, and trenches were dug
for shots from below. Last but not least she employed dozens of cameramen. There were six head
cameramen, Hans Ertl, Walter Frentz, Guzzi Lantschner, Kurt Neubert, Hans Scheib and Willy
Zielke, and at least 38 cameramen (as far as are known by name) working under them.
Riefenstahl perfected the efficiency of the team by delegating specific tasks to each division: Ertl
was the specialist for underwater shots, Frentz and Lantschner for the hand-camera, Neubert for
slow-motion shots, and Scheib for telephoto shots; Zielke filmed and edited the prologue.
Thus, Riefenstahl obtained many types of images that were new to the audience then ­ but
that have become common in TV sports reports today. Such images include the faces of athletes
before the competition, close-ups of the competitions themselves, travelling shots parallel to
runners, circling shots around discus-throwers, underwater shots of divers, the cheering audience
and overhead-shots of the stadium.
But these unusual images were only the material on which the even greater aesthetic
innovations of Olympia were based: Riefenstahl created an experience of presence for the film
audience, which was previously reserved for live audiences of the Olympic Games. In contrast to
the newsreel-reports, which focused on results, Riefenstahľs film was process-oriented, in order
to recreate the drama of the competitions. Thus, even when the results of the competitions were
already known, the spectator could become emotionally involved in the events. For this purpose,
Riefenstahl used techniques established in narrative, fictional films to promote identification with
athletes and build suspense. The 100-metre-sprint may serve as an example. Three qualifying
runs and the final run are shown. From the beginning, suspense is built by the comment that `the
USA's fastest runner, Jesse Owens' is among the athletes. We see him achieve a world record in
a qualifying run, but it is revoked because of tailwind. The emotional involvement is promoted
through shots of the concentrated and nervous faces of the athletes, whose names and
nationalities are stated. We see the phase of preparation, the signal-giver, the athletes on their
marks, but also failures such as a false start ­ and then the climactic final run.
Riefenstahl not only dramatised the sports events, but also idealised the Olympic Games
as a `Festival of the Nations' and a `Festival of Beauty' (the subtitles of the two parts). In
contrast to the fictional films of the Third Reich, in documentaries, including Olympia, swastikaflags,
the political leaders, especially Hitler, and Germans giving the Hitler-salute are shown. In
contrast to Triumph des Willens, in which Hitler is idealised as a `saviour', in Olympia he mostly
appears as an individual who freely expresses his emotions. Hitler is shown as an easygoing,
average sports-fan, who cheers the Germans' successes and is disappointed in their failures ­ an
image connoting Mitmensch (`fellow human being') rather than Übermensch (`super-human').
Some sequences do not deal with the competitions between nations, but stress the
commonalities of the athletes, e.g. the morning training at the beginning or the apotheosis at the
end of Part Two, which shows divers without mention of national origins or results. The divers
seem to transcend gravity when their feats are composed into movement-images in the style of
`abstract films'. Such images do not convey competition, but the beauty of athletic prowess for
its own sake. Riefenstahľs depictions of athletic, strong and beautiful bodies may be fascist in
their context, even though they were common before and beyond the Third Reich. The
functionalisation of these `body aesthetics' for fascist ideology is a frame of reference not made
explicit in the film and therefore dependent on the spectator ­ thus, these aesthetics could also be
appreciated by others with a different frame of reference. Whereas Riefenstahľs technical
innovations and semi-fictional devices had a lasting, international influence on sports reporting,
this was not the case for her distinctive aestheticisation of the body inspired by abstract film.
To enable the film's success in as many foreign countries as possible, several versions in
different languages - French, English and Italian - were produced. The German version was not
only shown in German-speaking countries, but also exported to countries speaking none of the
other languages. Only the Italian version was produced in the Cinecitt studios in Rome; the
other versions were made in Berlin.
Furthermore, the different versions were not just linguistic translations: the presentation
of the Olympic Games was `nationaliseď for different contexts. Mostly, the same film material
was used, but significant replacements and additions were made. In newsreels produced by the
different countries themselves, orientation towards local preferences had always been the rule:
they predominantly reported on the athletes of their own country, favourite sports etc. Such
variations had usually been the result of different producers, but for the Olympic Games of 1936
total control over the different versions lay in the hand of one person - Riefenstahl.
For several years after the introduction of sound in 1929, the production of `multiple
language versions' (separate films with more or less the same story, but with local actors,
sometimes different settings etc.) was a common and successful practice for exporting fictional
films, because it made domestic productions more understandable, culturally acceptable and
popular abroad. Smaller countries subtitled films, but several larger countries - e.g. Germany,
France, GB, Italy and Spain - produced versions, which was more expensive and only
economically viable for large markets. For example, since national audiences of the time
favoured their own stars, using local actors made these versions much more popular than dubbing
would have. Similarly, the export versions of Olympia employed the sports reporters of the
respective target countries as voice-over commentators. The reporters also appear on-screen: they
are shown commenting in actual presence at the Olympic Games, which gives the `nationaliseď
reports a feel of authenticity.
The export versions partly show different events and partly show the same events
differently. Competitions won by the target country were given priority in the respective export
version. For example, a sailing regatta and a fencing match that the Italians won is shown in the
Italian, but not the German version. The Anglo-American version does not include fencing at all,
because neither the British nor the Americans won any medals in that sport. Disciplines
especially favoured by certain countries are shown only in the versions made for them, e.g.
wrestling in Greco-Roman style is only included in the Italian version. Athletes who did not win
any medals are usually only shown in the version for their country of origin.
However, the nationalisation of the versions never went so far as to contradict the
internationality of the Olympic idea. On the contrary: the versions all present their local athletes
more prominently than the other versions do, but all of them have in common that the American
athletes Jesse Owens and Glenn Morris are featured as the top stars, because they won the most
medals. For example, Glenn Morris' triumph at the decathlon is elaborately presented as a
dramatic individual struggle against his countrymen Bob Clark and Jack Parker. Furthermore,
Afro-American Jesse Owens is given `star treatmenť in the presentation of the 100-metre-sprint,
in which he won the gold medal. From the 19 competitions, Riefenstahl selected four, among
them all three in which Owens participated. She shows the events not in chronological order, but
in a dramatic progression, suggesting that Owens steadily improved with every event. Not only is
his status as favourite emphasised verbally from the beginning, he is also portrayed in a higher
number of close-ups than any of the other runners. The only event without Owens that is shown
is the one in which a German, Erich Borchmeyer, qualified (he came in fifth in the final, a fact
the film does not mention). Compared to the film, even when taking into consideration its racist
remarks, the local German radio reports much more blatantly portrayed the 100-metre-sprint as a
fight between races (black vs. white) and worlds (USA vs. Europe) (Radio report on the 100metre-sprint,
3 August 1938).
How successful this international marketing strategy of Olympia was can be demonstrated
by the reactions of Luxemburg critic Evy Friedrich in the daily newspaper Escher Tageblatt
(Lesch 2002: 127). At first (17 June 1938) he vehemently complains about the second part of the
German version: `[S]everal sports are completely missing, including bicycling, wrestling and
heavy athletics. That is all the more deplorable, because France is not given the opportunity to
show its achievements. Thus, we must observe what we did not believe was the case a week ago
in first part, that a certain tendency was smuggled into the film, namely the clear tendency to
present Germany once again as the best and strongest country, at least of Europe' ­ which it was,
at least in the medals table. One month later (15 July 1938) Friedrich changed his opinion: `Some
time ago we observed here that in the two Olympia-films all the competitions that the French
won were missing. That was true for the original German version. But recently, first in Brussels,
then in Paris, the French version, called Les dieux du stade, was shown. Behold: in this version,
not made for Germany, all the competitions that the French won are included.' Friedrich goes on
to recommend that the Luxemburg exhibitors should show only the French version.
Riefenstahľs Olympia is propagandistic in a manner that is frequently underestimated especially
by the critical theorists of the 1960s and 1970s, who criticised their parent generation
for their role in Nazism and rejected all films of the Third Reich as symbolic representations of
Fascism. No matter how one interprets and judges Olympia regarding Nazi ideology, the film's
two main aims were to `raise foreign currency as well as our international standing' (as Hitler put
it). To achieve this, Riefenstahl adapted two strategies from fictional films for her documentary.
Firstly, she developed aesthetic devices that were innovative, compared to prior filmic reports of
the Olympic Games, and that gave spectators the feeling of being present at the dramatic events
by involving them emotionally. Secondly, export versions catering to the preferences of the
target countries were produced, which nationalised the presentation of the Olympic Games, but
also represented the Olympic idea of a fair international contest. Since Olympia earned more
money on foreign markets than all other German films of 1938 put together, Riefenstahl clearly
reached the first aim. Whether the film also achieved its second aim, i.e. to internationally
disseminate an image of the XIth Olympic Games that made Nazi Germany look like a
cosmopolitan and peaceful country, is more difficult to estimate. The `success' of the film in this
respect depended on contemporary spectators, and thus varied with different contexts and
individuals. While the film probably did not change Germany's image with spectators who knew
what was happening in Germany and were opposed to Fascism, spectators who were oblivious of
Nazi politics may have come to believe that all was well in the state of Germany.
Translation by Annemone Ligensa
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