OLYMPIA: PART 1

             Olympia: Part 1, [1] or Fest der Völker, was directed by Leni Riefenstahl and is a documentary about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, commissioned by the Olympic Committee. This is a very beautiful film that portrays the human body through the motion of athletes during events like the marathon, men’s diving, and Jesse Owens’s sprint races. This film has been criticized as really a form of Nazi propaganda; it was certainly shunned in Hollywood. Such speculation was verified by Adolf Hitler’s look of amazement as Jesse Owens wins four Gold Metals - until then, an unprecedented feat. Propaganda was central to Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic. The head of Hitler’s propaganda campaign, Joseph Goebbels, spread the doctrine of Aryan superiority and anti-Semitism. All the arguments of anti-Semitism were actually legitimized by the scientific community’s enthusiasm for the study of eugenics, even though technically eugenics began in the United States and was adopted by German thinkers as a strategy to validate their theories [2] . The question is: how can you tell this film is about eugenics?

One sign is the way Riefenstahl glorified the young male body through the players’ athletic prowess. The first segment of the film consists of shots of Athens and the Greek gods – all of which are examples of “perfect beings.” We then see the silhouette of a man throwing discs and spears. He appears to be what eugenicists might call the “perfect specimen of a man.” When we see the stadium for the first time, there is a huge amount of support for Hitler. The entire stadium applauds when the swastika is held high. The man who lights the torch is extremely Aryan, meaning tall, fit and blonde. All these elements may seem obvious because the games took place in Berlin; however, it is apparent that Riefenstahl chose to point out the pro-Nazi support in the first twenty minutes of the film, to present the idea of Nazi superiority in 1936. Riefenstahl tends to focus carefully on the movement of the athletes’ bodies and their physical appearance. For example, during the discus competition, the male winner is obviously the fittest of all his competitors. The winner of women’s discus is not only incredibly fit but also tall with blonde hair. She would be considered the ideal Aryan woman. Riefenstahl does not fail to show Hitler’s happy reaction when the German shot-put competitor wins the gold medal.

            “Motion pictures first made it possible to display the beauty of bodily action. The desire to depict the poetry and science of motion contributed to the development of cinema, while the use of film helped reshape modern beauty in terms of physiology, not anatomy, as active function, not just static form.” [3] Riefenstahl was a pioneer in beautifying motion, which is why Olympia is described as “an amazing display of propaganda and cinematography…the events are shown without any of the sappy human interest stories that bog down contemporary coverage of the Olympics.” [4] In the long-jump competition, Riefenstahl shoots many of the jumps in slow motion – to heighten the viewer’s perception of the athletes and make the sport look even more beautiful. Today, when we watch the Olympics, the races are so fast that we do not, as viewers, get a good look at the individual athletes. This film makes each athlete stand out as an individual through the use of creative editing skills, such as showing just the shadow of the jumper.

            Leni Riefenstahl carries the stigma of being the most celebrated filmmaker of the Nazi regime, but this should not obscure her merits. She never belonged to the party and was always candid about politics. She once said: “My films are aesthetic not ideological.” She was a wholesome artist. In this movie she stood against Goebbels, who wanted Jesse Owens’ performance deleted from the film, and won. [5] The Nazi attempts in later years to eliminate anyone who did not fit the profile of the Aryan man turned out to have fatal consequences, as we all know too well. In Hitler’s manifesto, he wrote that the state “must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and can therefore pass it on, and put this into actual practice…” Two months after the Nazi’ came to power, the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Progeny was issued and it allowed for “compulsory sterilization.” [6] This film could be looked at as a warning, or foreshadow, of future events that would terrorize what Hitler would call “the unfit race.” We can see traces of racism in this film through the commentator’s introductions of the athletes. Whenever a black athlete is mentioned, the commentator calls him “the American Negro” as if that were his name. Fortunately, it does not support the eugenic idea that blackness is associated with “ugliness” or “disability.” On the contrary, the black athletes are as strong as their white competitors. It is interesting, however, to notice that racism should be so prevalent at an event supposed to be about the inclusion and acceptance of every race and culture.

            Unlike Frankenstein, this is a documentary. You can see the difference between a documentary and a major motion picture through the way the director relates the message of the film. Documentary filmmakers tend to be more direct with their information and not afraid to cause controversy. For example, in Olympia, we see a shot of Adolf Hitler cheering when the German discus player breaks the world record but shouts and screams when the American player finally wins. This is a direct hit at Hitler, who even wanted Owens’ race to be discounted. Even though Riefenstahl probably thought that showing Hitler’s reactions would make the event more interesting, this information is still truthful and not altered for cinematic effect. Another form of direct filmography is the fact that black athletes were subject to segregation and exclusion in the United States. The verity of the information given in any documentary is up to interpretation and dependent on the subject, but if we are to look at Olympia, we can safely say that it is a truthful depiction of the 1936 Olympic games in Berlin. This is especially true because Riefenstahl was hired by the Olympic Committee to film the event, whereas Michael Moore, for example, often encounters barriers during his investigation. It was Riefenstahl’s choice to focus heavily on Hitler during the games and record his reactions to the constant United States victory.

            This is a truly gorgeous film that was a breakthrough in documentary filmmaking. Even though it is considered the greatest sports documentary of all time, more important is the fact that it was the first film to focus on the prowess of the human body and make athletes look almost like dancers. It certainly promotes strong and beautiful human beings and equates beauty with fitness, something that, as will be seen, Personal Hygiene for Girls and Personal Hygiene for Boys [7] also supports.