"Olympia" is by no means to be an enlarged news-reel but, as its {producer declares, is a picture to portray "the drama'of youth and its athletic prowess" at the 1936 Olympic Games.
Accordingly the picture is not a chronological "review of the Berlin games, Fade-outs and blending alternates with straight cuts, close-ups, and "candid camera" shots. In the sound department straight news reporting on the events alternates with natural as well as artistic sound effects and music, By and large, Leni Riefenstahl has employed in the making of "Olympia" the same principles she followed in the production of the various pictures on the Nuremberg rallies of the National Socialist Party.
Section One of "Olympia" starts out with pictures of ancient Greece. Acropolis, the' Parthenon, and other ancient edifices and temples are shown, each blending until finally the famous discus thrower of Myron appears on the screen gradually to fade over into a live modern athlets young officers of the Reich's armed forces undergoing military training at the ancient Doeberitz drilling ground. These pictures show the village at dawn shrouded in morning mists, the village stork, supplied at the time upon request by British athletes, solemnly strutting about at the edge of his artificial pond. Allegorical note for this overture to Section Two is provided by the chirping of thrushes and other song-birds chasing inadvertent worms for an early breakfast. Then follow cuts of the daily life and routine of the occupants of the village and shots from all the side-shows—swimming, rowing, the military, modern Pentathlon, boxing, wrestling, target-shooting, etc.—as well as of the Decathlon and the Marathon.
During the height of the shooting for "Olympia," Leni Riefenstahl's staff consisted of 40 cameramen selected from the country's best, 60 assistant cameramen, and over 10 handy men. The entire staff was "garrisoned" in a special encampment with a special police squad attached to the army of cameramen to assure of unmolested passage to all the "lots" where pictures for "Olympia" were being taken and Leni, in her traditional floating, white smock and bareheaded was an omi-present figure.
For the past twelve months, her laboratory staff claims, she wi closeted for twelve and fourteen hours per day in her tiny office sifting, re-sifting, and cutting from the maze of 400,000 metres of film the one-and-one-half per cent. of length that was to go into her picture-United Press. in the same pose, Next follow Greek statues of women. They, too, eventually blend over into a live girl who in turn fades over into a lambent flame, the "Olympic Flame" from which the torch is lit that then is carried by relay runners from Greece to Berlin to kindle the Olympic flame at the Berlin Stadium. Miss Riefenstahl
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.