Olympia

Few films have sparked as much debate as the 1938 documentary about the Berlin Olympics, directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Its political background is as widely discussed as its visual achievements. Riefenstahl had already made Triumph of the Will (1935) for the Nazi Party, and on the strength of that work she won Hitler's backing for an ambitious project to record the 1936 Berlin Games on film.

This revised edition adds material on Riefenstahl's filmmaking before Olympia and on her close ties to Hitler. Taylor Downing also presents newly available evidence that the film was ordered directly by Hitler and paid for through Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda. This contradicts Riefenstahl's later account that the Olympic authorities had commissioned it independently of the Nazi state. The author was granted access to a new restoration of the original version, made by the International Olympic Committee.