Leni Riefenstahl and Olympia

Leni Riefenstahl’s four-hour film Olympia deals with the major propaganda achievement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s: the Eleventh Olympic Games held in Berlin in 1936. Cooper Graham has scrutinized the history of the film and shows that it was deeply involved with the regime, both in its stages of production and in its later distribution. He also argues that the film can be regarded as a masterpiece of propaganda and, further, that virtually any work of this nature is bound to have a propaganda effect, whether intended or not. The author relates the film’s subsequent history against the background of the worsening political situation in Europe. The events leading up to World War II were to have a profound effect on the future of the film.