Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations (1938)
Olympia - Fest der Völker
Documentary • 3h 21m
Director: Leni Riefenstahl
Cast: David Albritton, Arvo Askola, Jack Beresford, Erwin Blask, Sulo Bärlund, Ibolya Csák, Henri de Baillet-Latour, Philip Edwards, Donald Finlay, Tilly Fleischer, Wilhelm Frick, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Ernest Harper, Karl Hein, Heinz Herman, Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler, Volmari Iso-Hollo, Cornelius Johnson, Matti Järvinen, Elfriede Kaun, King Umberto II, Kalevi Kotkas, Gustaf Alfons Koutonen, Luise Krüger, Maria Kwasniewska, Theodor Lewald, Luz Long, Spiridon Louis, John Lovelock, Gisela Mauermayer, Earle Meadows, Ralph Metcalfe, Paula Mollenhauer, Väinö Muinonen, Seung-yong Nam, Henri Nannen, Yrjö Nikkanen, Shûhei Nishida, Paavo Nurmi, Dorothy Odam, Martinus Osendarp, Jesse Owens, Leni Riefenstahl, Mack Robinson, Ilmari Salminen, Julius Schaub, Kee-chung Sohn, Julius Streicher, Gerhard Stöck, Naoto Tajima, Erkki Tamila, Kalervo Toivonen, Forrest Towns, Werner von Blomberg, August von Mackensen, Hans von Tschammer und Osten, Hans Woellke, Sueo Ôe
Best English-friendly release · updated 1 year ago
Overview
Commissioned to make a propaganda film about the 1936 Olympic Games in Germany, director Leni Riefenstahl created a celebration of the human form. This first half of her two-part film opens with a renowned introduction that compares modern Olympians to classical Greek heroes, then goes on to provide thrilling in-the-moment coverage of some of the games' most celebrated moments, including African-American athlete Jesse Owens winning a then-unprecedented four gold medals.
Sources: DVDBeaver (opens in a new tab)
The Kino Lorber Blu-ray, while being a new 4K restoration from Bundesarchiv, has aggressive grain management and black crush see caps
Director: Steve James
Director: Joel Coen
Director's Cut: Disappointing UK StudioCanal/US Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: LaserDisc or 2001 UK Universal DVD
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=21782879#post21782879 - comparison. StudioCanal is a massive improvement to the Criterion but still flawed in some areas (chroma noise)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Criterion 4K Blu-ray poor compression, otherwise Second Sight has best Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
> BFI 4K Blu-ray. caps Criterion presents the master as originally graded in SDR whereas FiM added HDR / Dolby Vision for the BFI.
Criterion 4K Blu-ray's audio mix has more detail than BFI’s and same applies to the subtitles, covering both English and France spoken word
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Director: Terrence Malick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Lovely underlying remaster by Criterion and Resillion but encode is sadly low-pass filtered by Pixelogic, and even then, the encode is still less than ideal. Still easily obliterates any prior disc release, but certainly wouldn't hurt to have a UK or German label take a crack at this same master.
Director: Anthony Mann
Criterion 4K Blu-ray, Universal 2008 DVD
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
2008 Universal DVD mono
The mono on the Criterion is severely filtered resulting in it sounding incredibly muffled. It is nearly as filtered as the 2003 original Universal DVD which had extreme filtering and sounds horribly thin. The 2008 DVD remaster and original Laserdisc analog mastering are mostly left alone. The original LD master is from a worn element but otherwise sounds very natural. The 2008 DVD is the highest quality version we have without the heavy filtering and the defects of the LD master. It isn't perfect but easily the best of the main four sources by a dramatic margin.
The existing 4K SDR restoration looks excellent, but the Criterion extras are limited and disappointing. The classic Stewart interview commentary from the LD is ported over but given a new mastering. Compared to past releases it has been very slightly noise reduced.
More Documentary on Blu-ray
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has excellent master in SDR and a good encode. BD caps here.
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor audio: The 2.0 is fine but unremarkable, the 5.1 is presumably an upmix with a botched, strongly raised LFE channel which makes the entire track unlistenable on well-tuned equipment. Audio graphs here.
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
While it's included on both Criterion The Palm Beach Story extras and Arrow's Sullivan's Travels' extras, Criterion uses a different source and is vastly superior, see caps
Director: Ebrahim Golestan
Director: Ebrahim Golestan
Edit history
No edit history available
Maintained by the community
· last reviewed 1 year ago
Every recommendation follows the same method — how these calls are made.