Product Description

Studio: A&e Home Video Release Date: 06/29/2004 Run time: 137 minutes Rating: Nr

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #60028 in DVD
• Brand: A&E
• Released on: 2004-06-29
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 137 minutes

Amazon.com
The First Olympics: Blood, Honor, and Glory includes three exciting History Channel documentaries about ancient roots of the Olympics in fact and myth. Curiously, the first two films, "The First Olympics" and "Blood and Honor at the First Olympics," are essentially the same, with slightly different narration, editing, and chapter titles. Of the two, "Blood and Honor" is a little more streamlined and is voiced by Leonard Nimoy, but the material is compelling enough to check out both works over time. Among other things, one learns that the first Olympians competed in the nude for all sports, that winning was everything and penalties for fouls and bribes were severe, and that there has been an Olympics committee--and Olympics competition every four years--since 776 B.C. "The Greek Gods" is a fine supplemental work introducing us to Zeus, in whose honor the Olympics were born, and the other divinities on Mt. Olympus. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Run, repeat, run, repeat
This trio of films from the History Channel is impressive in scope, but disappointing in that much repetition of both narration and video footage can be found among the presentations. In fact, the second program completely repeats the first program in the last part, with the exact same visuals and narration, with the only difference being that the same narration was re-recorded by Leonard Nimoy.

I was impressed that the nudity of the Olympics was discussed, and that art depicting such nudity was not censored. However, in live footage depicting silhouetted actors, it's still evident that they are not nude, but still wearing some sort of clothing. Did I expect full frontal nudity? No. But I did expect a better depiction to suggest that the characters being portrayed were nude at least to the camera's eye, just as in regular movies an actor might wear a nylon body suit that makes him/her to at least appear nude. This would have added to the authenticity.

I appreciated it being discussed that homosexuality was no big deal in Ancient Greece. In fact (Pauline Christians take note), the Greeks didn't even have words for homosexuality or heterosexuality, as such polarized concepts of sexuality would not exist for several more hundred years -- folks in those days were just considered sexual, period.

The best installment of this trio is the final program concerning the gods and goddesses of Mt. Olympus. Here, the soap opera of the gods is revealed for what it was; such treatment is common to the myths of any religion, but it's also noted that ancient Greeks took their gods very seriously, as any religionist might today.

All in all, this is a good representation, but could have been improved by having unique content (instead of much repetition), and (when used) better live action sequences.

Review from Oz
A compilation of three documentaries "The First Olympics", "Blood and Honour at The First Olympics" and "The Greek Gods". It consists mainly of the same archival film footage used over and over again in "The Real Olympics", "The Games for The Gods" and "The Ancient Greek Olympics" with different narration and contradictory "facts" gleaned from a few historical writings and some Greek Pottery and then integrated with an enormous amount of hypothetical supposition and personal opinions from so-called "experts".
I quote "expert" Ann Stewart (Professor College Year in Athens) "The important thing for a man to do was marry a virgin and produce children. The only way to keep virgins was the practise of homosexuality, and so it was encouraged." That's great. It leaves us with a mental picture of young Adonis screwing his friend so that he can keep little Aphrodite for a rainy day. And of course his friend obligingly "rolls over" and lets him because "Well that's what friends do for each other. Don't they?".
I thought I must have reached the bottom of the bucket with this little spark of absurdity, however from there on in it's downhill all the way with such little gems as " Women had to be "tamed" for marriage, and the best way women could be "tamed" was to show them naked athletes". And it just goes on and on.
The actual film footage is quite good but this is not a disk to buy.