Product Description

This limited edition 2-disc set features the complete original version of OLYMPIA, presented for the first time on DVD. (All Region, NTSC)

Special Edition DVD features: Over 5 hours of material including JUGEND DER WELT ("Youth of The World") Official Documentary of the 1936 Winter Olympics at Gaemisch-Partenkirchen, DIE KAMERA FAHRT MIT ("The Camera Goes Too") 1936 Documentary by Bavaria-Filmkunst featuring footage from Leni Rifenstahl’s films OLYMPIA and TRIUMPH OF THE WILL. Deleted Scenes, Biography, Still Gallery, German with ON/OFF English subtitles and English language, Dolby 2.0 audio, Essays by film historian David Calvert Smith, Trailer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19987 in DVD
• Brand: Olympia
• Released on: 2006-06-27
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Collector's Edition, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full length, Limited Edition, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: German, English, Spanish, Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 204 minutes

Customer Reviews

The Wonderful (cinematography) Horrible (transfer) of Olympia
Olympia is a piece of sport history coated in a magnificent art form. The superlatives aren't enough to describe this documentary; a veritable time machine traveling to an amazing and Orwellian future Valhalla called Nazi Germany.
1936 Olympiad was also well renown for the first to be broadcast on a form of television. This DVD sadly has an image quality comparable to what the citizens of Berlin saw on those twenty five large screens scattered along the City's main boulevards 70 years ago. Having seen some excerpts from "Olympia" in the documentary `The Wonderful Horrible life of Leni Riefenstahl" on DVD, I had great expectations concerning the image quality of this new release. What a disappointment! No one bothered to digitally remove the annoying scratches not mentioning the total absence of any timid tentative of restoration of a decent audio sound. Everything seems like a low resolution transfer from a cheap VHS . Let's hope that some day Criterion Collection will do this film the justice it deserves.

Classic Film / Horrible transfer
I have been waiting for Criterion to release this for 4 years now. With the technology of restoration of older films vastly improving I must say this is the worst transfer that I have seen of an older film released in the last two years. Don't spend your money on this edition and hope that Criterion will release this in our lifetime!

Be Honest
The original, as I viewed it on public television perhaps twenty years ago, was spectacular.

But the problems in this version are not just superficial and are not simply ones that some hyper-purist would notice. They include tiling, caused by extreme compression; scratches and blips galore; grey tonal quality converging on nil, and sometimes making it seem like one is looking through a duststorm; ridiculous cropping of the image, often even cutting off the heads of the subjects. The audio's flaky, too, especially noticeable in the sometimes lurching, but always tinny rendition of the orchestral scoring.

Weirdly, the package seems to have been conceived well, with nice features included. How is it possible, then, to have messed up the technical execution so badly?