A classic

A couple of days ago, I already saw ‘Olympia 1. Teil - Fest der Völker’ and I was quite eager to see this second part. Well, after a rather weird slightly homo-erotic intro, fairly quickly, they went back to the Olympics and, in contrary to the previous chapter which focused only on track and field sports, this 2^nd movie was much varied as it displayed all kinds of sports. Unfortunately, it did make the whole thing much more random and it didn’t help either that they focused on some rather obscure sports. It was also weird that all the competitions displayed were involving only male athletes. Indeed, it was only towards the end that they focused on the female diving competition but it was the only sport events involving some women. I thought it was also a missed opportunity that they did not end with something more spectacular but, eventually, it was rather short and quite anti-climactic. It didn’t help that the ending ceremony was included for some reason in the previous movie which, in my opinion, didn’t really make sense. Eventually, as far as I was concerned, I think it would have worked better to combine the two movies and cut it into a 3 hour long movie instead. On the propaganda side, it was much lighter this time around, above all since you didn’t get to see Adolf’s ugly face, but it was still really odd, awkward and even distressing to see some Nazi soldiers in full uniform taking part in some of the competitions. Anyway, some scenes in this movie were just mesmerizing to behold (the diving competition is rightly fully considered a classic sequence) and I don’t think I will ever get enough of watching such incredibly majestic athletes in slow-motion. To conclude, this film definitely deserves its stellar reputation and it is absolutely worth a look, especially if you are interested in such historical features.