DESIGNER UNKNOWN OLYMPIA. 1938. 49 1/2x37 inches, 125 1/2x94 cm. A. Haase. Condition B+: vertical and horizontal folds; minor tears and staining at edges; minor loss in image. Paper. One of only two known copies of this poster, the other in German.
Leni Riefenstahl's two most important films were Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938). The latter was her filming of the 1936 Berlin Olympics and contains two parts, Festival of Nations>M> and Festival of Beauty. This poster is advertising Part I.
"Riefenstahl was put in charge of filming the 1936 Berlin Olympics, no minor undertaking. For Olympia she had to manage a total crew of 60 cinematographers. Three different types of black-and-white film stock--Agfa (architectural shots), Kodak (portraits), Perutz (fields, grass)--were used to shoot over 1.3 million feet of film (400,000 meters, over 248 miles). In the process, Riefenstahl invented or enhanced many of the sports photography techniques we now take for granted: slow motion, underwater diving shots, extremely high (from towers) and low shooting angles (from pits), panoramic aerial shots, and tracking systems for following fast action. The result is considered a classic cinematic masterpiece. Olympia premiered at Berlin's UFA Palast am Zoo cinema on Hitler's birthday, April 20, 1938." [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/lriefenstahl.html]
The film begins with a Paean to the founders of the Olympic Games, the Ancient Greeks. It starts with "a shot of the Acropolis and then the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Then on to sculptures (various ones) and finally the discus thrower / This image dissolves into a shot of a contemporary German athlete." (Propaganda and the German Cinema, by David Welch, p. 95. I. B. Tauris, London, 2001).
The poster depicts an image of the Greek statue by Myron, considered one of the greatest Greek sculptors, and the statue itself is considered one of his masterpieces. The original statue was lost to time, but a Roman copy remains and has come to embody all the grace, beauty, harmony and balance of the ancient world. Many consider it to represent the perfect athletic form. As such, Myron's discobolus was a powerful political tool for the Aryan propaganda machine.
The perfection of the ideal human form was so important to Hitler and his philosophy of the Aryan superman that he negotiated to buy the statue from Italy in 1938. "The divine Discobolus by Myron . . . the epitome of grace and anticipatory release, and the culmination of all that sexy Greek art about athletes. 'Noble simplicity and quiet grandeur,' as the historian Winckelmann put it. For Hitler, this meant Teutonic, and it became Riefenstahl's model." (NYT Magazine 3/11/2007 p. 138)
The image of a discus-thrower also appears on the cover of Riefenstahl's photobook on the Olympic Games.
