10 great movies about the Olympic Games, from Margot Robbie in I, Tonya to Chariots of Fire, Cool Runnings and Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda
- Our picks tell stories of pure sportsmanship – think Jesse Owens in Berlin – politics, with the Black Power salutes in 1968, and scandal (hello, Tonya Harding)
- There are highs and lows, from Kon Ichikawa’s record of the first Tokyo games and Robert Redford’s hot-headed downhill skier to Munich 1972 and Black September
With the Summer Games of the XXXII Olympiad under way in Tokyo, Japan, we take a look at some of the many instances when the sporting contest has featured in movies.
The Games’ motto is Citius, Altius, Fortius, or “Faster, Higher, Stronger”, and they have provided rich material for compelling historical documentaries and fictional feature films.
These are 10 of our favourites, in chronological order, if you can’t get enough of the Olympic spirit.
Olympia 1 – Festival of Nations / Olympia 2 – Festival of Beauty (1938)
The first official Olympics documentary of its kind, the two-part Olympia chronicles the 1936 Berlin Games and offers an extraordinary testament to the physical accomplishments of the human body.
Directed by Leni Riefenstahl, perhaps history’s most notorious propaganda filmmaker, the film shows Adolf Hitler’s efforts to use the Olympiad to promote his Nazi agenda.
As in her earlier, equally controversial film Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl employs innovative filmmaking – mobilising her multiple cameras using rails, hot air balloons and flotation devices, and employing underwater photography – that transcends Olympia’s political trappings and elevates film as an art form to technological heights that were unprecedented at the time.
Tokyo Olympiad (1965)
For the 18th Olympiad, the summer games came to Asia for the first time. Japan was eager to show the world how it had evolved since the end of World War II, and put on an incredible display, captured in this mesmerising documentary by celebrated filmmaker Kon Ichikawa.
