The Boys of '36

The 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin provide a setting for several enthralling historical narratives. Perhaps best known is the story of how Adolf Hitler's scheme for demonstrating Aryan supremacy in sports was spoiled by the victories of Jesse Owens (the winner of four gold medals in track and field) and other African Americans—a story highlighted by two other films in 2016: the biopic Race, about Owens, and the documentary Olympic Pride, American Prejudice, about the group of eighteen black Olympians who together won fourteen medals for the United States. Also well known is how the German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, in her two-part documentary Olympia (1938), perfected several cinematic techniques (such as slow-motion sequences, tracking shots, unusual camera angles, and underwater filming) that have since become standard for shooting competitive sports. The 1936 Olympic Games were also the first to include a torch relay from Mount Olympus in Greece, the first to be televised (to theaters in Berlin), and the last to take place until 1948 (due to the intervening years of World War II

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