Olympic flames, Olympic films: ancient Greece and international peace at London 1948

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay offers a comparative analysis of the reception of ancient Greece at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the 1948 London Olympics. Focusing specifically on the respective Games’ torch relays and official films, it explores the ways that the contrasting messages of the 1936 and 1948 Games as a whole were advanced through symbolic engagement with Greek antiquity. In 1936, the torch relay and the subsequent film (Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia) invoked Greek antiquity in the service of zealous nationalism, positioning Nazi Germany as the living embodiment of the glorious legacy of ancient Greece. In 1948, on the other hand, the relay and film (Castleton Knight’s XIVth Olympiad: The Glory of Sport) portrayed ancient Greece as a benign example from the distant past toward which all modern-day nations could turn for inspiration in dealing with each other in peace. Ultimately, what makes this 1948 attempt to pacify Nazi Germany’s 1936 Olympic Hellenism even more interesting is that it was only partially successful: although London 1948 stripped away the spirit of Nazism from certain classicised elements of Berlin 1936, there also remained an unsettling coherence between the Olympic messaging of pre-war Germany and post-war Britain.