The White Stadium

Titled The White Stadium (Das Weisse Stadion), the film of the II Olympic Winter Games St. Moritz 1928 in Switzerland holds particular interest because it was directed by Arnold Fanck, a geologist turned filmmaker known for his sumptuous outdoor cinematography and notorious for discovering the acting talent of Leni Riefenstahl. Fanck had an aesthete’s eye for filming natural landscapes, and the first twenty-five minutes of The White Stadium dwell on the beauty of the Engadine region; each image, whether of a lake or snow-clad woods, is evocative in itself.