THE breathtaking large-format film ”Olympic Glory” was shot at the 1997 Winter games in Nagano, Japan, and is essential viewing for Olympic buffs and winter sports fans.

Seeing the world’s best athletes do amazing things on the eight-story-high IMAX screen doesn’t merely dwarf the experience of watching them on TV – it may be superior to actually being at the Games in person. Most effective and dramatic are the scenes shot by the large-format camera, placed on the front of a luge as it screams down the icy chute.

And although ”Olympic Glory” also gives you samples of figure skating, hockey, snowboarding, Nordic Skiing and speed skating – including cool wipe-out shots – 40 minutes of this kind of spectacular action just isn’t enough.

But for all its stunning visual power, ”Olympic Glory” could have been far better, given the amazing photogenic possibilities of its subject and an all-star team of producers Kathleen Kennedy (”ET” and ”Jurassic Park”) and Frank Marshall (the Indiana Jones trilogy), director Kieth Merrill and writer Thomas Kenneally (who wrote the novel on which ”Schindler’s List” was based).

Purely in terms of photography, ”Olympic Glory” doesn’t reach the dramatic heights achieved by great skiing/snowboarding filmmakers like Warren Miller. And although billed as an action-adventure film, it is really a documentary, but unfortunately not the kind of documentary that gets beneath the surface of its subject or one that lets the visual glory of the games speak for itself.

Instead, ”Olympic Glory” feels like more like a long advertisement for the Games, thanks to over-the-top music and Kenneally’s bland, relentlessly corny narration – read by Stacy Keach with what sounds like a bad cold. This is filled with the usual treacly hypocritical Olympic hokum about everybody who takes part being a champion and oodles of cheesy nonsense about unquenchable flames.

Fortunately, there are large swathes of the film unblemished by voice over. But you cannot help wondering if 40 minutes of pure photography and action – or a genuine documentary that took a less shiny, happy, sappy look at Olympic competition – would not have been better than an a mix of incredible spectacle and saccharine-soaked corn.

There’s something particularly odd about the amount of ultra-expensive IMAX film ”Olympic Glory” expends on sumo rituals, Japanese athletes winning the gold, Rising Sun flags and adorable Japanese children cheering on the fatherland’s victorious athletes.

But just as you begin to wonder if you’re watching something put out by the Japanese ministry of propaganda, the film switches to the American women’s hockey team as it triumphs over the Canadians. And as the American athletes stand for their medals, it’s hard not to be moved. There’s something about this giant screen that amplifies the emotional power of film to an extraordinary degree. It’s just as well that IMAX technology wasn’t available to the totalitarian regimes of our century.

OLYMPIC GLORY

Directed by Kieth Merrill, Screenplay by Thomas Keneally. Running time: 40 minutes. Unrated. At Sony IMAX Theater, Broadway and 68th Street.