La gran olimpiada

I've been watching all the Olympic documentaries available through the Criterion Collection and almost all photograph the Olympic sporting spectacle admirably. The standard up until this 1961 production were the ultra nationalist but skilfully directed documentaries about the 1936 Berlin Olympics from Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's chosen director.

This 1961 production is a favourite because it's such a contrast to the fascist Berlin documentaries. It documents the Rome 1960 summer Olympics in a relaxed style that is reminiscent of the best early to mid 1960 Italian cinema. The colors are exquisite, the camera lingers and the pace of narration is unhurried to match. The people watching scenes from the streets of Rome and inside the Olympic stadium are truly fascinating. It appears to have been a special time in a nation that had been ravaged during and after the Second World War. The fashion styles of that new era of post war prosperity are in full display with many athletes from numerous nations as carefully and colourfully dressed as the many sophisticated urban fashion leading spectators.

As for the Olympic event coverage, proper coverage is given to the great Track and Field legends who won Gold that year, especially Wilma Rudolph, Rafer Johnson, Armin Hare and Don (Tarzan) Bragg. The coverage of weightlifting is riviting, and the then-new slow motion film capturing of lessor events like Equestrian is terrific.

The highlight of the film also happens to be my first Olympic memory at age 9, etched permanently in my memory from watching live US TV broadcasts. The then unknown Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila runs through the streets of Rome barefoot and blows away the field, finishing under the Arch of Rome in the dark, lit by spotlights. Adding to the drama was that fact that Ethiopia had only recently won national independence from colonial Italy. Fortunately the coverage of this gripping historic race is by far the longest segment in the film.

My primary criticism is the same one I have for every Olympic host nation documentary; there is too much coverage of that nation's athletes. In this Olympics, the Italian team did well in boxing, so there's plenty of boxing coverage featuring Italian winners. But then the boxing Gold medal victory of the probably the greatest Olympic boxer ever,19 year old Cassius Clay, later known to us as Mohammed Ali, is missing entirely.

Finally, a warning to all that the narration fits the era it captures. The script isn't short on what would be considered serious racism and sexism by today's standards. But then one must remember it was produced in Italy over sixty years ago.

The Grand Olympics is the official documentary about the 1960 Summer Olympics held in Rome. I have only seen two other Olympic documentaries, Olympiad and Tokyo Olympiad, which I believe are considered to be the gold standard when it comes to this very narrow sub-genre. And while The Grand Olympics may not quite reach the heights of those two movies, it is still very much worth watching. The color cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, and the music, which ranges from vaguely avant-garde to outright cheesy, is mostly pretty effective. The movie covers a wide range of events, and as a result, very few of them are covered in depth. The final rounds events are usually what is shown, with very brief backgrounds given of the top contenders. (The notable exception to this is the marathon race which occurs near the end of the movie and goes on for a good 15 minutes.) And there is a slight preference given to the Italian athletes. The events are all photographed beautifully and the shots of the settings and the surrounding parts of Rome are fascinating. The only part that has dated is the sometimes sexist narration when it comes to the female athletes.

This Academy Award-nominated documentary shows the 1960 Summer Olympics, held in Rome. "La grande olimpiade" ("The Grand Olympics" in English) shows both the athletes participating in the games, and also gives some fine shots of the eternal city. Among the notable athletes who stood out at those Olympics were Wilma Rudolph (representing the United States) and Abebe Bikila (representing Ethiopia). Although not shown in the documentary, a young Muhammad Ali - then known as Cassius Clay - won boxing's light-heavyweight gold medal.

One of the things that you might notice while watching the documentary is that they call Taiwan "China", while mainland China is nowhere to be seen. No doubt the US wasn't going to allow China's participation. Similarly, Vietnam gets represented only by South Vietnam (a country practically invented by the US). I doubt that anyone would've guessed that a few decades later, every country would get to participate, even those which the US defines as the enemy.

The only other thing that I really noticed was that the narrator often mispronounced Slavic names. No doubt the names got transliterated in certain languages, and the narrator simply pronounced them Italian-style. Sometimes I feel like all names should get written in the International Phonetic Alphabet, just so that everyone can pronounce them.

Anyway, a fine documentary. It must've been quite the experience to be there.