Le Stade blanc

The White Stadium is a documentary about the second Winter Olympics, held in St. Moritz Switzerland in 1928. As such, it is an important historical document. But it is also a great artistic statement and proved to be an enormous influence on many later movies. Most of the movie's success can be attributed to its co-director, Arnold Fanck, who was the creator of the German "mountain movie" genre (yes, that really was a thing.) Not content to merely record the athletic events, the camera often cuts away to the surrounding scenery. While some people may be bored by this, the cinematography is so gorgeous I was rarely less than enthralled. The movie has an interesting structure. Almost a half hour goes by before the Olympics even begin. (BTW, the IMDB listed runtime is incorrect. The movie is actually about 123 minutes long.) The first part is just about the town and the athletes getting ready for the event. There is even an odd interlude featuring a mostly nude couple skiing through the mountains. Then, there is the opening ceremonies which took place in a blizzard. The rest of the movie is, naturally, filled up with the competitions. Highlights include what may be the first movie appearance of Sonja Henie, an absolutely brutal hockey game between Canada and Switerzland and the only Olympic appearance of skijoring, a horse race across a frozen lake where the riders are on skis behind the horses. The cinematography is uniformly excellent (if sometimes a bit distant)with lots of use of slow motion and even some trick photography. And there is even some sly humor from time to time.

An interesting side note: the next year Fanck would direct Leni Riefenstahl in The White Hell of Pitz Palu. Reifenstahl must have been paying attention to what Fanck was doing. Not only would she go on to direct a mountain movie of her own but also Olympiad, which has long been held to be the first great Olympics documentary. With the reappearance of The White Stadium (it was considered to be a lost movie until 2011) it may be time to reconsider that claim and to reevaluate Fanck's influence on Reifenstahl.

It's a wonderful thing that this documentary, believed lost, was found and restored in 2011. Director Arnold Fanck did a fantastic job of filming the first true, standalone Olympics Winter Games, held in St. Moritz, Switzerland in 1928, and while the sporting events are on full display, what I love about it is he also captures the beauty of the place in such an artistic way. The first half hour of its two-hour run time gives us an almost Zen-like appreciation for the snowy scenery, hardy people, and alpine architecture, and that's all before we even get to the opening ceremonies. I smiled over the kids having a snow fight and chuckled over the local skiers who strip down to their underpants, the woman topless, before skiing downhill. Let the games begin!

Perhaps in trying to document the events some of the segments get a little long, such as the cross country and the ski jump, but even then it's very well-edited, with a mix of different angles, long shots, and close-ups, rather than all coming from a static position. Fanck also employs some nice special effects, with multiple exposures, an instance or two of stop motion, and most importantly to follow the competition, quite a bit of slow motion. He occasionally interjects wry humor, such as the title card informing us that "in curling, it is not victory that is most important but - " and then cutting to man drinking a beer. All of this helps break up the more matter-of-fact aspects in an aesthetically pleasing way.

As for the games themselves, there were several highlights, including seeing the Canadian hockey team, unbeaten in 30 years, absolutely demolishing hapless Switzerland with explosive skating, slick stick handling, and sweet passing. At one point, we see the Canadian goalie leaning back nonchalantly as he watches the action on the other end. At another, he calmly catches a puck thrown his way with what looks like a mitten (and sans mask or helmet of course), in contrast to the Swiss goalie, who faced a barrage all game and helplessly waved his stick at a puck as it went by. Final score: Canada 13, Switzerland 0. (Perhaps mercifully, Fanck doesn't show us Canada's other wins, which were 11-0 over Sweden and 14-0 over Great Britain, after having been given a bye to the final round).

It was also quite a treat to see 15 year-old Sonia Henie in the women's figure skating, dazzling with her spins and jumps, all of which were very well shot, including one in slow motion with her skirt in a standing wave type pattern. Figure skating has come a long way since then in terms of its athleticism, but despite that, the elegance and grace of these competitors comes through.

Every so often we see something a little bit different, like the demonstration of "skijoring," which had skiers being pulled by horses, or the snow on the ski jump hill being tamped down after the first set of runs by using a long line of skiers standing perpendicular to it. More often, though, events like bobsled, speed skating, and cross-country skiing look similar to today, sometimes in more of a prototype form than others. Out of what isn't shown, the biggest omission seems to have been the 10,000m speed skating competition, which was canceled to great controversy by a Norwegian judge when an American skater was ahead of the Norwegian defending champion.

In addition to the levity Fanck adds, we also get a little taste of it in some things the crowd saw, like professional skaters clowning around, one on stilts and another in a giraffe costume. There are lots of smiles (ok maybe not from the Swiss hockey team), and the film captures what it must have been like to attend - a true celebration.

The timing of the film is at a remarkable intersection of the advent of the winter games and the rise of filmmaking as an art form. It's also remarkably spaced between wars, 10 years after WW1 ended, and 11 years before Germany invaded Poland, and just thinking about the beauty of what's on film here in contrast to warfare is sobering. There is the briefest of hints of the darkness to come in the opening ceremonies, where the Italian team is seen giving the fascist salute to the crowd, with Mussolini firmly in power by then. Perhaps there's also a little dose of Aryan racism in the title card informing us that Japan is present, and that it "can thank the theoretical study of German textbooks for its knowledge of skiing." (And while we see a Japanese skier, we don't see nations like Japan, Argentina, or Mexico in the opening ceremonies either). To think of Fanck's protégé, Leni Riefenstahl, soaking the film up as an influence for her own work may also cast a slight pall, but all of these things are minor compared to the triumph of what Fanck did here. Enjoy this one for what it is - a truly unique sports documentary.

It's the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. This is a black and white silent film documenting the sporting events. The first thirty minutes is an artistic visual of the mountain village and its nature. It's the people's athletic pursuits. It's artsy. Some people will like it. Not me so much. I don't mind a tour of the city but I'd rather get on with it. I don't know why that guy is skiing with a wedged underwear. The athletic competitions have not changed that much except for skijoring. It's skiing while being pulled by a horse. It must be a Swiss thing. It looks amazing and very dangerous. The Canadian ice hockey team almost gets a two touchdown win for the gold. I don't think it's necessary to do all the goals. It may not be a popular opinion but I would cut out most of the first thirty minutes.

Directors Arnold Fanck and Othmar Gurtner offer a film about the 1928 Olympic games in St. Moritz.

The basics of shooting winter sports were established by Peter Elfert more than twenty years before this film was produced, and you can see it in the framing of various events. Confronted with a certain monotony of such images, and the difficulty of making snow visually appealing, the four cameramen shot in a constant variety of focal lengths, and Fanck and Walter Ruttman kept to a lively pace of editing, as well as a variety of undercranking and overcranking to show details of movement and increase excitement. These techniques keep the film constantly interesting: the close-ups of the competitors to show their concentration; the long shots to show them facing their challenges alone. Given the established shooting techniques, it is not much of an exaggeration to write that it's the editing that makes this film still excellent almost a century later.