The Games of the V Olympiad Stockholm, 1912

This is an important piece of history indeed. The odds and ends of old film have been stitched together to produce a memorable, if not coherent, documentary on the Stockholm Olympic Games of 1912. The end of the film credits shows that the copyright was issued to the International Olympic Committee in 2016.

While viewing this amazing piece of history on Turner Classic Movies, it was of course obvious that these games are in a different category than the recently completed games of 2020 (or 2021 to be exact). We see some of the great figures of the day, like Pierre de Coubertain, the founder of the modern Olympics, who was there in attendance and King Carl Gustav V of Sweden who attended the games and with great panache presented medals to the winners. Jim Thorpe, the outstanding Afro-American athlete who won two gold medals in track and field is shown near the end of the documentary.

The film had a certain retro style with the appropriate music when showing athletes from different countries like France (La Marseillaise), Britain (Rule Britannia) etc. There was no narrative just titles before each segment accompanied by music. With silent movies we tend to appreciate the film as a film. At one point we see three winning athletes from Finland with the background music from Sibelius' Finlandia. As a Canadian, I was happy to see our athletes wearing the Maple Leaf on their shirts, since it wasn't until 1965 that the symbol was chosen for Canada's national flag.

The competitions proved interesting, to say the least, with the Marathon being run in two hours and thirty six minutes compared to 2:08 in Tokyo 2021. The runners appear on a dirt road in the woods outside of Stockholm. There was a turn at the halfway point from where they ran back to the stadium. We also hear that the first athlete to die from exhaustion at the games was a Portuguese athlete at the turn in the Marathon. The standing high jump showed athletes rotating their arms to liftoff for the jump. In the running high jump, they often landed on their feet without losing balance and hitting the ground. In the diving competitions, we see from a distance the athletes jumping off the platforms at heights of up to 30 metres and making huge splashes as they hit the water, unlike the small ripples we see in today's perfected techniques.

Suffice to say, that this is a documentary that gives an Olympics buff like myself great satisfaction. I was overjoyed to be able to record a number of these superb Olympics documentaries on TCM before the Tokyo Olympics this past summer. It was an excellent way for TCM to celebrate the Games and give viewers many hours of viewing pleasure.

Given the opening titles state this is a re-edited version of surviving elements, it's difficult to come to conclusions about the original production. As it exists, it's 175 minutes of clips, arranged in chronological order, of the 1912 Olympics. Events are offered in abbreviated versions, typically showing ten seconds of an event, followed by the names of the winners, and then images of them; the one exception seems to be the women's diving, which shows the young women in their damp outfits.

In 1912, of course, the thought was that people would wish to see the winners. Nowadays, most of the names are forgotten, save for Jim Thorpe and the King of Sweden. Almost everything is shot with a fixed camera, using angles that had become established by a decade earlier, back when actualities would show these sports, each by itself as part of a film program. Given these issues, this becomes a peculiar film, probably the longest documentary of its time, but of interest to an audience of Olympics memorabilists, showing the Olympics in an era when it was a competition of amateurs, people who performed for pride, and then got on with their lives.

This is The Games of the V Olympiad Stockholm in 1912. Surviving footages have been assembled and restored by the IOC. It serves more as archives of the competition. With events as old as these, it's important to maintain the limited footages. Some of these athletes have no other films. It's history. The most compelling may be the female divers. 90% of the footage has the male competitors. Women seems to be relegated to the pool and tennis. It's also a little scandalous to have the female form for those early days. I'm guessing this was rarely shown to the public. Other footage includes the gold medal football match. Quite frankly, the footage can be aired in some countries for the football fanatics. Notable oddities are some of the old flags. It's great to see the classic American look. The Canadians have their maple leaf. All in all, this is a piece of history and important as a time capsule.