Olympic Spirit

This is a documentary about the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, USA. There are quite a few of these documentaries produced for the Olympics each time and they tend to be long, boring affairs. By comparison, this is like a slick exciting emotional commercial for the Games. It helps that it's no more than thirty minutes. The music is very era specific. I do wonder if they could have tried the new IMAX format. I remember old IMAX movies from this era and this feels a lot like those shorts. The footage has a lot of action right next to the athletes. All anybody ever talk about with this Olympic is the USA hockey team and this closes with them especially the game against the Soviets. This is a great commercial for the Olympics and Coca-Cola.

The film is a series of video highlights from the 80's Olympics combined with a late 70s sound track because decades fade together like that at the edges. Its a short film but has a dream like quality to it, and restored in HD the grainy 16mm? film and the muted colors reveal an interesting window into the past, this was the 80s before the neon colors, the garish 80s we remember now. It lacks narration and length, but works as a slice of life, just enough of a taste of the past because frankly in any more depth the Olympics is a very boring thing, and is best remembered as nostalgia.

No, it's not every musical theme in this voiceless documentary of the 1980 Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in New York. But one of the ice dancers does his bit in a spangly outfit to a disco beat. Even though that's halfway through, it certain sets a tone.

It's one of the shortest Olympic documentaries I've looked at. I suspect the reason for that was the events surrounding the 1976 Olympics. It's hard to celebrate international amity and friendly competition after terrorists have just massacred an entire team. So the film makers, given the short length of the finished film, chose to show the Olympics with music and allow the spectators, who show up around the 20-minute mark, to serve as the movie audience and have a good time for us.

Olympic Spirit takes a different tack than most of the other Olympics documentaries I have seen. For one thing, it is a short movie rather than a feature. Also, it does without any narration, so no attempt is made to put anything in context. No athletes or even countries are identified. (The US hockey team is clearly identified both by their jerseys and the crowd chanting "USA!" but all the other athletes remain completely anonymous.) The shots of the events are grouped together but there is no attempt to build any narrative around them. Instead, the shots appear to be picked for maximum visual appeal and they are pieced together at such a dizzying pace that the whole event approaches abstract art. There is nothing wrong with this approach but it becomes rather dull after a while and it is hard to sustain interest even for 30 minutes. Add to this a truly wretched 70s style progressive rock soundtrack and a glaringly obvious bit of product placement for Coca-Cola (one of the sponsors of the movie) and you end up with what is essentially a second rate, and overlong, music video.

I was here in Placid for the games and am the little figure skater on the lake. (Mirror Lake, btw, Lake Placid lake is very close by though, almost adjacent). Glad to see I can find it! I was young but I recall much of the experience filming on the lake, the opening and especially closing ceremony (I was in that too), very well.

There's no words in the film, it's athlete event and medal ceremony footage, also opening and closing ceremony. Chuck Mangone is featured! Special attention is paid to the USA/RUSSIA game, but it doesn't overshadow all the other sports. They are all very well represented.

Olympic Spirit is well done a piece of history and worth a watch.