Tokyo Olympiad

By Richard Corliss | September 22, 2011 | +

Everett Collection

Director: Kon Ichikawa

Year Released: 1965

Cast: Abebe Bikila, Jack Douglas

Of all the filmmakers called on to document the Olympics (including the 1972 Munich team that included Arthur Penn and Milos Forman), Kon Ichikawa was the one with the most imposing résumé. The director of such profound war films as The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain, Ichikawa cared little about sports statistics; Tokyo Olympiad is a splendidly self-conscious work of art. And though he had 150 cameras at his disposal, the feeling Ichikawa imparts is one of intimacy: a closeup of a sneaker pressed against a starting block; a women’s race shown with no sound but the falling of a hurdle. Ichikawa’s telephoto focusing on process over results infuriated the Olympic committee, which initially allowed the film to be released stateside in a 93-min. version — barely half its full 3-hr. length and majesty, which was eventually made available on a Criterion DVD.

It happens that the 1964 Games lacked the breakout star athlete that Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia found in Jesse Owens. That suits Ichikawa fine. His one up-close-and-personal subject, Chad’s Ahamed Isa, manages only seventh place in the 800-m semifinals; to the director, Isa’s journey from a nation “younger than he is” is a personal victory revealing the Games’ true value. Often, Ichikawa suggests, the spectators are the stars. A child muffles his ears as ritual gunshots punctuate the opening ceremony; when doves are let loose, women hold purses over their heads for protection. During a race, the camera holds on faces in the stands as runners pass in a blur. Everyone, Ichikawa suggests, was a participant at this world event; we are all Olympians.

Next: When We Were Kings

Related Topics: Documentary, Sport, Tokyo Olympiad, Track

When We Were Kings

By Richard Corliss | September 22, 2011 | +

Ronald Grant Archive / Mary Evans / Everett Collection

Director: Leon Gast

Year Released: 1996

Cast: Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Don King

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Someone called him the Elvis of sport because he was a crossover pioneer, sexy and gorgeous, who forced the public to rethink its view of his form of entertainment. There was more to Muhammad Ali than his amazing cunning in the ring, more than his reputation as the most charming showboater in boxing history, with an impish rhyming wit that had the power of both butterfly and bee. Ali’s religious conversion, in which he joined the Black Muslims, tested white America’s fondness for him. His refusal to serve in the Army made him the Vietnam War’s most famous conscientious objector and deprived him of work for three years at the peak of his craft. Then Ali returned to lose the heavyweight belt to Joe Frazier. Leon Gast’s enthralling documentary, finally completed 20 years after the event, details the next step in Ali’s career: Act III of a great and poignant pageant. This was the Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 fight with George Foreman in Zaïre.

Promoter Don King and writers Norman Mailer and George Plimpton are on hand to offer bombast and insights. But Ali’s charisma makes the film. A preacher whose fans are his congregation, he hectors in poetry: “If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned/ Just wait till I kick Foreman’s behind.” Two other characters hover over the film: the Foreman and Ali of today. One became a preacher and found a rich comic voice that eventually made him an endearing figure, with the grills and all those sons named George. The other is afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, his grace palsied, his old raffish rhetoric muted. When We Were Kings restores Ali to his prime — when an athlete could be a renegade hero, not of the self but of the soul.

Related Topics: Boxing, Documentary, History, Muhammad Ali, Sport, When We Were Kings