Visions of Eight

If you're looking for a traditional, narrative, and episodic type of documentary replete with featured interviews, you won't find it here. It's not truly about the 1972 Olympics; the Olympics is more of a venue. This is a somewhat eclectic experiment that results in an often incohesive, mixed bag of hits and misses.

If you're a historian, professor, or student of film, or if you're perhaps a professional cinematographer, you'll probably take a lot more away from this than the rest of us. Eight different segments created by eight different artists bring eight different viewpoints and voices of what fascinates them about the Olympics. Some segments are captivating; others feel like throwaways.

It begins to feel laborious around the 60-minute mark, but then a segment entitled The Losers livens things up a bit. But from there, it starts to drag again. With a running time of approximately 100 minutes, it's too long.

You've got to be a true film buff to sit through it start to finish.

The 1972 Summer Olympic Games, in many ways, were the end of an era. Since 1936, the IOC had required each Local Organizing Committee to submit a documentary film as an historical record of their Games. After Munich, less emphasis was placed upon this and more upon Bud Greenspan's independent efforts. Only one-eighth of this film was directed by a West German; today, an American helms them all.

Munich '72 was the last occasion on which Olympic security could be said to be at all relaxed. The face of terrorism, at least before 9/11, bears the stocking mask of the Black September lookout at 31 Connollystrasse in the Olympic Village. John Schlesinger of "Midnight Cowboy" fame, assigned to film a British marathon runner, incorporates the tragedy into his mini-film as a distraction to the absurdly detached athlete.

After 1936 they all were imitating Leni Riefenstahl. Here, Japanese director Kon Ichikawa, filming his second Olympics, rings a change on the German's pioneering use of slow motion, using three dozen Arriflexes and four miles of film to turn the 100-meter dash into a quarter-hour examination of tortured lungs and leg muscles.

Producer David Wolper's take on this film was that it could have been better and was greatly improved in the editing room. The same could be said of any slice-of-life documentary, sporting or otherwise. The voice-over narrator sounds a lot like David Perry, who would soon become ubiquitous as Bud Greenspan's offscreen announcer. For almost the final time, feature directors got to play documentarian all those years ago.

Here's a very unusual view of the Olympics. It's not the vast number of cameramen involved; that's a given with the Olympics. It's that this movie is credited to eight directors, all of them distinguished: Kon Ichikawa -- back after TOKYO OLYMPIAD; Milos Forman; Claude Lelouch; Yuriy Ozerovnn; Michael Pfleghar; John Schlesinger; and Mai Zetterling. Each of them speaks a brief introduction to his - or her -- segment; and then there's music by Henry Mancini, for more orotund and distinguished than his usual sprightly, rag tunes.

There have been brilliant Olympic movies, and annoying ones, and movies that seemed to be collections that sort of vaguely showed you the exertions while muttering platitudes. The choices made in the production of this one strive valiantly to live up to those ideals, and I think it succeeds.

It's dedicated to the eleven athletes murdered at the Olympics.

Eight filmmakers are tasked with capturing the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics. The first seven segments have these filmmakers do their artistic efforts with the games. It's a lot of close-ups and slow-motion. It's not always the most compelling. Some are more interesting visually than others. I'm not expecting a wall-to-wall documentary about the terrorist disruption especially considering the probable involvement of the IOC. John Schlesinger's last segment does tackle the elephant in the room but mostly as the backdrop affecting the marathon runners. The race is delayed and they have to keep their mind on the competition. It's not the biggest swing but the terrorism is too big to ignore. In the end, the film has to stay on course and put the ugliness behind it instead of facing it head-on.

The four of the eight directors made fascinating contributions to this portmanteau film. Milos Foman's segment concentrating on the Decathlon event was memorable for its use of Bavarian folk music to blend with the visuals. Mai Zetterling's segment on the Strongest dealt with weightlifting and food for the athletes, which focussed on the athletes' obsession with one sport. Zetterling has always been interested with people's obsessions. Penn's segment on the Highest deals with pole vault and the emotions of losing. Lelouch's segment officially dealt with the losers but I felt Penn captured those emotions better. The fourth impressive segment was Schlesinger's on the Marathon. Three years later he would make "The Marathon Man." Technically, the Ichikawa segment on the 100 meters race was rewarding but not much more.