TOKYO OLYMPIAD Movie Review

Of the many big-screen documentaries that have tried to convey a sense of the excitement, drama, and physical splendor of the Olympic Games, Kon Ichikawa's spectacular 1966 Tokyo Olympiad may be the most elegant, the least agenda-laden, and—sadly—the least-well-known, at least in the United States. Ichikawa (Fires on the Plain, The Makioka Sisters) had the usual army of photographers at his disposal to record the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (not to mention two years of continuous editing), but he wasn't interested in just a mind-numbing chronicling of statistics. Instead, Ichikawa created a poetic and visually astonishing tribute to the endurance and capabilities of the human spirit—a three-hour epic that builds in power and possibilities until the athletes and the team of filmmakers who are recording them truly do seem to merge into a single force. All of that was thrown away when Tokyo Olympiad was cut in half when released in the U.S. in 1966; and as if to try to make up for the butchery, the American distributor added an insufferable, pedestrian narration, sprinkling unnecessary sentimentality on what was now a cold corpse of a film. (Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi-glorifying Olympia was shown in America without cuts, but with an English-language soundtrack.) Fortunately, Tokyo Olympiad has been restored to its original glory and is available in its original, full-length, widescreen version, complete with freshened color. The sad irony is that in this age of lightweight video cameras and full TV coverage of the Olympics, few moviegoers took the time to see the rejuvenated Tokyo Olympiad when it was reissued to theatres a few years back. Its video and laserdisc release should finally give this enduring, long-distance runner the second wind it deserves.

NEXT STOP … Olympia, Visions of Eight

1966 170m/C JP D: Kon Ichikawa; W: Kon Ichikawa; C: Kazuo Miyagawa. VHS, LV, Letterbox TPV, WFV, CRC