Some things I liked some I did not.

Don't Believe the Hype

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This Japanese documentary was only the second feature film to cover the Summer Olympics, the first being the 1936 Berlin Olympics in the two-part film Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl, it is also featured in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, directed by Kon Ichikawa (The Burmese Harp, An Actor's Revenge). This film covers the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan. Using 164 cameras, including with slow-motion and night-vision, it covers the opening and closing ceremonies, the lighting of the Olympic torch, and the highlights of the athletes competing. The sports seen, with many close-ups, blurring, ocassional black-and-white colour, and other clever filming techniques, include sprinting and marathons, track and field athletics, long jump, pole vaulting, shotput, hammer throw, weightlifting, hurdles, gymnastics, swimming, fencing, wrestling, shooting, cycling, football, hockey, basketball, sailing and many more. There are also the little sections that see the competitors training, resting with food and drink. With English commentary by Jack Douglas. It does not focus on the specific results in each event, it is much more about the performance, the techniques, the stamina and the reactions of the winners and losers. It may not have the statistics, but it is an inspirational tribute to human athleticism and endurance, a worthwhile documentary. Very good!

While I've yet to see all of what many consider to be THE document of 20th century Olympics in Riefensthal's Olympia (it is, of course, a very long movie, and we only saw bits in a class), this document of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics by Kon Ichikawa is quite the spectacle on its own. Ichikawa understands something that five years later Michael Wadleigh, director of Woodstock, would understand about filming an event (though Woodstock will always be the better, more incredibly watchable film for me). And it is, simply put, to make it an EVENT- in bold letters- for people who may not even really usually watch the Olympics. The way he uses his many, many, many cameras an exhaustively large crew is staggering, and just in the first half hour or so, when the countries all line up and the audience fills in as the games kick off, it's done in a very dynamic style. He alternates interestingly between big wide shots of the crowds (like Woodstock, seeming larger than it really is with everyone packed in thousands of masses), the stadium itself, and then to close-ups of individuals and bodies moving. It's this side of the film, the technical one, that is most worthwhile to see in the film.If it's less than perfect, it's because, frankly, it almost does become 'too much' to see so many games that go on in the near three-hour running time. And the narration voice that pops up now and again sounds way too much like a narrator from old newsreels, trying to add emphasis where it's not really needed. It's too immense an event with too many goals vied for victory to add on extra words. But there are highlights though, such as the 100 meter dash, done in a slow-motion that might echo some of Ichikawa's other narrative films. And the Joe Frazier boxing match, while brief, is memorable. Sometimes Tokyo Olympiad comes off almost like an avant-garde film as much as it does just straight-on documentary, and it's here that I got drawn in. Of all major events involving sports and other games and activities and trials and such, the Olympics brings together all cultures for the sake of competing for a country's honor and respect, and Ichikawa has a very good balance between showing that and adding a distinct style to the numerous events. In fact, Ichikawa has what might be the best avant-garde sports documentary ever made, at least in the past forty or so years.

Seeing as how this dvd is almost 3 hours long I assumed that I could fast forward through some of it. I was wrong. As much as I tried, every new scene kept me glued to the screen. It's the Olympics like you've never seen them, shot and edited with the eye of a real artist. Once again Criterion brings us a lost masterpiece.

Kon Ichikawa's "Tokyo Olympiad," a record of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, is not only arguably one of the best sports documentaries ever made, it is also among the best documentaries ever made, period. It is everything one would expect from a man who is known as one of the premiere stylists of the cinema and more. It is poetry, it is art, and it is almost ruthlessly compelling.Whereas most sports documentaries are relatively cut and dry in that they focus mainly on the winners, Ichikawa has almost no regard for winning or losing at all. For him, it is about the event, the preparation and the movement embodied in Olympic competition - and the film follows both the winners and the losers. The film is incredibly textural. Sight, sound, and movement - even the most imperceptible - all weave together to form a remarkable tapestry that is as much about the director's own concerns as it is about the Games themselves. It is for this reason that the film initially had a rather stormy reception from those that had commissioned Ichikawa to make the film (and given him an army of cameramen to do so), though if my recollection is correct it went on to break box-office records in Japan. "Tokyo Olympiad" is not a film about the victory of winning, it is about the victory of attending - of being amongst the awesome crowds, the athletes, the bodies in motion. Being there is it's own victory, which is why Ichikawa focuses so much on the athletes from the newly formed African nation of Chad who, although they do not come close to winning any medals, are the first representatives of their country to appear in the Olympic Games. For Ichikawa their story is just as triumphant as that of the Ethiopian long-distance runner who unflinchingly leaves all his opponents in the dust and goes on to win his event by a mile. "Tokyo Olympiad" is not just about the realm of athletic or Olympic experience, it is about the human experience and about creating cinema out of it. At nearly 3 hours in length it is neither a minute too short or too long, and I personally feel privileged to have seen it.