The Grand Olympics

The Grand Olympics (La Grande Olimpiade) (1961)

Runtime: 147 minutes

Directed by: Romolo Marcellini

Starring: Various athletes of the 1960 Summer Olympics

From: Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano/Istituto Luce

After being distracted for too long from watching these Olympics films, the upcoming event in Tokyo was one of the reasons why I finally returned to this odd niche; in the next month or so I will see a few of these, summer and winter. This was selected as I heard some good things and it was the first of these movies in widescreen-1.66:1, to be exact.

It is largely what I expected... the opening and closing are naturally the opening and closing ceremonies, there's some purple prose as the narrator describes the action on screen, plenty of focus is on track & field, life in the Olympic village/on the streets of Rome is shown, and when possible in these Rome Olympics, Italian competitors are put over strong. It seemed like most of the important stories of these games were shown, such as Wilma Rudolph's success on the track (she needed crutches to walk until the age of 11 due to polio; what a life she had) and German Armin Hary has an entire narrative surrounding him. Another nice story is in the decathlon, where the gold medalist Rafer Johnson apparently introduced silver medalist Yang Chaun-Kwang to the sport while in college. Cassius Clay is never shown-whoops, although I am sure many had no idea he would become a legend shortly thereafter as Muhammad Ali.

While not revolutionary like Tokyo Olympiad, I'll still give this high marks despite some narration that hasn't aged well either due to stereotypes or what I like to call “casual sexism.” Zoom lenses were used and that helped make the events seem more intimate, along with expert editing. And it has a musical score I loved (expect classical, jazz, and a literal chorus at times) from Angelo Francesco Lavagnino & Armando Trovajoli, the latter of whom was a composer that did the score for various De Sica pictures and has a song that is heard in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. From what I understand, this is one of the best Olympic films of its type so if you only want to see a few of those and don't want one of epic length-this is still almost 2 ½ hours-this is a solid choice.