Yep, I returned to the world of watching Olympic Films. This one-imaginatively titled-was about the 1964 Winter Games in Austria.
Yep, I saw this in part to acknowledge the beginning of the 2022 Winter Olympics. I'll watch those even though they are being held in Beijing and I am no fan of the Chinese government—note that I said “Chinese government” and not “Chinese people”. The desire for me to see action in such disciplines as downhill skiing, luge and bobsled done by innocent athletes from around the world is just too strong... moving on from a hot-button topic, I was interested in checking out the '64 Winter Olympics from the gorgeous Innsbruck, Austria.
It was largely what I expected from having seen a few of these from a similar time period: amusing narration that unfortunately at times delves into “casual sexism”, footage from the events-as a mutual noted, not even the shortest events are immune from being edited, which is a shame-a look at the area itself/its residents, getting to see the athletes in the Olympic Village eating food or otherwise hanging out, etc. This has the bonus of brief scenes where among other things, we get to see then-new technology used to cover the races, how blind draws are done to determine the order of competitors in certain competitions & there are some graphics/camera tricks used to show what lines the luge or skiing competitors should use as taking the wrong path literally could cost them a medal.
While I wish it could have been longer than 90 minutes (which may have alleviated the concerns of editing, although maybe there were other reasons why) and there's barely any of the opening or closing ceremonies, overall I'll be kind and say it was pretty good. It's not even my favorite one of the Winter Olympic films I've seen from around this time, but it was interesting enough for me. There isn't much else to say about this, besides there being yodeling at one point; while I know that won't be heard in the '22 games I'll enjoy watching them the next two weeks.
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