Tôkyô orimpikku (1965)

Director:

Kon Ichikawa

Writers:

Kon Ichikawa (writer)
Yoshio Shirasaka (writer)

Release Date:

24 September 1965 (Finland)

Genre:

Documentary | Sport

Plot:

Ichikawa's cameras follow the 1964 Summer Olympics from opening to closing ceremonies. Sometimes he focuses on spectators...

Plot Keywords:

Athlete | Olympics | World | Stadium | Color

Awards:

4 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Abebe Bikila	...	Himself
Jack Douglas	...	English-Language Narrator

Also Known As:

Seido no kando (Japan) (reissue title)
Tokyo Olympiad (International: English title)

Runtime:

170 min | USA:170 min (1984 reissue) | USA:93 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:S

Company:

Organizing Committee for the Games of the XVIII Olympiad

The Olympic Games of 40 Years Ago

Having watched this film for the first time only recently, it was striking to try to realize how much is forgotten about any given Olympic Games with the passage of time. Many of the names of athletes, including those of the USA, are simply forgotten. Bob Hayes, Billy Mills, Joe Frazier, Don Schollander were about the only American athletes on the 1964 Olympic team that were recognizable in this film.

My view of this film is that it did not particularly energize me or inform me about the Tokyo Olympics. Many of the editing choices were not good, and it was not a film that would stand the test of time. Compared with the wonderful Olympic films by Bud Greenspan over the years (16 Days of Glory), this is clearly the product of a relative amateur. But this predates Greenspan's Olympic work, and for its time it was probably the most ambitious approach to filming such an enormous athletic event since Riefenstahl's work in Germany.

Individual sequences that were particularly enjoyable were the close close-ups of the shot-putters and the hammer-throwers, the sprinters spiking their starting blocks into the cinder track, swimmers on the starting blocks just before the start, the amazing finishing sprint by American Billy Mills to win the 10,000 meter race (to this day one of the great singular Olympic moments).

This film did not personalize the athletes--there was virtually no background provided about them, no personal story. The only portion that came close to that focused for a time on a young runner from Chad who, as was pointed out in the film, was at 22 much older than his country at the time. This was clearly the filmmaker's choice--to present an abstract vision of the Tokyo Games--but it somehow left me cold. To present the first Olympic Games held in Asia in such an impersonal, abstract way, seems like the incorrect choice of approach.

Well, I've now seen this film once, probably will never watch it again--it brought back some memories of those Olympic Games, some nice photography. But in the end uninspiring & forgettable. Oh, yes, it rained a lot in Tokyo in October of 1964.