Games, like movies, have the power to sway millions with their magic. Nor is this the only link between the two mass entertainers. Many players have gone on to make it big in films, while scores of sports legends have been the inspiration behind blockbusters. With Olympics, the greatest paean to the power and beauty of the human body, around the corner, Vikramdeep Johal talks about memorable sporting moments on the silver screen. 

The Olympics and movies are twins in a way. The first Games of the modern era were held in April, 1896, barely three months after the Lumiere brothers began a historic exhibition of motion pictures in Paris. Since then, the growth of the Olympic movement has run parallel to the development of cinema. Their paths have crossed from time to time, attracting aficionados of sports, movies or both.

The most discussed Olympic movie is undoubtedly Olympia, the epic documentary about the 1936 Berlin Games. Adolf Hitler himself commissioned actress-turned-director Leni Riefenstahl to record his greatest propaganda event. Leni’s film company was granted sole rights to the Games. The resources of the state were hers for the taking. Steel camera towers were installed in the stadium; platforms were built for tracking shots; over 30 cameramen were employed to shoot the spectacle. However, this artist was fettered not only by the Nazi demand to highlight Aryan superiority, but also by the restrictions imposed on the movement of her crew by the International Amateur Athletics Federation. Despite all these limitations, she produced a work of art, a hymn to the "power and beauty of the human body".

Her cameras glided and floated around the stadium, capturing the winner’s ecstasy, the loser’s agony and the audience’s mood swings. She lovingly filmed the rippling muscles and glistening limbs not only of Aryan sportspersons, but also of those from other races and nations, including the ultimate champion of the Games, Jesse Owens.

In recognition of her brilliant work, Leni received a gold medal from the International Olympic Committee in 1948. However, her film was criticised by some for its seemingly propagandistic agenda, despite the director’s claims to the contrary. Whatever may be the agenda, no one can deny that Olympia was a landmark in the field of sports coverage.

Another monumental work about the world’s greatest sporting event was Tokyo Olympiad (1966), made by renowned Japanese film-maker Kon Ichikawa. He had much better technology at his disposal as compared to Leni, but it was his poetic vision that made his documentary no less mesmerising than Olympia.

The 1972 Munich Olympics were seen from the perspectives of eight major directors of the world in Visions of Eight (1973). The big names included Ichikawa, John Schlesinger (Britain), Arthur Penn (USA), Milos Forman (Czechoslovakia) and Claude Lelouch (France), who were each given one event to focus on. The outcome was surprisingly disappointing, with only Schlesinger’s short film on the marathon being of some merit.

From documentaries, let us move on to feature films. Easily the most famous of them all is Oscar-winner Chariots of Fire (1981), a tale of two athletes who won gold medals for Great Britain at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Harold Abrahams, a Jewish student at Cambridge, triumphed in the 100-metre race, while Eric Liddell, a devout Christian from Scotland, won the 400-metre event. What made their stories most fascinating were the factors that motivated them. Abrahams felt he had to win to shed his outsider tag; for Liddell, it had to be done not for the Empire, but for the greater glory of God. The latter, in fact, withdrew from the 100-metre and 4x400-metre relay races because they fell on a Sunday, the sabbath day.

The film boasted of fine performances by Ian Charleson as Liddell and Ben Cross as Abrahams. The thrilling music score by Vangelis was also a big asset. However, the film contained some factual distortions. For instance, Abrahams was shown completing the famous run around the great courtyard at Trinity College, Cambridge. Actually, it was done by another sprinter, Lord Burghley, winner of the 400-metre hurdles gold at the 1928 Games. No wonder Burghley refused to see the movie.

The lives of some Olympic champions have been both inspiring and heart-breaking, marked by highs and lows, making them ideal fodder for movies. The greater the odds they overcame, the more powerful the drama. Jim Thorpe — All-American (1951) told the story of James Francis Thorpe, who won the pentathlon and decathlon events at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics but was later stripped of his medals when it was revealed that he had not been an amateur. Thorpe died in 1953, still appealing to the authorities to return his gold medals. As many as 30 years later, the medals were finally given to his family. In the film, his role was played by the handsome and athletic Burt Lancaster.

The highly eventful life of Australian swimming champion Dawn Fraser was shown in Dawn!, made in 1978. Dawn won four gold and four silver in three Olympics, but she made bigger news with her off-pool antics, like openly defying Australian officials and indulging in wild partying. What ultimately made her worthy of admiration was her ability to rise from the ashes like the proverbial Phoenix. Dawn was involved in the making of the film as a swimming adviser, giving tips to Bronwyn Mackan-Payne, her reel self.

Two films have been made on the life of the inimitable Muhammad Ali, who won the light heavyweight boxing gold at the 1960 Rome Olympics but later threw it in the Ohio river after experiencing racial abuse. The Greatest starred Ali himself, while Will Smith played the lead in Ali (Ironically, it was Smith who was nominated for an Oscar, not Ali).

Running Brave (1983) was about Billy Mills, who won the 10,000-metre race at the Tokyo Olympics in one of the biggest upsets in the history of the Games. Mills, orphaned at the age of 13, was part Sioux Indian. The movie saluted his determination to achieve glory for the sake of Native Americans.

The amazing popularity of the Jamaican bobsled team at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics inspired the Disney film Cool Runnings (1993). The (mis)adventures of a four-man Caribbean squad, none of whom have ever seen snow, let alone a bobsled, made for a feel-good, side-splitting comedy.

A promising athlete who fell short of winning an Olympic medal surprisingly became the subject of as many as three films in the 1990s. Steve Prefontaine, who at one time held all seven US records between 2,000 and 10,000 metres, had to settle for the fourth place in the 5,000-metre race at the 1972 Games. He was expected to shine at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, but he died in a car crash a year earlier at the age of 24. (In a strange coincidence, screen idol James Dean died in the same way at the same age.) Prefontaine starred Jared Leto while Without Limits featured Billy Crudup. There was also a TV documentary about his life, Fire on the Track, made in 1995.

Now where does Bollywood figure in all this? Cricket, a non-Olympic sport, is supposed to have some potential, particularly after the success of Lagaan, but athletics and hockey are regarded as unattractive propositions. Lamenting the dearth of films on the subject, new Sports Minister Sunil Dutt said he had planned to look to the 1960 Olympics in search of a movie idea, but was not able to do so due to financial reasons. The question is — is any movie wallah planning to go to Athens for the purpose? If the answer is yes, and all goes well, we can hope to see in the near future an Indian becoming an Olympic champion — at least on screen, if not off screen.

Star champions

From top to bottom: A scene from Olympia; Johnny Weissmuller played Tarzan in over 10 movies; Sonja Henie starred in several musicals; Brazilian jumper Adhemar de Silva acted in Black Orpheus; Weissmuller’s modelling caught the eye of Hollywood’s producers.

After her victory in the high jump at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, 18-year-old Ethel Catherwood of Canada was asked whether she had received any offers from Hollywood. 

"I’d rather gulp poison than try my hand at motion pictures," she quipped. Indeed, she did not take the plunge, but there have been several Olympic champions who preferred the movies to poison, with mixed results. 

Only a few of them have performed on the big screen the way they did on the biggest sporting stage.

Austrian-born American swimmer Johnny Weissmuller was one of those who successfully made the leap. He won a total of five golds in the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, including two in 100-metre freestyle. While training for the 1932 Los Angeles Games, he modelled for an underwear company. 

His photos caught the eye of Hollywood producers, and he was invited to audition for the part of Tarzan. MGM signed him, and the man who ruled the pool became the lord of the jungle, making his debut in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). His dialogues were confined to grunts and monosyllables, but it was his fab body that did the talking. 

He went on to work in over 10 Tarzan movies, and even an expanding waistline failed to shrink his popularity. Several actors played the role after him, but for many he was the quintessential reel ape man. 

When he finally lost the battle of the bulge, he tried to stay afloat by playing Jungle Jim ("Tarzan with clothes") but came a cropper.

Weissmuller was not the only Olympic medallist who swung from vines before the camera. There were three others — Buster Crabbe, Glenn Morris and Herman Brix — though they were not even half as charismatic or successful. Crabbe won the 400-metre freestyle swimming gold in the 1932 Games, beating his rival by just one-tenth of a second. 

His thrilling victory attracted studio bosses and he was cast not only as Tarzan, but also Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, thus becoming a B-movie star. Incidentally, Weissmuller and Crabbe acted together in Swamp Fire (1946), both playing men instead of ape men for a change.

Glenn Morris, the 1936 decathlon champion, played the lead in Tarzan’s Revenge (1938). In a rare instance of an Olympian romantic pair, Jane was played by Eleanor Holm, who won the gold in 100-metre backstroke in 1932.

Herman Brix, who bagged a silver in shot put at the 1928 Olympics, acted in two Tarzan movies made by an independent company in the thirties. 

In 1940, he changed his name to Bruce Bennett and played notable supporting roles in acclaimed movies like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Mildred Pierce.

One unfortunate Olympic champion whose dream of playing Tarzan could not be fulfilled was pole vaulter Donald Bragg. When he won the gold at the 1960 Games in Rome, he regaled the spectators by yelling like the ape man. 

Much to his delight, he was signed for a movie named Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar. The shooting began in 1964, but it was brought to a halt by a court order due to a copyright infringement.

Sonja Henie of Norway won the gold in figure skating in three successive Winter Olympics, beginning with the 1928 St Moritz Games. After she turned professional, her parents convinced Twentieth Century Fox to take her in the movies. 

She starred in several comedies and musicals in the thirties and the forties, including One in a Million (1936), her debut film, in which she was cast as a skater whose father trains her for the Olympics.

The winner of the pentathlon and decathlon events in the 1912 Stockholm Games, Jim Thorpe, did small parts in B Westerns during the Depression years. He mostly played tribal chiefs, thanks to his part-Native American origin.

Some Olympic stars did not take up movies as a career, but made one-off appearances. 

Adhemar Ferriera de Silva, the Brazilian triple jumper who won the gold in the 1952 and 1956 Games, acted in Black Orpheus, made by Frenchman Marcel Camus. The movie won the Golden Palm at Cannes and the Oscar for the best foreign language film.

Muhammad Ali, the imperious boxer who triumphed in the light heavyweight category in the 1960 Olympics, played himself in the film based on his autobiography, The Greatest (1977). 

When comedian Buster Keaton had to pole vault to a second-storey window in a scene from College (1927), the young man used as his duplicate was none other than Olympic champion Lee Barnes.

Serena Williams, winner of the doubles gold with sister Venus in the Sydney Olympics, besides several Grand Slam titles, plans to work in a movie after this year’s US Open. 

Given her pick, she would choose a role in a horror film. "I would be really excellent in one because I have a great scream, really over-dramatic," she says. 

But she hastens to add that she would also be good in a comedy. Let’s see whether her comedy will be horrifying or her horror will be funny. — Vikramdeep Johal