In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from my local public library.
Visions of Eight, like Black Orpheus, is a film I remember really liking when I first saw it (but I was sports-mad and particularly Olympics-mad at the time, so not so surprising), and I was curious to see how it had held up after all these years. As with Black Orpheus, the answer turned out to be not entirely well, although it’s still a film worth seeing, for its own sake as well as for what it tells you about the time in which it was made.
The idea for creating Visions of Eight is credited to executive producer David Wolper, who also produced hit movies and miniseries like Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), Roots (1977), and The Thorn Birds (1983). He invited ten directors to create short films about the 1972 Munich Olympics, which would be combined into a single film including an introduction from each director. Federico Fellini lent his name to the cause to help Wolper recruit other directors, but never intended to participate, while Ousmane Sembène began shooting a film about the Senegalese basketball team that was never completed, for reasons that remain obscure.
Hence the final title became Visions of Eight, with segments directed by Yuri Ozerov (“The Beginning,” about the moments just before a competition begins), Mai Zetterling (“The Strongest,” about weightlifting), Arthur Penn (“The Highest,” about pole vaulting), Michael Pfleghar (“The Women,” focused on female competitors), Kon Ichikawa (“The Fastest,” about the men’s 100 meter race) Milos Forman (“The Decathlon,” about the event named), Claude Lelouch (“The Losers,” about athletes who didn’t win, and particularly about those well out of the running) and John Schlesinger (“The Longest,” about the men’s marathon, which is the most traditional sports documentary of the lot).
The first thing I noticed upon this rewatch was how similar the segments were, which is surprising given the range of directors and subject matter. Most take a highly stylized approach, de-emphasizing completed actions in favor of fixation on moments in time or closeups of details rather than the full-body shots of the competitors. Slow motion is used so much it becomes the movie’s defining cliché, while the fragmented shots remind me of Fred Astaire’s insistence that he be shot in long takes and with his entire body in the frame, and what pity it was that the athletes couldn’t make a similar demand to let their skills be seen and appreciated.
Mai Zetterling says openly that she has no interest in sports, but the same sentiment seems to be shared by most of the other directors. Instead, apart from Schlesinger, their interest seems to lie primarily in abstracting visuals of the athletes, editing together the fragments in unusual ways, and setting them to music. Henry Mancini wrote the soundtrack, which may be the most 1970s aspect of the entire film. Aspects of Bavarian folk culture (yodeling, cowbells, dirndls and the like) are included for comic effect, and some of Mancini’s music also seems to be making fun of the athletes.
Some segments also include too much faux seriousness for my taste: when Yuri Ozerov says something about the moment before the competition begins being a moment of existential crisis when the athlete knows he is really alone, I feel like saying “no dude, they’ve done this a million times before and they know how it works.” Kon Ichikawa used 35 cameras, including one manned by Claude Lelouch (who always shot his own films), but the result is not distinctively different from what the other directors achieved with far less.
Another very 1970s trait of Visions of Eight is the assumption that sports are for men, with women segregated into one segment that has its own biases. Apparently women doing gymnastics are beautiful (one of the more extended sequences in the entire film shows Ludmilla Tourischeva competing on the uneven parallel bars, set to classical music, and she is indeed amazing and graceful), but women running is set to jokey music because who knows why? They’re all athletes and deserve respect for their achievements, but that’s not how some of these directors seem to see it.
Visions of Eight was shown out of competitions at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival and won the 1974 Golden Globe for Best Documentary. Overall, it was not a success either critically or at the box office and was criticized for not including more about the terrorist attack on the Israeli team, which is mentioned in Schlesinger’s segment but are not central to it.| Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 1081
Technical details: 110 min.; color; screen ratio 1.85:1; English.
Edition reviewed: DVD
Extras: commentary track by Amanda Dobbins, Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan; documentary including material from Sembene’s uncompleted segment; promotional short; booklet with a 1973 article by George Plimpton, excepts from Wolper’s 2003 memoir, and reflections on the film by novelist Sam Lipsyte.
Fun Fact: You set glimpses of several famous athletes in passing, including Mark Spitz (who won seven gold medals in swimming) and the decathlete formerly known as Bruce Jenner (now Caitlyn Jenner), whose breakthrough success would come in the 1976 Olympics.
Parting Thought: What should Wolper have done, if anything, to include more coverage of the terrorist attack? Each director had creative freedom and had planned their segment before the attacks took place (it was easier for Schlesinger to incorporate something about the attacks because the men’s marathon is the last event in the Olympics). I think the best solution would have been to hire a ninth director to make a segment specifically about the attacks, but for whatever reason Wolper did not make that choice.
