How far the world has moved in just 22 years.
Chariots of Fire, released in 1981 and the winner of a 'Best Picture' Oscar, is a justly-acclaimed British movie about two athletes competing for gold at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games.
One is an English secular Jew, Harold Abrahams. The other is a Scottish putative Presbyterian missionary, Eric Liddell. This true story tells of the private background behind their runs to glory.
The film is well crafted, with great performances from Ben Cross as Harold, Ian Charleson as Eric and Nigel Havers as another Olympian, Lord Andrew Lindsay, who was at Cambridge with Harold. And the Oscar-winning synthesiser-based music from Vangelis still thrills.
But our world has changed since this film was made, and we notice more than ever before the unstated truth behind the facts.
This is a film about two athletes winning gold. One for England, one for Scotland. One for Harold in his personal fight against the Jew-despising establishment, and one for Eric and his very Presbyterian God. The unstated truth is that these British athletes won gold only because, back in 1924, there were no black athletes running against them. Economic, social and political pressures effectively stopped competition from that quarter. The film shows one black athlete on the American team, competing in the long-jump. He would have been one very lonely fellow.
The film is still powerful enough, however, to forget that for most of the time. Harold's student days at Cambridge and Eric's preaching days in Scotland are juxtaposed to great effect - they are very different, but both outsiders as far as the English athletics and ruling establishment are concerned. And it is ironic that, in the end, their triumph brings glory to the very establishment which would have been happy to shun them.
This widescreen movie has been given an anamorphic transfer, but one wonders why the engineers bothered.
I have rarely seen a worse-quality DVD transfer. The first problem appears during the titles - you have to search a long time for old-fashioned ghosting like this. The picture is murky, overly grainy and most of the time it appears not as a film, but as if this is a bad transfer of a poor-quality video.
If you remember this film and want to see it, then rent it but keep your expectations low.
If you have never seen it, borrow a friend's video. Sadly even a pan-and-scan video would give a better result than this DVD.
