Muhammad Ali - The Greatest is frustrating. This is a documentary which could have been great. It falls short of greatness, but still gives a valuable insight into the man who became, for a time, the most famous in the world.
It's difficult to realise, unless you lived at that time, the impact Ali had. As Cassius Clay he was the first fighter with the strength of personality, the sheer charisma, to break the mobster-mould of prize-fighting. Even people who loathed boxing were in awe of the man's grace and fluid beauty.
This film, by French cinema-verite film-maker William Klein, tracks Cassius immediately before his first bout with Sonny Liston in 1964, when he gained the heavyweight title, and follows through to the controversial return bout soon after, when, now Muhammad Ali, he stopped Liston in the first round, after just one minute.
Then it breaks. While the camera isn't running, Ali has gone to gaol rather than serve in the Vietnam War, and has had his title stripped from him. He has gone through two unsuccessful attempts to regain the title. The camera starts turning again in 1974, as he travels to Zaire, to reclaim his rightful title from its temporary holder, George Foreman.
There's hardly any boxing in this movie. There's no footage of these classic fights, although still-photographs give some of the feeling of the bouts. Instead, this movie concentrates on Cassius/Ali, on his perpetual psyching-up of himself and his entourage, and on the people who took strength and pride from him.
It's interesting that although the people he fought were black as well, they totally failed to symbolise, as Ali did, the new spirit of Black America, and its hatred of the old subservience. The DVD is worth having for just a few minutes alone, when William Klein is able to interview the Black revolutionary, Malcolm X. An incredibly articulate, perceptive and super-cool Malcolm X says straight-out that Ali will win his fight. It is his time, and his people's time, in history. A few days later Malcolm X was dead - murdered, some believe, by other Black Muslims jealous of the power-base Malcolm X was building.
The film shows the tremendous spirit, through example, that Ali was able to pass on to young Blacks in America. It shows some ugly scenes too - as when a leading member of a Louisville syndicate of whites who had financially backed Ali as a young boxer, rails against his seeming ingratitude. He reminds viewers that once, not that long ago, his grandparents would have owned Ali's grandparents. Eternal gratitude, it seems, is his right.
There is a lot of great footage here - and plenty of testimony of why Ali earned the soubriquets of The Louisville Lip and The Mouth. But it is also, in the long run, a fairly indulgent film, with much repetitive footage, particularly in Zaire.
The 111-minute length movie (not 117, as the liner tells us) would have been more powerful if cut to around an hour. The 1964 footage is compelling - but the story of the 1974 fight against Foreman, the famous 'Rumble in the Jungle', has been told so much better and more powerfully in the outstanding documentary When We Were Kings.
This is definitely worth viewing, and the squeamish will enjoy the lack of actual fight footage. But rent first, before deciding to add it to your collection.
The mythic nature of Ali is portrayed better, however, in When We Were Kings, and I think this documentary really does suffer from not having footage of the first Clay/Liston fight.
That footage is essential viewing if you are to appreciate just how extraordinary Clay's emergence was. When you see him dance around the ring, circling the lumbering behemoth from another age and society, this really was so much more than just a boxing match.
