A few months ago, I remember seeing a film on TCM which documented the infamous Olympics in Munich that took place in 1972. The entire event would be overshadowed by a terrorist attack in which some athletes were killed. This movie was made much earlier (technically) but is a newly restored version dating from 2017. The original footage is from the 1912 summer olympics hosted in Stockholm, Sweden. It was not as grand or extensive as ones hosted now, and only 28 countries competed. This was also the first time an asian country (Japan) was competing. Because world war 1 would happen shortly after this, there were no more olympics held until 1920. This film is pretty difficult to comment on because as you might guess, it has no storyline. It's essentially nothing more than various clips strung together in different segments. The first segment is pretty short and focuses on the preparations of the games, as well as the opening ceremony hosted by the swedish king Carl Gustav V. Then it goes to the sporting events themselves which makes up the majority of the almost 3 hour long runtime. Once the games are finished, they show many of the athletes receiving medals. While it doesn't have much in the way of a plot other than history, there is the saving grace of the music. It's sounds typical by silent movie standards for the most part, but one cool feature regarding the music is how it will play a rendition of a country's anthem depending on who wins an event. The songs change, so it doesn't get annoying. If an american wins the discus, it might play a short tune from the Star Spangled Banner or Stars and Stripes Forever. If a brit wins, it might play Rule Britannia or God Save the Queen. This country-specific music doesn't just apply to the moments that depict a victory though. It also occasionally shows up when a team is shown stretching or preparing for an event. One thing that caught me completely by surprise is how George S Patton is actually in this film. Patton would later garner a legendary status as a military commander during the second world war, and here he's shown fencing against somebody. He didn't end up winning, but he was the best fencer in the event who wasn't swedish. The film also depicts women's sports, such as swimming, and this was actually the first time the olympics contained a swimming event specifically for them. Towards the end, we get to witness a marathon, which a runner apparently died attempting to finish. Once all the sporting events have been displayed, the hosts award those lucky enough to be given medals. The gold medals here were actually solid, and this was the last time this was done probably because of how expensive it was. Other than going into detail about the various sporting events that are shown in this film, there isn't much to say about it. It's pretty long, but the 1912 sweden games are the earliest olympic games to be put on film, so it makes sense. I thought it was enjoyable enough, and it was a little surprising to see how little the olympics have changed in the past 109 years.

This is an important piece of history indeed. The odds and ends of old film have been stitched together to produce a memorable, if not coherent, documentary on the Stockholm Olympic Games of 1912. The end of the film credits shows that the copyright was issued to the International Olympic Committee in 2016.

While viewing this amazing piece of history on Turner Classic Movies, it was of course obvious that these games are in a different category than the recently completed games of 2020 (or 2021 to be exact). We see some of the great figures of the day, like Pierre de Coubertain, the founder of the modern Olympics, who was there in attendance and King Carl Gustav V of Sweden who attended the games and with great panache presented medals to the winners. Jim Thorpe, the outstanding Afro-American athlete who won two gold medals in track and field is shown near the end of the documentary.

The film had a certain retro style with the appropriate music when showing athletes from different countries like France (La Marseillaise),Britain (Rule Britannia) etc. There was no narrative just titles before each segment accompanied by music. With silent movies we tend to appreciate the film as a film. At one point we see three winning athletes from Finland with the background music from Sibelius' Finlandia. As a Canadian, I was happy to see our athletes wearing the Maple Leaf on their shirts, since it wasn't until 1965 that the symbol was chosen for Canada's national flag.

The competitions proved interesting, to say the least, with the Marathon being run in two hours and thirty six minutes compared to 2:08 in Tokyo 2021. The runners appear on a dirt road in the woods outside of Stockholm. There was a turn at the halfway point from where they ran back to the stadium. We also hear that the first athlete to die from exhaustion at the games was a Portuguese athlete at the turn in the Marathon. The standing high jump showed athletes rotating their arms to liftoff for the jump. In the running high jump, they often landed on their feet without losing balance and hitting the ground. In the diving competitions, we see from a distance the athletes jumping off the platforms at heights of up to 30 metres and making huge splashes as they hit the water, unlike the small ripples we see in today's perfected techniques.

Suffice to say, that this is a documentary that gives an Olympics buff like myself great satisfaction. I was overjoyed to be able to record a number of these superb Olympics documentaries on TCM before the Tokyo Olympics this past summer. It was an excellent way for TCM to celebrate the Games and give viewers many hours of viewing pleasure.

Given the opening titles state this is a re-edited version of surviving elements, it's difficult to come to conclusions about the original production. As it exists, it's 175 minutes of clips, arranged in chronological order, of the 1912 Olympics. Events are offered in abbreviated versions, typically showing ten seconds of an event, followed by the names of the winners, and then images of them; the one exception seems to be the women's diving, which shows the young women in their damp outfits.

In 1912, of course, the thought was that people would wish to see the winners. Nowadays, most of the names are forgotten, save for Jim Thorpe and the King of Sweden. Almost everything is shot with a fixed camera, using angles that had become established by a decade earlier, back when actualities would show these sports, each by itself as part of a film program. Given these issues, this becomes a peculiar film, probably the longest documentary of its time, but of interest to an audience of Olympics memorabilists, showing the Olympics in an era when it was a competition of amateurs, people who performed for pride, and then got on with their lives.