A brisk, 76 minute documentary of the 1976 Olympic Winter Games held in Innsbruck, Austria, narrated by James Coburn and focused more on the beauty of the human form and the intensity of the events than being a complete accounting of the competition. The approach has its pros and cons: it's not a dry rehash, some of the footage is sublime, and Rick Wakeman from the band Yes livens things up with some trippy music, but on the other hand, the sampling of the sports is uneven and there are glaring omissions. With that said, it's fun to compare this to the modern games, both in the equipment used (that Czech goalie's facemask!) and in technique (notably the ski jumpers not holding their legs in a V shape for increased lift, as that innovation hadn't been popularized until the 1990's).
It was interesting to see James Coburn, but he's hit and miss in his role as narrator. When he tries sports like bobsledding or biathlon himself, we really feel how intense and difficult they are, but he was also overly dramatic with the superlatives in his descriptions. Of the men's downhill skiing champion, he says "And the man that wins the gold on this mountain will not only be Olympic champion, he'll receive more adulation and publicity than all the other medalists combined." Oh, really, all of them combined? He tended to ham things up ala William Shatner, and overall I'm not so sure he was necessary.
Regrettably, the women athletes who were most successful at medaling at these games are barely mentioned. We see Rosi Mittermaier, the woman's skiing champion from Austria who two golds and a silver, for all of ten seconds, something that felt like an afterthought. We don't hear at all how in her final race she missed a historic third gold - and in her home country - by just 12 hundredths of a second. We don't see Soviet skater Tatyana Averina-Barabash (2 gold, 2 bronze) or Soviet Nordic skier Raisa Smetanina (2 gold, 1 silver) at all. The male bias cuts across all countries: from the United States we don't see Sheila Young (1 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze in speed skating) or Dorothy Hamill winning gold in figure skating. At least Soviet legend Irina Rodnina and her partner Alexsandr Zaytsev got a decent amount of coverage.
I know the filmmakers consciously chose to make the documentary in the style of other successful artistic representations of the games (Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad from the 1964 Summer Games really comes to mind). However, when you think we saw Coburn flailing around as a hockey goalie or waxing skis as if he's some kind of shop pro instead of world class athletes who worked hard to be there and succeeded in dramatic fashion, it has to be chalked up as a misfire in some ways. Entire sports like speed skating are neglected, with a few sequences shown during the closing credits without explanation.
Still, despite all of my complaining, I liked watching this. The insanity of going 70 miles an hour down a bobsled run or nearly that while downhill skiing hits home. The form of the skill jumpers, some of their bodies looking nearly parallel to the skis after taking off, is incredible. Even though it was just 46 years ago, it feels like a simpler time in all of these sports, with many events having been added since, but the athleticism comes through. It also doesn't overstay its welcome, and would probably be enjoyable to non-sports fans.
