100 Years of Olympic Films
10: Cortina d'Ampezzo 1956
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Synopsis
Spanning fifty-three movies and forty-one editions of the Olympic Summer and Winter Games, this one-of-a-kind collection assembles, for the first time, a century’s worth of Olympic films—the culmination of a monumental, award-winning archival project encompassing dozens of new restorations by the International Olympic Committee. These documentaries cast a cinematic eye on some of the most iconic moments in the history of modern sports, spotlighting athletes who embody the Olympic motto of “Faster, Higher, Stronger”: Jesse Owens shattering sprinting world records on the track in 1936 Berlin, Jean Claude-Killy dominating the slopes of Grenoble in 1968, Joan Benoit breaking away to win the first-ever women’s marathon on the streets of Los Angeles in 1984. In addition to the work of Bud Greenspan, the man behind an impressive ten Olympic features, this stirring collective chronicle of triumph and defeat includes such landmarks of the documentary form as Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia and Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad, along with lesser-known but captivating contributions by major directors like Claude Lelouch, Carlos Saura, and Miloš Forman. It also serves as a fascinating window onto the formal development of cinema itself, as well as the technological progress that has enabled the viewer, over the years, to get ever closer to the action. Traversing continents and decades, and reflecting as well the social, cultural, and political changes that have shaped our recent history, this remarkable marathon of films offers nothing less than a panorama of a hundred years of human endeavor.
Picture 7/10
Still making my way through Criterion’s 100 Years of Olympic Films box set, disc 10 presents one film covering the 1956 Winter Games in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Giorgio Ferroni’s White Vertigo. The film is presented on this dual-layer disc in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1 with a 1080p/24hz encode. The restoration was either done in 2K or 4K resolution.
Another colour film this one is an oddity in the set up to this point, though at least one other film later in the set shares a similar trait with it (I’m currently on disc 18 as of this writing). The other colour films up this point have all delivered colours that seemed to be balanced pretty evenly on the warm/cool spectrum but White Vertigo ends up leaning quite a bit on the warmer, yellow side of things, the snow taking on a yellow tint during a number of sequences. Since this look hasn’t plagued the previous colour films it could be safe to assume it’s supposed to look this way. The notes point out that Eastman Color negative was used for the restoration, with a hint they also referenced Ferraniacolor prints made for distribution. But even if this is how it is supposed to look it still throws off other aspects of the image. Blacks are explicitly effected by this, the balance thrown off making them more milky and gray, especially in the nighttime sequences. This in turn completely crushes out shadow detail, severely flattening the picture. I really don’t know what to make of it, it’s just so odd after how most of the other colour films in the set look so far. It’s not alone in the set so far though: spoiler alert, disc 12’s The Grand Olympics looks similar.
Getting past that I don’t have much else to complain about. The clean-up job is pretty immaculate and I don’t recall any bits of damage other than a bit of a flicker on the edge of the screen during an ice hockey match. The picture has also been encoded well, no obvious artifacts present and film grain, which is pretty fine, is rendered superbly, leading to sharp and distinct details when the black levels aren’t crushing them out. Ultimately, it looks like a film for the most part, but that yellow tint throws things off.
100 Years of Olympic Films - Screen Captures
Audio 6/10
The audio is again presented in lossless PCM 1.0 mono. The music and narration sound fine, but again fidelity is limited, as is range. But like most of the films so far damage isn’t a concern and it sounds quite clean.
Extras 5/10
The only disappointing aspect to this set is that there are no on-disc special features to speak of. The set does come with an incredibly thorough 216-page hardbound book, featuring material on the restorations by Adrian Wood along with essays covering the films, all written by film scholar Peter Cowie. It also filled with photos from the various events. Cowie’s essay for the film is one of the shorter ones in the book, admiring the look and its coverage of events, so I can only further assume the yellow tint is correct. (The grade given here refers to the supplements for the set as a whole, which, in this case, is just the included book.)
Closing
Generally the presentation is clean and doesn’t present any noticeable artifacts, keeping a filmic look. The yellow tint and weak blacks admittedly threw me off.
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