The First Olympics – Athens 1896 (1984/Sony DVD/TV Mini-Series)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C Extras: D Episodes: B-
By 1984,
the U.S. TV movie and Mini-Series was in decline, but a few good ones still
were made and that included Alvin Rakoff’s The
First Olympics – Athens 1896, ironically arriving as the U.S. and former
U.S.S.R. were boycotting each other’s games.
The title can be misleading as this was really the first modern
Olympics, but that is another story.
Despite some aspirations to imitate Chariots
of Fire and fit the feel-good Hollywood mentality that often felt phony at
the time, the 4+ hours hold up pretty well and nicely take the long way to tell
the story of U.S. participation in the games.
David Ogden
Stiers plays the man trying to get a track team together for the country and
facing all kinds of obstacles in the process of essentially reviving the
Olympic Games. Like many such
productions of the time, it has an all-star cast, though this turns out to be a
British co-production despite its U.S. TV feel.
The Charles Gary Allison/William Bast teleplay is not bad, smart and has
its moments, though it is far from a homerun.
Saving
this from its flaws are the rest of the cast, including Honor Blackman, David
Caruso, Hunt Block, Alex Hyde-White, Gayle Hunnicut, Virginal McKenna, Louis
Jordan, Jason Connery, Ed Bishop and a very good supporting cast overall. Sets and locations are not bad, while the
time period seems authentic enough, which I cannot say about later such
productions on the big or small screen.
If you like the idea of the story and give this a chance, you will not
be disappointed.
The 1.33
X 1 image looks good for its age, a little soft, slightly sepia toned on
purpose and it is believable enough that this is a new High Definition
transfer, which means this might be an early classic TV Blu-ray down the
line. Director of Photography Paul
Beeson (The Saint) did a nice job
shooting this and it holds up very nice all these years later. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is a little lighter
than expected, slightly compressed and limited for even a production its age. This hurts Bruce Broughton’s score a bit too. There are no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
