Video: Filming the Olympics

In one of those interesting historic coincidences, the modern Olympic movement and the cinema were born within a few short months of eachother in late 19th-century Paris. Writing in the August issue of History Today, Taylor Downing examines how the Games have been captured by on film. Here, we present footage from some of the events he references. Make sure to catch the full article in this month's magazine.

Here's a montage of clips (best viewed with the sound off) from Stockholm 1912:

In the next video, Harold Abrahams, whose exploits at Paris 1924 became the inspiration for the 1981 film Chariots of Fire, is put through his paces on the training ground:

However, the real hero of that year was the Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi, who collected five gold medals:

The Berlin 1936 tournament, held in Hitler's Germany, became notorious for many reasons, not least the film that it produced: Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia, widely regarded, despite its ideological origins, as a masterpiece of cinema and, as Downing describes it, "a celebration of the human spirit behind the striving for excellence epitomised in every Games". Here is a clip from the film's diving sequence

Berlin was the final Olympics before the outbreak of the Second World War, and the 'austerity Games' of London 1948 resulted in a very different tournament. Here are some clips from the event:

Our final clip comes from Tokyo 1964 and the remarkable film that came out of it, Tokyo Olympiad. Directed by Kon Ichikawa, the high-tech production, made using powerful telephoto lenses and slow-motion cameras, is a memorable record of the Games. The following section depicts the marathon and, for a change, is best viewed with the sound on:

You can read more about the Olympics on film in the August issue of History Today, which is out July 19th.