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The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo were a milestone as much for the intense athletic competition as the joyous commemoration of Japan's recovery following its defeat in World War II. Director Kon Ichikawa (The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain) created an epic film of the event, a documentary that covered the entire athletic competition while also capturing the surrounding atmosphere. Early in the film is a stunning aerial shot of Hiroshima, which first shows the devastated area, where destruction from the atom bomb has been preserved, before focusing on a beautiful park where an Olympic ceremony was being held. The scenes of athletic competition, some of which were shot by cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon), work beautifully on two levels. The camera frames the extreme effort expended by such athletes as the great American runner Bob Hayes, and thus the film functions as a credible sports documentary, yet the camera also goes in for close-ups, lingering on the athlete's muscled forms to provide images that would look perfectly at home on the wall of a photography gallery. The narration in Japanese is accompanied with English subtitles, and this edition retains the widescreen look of the original theatrical release (in a letterboxed format) as well as the complete 170-minute running time. --Robert J. McNamara
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