British documentary filmmaker and producer Tony Maylam reinvigorated the sports documentary genre with WHITE ROCK, an idiosyncratic and utterly engaging account of the XII Olympic Winter Games Innsbruck 1976. He did so by placing music (by organ and synth wunderkind Rick Wakeman) front and center, and by using Hollywood star James Coburn as a "guide for the uninitiated."
UK
UK
"Yours is not a jump for glory; it's a jump for joy."
Dear readers, the most intrepid among you know that I make no secret of my basic friendliness toward sportsball. I enjoy seeing people do remarkable things of which I'm not capable (no shortage of options there), and I have an outright mania for NBA basketball (go Knicks!) dating back to the fabled 1992 Olympic Dream Team. By and large, however, the Olympic games have never enticed me much, perhaps owing to their distasteful appeal to patriotism (a matter on which I'm resolutely Team Samuel Johnson). As such, I'm always looking for the secret window that will enable me to appreciate the Olympics more generally. Alas, that window does…
James Coburn mansplains the Winter Olympics to you with the aid of a lot of truly gorgeous footage and a dreamdrone Rick Wakeman score. Occasionally tips into some Michael Mann-ish hyperstylized abstraction. Pretty rad.
Criterion Channel, film #19
If you've never seen any of the Olympic games before, start with this one. The sports are "explained", so if you're from another planet and have never encountered sports before, you'll be in luck. Also, the soundtrack was so hideous.
I’ve been missing the Olympics lately, so falling asleep to an ultra-stylish Olympics doc was the perfect medicine. I’m already a big fan of the Olympics, but it’s never looked as cool as it does in White Rock. The editing is superbly sleek.
I have to draw attention to my favorite moment. During the bobsledding portion while flicking through the heads turning amongst the crowds to follow the rocketing bobsleds, one man stays firmly glued on a Playboy magazine in the complete opposite direction.
Film #32 of 100 Years of Olympic Films: 1912 - 2012
When Tony Maylam was tasked with shooting the Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria, he wanted to create something different. Where the documentaries of the past had excelled at event coverage, Maylam wanted to excel at explaining just what the hell the event actually was - how it felt, how it worked and how it's won. So, what does Maylam do? He hires actor James Coburn to walk us through select events. Coburn doesn't just walk us through them, though, he actually participates in them - well, the ones that he's capable of doing. This unique twist allows the viewer to actually experience the event, putting them directly in the action. The camera follows Coburn, and the athletes, whipping down bobseld lanes and flying off of ski jumps. It's pretty thrilling stuff that's set to some extremely funky Rick Wakeman tunes that manage to put the rock in White Rock.
🏅"The Winter Olympics -- the most dramatic, exciting championship in the whole spectrum of sport!"🏅
100 (and more!) Years of the Olympics Documentary Marathon -- Part #32 of 57, Innsbruck 🇦🇹 1976
Back to Innsbruck we go, only twelve years after the 1964 Winter Games, with the Olympics returning in 1976 as documented by Tony Maylam's White Rock. And it couldn't be more of a left turn from the last time we were here.
One of the shortest feature-length films about the Olympics at just 76 minutes, White Rock continues the recent trend of these documentaries from the 60s and 70s that absolutely try to do something different than their predecessors. Maylam, to his credit, surely does that with a…
James Coburn does a beer/car commercial for every Olympic sport, and with Wakeman playing some wicked tunes, I’m buying.
fantastic documentary, ties very much into battle of the network stars with james coburn doing the Olympic sports
In the year 2021, the availability of a GoPro camera has made first person action shots quite easy to obtain. This ease of access has actually desensitized myself to the magic of POV action shots. That is, until I watched 1977's White Rock.
The POV shots in director Tony Maylam's film about the XII Winter Olympics have a griminess to them that make it nearly impossible to look away from the screen. Combined with an all-timer score by Rick Wakeman, these shots allow an audience to experience just a small iota of the adrenaline rush an Olympic athlete must feel. The high jump skiing sequence in particular was so fantastical that it nearly moved me to tears.
While the rest…
Holy fuck.
Holy fuck.
It’s like if Michael Mann directed the Olympics.
On Criterion Channel.
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…
