Paris 1924: the Olympic Games as if you were there

A hundred years ago, Paris already hosted the Olympic Games. If television did not exist and cinema was silent, a sublime period film gave an account of the event. It has just been released on video.

100 years. A century. 1924 – 2024. In the meantime, wars, peaces, crises, political, scientific and technological revolutions… In the meantime, above all, sport, this opium of the people, has become such a colossal business that we wonder if it is really serious to continue to rave about our sponsored athletes. However, after three weeks of Paris 2024, which some saw with an inquisitive eye predicting a huge fiasco, we want more. Good news, the Paralympic section opens in a few days.

In the meantime, this period documentary has just appeared in the video shelves, Olympic Games, Paris 1924 by Jean de Rovera, three hours of (silent) cinema around these Olympics from another age. The 2K restoration allows you to (re-)discover absolutely crazy images that reflect both a sporting event and an era.

Revenge after the fiasco

These 1924 Olympics were supposed to make us forget the fiasco of those of 1900, also organized in Paris on the sidelines of the Universal Exhibition which would literally devour the sporting event. At the beginning of the 20s, Pierre de Coubertin got his revenge, right from the opening ceremony with his parade of athletes (many men, few women) representing 44 nations in the Colombes stadium. In the stands, a whole Sunday best fauna from the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. The “common” people seem, in fact, absent from the raout.

The director of L'esprit Coubertin analyzes the Olympic Games

Once the ceremony is over, the film indicates with the help of intertitles the exploits of the various sportsmen that the operator has captured with astonishing accuracy of vision. The film links the disciplines according to the chronology of the organization (Greco-Roman wrestling, athletics, swimming, etc.) We obviously think of the first Lumière films with their fixed shots whose dynamism comes from within the frame itself and not from a play of external staging artifices.

The only effect used by Jean de Rovera is slow motion, the real star of this documentary as it allows us to capture the grace of the athletes in all its strength and beauty. But Jean de Rovera, unlike Leni Riefenstahl in her Stadium Games, the People's Day (1936), does not abuse low-angle shots and other sophisticated framing to sanctify the human body. The slow motions above all allow us to grasp the sporting feat that the camera's eye could not capture at real speed.

Tarzan superstar

Among the stars of these Olympic Games: swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, future Tarzan for Hollywood, three times gold medalist (one less than Léon Marchand); the 100m aces, the British Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell whose crossed destinies would inspire Hugh Hudson for his Chariots of Fire (1981) or even the French tennis players Jean Borotra and René Lacoste.

The sublimely restored black and white, the silence of the projection (accompanied by the original music of Donald Sosin) and the economy of the staging, allow for total immersion. An immersion that contrasts with the television orgy that we have just experienced (suffered), made up of a multiplication of shots that often derealize the performance, of incessant comments with exacerbated chauvinism or even of beatific self-celebrations. This 1924 film is the victory of cinema on the small screen.

Olympic Games, Paris 1924 by Jean de Rovera. Edition: Carlotta. Duration: 174 minutes.

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