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A spectacle of magnificent proportions and remarkable intimacy, Kon Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad remains one of the greatest films ever made about sports. Supervising a vast team of technicians using scores of cameras, Ichikawa captured the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo in glorious widescreen images, using cutting-edge telephoto lenses and exquisite slow motion to create lyrical, idiosyncratic poetry from the athletic drama surging all around him. Drawn equally to the psychology of losers and winners—including the legendary Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikila, who receives the film’s most exalted tribute—Ichikawa captures the triumph, passion, and suffering of competition with a singular humanistic vision, and in doing so effected a transformative influence on the art of documentary filmmaking.
Original Release
03/20/1965
US Release
10/20/1965
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Cast
Name | Character |
---|
Abebe Bikila | Self |
Ahmed Issa | Self |
Yoshinori Sakai | Torch Bearer / Self |
Joe Frazier | Self |
Hirohito | Self (Emperor of Japan) |
Camille Torabpour | English-Language Narrator |
Directors
Writers
Kon Ichikawa, Claude Darget, Yoshio Shirasaka, Shuntaro Tanikawa, Natto Wada
Cast
Name | Character |
---|
Abebe Bikila | Self |
Ahmed Issa | Self |
Yoshinori Sakai | Torch Bearer / Self |
Joe Frazier | Self |
Hirohito | Self (Emperor of Japan) |
Camille Torabpour | English-Language Narrator |
Producers
Name | Role |
---|
Jun Kiyofuji | Producer |
Asao Kumada | Producer |
Suketaru Taguchi | Producer |
Senkichi Taniguchi | Producer |