Rendez-vous à Melbourne

A nice example of the Olympics documentary before the Bud Greenspan template locked its hold on them. Very nice looking color cinematography with occasional close ups of the athletes. As usual, not every event is covered. The track and field events get the majority of the attention, while swimming and many others are completely ignored. The marathon, with Alain Mimoun's historic, win gets extended coverage with a jazzy score. Much of the film is spent on the mechanics of running the games and also about Australia itself. People who are only interested in the games might grumble about this, but for me it just added to the film's charms. Some demerits though for the casual sexism, though. The narrators seem more interested in the female athlete's appearances than their accomplishments--a common problem in early Olympic documentaries.