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Tokyo Olympiad (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Kon Ichikawa (Director) Rated:
NR
Format: Blu-ray
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 95 ratings
IMDb7.8/10.0
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June 23, 2020
Criterion Collection
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Genre Special Interests
Format Blu-ray, Subtitled
Contributor Kon Ichikawa
Language Japanese
Studio The Criterion Collection
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From the manufacturer

Tokyo Olympiad banner

Kon Ichikawa’s stunningly original, beautifully humanistic take on the 1964 Olympic Games

Newly restored

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 team of hundreds of technicians using more than a thousand 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 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 effects a transformative influence on documentary filmmaking.

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration
  • Audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie
  • New introduction to the film by Cowie
  • Eighty minutes of additional material from the Tokyo Games
  • Archival interviews with director Kon Ichikawa
  • New documentary about Ichikawa
  • And more
Tokyo Olympiad bottom banner

Product Description

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 team of hundreds of technicians using more than a thousand 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 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 effects a transformative influence on the art of documentary filmmaking. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack • Audio commentary from 2001 by film historian Peter Cowie • New introduction to the film by Cowie • Eighty minutes of additional material from the Tokyo Games, with a new introduction by Cowie • Archival interviews with director Kon Ichikawa • New documentary about Ichikawa featuring interviews with cameraman Masuo Yamaguchi, longtime Ichikawa collaborator Chizuko Osaka, and the director’s son Tatsumi Ichikawa • Trailers • New English subtitle translation • PLUS: An essay by film scholar James Quandt

Product details

  • MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ NR (Not Rated)
  • Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.7 x 7.5 x 5.4 inches; 3.53 ounces
  • Director ‏ : ‎ Kon Ichikawa
  • Media Format ‏ : ‎ Blu-ray, Subtitled
  • Release date ‏ : ‎ June 23, 2020
  • Studio ‏ : ‎ The Criterion Collection
  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0863QWY5P
  • Country of Origin ‏ : ‎ USA
  • Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 95 ratings

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
95 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Visual Beauty
    Reviewed in the United States on November 20, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Sit back and enjoy the beauty of the film and pray for Japan, our friend.
    One person found this helpful
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  • hughb
    5.0 out of 5 stars Tokyo Olympiad
    Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    Product was exactly as promised - mint condition of both the packaging and DVD. Fantastic version of a product I've been looking to give as a gift to my father. He's been searching for a copy since he first saw it as a boy in the 60's. Practically impossible to find in Australia.
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  • Chris
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great
    Reviewed in the United States on August 5, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Great
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  • Jon96789
    4.0 out of 5 stars Classic movie about the 1966 Tokyo Olympics
    Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    This classic documentary from Kon Ichikawa covers the 1966 Olympics. While a two-hour version can be found on the 'net, this is the full version, running almost three hours. The transfer was done by The Criterion Collection, so you know the video has top notch quality and sound. It also has the original Japanese audio track as well as an English soundtrack.

    This video was only released on DVD earlier and was out of print for decades until this release. Well worth the buy.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • jazz man
    5.0 out of 5 stars Tokyo Olympiad
    Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Bought for a friend he likes this film and mention the quality of Criterion is excellent as always ,highly recommended .
    One person found this helpful
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  • Christopher B. Hoehne
    5.0 out of 5 stars The human side of sport without the sap...
    Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2002
    A lemon placed as a totem on a starting block. The torn feet of drained marathoner. The fleshy cheek of a shooter oozing over the butt of his rifle. The turkey-like jowls of older spectators. The squint against blinding lights of an athlete from Chad as he steps off a plane and into the alienation of city life for perhaps the first time. Rain on a sopping wet track. Trains clattering over bridges. The splat of a hammer in wet turf. The almost obsessive-compulsive preparation of a shot-putter has he prepares for his throw. The nonchalant strength and focus of a winning judo expert. A yachtsman, while leaning far out over the water to balance his craft, capricously dipping his hand into the water as it passes inches from his face. The giddy excitement of a little girl spectator clapping and cheering for the sake of it. A member of the American delegation breaking the solemn ranks of the opening ceremonies to chase away a pigeon.
    All these things, and countless other human details, are elements that make up director Kon Ichikawa's loving portrait of human aspiration: "Tokyo Olympiad".
    At least as important as what it does, is what "Tokyo Olympiad" does not do. Unlike television coverage of the last few Olympic games, it does not plead for our sympathy by drowning us in "human interest" stories of hardship, cancer and family tragedy. Unlike in newspaper and television coverage of the games, the politics and ambition of individual nations' teams is far in the background. Unlike Leni Reifenstahl's "Olympia", it does not hold the athletes up as demigods, asking us to fawn over the glorious perfection of their shining bodies and heroic achievement. And, most importantly, it does it seek present a complete account of the final results of the events. Doing so in a 2 1/2 hour film would be impossible anyway.
    More important to Ichikawa is the experience of the event itself- from both the spectators', and participants'- both winners and losers- point of view. Each event that that falls under the directors gaze, is presented in its own idiosyncratic way- with much attention given to the composition and visual texture of events as well as the human elements of each sport.
    In one of my favorite segments- the women's 80m hurdles- Ichikawa begins by showing us an almost abstract close-up of the race we are about to see. In this way, the director seems to be saying that it's not the official result, but the intense feeling of being in such a race, which is important. Cutting back to before the race, the camera follows the athletes as they pace the field and go through their often quirky preparations. The Japanese runner, psyching herself up, jerks her head from side to side, does a childlike summersault, jerks a few more times, then does a cartwheel. In the next shot, with no explanation, we see that she places a lemon on the staring block, which Ichikawa allows us to consider for a second. With the runners lined up, the camera goes into extreme slow motion. We witness the sinew, focus and tension at the starting block. The din of the crowd is faded out, and all that remains is the sound of ropes rhythmically clanging against the stadium's flagpoles in the wind. Then even that fades out, the gun fires, and, as the runners powerfully push out of the starting blocks, silence. We are shown a front view of the brief race in extreme slow motion. The mood is pierced once by the bang of a single runner hitting her hurdle. Then, as the final hurdle is cleared, the roar of the crowd swells and the lead hurdlers break the tape.
    Compared to this, who ended up winning the race is mere trivia.
    Each event is treated in own careful manner- revealing not the sporting drama of scores, distances and times, but the feeling of human aspiration embodied in motto "citius, altius, fortius". The dramatic marathon, the last event to be shown, is a masterwork, into which is impossible to not be drawn in.
    Ichikawa views the Olympics idealistically. Through stunning images, and the color-commentary-like narration (in subtitled Japanese) we come to experience the Olympics as an event about human beings (instead of nationalistic athletic juggernauts) coming together to compete in an atmosphere of peace. After seeing athletes and spectators from all over the world cheerlly mingle, cheer, and celebrate, one sees the Olympics as a reminder what world peace can look like. It's just the sort of thing that the planet needs from time to time. It gives us something to work towards.
    The DVD is mastered beautifully, and the colors are subtle and rich as a documentary film from 1964 can be. The sound is excellent. The enclosed liner notes by sports-writer legend George Plimpton are vivid and enlightening. (Can you tell I like this DVD?) The commentary by Peter Crowie provides the fascinating back story of the film through stories of the athletes of the Olympics themselves- though I would recommend watching the film without it the first few times. He also makes comparisons between today's Olympics (Sydney) and these games- relatively (though not entirely) untainted by the politics of performance enhancing drugs (though it is quite likely that they were used extensively) and the excessive commercialism of the modern sporting world. The finely sculpted, corporate sponsored, bodyguard protected, superstars of today seem, somehow, less human than these athletes- allowed to walk freely around the field before their heat, who were not ensconced in some distant, private training camp away from the lesser mortals from lesser countries, and who were allowed to experience the Olympics in much the same way that Ichikawa wishes to portray them- as a big celebration of what it feels like to have something in common with new friends from all over the planet.
    In the included 1992 interview in Tokyo Stadium- where the track events had taken place 28 years earlier, Kon Ichikawa was asked how he would film today's Olympic games, if commissioned to do so. "Pretty much the same way", was his reply. I would love for this to happen.
    38 people found this helpful
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  • darragh o'donoghue
    3.0 out of 5 stars Perhaps more appeal for the cinephile than the sports fan.
    Reviewed in the United States on November 23, 2001
    there is something about sport that seems to lend it to abstraction. Once you have removed the familiar 'narrative' elements (start/finish, victory/defeat, struggle/result etc.), what is left - movement, bodies - becomes formalised, ritualised. The 1964 Olympics were the first mass live TV Games, so when Kon Ichikawa came to assemble his film, he knew millions had watched the 'real time' experience of the events, and so could be freer in his own interpretation.
    And so he magics the most extraordinary visual architecture, constructed from a blueprint of pure lines - the gestures of the human body; its movement (or that of sporting implements) through space; the markings on tracks, pitches, courts, pools etc.; the structure of arenas and halls; the urban grid of Tokyo itself, its buildings and roads - all captured in exquisitely formal widescreen photography, in which the most banal element, be it the colour of a pair of shorts, or an official carrying a towel, becomes a vital part of its design.
    Ichikawa's most obvious predecessor for this aesthetic is Leni Riefenstahl's 'Olympia', a film under whose shadow he clearly operates: like Riefenstahl, he breaks up the narrative by disjoining the soundtracks and image, by freeze-frames or sudden jump-cuts; the amazing gymnastics sequence, a sport which can be most readily appropriated for abstraction, is a case in point, colour, form and movement turning athletics into a kind of live action painting.
    Of course, 'Olympia' was created to glorify the Third Reich; the Tokyo Olympics were specifically a celebration of Japanese pacificism and post-war economic recovery, as the opening shots of a blinding dawn sun and the ruined buildings of Hiroshima suggests. These Olympics were fraught with political significance - East and West Germany competing as one team, for example, or the debut of many newly independent African states - but Ichikawa films everything with relative, unportentous calm and detachment, especially compared to the over-determined, bludgeoning fascist aesthetic of Riefenstahl. Ichikawa had to negotiate similarly formidable logistics (over 100 cameramen etc.), but the resultant film seems effortless, whereas 'Olympia' flaunts its technical impossibility.
    for the non-sports afficanado, the marathon is always the most fascinating event - its gruelling length seems to expose and reveal human nature more starkly, the struggles, the waiting, the glimpses of agonising failure after superhuman effort. Ichikawa creates a supreme mini-epic out of the marathon here, with the refreshment stalls acting as a strange opportunity, like a hidden Candid Camera, to see how individual, unwitting athletes behave. The montage of bodily decay and exhaustion is somewhat at odds with the ennobling, 'official' sentiments of peace and brotherly harmony. By the end of the film, though, you're as exhausted as the athletes.
    10 people found this helpful
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  • Jrum C.
    5.0 out of 5 stars Since Tokyo Olympics delayed for a year . . .
    Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2020
    . . . thought what a perfect time to finally acquire this Criterion, of the '64 games there. Had first tried to find older release ('02), but prices were much higher -used!- then this newer, special-feature laden release. Will re-visit review once I actually acquire dvd in June. (yeah, I know: "why submit review on somethin' you don't yet have?" Well, I am just excited I can both satisfy Olympic itch -without the modern "human interest" element- and have a classic, highly acclaimed film in a new Criterion release. Life. Is good. We just gotta get past this virus business. Together . . . :)
    5 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Geoff Wicks
    5.0 out of 5 stars The reward of a 50 year wait.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 15, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    When I was first introduced to the Japanese cinema way back in the 1960s it was mainly the works of Ichikawa and Kurosawa. Of the 4 Ichikawa films that were screened Tokyo Olympiad was the most praised. It was said at the time that old ladies with little interest in sport enthused over the film. It was the one film I missed and it has been on my "must see" list for over 50 years. The reward for waiting is a remastered version released in 2020 by the Criterion Collection.

    The film comes on 2 DVDs, but a word of caution, they are region 1 (USA and Canada).

    Disk 1 contains the film and a short introduction by Peter Cowie. You should view the introduction before watching the film as it has many points to watch for. Tokyo Olympiad is not a traditional documentary and there is a debate if it should be better classified as Art Cinema. It was the first Olympic documentary filmed in widescren making use of the latest telephoto lens technology and an army of cameramen. There is extensive use of ultra close up shots of the athletes, revolutionary at the time, and some use of slow motion and black and white footage. It is a film of cinematic brilliance although it was not well received in Japan perhaps because it was not patriotic enough. Outside Japan it has become one of the great classics of the cinema.

    Disk 2 contains the extras and the content is a treasure trove for the serious film buff. Much of the disk as taken up with unused footage and ironically the short section on wrestling was probably the patriotic film the Japanese would have preferred. Also on the disk are three interviews with Ichikawa and interviews with three people who knew him, a film editor, a cameraman and his son. There is also a short interview with one of the restorers which details the many problems that film restorers have to contend with.

    In short a film for both sports and cinema enthusiasts and for me a satisfying end to a 50 year wait.
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  • Film lover
    5.0 out of 5 stars Pure BLISS !!!
    Reviewed in Canada on December 31, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    How do you recommend a masterpiece like TOKYO OLYMPIAD in a few sentences? It ain't easy!

    I would venture to call it "the best sports documentary film of all time!"

    I would also call it "the sports documentary as art!"

    The colour and widescreen cinematography is absolutely stunning, especially the quality of the close-ups.
    There are a few nice black and white scenes, too.

    In addition to the images, the sound recording is sensational.

    For me, the games themselves represent a transition between the altruistic old-world Olympics, signified by East and West Germany competing together, and the modern Olympics, represented by electronic timekeeping boards.
    These games represent the best of both worlds.

    The film captures some wonderfully quaint moments which are no more.

    How about 100 metre runners hammering their own starting blocks into the track, a mixture of clay and cinders.
    Or the scissor-kick high jump, four years before Dick Fosbury invented the flop jump.
    Or several women swimmers competing without bathing caps, and winning!
    Or athletes shaking hands with one other instead of hugging.

    For those who don't want to buy such an expensive DVD, there is a condensed, English language version of the film on YouTube which omits some footage from this film but, surprisingly, includes some footage not seen here!
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  • Mark
    5.0 out of 5 stars Tokyo Olympiad is Must-See Viewing!
    Reviewed in Canada on July 23, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    Sports fans and documentary film fans should not miss this one! I had no idea filmmakers could get this up close and personal back then. Watching this documentary, it IS 1964 and you ARE in Tokyo! But it's also a fascinating portrait of both Olympiad winners and losers. Very, very highly recommended!
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  • v a robbins
    5.0 out of 5 stars best dvd
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 24, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    This was a present for my husband and he thought it was one of the best dvds he has ever watched.
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