It was going to be impossible for ‘The Crown’ not to advance in the development of the story of Princess Diana of Wales without ending up entering her relationship with businessman and producer Dodi Fayed. After all, they both died in the same car accident that caused a stir in British society and on which the shadow of suspicion continues to exist.
Beyond that, Fayed’s story is also intrinsically related to British cinema, although this did not mean that the Netflix series was going to touch her yes or yes. But she did. In episode 3 of its recently released season 5 we see the producer on the set of his most important film, a phenomenon in his year, and he recreates his most memorable scene, which is remembered in any special in the history of cinema. It is, of course, aboutFire cars‘.
running for a dream
Hugh Hudson’s classic is available to stream on the Disney+ platform, and it’s worth getting it back. Not only because ‘The Crown’ recreates the great scene of him on the beach, but also for being able to witness the movie that most captivated the public in 1981. One of the most watched films of the year (well, really from 1982) and a big winner at the Oscars with four statuettes out of the seven it was up for, including best film.
The film is a sports biopic that tells the story of the British athletics team. Two characters with different contexts and world views stand out in it, one a son of Scottish missionaries who had him in China and the other a Jewish son of a Lithuanian immigrant. For both of them, running is not only a sport, but victory was the way to achieve respect and dignity.
Certainly his way of connecting a message of mutual respect with commentary on class and sport, with an eminently classic and well-intentioned tone, meant that his story was seen as something inspiring and moving that would excite the audience. The passage of time has not been particularly good, yes, to its classicism so calm that it makes the experience lethargic at certain points.
‘Chariots of fire’: sports epic
It does not mean that ‘Chariots of Fire’ has virtues that make it really powerful in the audiovisual. The racing sequences are shot with great exquisiteness as well as strength, with a verve accentuated by Vangelis’s powerful and iconic music that makes your skin crawl as it begins to play. The combination of images of moving bodies and epic sounds justify its presence in a cinematographic pantheon that celebrates the exclusively sporting.
Then it will work more or less according to taste, but director Hugh Hudson’s attempt to build a classic epic is very appreciable. The conventions of sports film as we know it are drawn from both this and ‘Hoosiers: More Than Idols‘, and that already marks its importance in the development of the history of cinema. And there is also, of course, your importance in British cultureevidenced by the tribute made by ‘The Crown’.