Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Muhammad Ali: The Greatest (1975)

Director: William Klein

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

This flawed but fascinating 1975 documentary adds yet another layer of insight and context to the world's greatest heavyweight champion. Focusing on the same events that top and tail Mann's Ali, it parallels the young Cassius Clay's shock 1964 triumphs over Sonny Liston, and the equally shocking Ali victory over George Foreman in Zaire in 1974. Klein's evocative b/w imagery and jumpy juxtapositions are sly and striking, giving revolutionary weight to our hero as Ali clowns, savages white supremacy and meets the Beatles, and everyone from drama students to Malcolm X has their say about the meaning of the phenomenon in their midst. Sadly, the film should have stopped right there. It suddenly jumps clumsily from '64 to '74, Maine to Kinshasa, b/w to colour, and moves through interminable tribal travelogue cut with some standard Ali media manipulation. In comparison to When We Were Kings, the footage is dull and undramatic, and Klein understandably struggles to shed light on Zaire with the same confidence and empathy he brings to American race relations.

Author: GMu 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: William Klein

Cast: Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali, The Beatles, Sonny Liston, Angelo Dundee, Jack Nilon, Chris Dundee, Finlay Campbell, James X, Malcolm X, 'Jersey Joe' Walcott, James J Braddock, Floyd Patterson, Norman Mailer, Stepin Fetchit, Sam X, George Foreman, Don King, Mobutu Sese Seko, Joe Frazier, John Daly full cast

Genre(s): Documentaries

Duration: 116 mins

Related articles


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.