White Rock

The official film of the 1976 Winter Olympics held at Innsbruck isn't even satisfactory as a documentary record of the major events. The trouble is that writer (Maylam) and narrator (Coburn) reduce virtually all the events - ski-jumping, ice hockey, the biathlon, bobsled, slalom, downhill racing - to the rock-bottom level of beefy American locker-room speed, thrills and spills, neglecting to pay any attention to the individual athletes, or (as in Herzog's The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner) the inherent spiritual attraction of the sports on view. Coburn's running commentary seems more interested in recording his own participation in death-defying stunts (taking front position on a two-man bobsleigh, for instance) than in interviewing any of the athletes; while Rick Wakeman's 'bubble and squeak' synthesiser soundtrack and much flashy editing do little to gloss over the poverty of this tedious film.