I Was There: Rex Reed on ‘September 5’ and the Munich Olympics Tragedy
The massacre in Munich—when 11 Israeli athletes were held hostage and murdered by a group of Palestinian terrorists called Black September while the world looked on—may be 52 years old now, but thanks to September 5, the meticulously researched, imaginatively directed, tightly edited and unbearably suspenseful new film about the 1972 Olympics, it lives again. Technically, you can’t label September 5 a documentary because it is scripted, and actors play the roles of actual people. But despite the new technology that allows us to view the issues in Munich that made international headlines, changed the way news was covered on live television and swayed the path of history, I can tell you everything in this fantastic movie seems totally accurate and looks exactly the same as it did on September 5, 1972. I should know. I was there.
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SEPTEMBER 5 ★★★★ (4/4 stars) |
It started, for me, as a routine assignment. On my way home from the Venice Film Festival, I stopped off at the Olympics at the invitation of renowned, prize-winning producer David L. Wolper, who made such memorable films as The Hellstrom Chronicles and The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. In Munich, he had invited eight of the world’s most illustrious and industrious film directors to each contribute ten-minute segments about the different aspects of the games that interested them most for a film to be entitled Visions of Eight. With the aid of ace British cameraman Walter (Tom Jones) Lassally, Arthur (Bonnie and Clyde) Penn was preparing a highly personal birds-eye view of the pole-vaulting event. From Czechoslovakia, Milos Forman was structuring a humor piece, blending the decathlon with the high C in an operatic aria. Japanese genius Kon Ichikawa chose the world’s fastest humans, filming the 10-second, 100-meter dash with 35 different cameras, using a Japanese haiku poem for his script. Claude Lelouch, famous for his intimate love stories, trained his sights on 86,000 spectators in the Olympic stadium for the opening-day ceremonies. John (Midnight Cowboy) Schlesinger focused on the 26-mile marathon race through the city of Munich, using 45 camera units operating 65 cameras from electric trucks because no gas fumes were allowed on the streets of the marathon course. Yuri Ozerov, the Russian director of Liberation, showed the pre-game warm-ups when the parents and coaches were gone, leaving the athletes alone with their fears, anxieties and prayers. Germany’s Michael Pfleghar chose the subject of women, and Sweden’s Mia Zetterling shocked everybody when she chose weightlifters and musclemen. “Because I’m a woman, they thought I’d choose the segment about the female athletes,” Zetterling told me. “But this will be different from anything you expect to see.”
I remember following her to the Olympic Village restaurant, where she copied down the day’s recipe for the super-heavyweights’ menu: 1.2 million eggs for 12,000 sportsmen, four steaks per meal, and 42 pints of milk per day. “I have shot four hours of film to get my ten minutes,” she said, “but I can assure you it will be very exciting.”
It was all very exciting, and Mr. Wolper made it more so by pinning on my lapel the official badge that got me a room in the Olympic Village Hotel and access to all of the events. I had just watched Mark Spitz win his seventh gold medal (at a spot so close to the Olympic swimming pool that he splashed
Every angle is covered, from the ABC-TV control room to the inside of the Israeli athletes’ apartment. All three networks were there, but the main focus is on ABC, where the rivalry between the news and sports divisions erupted into a contest behind the scenes to see who would take credit for calling the shots. More viewers watched than the number of people who sat glued to their sets when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Director Tim Fehlbaum does a masterful job of hopping from one highlight to the next, capturing the essence of what I saw in person. Throughout the day, the vigil continued as ransom notes were sent out and demands were made while the German police became more and more hysterical, drawing guns even on the ABC reporters in the control room. Despite press reports about the tightest security on the planet, I was able to re-enter the Olympic Village by taking a simple passageway through the hotel kitchen and climbing onto the roof of Building 31, where the Israelis were being held as prisoners. There, I watched terrorists, their faces concealed in Ku Klux Klan-like masks, moving silently behind the windows. At 10 p.m., I watched from my hotel window with reporters while the terrorists and the hostages left Building 31, entered the bus that unloaded them in front of the hotel and boarded the three waiting helicopters that transported them to their final bloody, floodlit carnage at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base, past signs marked, to everyone’s horror, “This way to Dachau.”
It was a terrifying thing to live through, and even when I was watching it unfold from my hotel room in the Olympic Village, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It’s all there again to see, hair-raisingly recreated in September 5. The movie is about the hostages, of course, and one of the most heinous events in sports history. But it’s also about the technical difficulties, 52 years ago, of covering an international event via satellite when each network was only allowed a few minutes on the air, as well as the moral question: how much tragedy can you show within the parameters of good taste? The issues the film raises about journalistic integrity and broadcast morality make September 5 the most rivetingly responsible film about journalism since Steven Spielberg’s The Post. Not to mention the obvious fact that in light of the current political climate, this is a film of gravity that screams relevance and is one of the best achievements of the year.