Chariots of Fire (1981)

'I run to win...'

‘The British are Coming!’

The early 1980s was a Golden Age for British Cinema. Pinpointing change (that exact moment when fashions shift and new attitudes develop) is a tricky affair, but comparing Chariots of Fire (1981) or The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), say, to The Thirty Nine Steps (1978) (the Don Sharp/Robert Powell remake) or The Lady Vanishes (1979)— the last gasp of The Rank Organisation as a film distributor— is like the difference between strawberries and raspberries. Yet, all four films are separated by only a few years. The 1980s may actually have started in 1977, with the arrival of Punk. Vivienne Westwood and The Sex Pistols may have more in common with Mrs Thatcher than they probably care to admit. Either that or Mrs T spiked the water supply— as in the very first episode of The Professionals (1977), which has Bodie and Doyle saving Britain from a dastardly terrorist plot to poison London’s reservoirs. And then screenwriter Colin Welland (he of Z-Cars and The Sweeney ) stood up at the 1982 Academy Awards, brandished his Oscar and declared, ‘The British are Coming!’, quoting Paul Revere.

Nigel Havers later suggested that this was Welland’s little joke. That said, during the first half of the 1980s, the British film industry suddenly produced a series of intelligent, edgy, beautifully made films, petering out, with the odd exception (Withnail & I), in 1985 or thereabouts. The collapse of Goldcrest (‘the saviour of the British film industry’) may have had something to do with it— as chronicled in Jake Eberts and Terry Hott’s fascinating book, My Indecision is Final (1992).

‘I run to win…’

Chariots of Fire was released in 1981. As a double bill with Bill Forsyth’s delightful coming-of-age romantic comedy, Gregory’s Girl. This was the year before the outbreak of the Falklands War— a time of rediscovered national identity— a concept, I suspect, now a mystery to younger audiences. ‘Chariots of Fire’ is, of course, taken from a line in William Blake’s Jerusalem, set to the stirring music of Sir Hubert Parry. Today, it is, perhaps, easy to dismiss Chariots of Fire as yet another quaint, old-fashioned period drama with bad make-up. All floppy hair and cricket jerseys. And yet, despite the patriotic sensibilities, Chariots of Fire is about two driven men’s battle against a prejudiced establishment. Ben Cross stars as Harold Abrahams, the Jewish athlete, determined to prove himself and win whatever it takes. And in a parallel story of equal determination, Ian Charleson (who tragically died of AIDS in 1990 ) stars as Eric Liddell, the fastest runner in All Scotland, a Scottish Calvinist missionary who refuses to run on a Sunday on religious grounds. Both men run for Britain at the 1924 Paris Summer Olympics.