Contributor: By Andrew Barker

The histories of the Olympics and the cinema have always been closely entwined. And it makes sense that they should be. The first modern Olympic Games, after all, were held just in 1896, a year after the Lumiere brothers premiered their first shorts in Paris cinemas, and the two institutions more or less grew up together.

Moving picture cameras have been present at every Olympics since the 1908 Games in London, where the then-nascent technology captured events such as the gold medal tug of war match, as well as the impossibly cinematic final few hundred yards of the marathon, when race leader Dorando Pietri collapsed inside the stadium and was helped to the finish line in order that he “not die in the presence of the Queen.” (Spoiler alert: He survived, though he was disqualified from the medal podium.)

In the century-plus span since then, countless filmmakers have been drawn to the Olympics’ inexhaustible store of triumphs and tragedies. As the 2024 Summer Games gets underway in Paris, there’s no better time to revisit the Olympics’ greatest moments on film, many of which have been recognized with Golden Globe awards and nominations.

Chariots of Fire (1981)

Winner of the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, Hugh Hudson’s “Chariots of Fire” remains arguably the defining Olympics film. From its timeless Vangelis score to its time-capsule portrait of Lost Generation political-religious tensions coming to a head at a fateful 400-meter race, “Chariots” showcases the Games at their most transcendent and triumphant — and it also happens to have its climax at an Olympic Games that took place exactly a century ago, in the same city as this year’s.

Munich (2005)

Gathering representatives from nearly every nation on earth during times of both peace and conflict, the Olympics have always been about much more than sport, and never more tragically so than in 1972, when the Black September terrorist group murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team. The Olympics’ darkest day provides the starting point for Steven Spielberg’s 2005 drama, which remains all-too-contemporary in its interrogation of the blurry boundaries between justice and vengeance. “Munich” earned Spielberg his tenth Golden Globes Best Director nod, as well as a Best Screenplay nomination for writers Tony Kushner and Eric Roth.

I, Tonya (2017)

For anyone who was of sports-viewing age in the 1990s, figure skater Tonya Harding — who was drawn into a plot to literally kneecap her rival American skater Nancy Kerrigan shortly before the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, only to dramatically implode during her own Olympics spotlight— has always been one of sports’ greatest villains. Craig Gillespie’s darkly comic Best Motion Picture-nominated 2017 film casts Globe nominee Margot Robbie as the infamous skater, restoring a bit of dignity and humanity to a figure who had long since passed into caricature. Alison Janney won her first Golden Globe, for Best Supporting Actress, thanks to her unnervingly enveloping turn as Harding’s mother, LaVona.

Richard Jewell (2019)

The 1990s were a busy decade for Olympics scandals, although the aftermath of the Olympic Park bombing during the Atlanta Games of 1996 was far bleaker than the tragicomedy of Tonya Harding. Clint Eastwood’s film stars Paul Walter Hauser as Richard Jewell, a security guard who saved countless lives when he discovered a bomb under a bench during an Olympics concert, only to become a figure of mockery and suspicion when unscrupulous journalists and FBI profilers begin to baselessly speculate that he planted the bomb himself. Similarly to  “I, Tonya,” “Richard Jewell” saw a Best Supporting Actress Globe nomination for the actress playing the mother of the title character, in this case Kathy Bates as Barbara “Bobi” Jewell.

Foxcatcher (2014)

Mostly taking place in the periods between Olympics — specifically the 1984 and 1988 Games — “Foxcatcher” is an acting tour-de-force about two Olympic champion wrestler brothers and the shadowy multimillionaire who became their benefactor, drawing them both into a disturbing psychodrama that ended with one of them murdered. The film was nominated for Best Motion Picture, while Steve Carell and Mark Ruffalo were also nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively.

Visions of Eight (1973)

Though possibly the least well-known film on this list, 1973’s multi-director documentary “Visions of Eight” is also easily the most daring, and the most laser-focused on the Games themselves. Recruiting eight filmmakers — including such masters as Miloš Forman, Arthur Penn and Kon Ichikawa — to helm short films on location at the 1972 Munich Games, “Visions of Eight” would go on to win the Globes’ (since discontinued) Best Documentary Award the following year. 

Jim Thorpe, All American (1951)

Burt Lancaster was at the height of his early powers when he took on the role of Jim Thorpe, the first Native American athlete to win gold medals at the Olympics, in 1912, only to have them cruelly stripped when it was revealed that he had once earned pocket change to play baseball, placing him afoul of the Olympics’ then-strict rules around amateurism. Decades after Thorpe’s death, the International Olympic Committee would reverse the decision, and Michael Curtiz’s 1951 film surely helped keep his story alive.

Personal Best (1982)

The first directorial effort from the late, great Robert Towne (who won a Best Screenplay Globe for “Chinatown”), this passion project about a love affair between two women’s track athletes has only risen in stature since its indifferent commercial reception in 1982.

The Jesse Owens Story (1984) / Race (2016) / Olympia (1938)

Perhaps no American athlete embodies the spirit of the Olympic Games as iconically as Jesse Owens, a Black man born into segregation in Alabama who went on to win four gold medals right under the nose of Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Games in Berlin. His achievements have been dramatized numerous times on screen, most memorably in the Emmy-winning 1984 TV movie “The Jesse Owens Story,” though Stephan James also offered a strong performance as the sprinter in 2016’s “Race.” Of course, if you can stomach it, the greatest actual footage of Owens in action at the Olympics was captured by none other than the Nazi Party’s primary cinematic propagandist, Leni Riefenstahl, in her 1938 documentary “Olympia.” (In case it wasn’t already clear, the history of the Olympics is … complicated.)

Unbroken (2104)

The subject of Angelina Jolie’s 2014 drama “Unbroken” was one of Owens’ teammates from the 1936 U.S. Olympic track-and-field team. Although for Louis Zamperini, his 8th place finish in the 5000-meter final was merely a prologue to the real endurance test that would follow, as he was subsequently captured by the Japanese during WWII, and subjected to unimaginable mental and physical torment. He survived his long ordeal, and would later return to Japan — as an official torchbearer during the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano.

Miracle (2004)

Okay, you’ve made it through nearly a dozen Olympics films involving themes of terrorism, Nazism, racism, murder, assault, media malfeasance and prison torture. In the mood for something a tad more uplifting? It’s hard to go wrong with Kurt Russell’s fist-pumping turn as U.S. men’s hockey coach Herb Brooks, who pulled off the greatest upset in Olympics history with his victory over the Soviet Union in 1980.