Classics Revisited: 'Chariots of Fire' & The 1924 Paris Olympics

As the 2024 Paris Olympics draw to a close, we’re celebrating with a look back at 1981’s Chariots of Fire, a film based on the true story of the 1924 Paris Olympics. Directed by Hugh Hudson (his greatest hit in an otherwise unremarkable career) and written by Colin Welland, Chariots of Fire was inspired by Robert Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons. The creators wanted a plot similarly driven by moral choices, integrity, and honor. With the passing of former Olympian Harold Abrahamson, athlete, barrister, writer, and broadcaster, only a few years prior in 1978, the time was right to retell his story of overcoming the odds to win the Gold Medal for the U.K.

An upper-class British Jew, Abrahamson was a man of conscience who organized the country’s boycott of Hitler’s Olympics, promoted sports to Jewish youth, and raised British athletics to a professional level. With its unabashed patriotism and celebration of British culture, the film became a favorite of both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. (Joe Biden also lists it as his favorite film.)

The film is smartly done to create broad appeal. On the surface, it’s a film that celebrates the conservative values of an earlier time, but subtextually, it’s a brilliant, occasionally subversive film with a superb cast, astonishing camera work, and a great score by Vangelis. Framed by Abrahamson’s then-recent funeral, the film rewinds to 1919, tracing the careers of athletes Harold Abrahamson (Ben Cross) and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) as they work toward the Olympics, opening with one of the most famous title sequences in cinema, where the British Olympics team in training run barefoot through the surf and sand of West Sands in St. Andrews, Scotland.