The intense and driven Jew Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) defies the antisemitism of Cambridge dons and their disapproval of his use of a professional coach, another outsider, Italian/Arab Sam Mussabini (Ian Holm). It is essentially a film about two determined individuals defying and triumphing against the Establishment. It is much more than just a film about two British runners winning gold medals at the 1924 Paris Olympics, enhanced by the lyrical slow motion running scenes, the iconic Vangelis score and superb performances by the then unknown Ben Cross and Ian Charleson. But Chariots of Fire was destined to become, in the words of Sir Roger Bannister, ‘one of the greatest films about sport’ ever made, the recipient of four Oscars (including Best Picture) and a world-wide box office hit. Here looking at a glass plate negative of a photo of him crossing the finishing line in his at the time record breaking sub four minute mile.It must have seemed a somewhat quixotic enterprise to produce in 1981 a major feature film about an athletic rivalry in a long forgotten Olympic Games. Read the whole story on Photo Archive News: Sir Roger Bannister at home in Oxford. Indeed, preserving a photographic archive is not only about keeping trace of the past, but also fostering new reuse of unique historical content, and the creation of new contemporary content. After seeing the article, Sir Roger Bannister himself contacted the Times, and Michael-John and the photographer Jack Hill were invited to visit him, for showing the original plates and for an interview and a very nice new photo shoot. Understanding their storytelling potential, the whole set of negatives was immediately digitized and reused in a celebration article published later on the Times. The Times photographer did a remarkable job capturing the race, in particular the finish line image, as most other photographers and reporters had been placed on the inside of the Oxford track: the photographer William Horton however was on the track itself, looking straight down the lens at Roger as he crossed the tape. As it was typical of the time, photographs were not often used in broadsheets but this picture, seen now together with the other seven photographs, illustrate perfectly a moment in history. In facts, in 2014 he was able to retrieve in the archive the original set of negatives of the photo taken that day, including the full un-cropped version of the published image. The original Times coverage of that day had published a very famous cropped shot of Bannister exhausted crossing the finish line but there is a nice follow-up story, recently published on Photo Archive News magazine and told by Michael-John Jennings, the Picture Librarian at the Times (News Licensing) photo archive. When the announcer, Norris McWhirter, declared “The time was three…”, the cheers of the crowd drowned out Bannister’s exact time, which was 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. This strengthened his resolve to be the first 4-minute miler, and he achieved this feat on at Iffley Road track in Oxford. He is a true celebrity in the UK: in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Bannister set a British record in the 1500 metres and finished fourth. Recently passed at the age of 89, Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister was a British middle-distance athlete, doctor and academic who ran the first sub-4-minute mile. Images: News UK Archives via Photo Archive News.
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