Product Description

Features include:

•MPAA Rating: PG
•Format: DVD
•Runtime: 124 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8137 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Published on: 2005-02-01
• Released on: 2005-02-01
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, Surround Sound
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Dimensions: 1.20 pounds
• Running time: 124 minutes

Features

• Winner of four Academy Awards(R) including Best Picture! The inspiring true story of British athletes competing in the 1924 Olympics. Ben Cross and Ian Charleson head a sterling cast of newcomers and veterans. The story, told in flashback, of two young British sprinters competing for fame in the 1924 Olympics. Eric, a devout Scottish missionary runs because he knows it must please God. Harold, the

Amazon.com
The come-from-behind winner of the 1981 Oscar for bestpicture, Chariots of Fire either strikes you as either a cold exercise in mechanical manipulation or as a tale of true determination and inspiration. The heroes are an unlikely pair of young athletes who ran for Great Britain in the 1924 Paris Olympics: devout Protestant Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a divinity student whose running makes him feel closer to God, and Jewish Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross), a highly competitive Cambridge student who has to surmount the institutional hurdles of class prejudice and anti-Semitism. There's delicious support from Ian Holm (as Abrahams's coach) and John Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson as a couple of Cambridge fogies. Vangelis's soaring synthesized score, which seemed to be everywhere in the early 1980s, also won an Oscar. Chariots of Fire was the debut film of British television commercial director Hugh Hudson (Greystoke) and was produced by David Puttnam. --Jim Emerson

DVD features
It took 24 years for the 1981 Best Picture Oscar winner to receive a widescreen home video version. Although this is far better looking and sounding than previous versions (especially TV airings and the ho-hum original DVD), the print isn't as flawless one would hope. A second disc includes two documentaries with new interviews from many members of the cast and crew. In 25 minutes, a good deal of the passion behind the project--created by many first-time film talents--is communicated along with pictures of the real-life figures. Director Hugh Hudson gives more insight with an ordinary commentary pointing out where dramatic license works (Liddell's Olympic plight) and keeping silent when it doesn't (the run around the college campus). A 19-minute reunion with two supporting actors plus the director, writer, and cinematographer drop by producer David Putnam's house to reminisce about the making of the film; it's a lot more interesting than it sounds. Eleven minutes of deleted scenes are nice snippets of character development and a cricket scene that was in all cuts of the film except the American version. It's a real curio since it was the original introduction of the athletes and could have been integrated in this DVD. --Doug Thomas