DOWNHILL RACER

US, 1969, 103 minutes, Colour,
Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, Camilla Sparv, Karl Michael Vogler.
Directed by Michael Ritchie,

Downhill Racer is a modest sporting drama that boasts that it is the first drama about international skiing and has some expert photography to prove it. Cameras were strapped to skiers and the resulting shots are incorporated into the film as subjective sequences, giving the audience a vivid vicarious sensation of what skiing downhill is like.

However, the story focuses on a rather disagreeable ski champion and shows us some of the sweat behind the glamour and the tough world of international sport. At this level, the film works fairly well and incorporates a lot of newsreel, interview style, photography to help give the film an air of authenticity and semi-documentary.

Charlton Heston's film, Number One, probably serves as a sequel to Downhill Racer. It tells the story of a sporting champion who has come to the end of his peak and who finds it hard to climb down.

Robert Redford, reminiscent of his role as Big Halsey, is good as champion Dave Chappellet and Gene Hackman is unobtrusively fine as the ski teams' coach.

1. Did you find that the style of the film - semi-documentary ski photography, newsreel techniques - helped to convince you that the film was about real people and to-day's world and situations?

2. How impressive was the photography of the skiing, especially when the camera sped downhill itself and the effective shots -made the audience identify with the skier?

3. What kind of a person was David Chappallet? What impression did he make during his first European season - a loner, arrogant, upset that he should be seeded number 88 or 79?

4. How did his return home to Idaho Springs, Colorado, reveal more about him? His relationship to his inarticulate father, the poor farm he came from, the country town, the easy-going girlfriend and his use of her? (Note the scene where she tries to interest him in what she is doing and the choice she has to make and he doesn't show the slightest bit of interest)?

5. What explains Chappellet's driving force and ambition? Was he a good sportsman? Was he a good team member?

6. Why did Chappellet begin the affair with the girl? Who took the initiative? Did he love her? Why did her indifferent attitude and the breaking of the affair show how naive he had been?

7. What did you think of the coach? a good man? Did he do his job well? Did he understand Chappellet?

8. What is the role of a coach for such a team? How much power does he have? How much power and capacity for decision should he have?

9. What future would Dave Chappellet have? Had he learned anything by the end of the film, do you think? Was he a better man? just as egoistic, mean and ruthless? What do you think of the behind-the-scenes world of the world of
international sport - the organisation, money, restrictions,
rivalry, camp-followers, the interviewers?

10. How mean was Chappellet? Why did he dare the American champion to race downhill? Was he deliberately trying to get him out of the competition?

11. Did the hospital sequence help you understand how the sport is so important for champions and that fitness and being present at the time of championships is essential?

12. Was the Olympic championship well done? Were you glad Chappellet won? How did you feel when it looked as though the Frenchman would win?