Does the media report the news, or create it? What is the moral role of journalists in extreme situations? And what difference does the technology available make? These questions have existed for well over a century, and film-makers have responded accordingly. Last year Alex Garland suggested some answers through a fictional scenario, but a very real moment in recent history is the subject of a new film from director/co-writer Tim Fehlbaum and co-writer Moritz Binder: the Black September attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Their focus is on the American television team that found itself uniquely positioned – if completely unprepared – to broadcast those shocking events to the world, and as I found out last night at a preview screening with cast and crew that emphasis makes for a powerful and effective piece of cinema.
The Games of the XX Olympiad were, famously, a chance for post-war West Germany to show it had changed. Munich, heart of the former Nazi regime, was chosen as the host city to drive the point home but there were other manifestations of this intention. A new architecture of acrylic and cables for the main stadium roof provided literal and metaphoric transparency, the new technology of satellite transmission made it possible to show events live to an international audience and a new generation of Germans welcomed the world whilst being anxious at the possible reactions. A slogan was chosen to fit the hoped-for mood – The cheerful Games.
The sports reporters of ABC Television provided unprecedented coverage (“Live, in colour” according to an upbeat promo embedded in September 5’s opening) of the events, using 16mm newsreel cameras, reel-to-reel video tape recorders the size of vending machines and walkie-talkies. Anchor Jim McKay (appearing as archive footage throughout) and roving reporter Peter Jennings (Benjamin Walker, though delivering most of his lines off-camera) were the public face and voice of the operation, which was otherwise run from a bunker-like control room.
When shots are heard from the Olympic Village one evening the team has no clear idea of what has happened and limited means to find out, but executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard) and producer Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin) quickly shift gear, determining not to relinquish control to the news division and empowering young director/producer Geoff Mason (John Magaro) to take charge. Mason inventively re-purposes equipment and rapidly reassigns people to get eyes and ears on the ground, and it’s clear that conveying the “physicality” as the makers later described it to us of this analogue era is key to their take on the events portrayed.
With transistor radios providing information from rival channels and, later, police frequencies (this thanks to a bit of old-fashioned soldering), teleprinters conveying other messages and German assistant Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch, playing a composite character) interpreting, this cat’s cradle of sources begins to shape the narrative, to the audience then and now alike. Using press kit imagery and maps and collating camera viewpoints, the names of the hostages emerge as does the shock of the first murder. Crude patch-ins with receivers held to microphones are used to swap intelligence and get that on air as the full horror begins to cohere, when Fehlbaum and Binder introduce their second strand – whether the ABC team should, in fact, have even attempted to cover what was occurring that night, let alone do so so successfully. No-one says ‘the public has a right to know’ but that is the obvious justification, though the competing ethical questions (as well as the evolution of technology) are caught by a quick comment that “We need a live picture” to fill the twenty minutes of blank screen whist that 16mm film is being developed. That the terrorists were likely to also be seeing the same live picture as the public is also raised, adding another layer of nuance and one that must resonate with today’s smartphone-carrying watchers.
The Jewish heritage of some of those involved naturally arises, as does the wartime experience and service of some of the local French and German crew. Some of the dialogue here is a little simplistic, not to say anachronistic, such as “Germany’s makeover is more important than safety,” “No wonder Germany lost” (said after a botched attempt at a rescue) and “Just the ‘bad’ Arabs?”, making the recent Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay feel a little unjustified. But the way in which Mason becomes the driving force of ABC’s coverage and the film, thanks to on-point jargon and a real sense of rising stakes, is superb and Magaro gives by far the finest performance of the production when delivering these scenes. At the Q&A that followed the actor explained how his preparation involved “A lot of shadowing, a lot of studying, a lot of listening” whilst visiting modern CBS control rooms to get a sense of what happens, as well as talking to the real Mason.
Fehlbaum now keeps us entirely within the control room, partly because a more conventional multi-perspective storyline came with a commensurate budgetary increase but also as he was struck by how the ABC team was “so close but don’t actually see” the action. Those monitors thus became “windows to the outside world”, and he and Binder are happy to acknowledge Alfred Hitchcock’s explorations of similar ideas, such as Rear Window. To that end archive footage was played out directly through the set’s monitors rather than composited in later using greenscreen, giving the actors something to interact with, whilst I was interested to hear from the director – speaking to me briefly after the screening – that the actors actually needed to allow for the authentic tape decks employed in the film to spool up when considering their cues. With brilliant work by his editor Hansjörg Weißbrich, Fehlbaum creates a seamless integration of material here and conjures real tension as we cut between screens, switches and speakers, resulting in one of the most absorbing evocations of a pressurised time period and confined space I’ve experienced.
When the Israeli hostages and their kidnappers are conveyed to a nearby airfield the ABC team’s improvisation continues via phone booths instead of walkie-talkies, though whether a sound crew really was sent as insurance “if there’s shooting” is unclear. Compression of the real timeline also occurs at this stage, albeit without any visual or verbal indication – I’d have liked this to be made clearer. The ultimate tragedy of what occurred during that attempted escape will be well known to many today, and was made worse at the time by erroneous initial reports – also conveyed by ABC, though caveated – that everyone was safe. That this is included says much about the film’s core of honesty.
Reflecting on the experience of making this important contribution to a solid sub-genre (at various times of the evening Fehlbaum cited All The President’s Men, Network and Good Night and Good Luck as influences) the cast and crew were thoughtful. Binder noted that we not only sit in front of screens now, but with social media we are part of that world; Sarsgaard commented on how hard it is to invest technical dialogue with plot and character and make it sound real; Benesch said the fictional Marianne was the spirit under which the Olympics was held that year, telling me later that she didn’t feel her any less of character than the others thanks to that script).
The last word should go to the director. Asked about the tight running time, Tim Fehlbaum explained that the film was about the adrenaline rush of that moment, that it was in effect “a heist movie in a way, with a hunt for pictures” rather than money. As the real Mason told them, the time for reflection only came later. In a post-9/11 and post-October 2023 world, it’s an issue we have yet to resolve.
September 5, distributed by Paramount Pictures, opens in the UK on Thursday
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