One Day in September (1999)

It's quite striking in watching documentaries with newsreel footage from, say the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s that the people who look the most outdated (ridiculously so!) are American network television newsmen. With other people in old footage, fashions and haircuts may change over the decades but no individuals appear clownish in outdated somewhat clothes or grooming.In any given period, though, network television newsmen are always exaggerated comic caricatures of that period's look.Another documentary I saw recently in which this was apparent was "How to Survive a Plague."

No, I don't think this remarkable documentary was pro- anything. The Israeli team during the Munich Olympics was featured because they were on the all-star list. In fact all the contenders were stars as they always are during these world competitions. Of course we know their names. We have access to the names of every contestant and finally, every winner and loser. The fact that they come with biographies certainly isn't any surprise. That's the nature of the Olympics. We don't know much of anything about the terrorists. They weren't the athletes in the competition. Why should we know about them? This excellent film does not take sides, as hard as it must have been to avoid, or make any overtly political statements and this has been criticized in some quarters. Instead of presenting a political diatribe or a hate machine or a propaganda film, this documentary sticks to the facts, presented chronologically for the main part, and leaves the viewer to draw any conclusions. There are some conclusions we can hardly avoid but the film doesn't abet in trying to sway us. This is simply a tragedy reviewed and the inability to deal with the circumstances leading up to it in any practical way. The film whizzed by, as painful as part of it was to watch. There wasn't much to see about the personal reactions. That wasn't the purpose of this fine piece of work.Curtis Stotlar

The core power of this documentary is the intelligently and very touching story as told by Ankie Spitzer, the wife of one of the athletes involved in this.Otherwise, this is a very straight-forward story of how the Olympic Games were hit by terrorists who took the Israeli squad hostage, making some quite incredible demands, and how the "rescue-mission" was completely botched by the German government, kind of shoot-aim-ready, in that order. I'm amazed by how it seems that very few people/governments were genuinely interested in helping out. Also, it felt very weird to me that the Olympics went on despite of the hostage-situation, which happened in the compound.The soundtrack to this documentary is quite bewildering at times, except when slo-mo film is shown of athletes competing. Michael Douglas' drawling voice is - thankfully - not applied often throughout the documentary.All in all: interesting, but if it weren't for Ankie Spitzer and a few other voices chiming in here, there wouldn't be much more than a cinematic equivalent of a Wikipedia entry to this.

I believe that what happened at the 1972 Olympics established a template for a good deal of future terrorist activity. This incident demonstrated for the first time that you could gain a world stage and the world's attention by committing an atrocity. The press has played a tacit role in terrorism since that time. Terrorists are looking for media coverage and know that the best way to get that is by executing attacks at prominent events or on large population centers.Re. the film, the fact that the German security forces were unprepared is no surprise as there was no precedent for this type of incident in the past. Sadly, many countries including most western countries are quite prepared now.