Reviews of The Melbourne Rendezvous 1957

Sort by
  • 🥥🌴🐱Andrew Chrzanowski🐱🌴🥥

    ★★★½ Watched by 🥥🌴🐱Andrew Chrzanowski🐱🌴🥥 16 Jul 2021 7

    🏅"Mediterranean fever has seized these Anglo-Saxons."🏅

    100 (and more!) Years of the Olympics Documentary Marathon -- Part #20 of 57, Melbourne 🇦🇺 1956

    There's already one full-length documentary about the Melbourne Olympics of 1956, and that film is pretty rote and uninteresting. Great to know then that there's a second, directed by Frenchman René Lucot, and it's a wonderful jump in quality and tone. Rendez-vous à Melbourne ["The Melbourne Rendezvous"] "excels," in the words of Peter Cowie, "more observant and…

  • Tentin Quarantino ☭

    Watched by Tentin Quarantino ☭ 03 Jan 2021 4

    "Look at these lovely ladies. This one looks strange holding a javelin. How odd that large black woman is."

    Oh, fuck you, you piece of French shit. Every one of those ladies could smoke you in every single competition, tiny-dick loser. Go make them a sandwich and shut your fucking face.

    Only weak men fear strong women.

  • Chance

    ★★★★ Watched by Chance 29 Mar 2018

    Film #19 of 100 Years of Olympic Films: 1912 - 2012

    Not since Olympia has an Olympic film taken steps forward in technique or style, but The Melbourne Rendezvous finally breaks that streak of mediocrity. Overall, The Melbourne Rendezvous is a quirky document of the 1956 Summer Games, interestingly directed by Frenchman René Lucot, that really reminds me of the more experimental Olympic films that sprouted up in the '60s and '70s, namely Tokyo Olympiad and Visions of Eight. While…

  • KaleisaWaffle

    ★★★½ Watched by KaleisaWaffle 09 Aug 2021

    This focuses less on the spectacle and scope of the Olympics and more on the individuals competing, mostly in track and field. It's quite charming honestly, and the narration is really exciting and delightful and adds a lot. The sharp colors, quirky tone, and jazzy soundtrack made watching competition kind of (dare I say) endearing. I wish they showed more events besides track and field, because the other sports they show are very brief. Also be prepared for some 1950s sexism. But koalas are cute!

  • megan

    ★★★½ Watched by megan 10 May 2021

    50s melbourne on celluloid looks unreal i’m so homesick

  • brahski

    ★★ Watched by brahski 21 Mar 2024

    the idiot french announcer says without any irony "this canadian woman would be lovelier with a bit more softness about her" and then shows us one of the most classically beautiful women i've ever seen. like to say nothing of the casual misogyny and racism throughout, these guys just look dumb as hell

    the star and a half is for the animal footage and the part where the olympians hang out with animals. another half a star because i thought the ending marathon was pretty well done

  • Auteur

    ★★ Watched by Auteur 13 May 2022

    A female athlete is still a woman, and it's only natural for a woman to go shopping.

    [This Canadian] would be lovely with more softness.

    These women are eager to prove they are just as good as men.

    Another day, another horrible Olympic documentary. I wish I could just chalk it up to "those were the times," but this chauvinistic gender view is woven into the very fabric of pretty much all of these early Olympic documentaries, and it's really…

  • jake panek 🎃

    ★★★★½ Watched by jake panek 🎃 02 Oct 2020

    “This lovely Colombian girl came just to march in the parade. You won’t see her again.”

    reasons why this random french film about the australian olympics is somehow one of the best olympic films in this collection:
    1.) this is one of the most visually striking olympic films since olympia and by far the most unique in the visual sense
    2.) this is a film that actually cares - about the spectators, about melbourne, about the athletes, about the people…

  • Jeffrey Coté

    ★★★½ Watched by Jeffrey Coté 16 Jul 2020 2

    Despite its French-based production, arguably no other Olympic film I've seen thus far has been as celebratory in its geography as The Melbourne Rendezvous.

    The film revels in its very Australian-ness, with many shots of Melbourne and its lily white suburbs interspersed throughout the runtime. Footage of sporting events will often be followed by scenes that appear straight out of a tourist brochure, with notable inclusions being gorgeous shots of the local flora and fauna, to athletes cuddling with koalas.…

  • Pete Talbot

    ★★★ Watched by Pete Talbot 27 Mar 2020

    The film quality from the time is not as impressive as the Olympic docs from the Silent era or the time after this. The tone is strange, the narrator is not impressed by some aspects of the games, at one point noting that you’d expect boxing to be exciting but these are all amateurs. There are some quirky and great moments in this like a segment on marching officials another comparing duckbill platypuses with the swimmers and the jazz score to the marathon.

  • grudlian

    ★★ Watched by grudlian 23 Jul 2021

    If it weren't for the overt misogyny throughout this, this would have been an okay movie. Almost every time women show up, there is a comment on their attractiveness, or how most women will cry if they lose, or women in sports!?!?! It happened!!!! kind of attitude.

  • Nick

    ★★★½ Watched by Nick 20 Aug 2020

    Watched this for some cool 50s footage of the world's greatest city, was not disappointed! Those aerial shots of the CBD and Richmond were crazy!!