The 1980 British movie Christopher Nolan crowns as a total “masterpiece”
Having tackled countless genres throughout his own career, ranging from the mind-bending murder mystery thriller Memento to the intensely riveting Oppenheimer by way of the comic book bombast that defined his Dark Knight trilogy, Christopher Nolan has never been a filmmaker to stay in the same storytelling sandbox for too long.
That desire to test himself in new arenas was in part formed by his own list of favourite films that served as his inspiration, which includes everything from action-packed Hollywood blockbusters to silent classics. However, there’s one British movie in particular that Nolan has designated as a “masterpiece”.
Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire – inspired by the true story of Eric Liddell and Harold Abraham’s overcoming adversity to run at the 1924 Olympics – was showered in acclaim and accolades following its release in 1981, ultimately winning four of the seven Academy Awards it was nominated for, including ‘Best Picture’. Even the opening theme – officially called ‘Titles’ but better known as simply ‘Chariots of Fire’ – ended up as one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of film music ever written, becoming the source of just as many straight-laced reuses as it did outright parodies.
Reflecting on its thematic, narrative, visual, and tonal merits when espousing its many qualities to BFI, Nolan was unequivocal in his belief that Chariots of Fire deserves to be placed among the pantheon of cinematic greats. He said: “The visual splendour, intertwined narratives and aggressively anachronistic music of Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire combined to create a masterpiece of British understatement whose popularity rapidly obscured its radical nature.”
What Nolan identifies there is the exact thing that made Chariots of Fire such an unlikely cultural phenomenon in the first place. On paper, a restrained period drama about amateur runners overcoming class prejudice and religious conflict hardly sounds like the sort of film destined to transcend generations, but Hudson approached it with the scale and conviction of an epic.
Musical scores directly informing and enhancing the events unfolding on-screen have also become a recurring motif of Nolan’s work, another influence that can be traced back to his lifelong admiration for Chariots of Fire, which he described as having “a remarkable piece of film score” to Desert Island Discs.
Revealing that it was a soundtrack he’d listen to over and over again during his younger days, Nolan reflected on his obsession with revisiting Vangelis’ seminal compositions: “When I was away at boarding school, you know, after lights out, you’d sort of sneak out your Walkman and hope you had enough batteries to run the album,” he said. “You’d put the batteries on the radiator and see if you could re-energise them a bit.”
There’s also something distinctly British about Nolan’s attachment to the film that goes beyond simple nostalgia. Chariots of Fire arrived during a period when British cinema was often boxed into kitchen-sink realism or heritage dramas, yet Hudson managed to make a story rooted in national identity feel modern and emotionally immediate without sacrificing its reserve. Nolan has followed a similar path throughout his own career. For all of the globe-trotting spectacle and studio budgets, there remains a peculiarly British stiffness to many of his protagonists, characters who bury emotion beneath duty, obsession or principle until the pressure finally cracks them open.
Striking a balance between intensely personal character-driven drama as its two protagonists deal with a different set of obstacles in order to reach the same goal, fist-pumping exhilaration in its Olympic-set sequences, and sweeping visuals working in synchronicity with Vangelis’ score to enhance the viewing experience, Nolan may have never directly channelled Chariots of Fire in terms of embracing the sports film as of yet, but its fingerprints are nonetheless there for all to see across his entire filmography.
