How 'Race' Recreated Jesse Owens' Victory at the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany
In 1936, during the rise of the Nazi regime, African-American sprinter and long-jumper Jesse Owens made history when he won four gold medals at the Berlin Olympic games. It's a story of triumph against overwhelming odds-the type of story that movie executives clamor over-but it's not a narrative that Hollywood has tackled until now. In Stephen Hopkins' new movie, Race, out February 19, actor Stephan James takes on Owens' story, following the runner from his time at Ohio State to the Olympic games.
The film's concept began with one image, which set Hopkins off on the journey of the film. "I asked myself the question 'How was it possible for a 22-year-old African-American man to walk into this gladiatorial and hostile arena with a 200,000 saluting Nazis and be able to hold it together and push everything away and explode for ten seconds on the track?'" Hopkins tells Esquire.
So how did he do it? With historical source material, some digital trickery, and James' unflagging preparation for the role.
Finding The Character
Early drafts of Race's script tackled Owens' entire life, rather than what became a focus on a few years. For Hopkins, the challenge was figuring out how to best convey Owens, who isn't the most dramatic of historical figures.
"It's a tough story to tell," says Hopkins, who got the blessing of Owens' daughters to make the movie. "He wasn't a very vocal person. He wasn't a big character on the outside. It was really about the inner life of someone who was going through an incredible political time. I feel like I tried to give the film the narrative push like a political thriller. But in the end I wanted to make it about the relationship between him and [his coach] Larry [Synder]."
For James, the key was research. Once production moved from Montreal to Berlin for the second half of shooting, the actor found his deepest connection to the man and his story. "Going to Berlin really filled in all the gaps for me," James says. "Going there and seeing the history-they don't shy away from that time, from those Olympics. They love Jesse. His photo is all over the place and he's a big, big hero to these guys. To be there and see it from that perspective meant so much to me."
Preparing To Run
None of the athletics in Race were digitally crafted. James says he did "99 percent" of his own running, for which he spent months training at Georgia Tech with an Olympic coach while simultaneously shooting last year's Selma. It was important to him to do justice to Owens, which included wearing historically accurate-and extremely uncomfortable-leather running shoes and doing the long jump himself.
"I had to make sure my conditioning was where it needed to be to sustain the filming," James says. "And then to be believable as the fastest man on the planet. I took it upon myself to not only try and run fast, but also run like he ran, which is such a specific style. It was a challenge to make sure you're being accurate with that because there's Jesse enthusiasts the world over. Not to mention his family, who is going to watch the film. You want to make sure you're doing all these people justice."
Hopkins brought in Olympic athletes to play the other runners in the film and was struck by their intense power, which he wanted to capture on camera. The director wanted to give the viewer a "real sense" of what it feels like for an athlete to sprint and jump in a superhuman way. "It's one thing to watch it on the television, but when you're there they literally train all day and then do it once and collapse on the ground covered in sweat," he says. "Their bodies explode and they're running at 40 miles an hour. It's an extraordinary feat to watch and it's really hard to get that across." He adds, "There's less than three minutes of the sport in the entire film-so it's a great sport to tell a story about because you're showing something about human power, and the psychology behind it, in very short bursts."
Fighting the Powers That Be
A key element of the film was negotiating with the Olympic Committee, who owns the rights to German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia, which Hopkins watched numerous times to help understand the 1936 games. According to Hopkins, the Committee used "blackmail and such things" during the process and did not aid in getting the movie made.
"The Olympic committee wasn't very helpful to us on the film at all," the director says. "It's not so much about the film, but they just want the money. They're very greedy. I wasn't very happy with them and they should be ashamed of themselves. But there's a lot of corruption-the Olympic committee is the next thing to go down after FIFA goes down."
Rebuilding The Olympics
The scenes of the 1936 games are the highlight of Race. Many of them were actually shot in the stadium where the games took place: Berlin's Olympiastadion, which still stands today. It's been changed over the years (it now has a roof and holds less people), but the structure was instrumental in making the movie work. For the shot where Owens enters the arena, Hopkins enlisted 200 extras to stand in for the 200,000 Germans who watched the original games.
Perhaps the trickiest scene to shoot was the one in which Hilter enters his viewing box as the crowd salutes. "You're not allowed to do the Hitler salute in Germany," Hopkins says. "It's actually against the law-you go to jail if you do. There was one point where we had Hitler's box full of all of those guys and we were shooting and we were supposed to have the stadium to ourselves but somehow some tourists got in. So there was all this saluting going on and all these tourists were watching and it was really creepy and strange." The same held true for the swastika flags, which had to later be added digitally. All swastika armbands on the Nazi costumes were required to be covered between shots.
Hopkins kept Hilter in the background, opting instead to focus on Riefenstahl, played by Carice van Houten, and Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, played by German actor Barnaby Metschurat. In the film, Hilter appears only a few times; although even in his absence, his presence is still felt, particularly when he leaves the games without congratulating Owens on his first medal. "I decided to keep Hitler as a mythical figure," Hopkins explains. "He didn't have to speak, as far as I was concerned."
As the elements came together, even without the added digital effects, there was a feeling of intensity onset. "It blew my mind a little bit," James says of the scene. "To be in Germany and around all that history and in that stadium 80 years later was amazing. It's a massive place with a lot of history. That was a moment where I felt like I was connecting with Jesse walking into the stadium. I felt the importance of that scene while shooting it. It's quite the epic moment, him being one man and walking into a stadium in Nazi Germany."
