Week 8 Screening 2

Fire on the Track. The Steve Prefontaine Story. 1995. Erich Lyttle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0WMzYGhCgw

This tribute documentary opens with a poetic introduction to the deceased subject of the documentary, athlete Steve Prefontaine. At first the introduction uses a montage of images and a professional voiceover but it quickly switches to a talking head interview. This sudden switch to a completely different type of content is jarring, although documentaries are often made up of differing source material the footage is so different it appears to have not been graded. The tone change is also abrupt, going from poetic retrospective to a casual contemporary interview in the space of a few seconds. Although this is only one particular sequence the slapdash feeling of the edit continues throughout the documentary. In a sense the ungainly editing of the opening sequence sets the tone for the documentary as such changes of tone occur regularly throughout. Although it was released in 1995 it appears to be from the 1980’s in style and content.

The film has many other unprofessional aspects that ruin the flow of the film, aspects such the titles covering the mouth of the person speaking, or the interview subjects being badly framed and badly lit (and sometimes both). Worst of all was the sound not being mixed well, the interviewees having to compete with the score. The filmmaker had limited footage of Prefontaine to work with and this aspect becomes comparatively repetitive and visually tiring. The documentary has a regulated structure switching between romantic observation and interview mode, all of which pay tribute to someone who was undoubtedly a great sportsman but the message of the documentary is the same throughout. This repetitious singing of Prefontaines praises becomes a little indulgent and tiresome. There were other aspects of Prefontaines life that could have been explored to give the narrative of the film some depth or texture. Aspects such as his battles with the athletic association, or his use of food stamps to survive but instead it recurrently plays the same note for the entire film.