Text Box: LAST MINUTE GOAL! After the box office slumped in Argentine towards the end of 1986, when the first heat waves of summer lured people away from downtown hardtops and distributors read the meagre daily grosses in the morning papers; when despair filled the offices cramped around the Lavalle and Ayacucha streets in Buenos Aires and the austral (Argentina’s new currency) started nose-diving against the dollar, a true miracle happened. Over Christmas, in the last week of the year, all pessimistic predictions on the future of distribution crumbled like a house of cards under the impact of “HERO”, a semi-documentary on the World Soccer Cup that Argentine won in Mexico in June. The star, a small and chubby soccer player with incredible skill and boyish temper, was acclaimed by millions of onlookers — sports fans or not — and became the highlight. His name was Diego Armando Maradona. The fortunate distributor for HERO in Argentina was Transmundo Films. At press time it is believed that HERO has had over two million patrons passing the wickets within only 1½ months and has already achieved an all-time box-office record in Argentina. Ironically, most remarkable for fostering this national outburst were the British production company, Worldmark, and its heads, Drummond Challis and Tony Maylam (also writer and director of the film), a circumstance which has been greatly commented on with reference to the Falkland Islands Incident, won by the Brits. Text Box: “HERO”: A NEW FILM AND FOCUS Come Christmas day, Argentines will be able to take a privileged cinema seat to view, ahead of the rest of mankind, “Hero”, Tony Maylam’s Official Film of the 1986 World Cup. Film cameras extract drama and emotion the wretched Mexican television presentation denied to billions. Nothing moves with more pleasing genius than Maradona. You’re drawn in, almost physically, to his second goal against England. It’s as if it were you lunging - desperately and late, always a tick late. Several times, you’re sure that the path to goal is closed. But you see from half a dozen angles how nothing could stop him. You experience the astonishing pace, you sense the rush of muscle, the gasps of astonishment as one, two, three, four defenders miss both men and goal. And you see, ultimately, how close Maradona thinks he is to his goal - how he, in heartfelt triumphs and disasters during a game of soccer, cups his hands to the heavens. The direction of Tony Maylam is true to his instincts. A dedicated film-maker and worshipper of sporting movement. His strength is to select a theme and not allow the edges to be blurred. ROB HUGHES

THE OFFICIAL

FILM OF THE 1986 WORLD CUP

MEXICO:
THE PAIN
& GAIN
ON FILM

By David Miller

Chief Sports Correspondant

 

Football is a team game, HERO the Official Film of the World Cup, spectacularly and controversially concentrates on what is box office: the individual stars, the aggression, the emotions.

Photographically it is a stunning and revealing film. Tony Maylam, the director, chose a close-up study of the men who make the news, win or lose. Somebody at the premiere in Zurich this week termed it a psycho-thriller.

What we get, from a half dozen of the world’s best cameramen positioned around the pitch, is not so much an analysis of pattern, of the final product, as a worm’s eye view of the personnel: a pictorial gossip column punctuated by violence, ecstasy and grief.

We may deplore FIFA’s use of penalties to resolve drawn matches, but they are a film-maker’s dream. The high noon of Brazil-France shoot-out with the gunfight background of Rick Wakeman’s score, the cleverly interchanging live Brazilian or French commentators, and Michael Caine’s deadpan delivered script, is almost more dramatic than the moment was the moment on that memorable dayin Guadalajara.

 Socrates and Platini shoot over the bar and we again feel the pain: we see the anguish in their expressions, and the agony in the faces of their followers on the terraces as distraught as people involved in a motor accident. We see Bats in goal, head on like a bear behind bars, as no camera normally sees a goalkeeper. The lens does not miss a blink.

When Stanley Matthews was the world’s most famous forward, there was little film to remind us of his genius. As HERO follows Argentina towards triumph, we are able to see more than ever how Maradona’s exceptional physique rides the assaults and leaves defenders for dead.

What the producers have uncovered provides a film with a difference and will generate argument. Maylam’s direction, like Reifenstahl’s, merely reports emotion. His heroes create it.

Ultimately, the film leaves you with the conviction that not to have been in Mexico was to have missed something.