21 December 2023

By Peter Mallory

Peter Mallory reviews the film of that book.

Last week I got to see the new theatrical feature, The Boys in the Boat. The Hollywood version only highlights how magnificent the book version is. This movie is not intended for historians like me. I winced at every departure from actual history, but I quickly reminded myself of the old Hollywood adage attributed to director John Ford, “When you had to choose between history and legend, print the legend. And so I’ve done.” Director George Clooney could say the same. 

It comforts me to realize that Daniel James Brown’s magnificent writing has pushed the story of the 1936 Washington Crew into the realm of legend, and so my thoughts return to the resulting movie. In it we enter the world of Hollywood fantasy . . . and Old Hollywood at that! It is a very satisfying picture, mostly about the endearing young love between Joe Rantz and his girlfriend Joyce. Hollywood cliches, and I mean that in a good way, rush by one after another: The whole movie is an old man’s flashback trope, the railway station goodbye scene, the sneaking a boy into the girls’ dorm scene, the overnight train trip scene, the alienated father and son scene, the longshoremen hoping to be chosen to work scene. Echoes of On the Waterfront, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, Citizen Kane, Rebel Without a Cause, North by Northwest, The Grapes of Wrath, Some Like it Hot, Waterloo Bridge, It’s a Wonderful Life, even Animal House, ring through the theater. It really is quite marvelous, and the relationship between Joe and Joyce makes the grumpiest historian smile repeatedly, even tear up. Given all that, any deviations from history to fit a 400-page book into a two-hour movie seem as justified as they are inevitable. 

For the rowing historians in the audience, the relationship between Joe and George Pocock is among the highlights of the film, as it was in the book. Henry Penn Burke is appropriately dastardly. The real Burke can even be spotted during the end credits. Ky Ebright has morphed from an elegant little man into a boisterous big man with an expanding waistline, but the relationship between Ebright and Ulbrickson is accurate enough, and though I never heard a story about Ebright being involved in Washington’s fund raising for Berlin, I found myself wishing wistfully that the Hollywood version had some basis in fact. There is the briefest appearance of the Jesse Owens character which resonates with profundity, and the portrayal of a petulant Hitler and his adoring crowds in full technicolor should be especially haunting to us in 2023. 

And, darn it, it’s so nice to see rowing on the big screen. Clooney is on record saying that he made a great effort to ensure that the rowing would be believable, and he was largely successful. The actors obviously accepted and embraced the task of bringing Olympic legends to life, both on the water and off. They were all terrific.

Nit-picks? The U.S. never fell back four lengths in the 2,0000m Olympic final, but that was only one of several gross exaggerations in the film. I suppose they would say that it was to enhance the drama for the non-rowing audience, and Washington probably did fall four lengths behind over 4 miles at Poughkeepsie and still come back to win, so I suppose one man’s exaggeration is another man’s artistic license. 

One thing I found amusing. I don’t think they actually used a finish line camera in Berlin, but I’m pretty sure that the camera they showed in the movie was on the starboard side of the course, but the photo that came out was the familiar photo taken from the grandstands on the port side of the course. So magic camera.

The end result? For years, rowers have fervently prayed that Hollywood wouldn’t screw up this most sublime of stories. Thank heavens, they didn’t. I left the theater with a smile on my face, thinking of Judy Rantz Willman, Joe and Joyce’s daughter, and how pleased she must be to see her parents enter Golden Age Hollywood heaven, for their personal tale had always been as heart-warming and inspiring as the other story of nine hard scrabble guys who improbably won the Olympics. 

My advice? Go see the movie at your earliest opportunity. Then definitely go read the book again.