We contacted FIFA’s Films department to try and find out why it was not part of their archive. Today they responded, via the distribution company Infront Sports & Media who produce their DVD archive, and they were kind enough to provide something of an explanation. They said that they had only recently acquired a copy of the film, and that the version they had was mute. They also said they assumed FIFA’s legal team was looking into whether FIFA owned the rights or not — I believe (though stand to be corrected) that in France, copyright in film extends to 70 years after the death of the director, in this case René Lucot, who died only in 2003.

However, as we noted, the credits to the film, and indeed its mere existence at all, strongly suggests it was a work commissioned by at the least, the French Football Federation, with FIFA’s support. It will be interesting to see if the film does in time become part of FIFA’s World Cup films archive, and if so, whether the version they release goes out unedited from Lucot’s original.

But, in fact, there does appear to be an official narrative film made earlier than that, from the 1938 World Cup. Curiously, there is no mention anywhere on FIFA’s films site or elsewhere as far as I can tell in the English-language of a roughly 30 minute long film made at and released shortly after the 1938 World Cup held in France. Yet I believe that 1938 film, by young French director René Lucot, was an officially sanctioned product. The introduction to the film lists the committee of FIFA in its credits. The film has even been forgotten by chroniclers of Lucot’s long film career, and it may indeed have been his first: Lucot’s IMDB filmography does not list it, giving his 1942 film Rodin as his cinematic debut instead.

I’m not particularly sure why this film has apparently been forgotten (I suppose it doesn’t help that the narration is only in French), and only stumbled upon its existence myself when reading through a detailed academic article on the culture of that World Cup by Joan Tumblety, entitled The Soccer World Cup of 1938: Politics, Spectacles, and la Culture Physique in Interwar France [PDF] and well worth reading itself. According to Tumblety, Lucot’s film was part of a “multigenre publicity campaign designed to extend the event’s audience far beyond the stadium.”

I was able to find a full-version of Lucot’s 1938 film at a French site (you can view the full-length version below, too). Even though the narration is in French, anyone interested in the history of the World Cup should give it a look. One thing that strikes one immediately is the visibility of  the uncomfortable politics that surrounded the 1938 World Cup, with the Germans prominently offering the Hitler salute several times in the film, along with what appear to be broadcasters and other prominent officials on the sidelines and in the stands.

Maybe this footage isn’t what FIFA wants the 1938 event to be associated with at a World Cup that ended with the triumph of Mussolini-era Italy, and just perhaps, that’s actually the reason why this film is lost in the archives.

My intrigue also relates to the fact that while I’ve always been a soccer fan, as a red-blooded American boy I also grew up watching the NBA and other “American sports” leagues.  And I often find myself engaging in the debate about whether different sports fit better or worse within particular cultural contexts.  Do Americans really prefer basketball to soccer because there is more scoring?  Do Europeans really prefer soccer because it is more emotional and artistic?  Or are different sport cultures just an accident of the fact that we tend to like what we know?  Comparing Kobe Doin’ Work with Zidane: A 21^st Century Portrait strikes me as a chance to tangentially address that debate.

Of course, the movies are not directly comparable in that they were made for different purposes.  Kobe was made for ESPN by Spike Lee, who is almost as famous for his NBA fandom and his courtside presence at New York Knicks games as he is for his filmmaking.  The makers of Zidane, on the other hand, are more artists than filmmakers—and, one suspects, more artists than sports fans.  Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Scottish and French respectively, are both more known in the art world for their expositions than their filmmaking.  And their work has a decidedly eclectic European aesthetic, particularly considering the movie was filmed in Spain with funding from Iceland.  It is probably safe to assume that ESPN and the Icelandic film council have very different ideas about what makes for a good documentary—but that itself may say something about the cultures of sport.

The films

While many reviewers have noted that Kobe Doin’ Work was inspired by Spike Lee’s encounter with Zidane at the Cannes Film Festival, fewer have noted that Zidane: A 21^st Century Portrait was itself preceded by a 1971 German film Fußball wie noch nie (Football as Never Before) following George Best through an entire Manchester United game.  Though the makers of Zidane only learned about Football as Never Before after initiating their own work, the idea of immersing oneself in a consideration of a single athlete’s experience seems to appeal as a bridge between sport and art.

And Zidane is very much an artistic consideration of a single athlete’s experience.  The film relies on 17 cameras to follow Zidane, and Zidane alone, through an otherwise ordinary 2005 Spanish league game between Real Madrid and Villarreal.  The shots focus on ground level views of Zidane’s movements amidst the sounds of the crowd alternated occasionally with pixilated downward angles and background commentary, constantly reminding the viewer that the game itself is an artificial production.  There is no audible narration, but late in the first half subtitles appear to offer Zidane’s own abstracted thoughts:

“As a child I had a running commentary in my head when I was playing. It wasn’t really my own voice.  It was the voice of Pierre Cangioni, a television anchor from the 1970’s. Every time I heard his voice I would run towards the TV, as close as I could get. For as long as I could.  It wasn’t that his words were so important but the tone, the accent, the atmosphere, was everything.”

In Kobe, on the other hand, the atmosphere of the game is primarily a platform for the player’s own voice-over describing his game.  The film uses 30 cameras to follow Bryant through an otherwise ordinary 2008 game between the LA Lakers and the San Antonio Spurs, moving from some pre-game preparation through most of the game’s action.  The camera shots of Bryant playing come at all angles, and allow for some appreciation of his athletic grace.  But unlike Zidane, Bryant also offers a constant verbal commentary on each scene and shot, most of which involves explaining mundane details and clichéd observations: “that home court advantage is so important;” “I hate turnovers;” “My high school coach told me a long time ago: you don’t build a house without blueprints.”

The commentary comes to dominate the film—in the same way many American soccer broadcasters feel compelled to talk through every second of play.  Even in an otherwise complementary review of Kobe Doin’ Work, a basketball writer noted how Bryant’s commentary overwhelms:

“If there was anything I came away with from watching the full ninety minutes of Kobe Doin’ Work, it was this: Kobe does not shut up. Not in the locker room, not in the huddles, not on the court. Heck, not even on the voiceover. If we are to take this film of one game as a sample representation of what it is like to play basketball with Kobe Bryant, then being a teammate of Kobe Bryant must border on unbearable. Because Kobe is constantly telling his teammates what they are doing wrong.”

The contrasts

I’m tempted to claim that the unfortunate tendency to expect players to both play and offer verbal insight into their play is distinctly American, but that’s probably not quite right.  Realistically, the contrast between Zidane and Kobe is not so much Europe v America as it is different hybrids.  In fact, in watching Zidane I took a strange pleasure in multiple scenes where the players’ lugubrious intensity took place in front of large electronic advertising boards promoting Kellogg’s Frosties with the cartoon image of Tony the Tiger—a prototype of silly American marketing.  And, similarly, Bryant (who spent much of his childhood in Italy) seemed to take great pleasure in emphasizing his ability to converse on the court with his European teammates in Italian and Spanish—and even playfully used his soccer skills to juggle a basketball on his way to one timeout.

Even the influences on the filmmakers goes both ways, as Douglas Gordon notes a debt to American football in describing his vision for Zidane in an interesting interview with the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

“I wasted my youth watching 16mm, fantastically well-photographed NFL [footage]. Beautiful stuff, [shot by] cameramen who’d just come back from the war [in Vietnam]. Seagulls might flap by in front of them, and it wouldn’t be edited out. There was something rough about the NFL stuff that we wanted. There’s a couple of scenes in Zidane where the camera drifts up. That was deliberate, but it’s a reference to the sort of accidental beauty that can happen in that type of footage.”

That emphasis on “accidental beauty” is, however, more characteristic of Zidane rather than Kobe.  Both at the start of Zidane and then at halftime we are told that the scene is Madrid, Saturday April 23^rd 2005 and “who could have imagined that in the future an ordinary day like this might be forgotten or remembered as anything more or less significant than a walk in the park.”  And at the very end, after Zidane has been red-carded for charging and swinging his way into a scrum of players that he originally had nothing to do with, the subtitles note only that “magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all.  Nothing at all.”

On the whole I enjoyed such affectations, but I also understand that watching Zidane, and watching soccer, can be frustrating precisely because it does sometimes seem to be “nothing at all.”  When I sit down to watch my Trail Blazers play an NBA game I can be assured of a consistent baseline of entertainment, but when I watch soccer I have to actively engage.  In fact, the rhythm and flow of Zidane the film is much like the game itself.  At first there is the settling in.  For twenty minutes we just watch Zidane move, and get used to his rhythms.  Then come the subtitles, the thoughtful interlude where Zidane’s words allow us to consider the game’s meaning.

In the second half the pace quickens, alternating between words, movements, and abstract images.  There are subtle touches of aggression, with Zidane engaging in small bits of contact while his face—without changing expression—becomes more angry.  The tension builds, accompanied by haunting music from Mogwai, and then for perhaps the first time Zidane smiles.  He has a brief exchange with Roberto Carlos, they share a laugh, and we briefly relax.  Minutes later a Real player drives along the endline, a Villarreal defender adds relish to his tackle, and Zidane accelerates into a brief rage.  When the referee shows him the red card, he shows no emotion.  But the emotion of this meaningless game feels suddenly overwhelming.  The movie ends.

There is energy to Kobe Doin Work as well, but it is more a persistent buzz—a bubbling enthusiasm that feels like a summer’s day at the carnival.  It is an easy entertainment, built partially around sideshows.  In fact, when American sports fans criticize soccer for lacking in scoring and action, I often wonder how they define action—watching an NBA game is as much about commercial breaks and sideshows as it is about basketball.  If I spend two hours watching soccer I know I will see 90 minutes of the game; if I spend two and a half hours watching my Trail Blazers I see 48 minutes of basketball and learn much about the latest specials at Standard TV & Appliance.

Considering the differences in the action, it is perhaps ironic that the key to understanding both films seems to lie not during the play but during halftime.  In Kobe we follow Bryant into the locker room where he leads the team in an analysis of film from the first half.  Having this kind of access to a locker room is considered a rare coup in a sports broadcast, and the scene serves to highlight that the documentary is about the importance of Kobe mastering the game.

At halftime in Zidane we leave Madrid, running through a collage of the world on that particular day.  An Ipanema beach puppet show.  Floods in Serbia-Montegnegro.  Elian Gonzales on Cuban TV.  And most powerfully: an image of a man fleeing a bombing carrying an injured child and the text “Car bomb in Najaf, Iraq kills 9 in escalating attacks.”  On the side amidst the horror another man is wearing a replica Zidane jersey.  The interlude is brief and seems random, but it clearly conveys that the documentary is intended to raise, rather than answer, questions: how can a game simultaneously mean so much and so little?

“The script has already been written”

Some critics find Zidane too sycophantic—occasional Pitch Invasion contributor Jennifer Doyle discussed the film in an excellent review and argues: “Zidane … is too beautiful, too controlled, too glossy. You can buy the DVD in supermarkets in France – a sign of how deeply the film co-operates with and expands Zidane’s celebrity.”  But for me that cooperation is part of the fun—I know the athletic gifts of Zidane and Bryant do not warrant real hero status, but I willingly submit to a degree of that illusion (though only to a degree).

If I have a complaint of both movies it is that they portray the game as being about individuals—though they do so in slightly different ways.  In Kobe the individualism lies in the naked celebration of Bryant’s every move and thought; in Zidane the individualism lies in the lonely intensity Zidane exudes through his movements and his portrait.  But those movements are themselves beautiful—the movies share a core appreciation for the aesthetic beauty of the elite athlete.

And together they highlight how much of our fandom depends upon where we happen to be born, and the sport cultures we happen to learn.  Kobe Doin’ Work is much more of a jaunty piece that offers basic entertainment—which seems appropriate to the ethos of the NBA.  Zidane: A 21^st Century Portrait is much more of an abstract impression that requires some active engagement—which seems to befit European soccer.  Ultimately, as a subtitle in Zidane observes “Sometimes when you arrive in the stadium you feel that everything has already been decided.  The script has already been written.”

Andrew Guest writes weekly for Pitch Invasion. He is an academic social scientist and soccer addict living in Portland, Oregon.  Having worked (and played) in Malawi and Angola, he has a particular interest in Africa.  He can be contacted at drewguest (at) hotmail.com.