Abstract
Drawing upon the writings of Benedict Anderson, Hayden White and Robert Rosenstone, this essay compares and contrasts three feature-length films dealing with a historically significant event and its aftermath: the ‘Munich Massacre’, which took place during the 1972 Summer Olympics and led to violent reprisals in the months and years that followed. While stylistically different from one another, these political thrillers – 21 Hours at Munich (1976), Sword of Gideon (1986) and Munich (2005) – share thematic similarities and mobilize sport metaphors so as to emphasize the teamwork that was necessary to counteract this and other terrorist threats. The essay also considers the significance of witnessing TV sportscasters such as Jim McKay (who appears in the opening minutes of Munich and can be heard in 21 Hours at Munich) deliver breaking news in such a way that two seemingly unrelated things – spectator sports and terrorist reports – begin to slip into one another. Finally, it is argued that, in deconstructing the boundaries between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’, ‘history’ and ‘narrative’, these films collectively make the case for a modernist form of history writing while reminding audiences that singular events are at once ‘bound’ to other extreme moments in history and, perhaps paradoxically, beyond representation.
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