A new film project taking the Livingstone Brothers’ “Blood over Water” book about the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race and making it into a movie prompted us to check out the best and worst of films featuring rowing or sculling.
Most of us have seen The Social Network and bemoaned the poor quality of both the script and the rowing in other films (Sliding Doors and Sommer Sturm spring to mind). Why can’t someone make a truely engaging rowing film that has a strong story line, a good cast and some extras who can actually row properly?
Two good compilation lists of rowing in the movies row2k and the Tideway Slug. Both make very entertaining reading for your lunch break.
Or watch the trailer below and form your own views.
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Yesterday, by accident, I caught part of “Strange Interlude,” an adaptation (I think) of a Tennessee Williams play that featured… Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, and Maureen O’Sullivan. The Gable and Shearer characters have a son who rows at some American university, and there’s a melodramatic climax involving what must be one of the many IRA championships that were rowed on the Hudson River, at Poughkeepsie, New York. The story is pretty much a laugher, but there’s some very cool and obviously authentic footage of eights racing many-across on the Hudson. (Intercut with some hokey medium shots of the young hero with his supposed crewmates.)
Howard – what a wonderful addition to the collection of movies! I do love it when you get additions to the list! We found some great old film on the Pathe Newsreels that had the Empire Games of 1918 and lots of Oxford/Cambridge boat races https://www.rowperfect.co.uk/2010/10/11/british-pathe-newsreel-footage-of-rowing/