Chariots of Fire covers arduous ground — faith, conviction and history (both the making of it and the living up to it) — but it does so with the same courage and sincerity that drives the two young men at its heart.
They are, of course, Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, respectively the Scottish evangelical Christian and Cambridge-educated Jew who ran for Great Britain, among other causes, at the 1924 Olympics.
Much has been written about the two extraordinary lead performances, and Ian Charleson and Ben Cross certainly fit the roles as snugly as Lycra does muscle. But director Hugh Hudson and writer Colin Welland invest just as much in the lightly sketched characters on the film’s periphery: I love Patrick Magee’s portrayal of Lord Cadogan, a cabbagey peer of the realm, and Dennis Christopher’s Charles Paddock, an American runner of almost extraterrestrial lissomness. The screenplay was by Colin Welland, who won an Oscar.
The opening beach run, set in Broadstairs but filmed in St Andrews – and soundtracked with that anachronistic yet curiously fitting electronic score by Vangelis – has become iconic; but for me the film’s finest sequence is the 100-metre sprint final in Paris.
The race itself is over almost before it begins — and then Hudson shows us it again, decelerated and deconstructed, allowing us to take pleasure in Abrahams’s athleticism in the same way Liddell believes God does in his.
Even after 31 years, Chariots of Fire doesn’t simply impress; it inspires.
• On November 3 2015, Oscar-winning writer and actor Colin Welland died aged 81. Welland, a Lancashire-born father-of-four who acted in everything from Kes to Z Cars, won his Academy Award for the screenplay of Chariots of Fire in 1981, famously waving his statue and announcing in his acceptance speech: "The British are coming!"