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As I continue winding my way through all the official Olympics documentaries, there has been one emergent trend: they are rarely weird. “White Rock,” chronicling the 1976 Winter Olympics was eccentric in a cheerful prog rock sort of way, and it was a little strange to hear Don LaFontaine narrate the 1992 Winter Olympic documentary to someone like me who grew up with him as the original trailer man, but neither of those weirded me out. Not like the official documentary of the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz. And that is weird in and of itself because these were the first Olympics since 1936, emerging from the unremitting darkness of WWII, none of which is eschewed in “Fight Without Hate” but openly addressed in a nifty prologue that takes us from the first modern Olympics up through Berlin and footage of you-know-who. Granted, even as it shows this, the narration remarks that sport rises above politics which is not quite true and not just because I say it is not. The documentary notes that Korea is only the Asian representative at the 1948 Winter Olympics, forgoing an explanation of why Japan is not present, but surely, viewer, you can guess. Still, you can understand the inclination to lighten the mood, though “Fight Without Hate” takes lightening the mood to the pre-second wave feminism extreme.
Despite recounting the truly extraordinary St. Moritz locations, hockey and skating ranks plunked down before awe-inspiring Alpine vistas, and skeleton and bobsleigh chutes of ice that the movie shows us painstakingly being constructed, what stands out most about “Fight Without Hate” is often not the action itself but the commentary. Director André Michel artistic choice, it turns out, was to invent a narrator, one called Gaston, who not only adds cheeky fashion commentary and cracks jokes but throughout his narration is also forced to deal with his nagging wife, one who keeps interrupting him to ask questions that he waves off with no small amount of sexism. It’s like you’re watching the Olympics with a Blondie comic strip running concurrently next to it. Indeed, at one point Gaston notes that someday the athletes’ uniforms might “appear naïve and old fashioned,” not realizing he’s referring to himself. It was a different time, as they say, and that is certainly true: it would be 12 years before speed skating was added as a medal event for women, and it would be 66 before ski jumping was added. What would Gaston make of that?
“Fight Without Hate” works better when it puts its cheekiness toward the actual coverage of events, like situating a camera in front of a bobsleigh so that we get a point-of-view shot the whole way down the track. Michel showcases the downhill skiing event with aerial shots and wide views that not only capture the many spills and tumbles but provides thrilling context as to just how massive the vertical descent for this event really is that even modern television coverage can never properly evoke (at least, not until NBC’s drone shots here in 2026). And for a surprisingly long stretch during figure skating competition, “Fight Without Hate” indulges in nothing more than a montage of the skaters’ twists and turns. It might be lyrical overkill for some viewers, it might have been lyrical overkill for me, but it’s also the one sequence where Gaston finally shuts up.
