In the years since William Klein’s intimate “all access” tennis documentary “The French” came out, it’s been somewhat displaced as the definitive statement on that glorious era in tennis — the late’70s through the mid-’80s.
“John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection” (2018) is a genre-best dissection of tennis, one player’s game and his psyche during McEnroe’s years attempting “perfection” at Roland Garros Stadium outside of Paris, a movie assembled thanks to an archivist’s obsessive examination of the hours and hours of footage that the French shot of McEnroe’s matches there.
But in 1981, photographer and filmmaker William Klein (“Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee”) was granted the sort of access sports rarely permits today. “The French” allowed him into their tourney, behind the scenes, in the alley with the ballgirls and ballboys, in the locker rooms with the players and in the various courts of the stadium…
View original post 484 more words
Recent Comments