Pumping Iron

A documentary about bodybuilding. The subject is preparation for a competition. The athletes train for months, and the film watches them in the gym, the kitchen, on the bus and backstage. Two men are at the centre. Arnold has won five times running and wants a sixth; sure of himself, talkative, using the wearing down of his rivals as a method. Lou is much younger, much bigger, and trains with his father. The best-known thing about the film is the relationship between them. Arnold needles him constantly, they have breakfast at the same table on the morning of the contest, and what he says plainly shakes Lou. What the narrative is interested in is not muscle but mind: what decides the result on stage is built largely not in the gym but at that breakfast. Other sections follow other athletes: a family man, someone competing for the first time, someone who does not know what to do after losing. There is a part that was argued over later. It has been said over the years that some scenes were staged and some conversations re-performed; Arnold himself later admitted one passage was not real. On release the film took bodybuilding out of a small subculture and was the beginning of Arnold Schwarzenegger being known. George Butler and Robert Fiore directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes sports documentaries and is curious about American subcultures of the 1970s. Who it is not for: anyone expecting neutral observation; the film plainly centres one man and carries the story he tells.