The amazing true story of Eric Liddell
AS THRILLING WAR FLICK WINGS OF EAGLES WOWS AUDIENCES…
IN 1981, a low- budget British film called Chariots of Fire caused a sensation.
It focused on two runners – a Jewish Englishman, Harold Abrahams ( played by Ben Cross) and a devout Christian Scotsman, Eric Liddell ( played by Ian Charleson) – who represented Blighty in the 1924 Paris Olympics.
Now a new film, Wings of Eagles, with Joseph Fiennes ( Shakespeare in Love) starring as Eric Liddell, depicts his equally dramatic later life in China during WWII.
To celebrate the film’s release, we look at Liddell’s amazing story and how these two movies were inspired by the remarkable man.
As shown in Chariots of Fire, it’s true that Liddell made headlines during the Olympics by refusing to compete in the 100 metres because his heat was scheduled on a Sunday.
He had found out several months in advance and the British Olympic team fitted him into the 400m race instead.
Record
WAR GAMES: Liddell raced a Japanese officer to win medicine tale depicted in Wings of Eagles.
Co- directed by the veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Stephen Shin and Canadian Michael Parker, it focuses on the final years of Liddell’s life, when he was held in a Japanese labour camp in Chinese coastal provinces.
With its themes of religion and wartime aggression, this unofficial sequel required some careful negotiations with the strict Chinese censors.
“It means a lot to me to be able to tell this story of an Olympic champion who came to China and sacrificed so much to help others,” Shin, 66, said.
“These days, I’m not so much into making movies for money or fame any more. I’m old now, I just want to make movies with good stories.”
The director first learned about Liddell’s life while working on a project related to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Liddell was born in China to CHINA CRISIS: Joseph Fiennes as missionary Liddell Christian missionary parents and died there, so some refer to him as the country’s first Olympian.
In the years following the Olympics, Shin’s idea of telling Liddell’s story expanded into a personal project devoted to broadly understanding his subject’s life in China.
He and his collaborators consulted Liddell’s daughters, who live in Canada, and the Eric Liddell Centre in Edinburgh.
They tracked down survivors of the camp and interviewed people who had lived nearby.
In the end, they produced a documentary and a book to accompany the movie.
The film shows Joseph Fiennes, as Liddell, at the internment camp during 1943 and flashes back to his years in a Chinese coastal city as a teacher and missionary following his Olympic victory.
After the Japanese invade, he sends his pregnant wife ( played by Elizabeth Arends) and their two daughters to safety in Canada.
At the camp with many other civilians from Allied countries, he finds himself as something of a leader, helping to find supplies for prisoners with assistance from sympathetic Chinese.
In one scene, an unwell Liddell runs a race against a Japanese officer in order to win medicine for a prisoner who’s dying – echoing his earlier Olympic glories.
Kill
Yet despite the story’s emphasis on heroism and self- sacrifice, the director acknowledged that China’s film censors had to be placated. Depictions of Japanese soldiers during World War II, for example, are still regarded warily by China’s ruling party.
In the script, a nurse in a hospital said to the invading HEROIC: Liddell captured 400m Gold at the 1924 Olympics Japanese soldiers: “This is a hospital. Everyone in this hospital is equal.”
But the director explained that the censors thought audiences might misunderstand because, in the eyes of the Chinese, the Japanese were not equals, they were invaders.
It was changed to have her say: “This is a hospital. We are here to save people and you are here to kill people, so I would ask you to please leave.’”
But in the end, Shin said, the script was approved with only minor changes.
Liddell sadly died just before the camp was liberated at the end of the war. But you’ll have to watch Wings of Eagles to see how heroic the last years of this remarkable man truly were.
Wings of Eagles is out on Digital HD on March 12 and DVD on March 19.