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Hero image for Score

Score

Short Film (Full Length) – 1980

The theatre of sport is given full-blown operatic treatment in this National Film Unit classic. Footage from the French 1979 rugby tour of New Zealand is rendered in slow-motion and cut to a Tchaikovsky score. The result is an often glorious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, paean to rugby. Balletic lineouts, driving tackles, and the dark mysteries of the ruck, make for a ballsy Swan Lake in the mud. It includes the Bastille Day French victory over the All Blacks. Directed by NFU stalwart Arthur Everard, it won a jury prize at the Montreal World Film Festival.

Acknowledgements

Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony Courtesy of EMI Music Classics.
The New Zealand Rugby Unions are thanked in the credits.

Music

Set to Tchaikovsky (Manfred Symphony)

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