Filmmakers Agree to Alter Acclaimed Documentary

At first, it sounded like a good idea to Ilana Romano: a documentary that would recount the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany.

Romano’s husband, wrestler Joseph Romano, was killed in the tragedy, one of the most horrifying chapters in Palestinian terrorism.

And a film must have seemed a good idea to a lot of other people, since “One Day in September” won an Academy Award last month as best feature documentary.

But when Romano saw the movie and, in it, photographs of her husband’s stripped and mutilated body, she was shocked and sickened.

Bowing to the demands of Romano and another widow, Ankie Spitzer, and after hours of painful negotiations through attorneys, the producers agreed this week to blur several of the most objectionable sequences in the highly acclaimed film.

The movie’s producer, veteran filmmaker Arthur Cohn, said he will spend about $100,000 to change the negatives of all copies in circulation. Under the agreement, the altered version of the film is the one that will be distributed both in Israel and worldwide. (The movie has yet to be released in the United States.)

Film industry experts said Monday that it is rare, but not unheard of, for an award-winning film to be altered after its release.

While the circumstances surrounding the changes in “One Day in September” are unusual, editing of films often occurs for television release or to shorten a film’s length. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does not keep records on what is done to films once the golden statuette has been bestowed, and as long as producer and director agree on changes, issues of artistic rights are not in play.

“This is a victory,” Spitzer, whose husband, fencing coach Andrei Spitzer, was among the victims, said Monday. “It doesn’t happen every day that an Oscar- winning film is going to be changed. We are very relieved.”

Cohn and director Kevin Macdonald, in Israel to negotiate with the families, agreed to the changes with great reluctance. The whole point of the story is the brutality of terrorism, they said, and obscuring the photos diminishes the impact.

“Ideally, I’d like it not to be seen like this, but sometimes you have to compromise,” Macdonald told a small group of journalists and filmmakers gathered in the Tel Aviv Cinematheque for a private screening of the altered version of the movie. “It is probably less effective. The shock value of the film is an important one.”

Cohn said that only about 37 seconds of the 91-minute documentary were at issue. As part of their agreement with the relatives, the producers have blurred the faces of dead Israelis who appear in German police photographs as they slumped in a bullet-riddled helicopter. The especially gruesome picture of Joseph Romano, lying nude in the room where he was tortured, his body covered in blood, has been distorted.

The movie is a gripping account of the events of September 1972, when a squad of eight Palestinian commandos from the Black September movement stole into the Olympic Village at the Summer Games in Munich. Demanding the release of 200 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and elsewhere, they seized 11 Israeli athletes and coaches. Two of the Israelis--Romano and coach Moshe Weinberg--were killed in the first hours of the ordeal.

After nearly 24 hours of fruitless negotiations, German authorities transported the captors and captives in two helicopters to a military airport where German snipers lay in wait. A ferocious gun battle erupted. One of the Palestinians hurled a grenade into a helicopter, and the other aircraft was sprayed with bullets. The nine remaining Israelis, five Palestinians and one German officer were killed.

Macdonald and Cohn said their goal was to make a film that would keep alive the memory of what happened in Munich without sacrificing elements of a tense, compelling thriller. They seemed both bewildered and perturbed at the controversy in Israel over the film, noting that the families cooperated with the project from the start and were the original source of the photos. But they agreed to the demands to avoid further alienation.

“This movie is a testament to them, the widows and children, and these are the people protesting it?” a clearly disappointed Macdonald said. “We couldn’t live with that. And we also didn’t want [the controversy] to hurt the prospects of the film.”

Ankie Spitzer, who appears in the film extensively, offering her recollections of her husband and the day he was killed, said that she told the producers about the photos so they would be aware of the torture that took place but that she did not intend for the material to be shown to the public. (The producers dispute this.)

“It is impossible morally and ethically to show those photos,” Spitzer said. “If it takes away from the impact of their movie, that’s not my problem.”

Romano said her husband was a “true hero” who should not suffer “more degradation.” She said Monday that she was satisfied with the compromise.

Spitzer and Romano saw the film in January in London, and that’s when they said they decided to fight the graphic displays of the dead. It was by no means a unanimous protest among the families.

Eyal Shapiro, whose father, Amitzur, was the Olympic team’s track and field coach, had nothing but praise for the original film’s realism. He opposed doctoring it, and took his two children, ages 17 and 15, to the Tel Aviv screening because he believes the message of the film is so important.

Nataly Shapiro, the 17-year-old, wanted to see the movie, but watching it was difficult. Seated next to her father in the small theater, she gasped and wept at some of the more poignant and harsh moments.

“It helped me to understand a lot of what happened to my grandfather, even if it was hard to take,” said Nataly, who will begin her mandatory service in the Israeli army in a few weeks. “There are people my age who don’t know about Munich, and that bothers me. This is important for me and for the next generations.”

Cohn said he has received enormous support from Israeli government and military officials who appreciate the film as a statement against terrorism. But Cohn insists that the film is not propaganda. It includes interviews with the lone surviving Palestinian who participated in the Olympic raid, Jamil al Gashey, who lives in hiding in Africa. The other two survivors were hunted down by Israeli intelligence agents.

Including Gashey’s explanations of his motives, his unsettling declaration that he is proud of what he did, and pictures of the squalid refugee camp that he and his people came from were part of an attempt to be evenhanded, Cohn said.

Later, Macdonald was philosophical about the unexpected opposition. Sometimes, he said, success is measured in the number of people who are made angry by your work.