When Muhammad Ali died on June 3 at 74, he had taken on the aura of a benevolent, even innocuous symbol of racial harmony and the American Dream. Two documentaries made nearly 40 years apart question that image. In them Ali appears more subversive than placating, more reviled than regaled as he fights not just for a championship but for racial justice and personal vindication.
William Klein’s “Muhammad Ali, The Greatest’’ (1974), made over the course of 10 years, thrusts the camera directly into the subject’s life without introduction or explanation. In style it is similar to direct cinema films of the 1960s, like Robert Drew’s “Primary’’ (1960), about John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, and D.A. Pennebaker’s “Bob Dylan: Dont Look Back’’ (1967), about the young singer on tour. Like those two subjects, Ali is a charismatic figure, and a political one.
The politics begin with the introduction of the “owners’’ of the young boxer, a syndicate of 11 money men from Ali’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky who also own alcohol, tobacco, and oil companies but claim to be humble farmers. They praise their property’s talents, but complain that he’s “ungrateful.’’
They might as well have said “uppity.’’ Ali was not shy about speaking his mind, or promoting himself as the greatest, and putting it all in rhyme. He was the first rap artist, and in 1964 it didn’t go over well with white America. Nor did his conversion to the Nation of Islam, the Black Muslim sect that preached that white men were devils. When Ali tried to avoid the draft for religious reasons as a conscientious objector, he was stripped of his title, banned from boxing, convicted of draft evasion, and sentenced to five years in prison.
Klein, a photographer as well as a filmmaker, follows these developments as they are manifested in the moment. He covers three bouts — two with Joe Frazier and one with George Foreman. He doesn’t show the actual fights except as montages of stills, but between his in-your-face immediacy and his Godard-like montages he makes points as deftly as jabs from his subject.
The missing links in Klein’s movie are filled in by Bill Siegel’s “The Trials of Muhammad Ali’’ (2013, available for free streaming at www.pbs.org/independentlens/videos/the-trials-of-muhammad-ali/ until June 27). It covers the same period in a more conventional way, focusing on Ali‘s struggle to get his sentence overturned and his title reinstated while at the same time maintaining his religious and political convictions.
Some memorable moments include liberal David Susskind denouncing Ali as a “disgrace to his country and his race’’ and Ali singing in the Broadway show “Buck White.’’
“We have created a symbol,’’ says New York Times sports writer Robert Lipsyte at he end of “Trials.’’ “Muhammad Ali has long since been supplanted by what we think he is.’’
Like many legends, he means different things to different people at different times. Now is the time to bring back Ali the implacable fighter for justice and equality.
Peter Keough can be reached at petervkeough@globe.com.
