CNN — Almost everyone knows the opening sequence, film buff or not: the windswept beach, the foaming waves, the soaring, triumphant music against the sound of runners’ feet patting on wet sand. So begins the 1981 Oscar-winning film “Chariots of Fire,” introducing a group of British athletes as they train for the Olympic Games. The runners – whose t-shirts and shorts are muddied with sand and sea – splash through shallow water towards the Scottish coastal town of St Andrews, which slowly appears as a series of spires and rooftops on the horizon. The scene is embedded in cinema history,...