This is little more than George Lucas's indulgences coming at a cross-section, his love of race car driving (he stopped doing it after an accident just regular driving as a teen nearly killed him) mixed with his love of impressionistic, "tone-poem" style filmmaking, and the two modes mesh well together. Here, in his first color and sync-sound production, Lucas has the story of a driver who is trying to make the timing right at the mark of the time of the title. There's not much story here except for one key thing: if at first you spin off during a bad turn, you have to try again. And really the power and strength is in the editing; while Lucas had some help in assembling the footage, this feels like the best indication of where his head was at for the future of his films. This isn't as intense a style of montage as he would employ in something like the Star Wars Death Star dogfight... actually, no, it's more intense than that in some spots, and in others Lucas takes his shots longer to spend on seeing the car from afar (there's also a few, though brief, from inside the driver's POV). It's a cool little short, but if you're not fully interested in Lucas's more logistical approach to montage and composition, it may leave one cold.
Review of 1:42.08
