Grand Prix is ALWAYS slammed for what John Frankenheimer once called his choice to make a "Grand Hotel" picture rather than a "Test Pilot" picture, but that's got it all wrong. Except for length, this is one of the great date movies of all time: insane machines on the edge of disaster, men who makes the insane choice to go there with them, oodles of sexual politics and romance under great pressure, gorgeous...I mean GORGEOUS imagery of spectacularly beautiful places and a remarkable score to match, one of Jarre's most hummable in a long career of hummable orchestral scores. It is the most emotional movie about racing anyone is likely to make and it has been a source of sheer wonder to me why most critics dismiss it as "soap opera with gasoline" and the like. Maybe I should do a two-hour date movie cut...like almost all of the Cinerama roadshow pictures, it IS too long and that's it's one major failing. I first saw it over two nights on NBC about a million years ago; it's probably better that way. Play to the intermission, pick it up again the next night.
Except for Yves Montand, who seems to have been incapable of giving anything less than an intriguing performance, this is not an actor's showcase by any means, but everyone's OK or better and the movie is really about extreme and exotic situations involving people, rather than about the people themselves. It's a snapshot of a particular moment in European racing history that has far more dramatic potential than today's Formula 1: obscenely dangerous cars and circuits, a pre-sponsorship economic model that meant few drivers made any real money (certainly nothing close to what the risks they took were worth) and a certain c'est la vie attitude about the safety of both drivers and spectators. Only the truly obsessed played this incredibly deadly game.
Shot on 65 mm, it's probably always looked great, but on current Bluray/upscale/4K gear, it's just stunning. It quite literally looks like it was shot on top-tier digital last week. Because sports are a kind of news event, seeing the largely deceased male cast (and a great number of real drivers who later perished in crashes; the first recognizable face in the film is Lorenzo Bandini, who was killed at Monaco the following year) with this kind of visual immediacy is actually a bit disturbing. It's not like watching Citizen Kane; gorgeous as the current Bluray is, you never find yourself thinking "What's Joe Cotton doing alive?" You may very well have that thought about Jim Garner or Brian Bedford, as they look almost as if they are in a live feed from Monaco.
"Le Mans" is (probably) the best racing film ever made for racing fans. Grand Prix is the best racing film ever made for everyone.
Except for Yves Montand, who seems to have been incapable of giving anything less than an intriguing performance, this is not an actor's showcase by any means, but everyone's OK or better and the movie is really about extreme and exotic situations involving people, rather than about the people themselves. It's a snapshot of a particular moment in European racing history that has far more dramatic potential than today's Formula 1: obscenely dangerous cars and circuits, a pre-sponsorship economic model that meant few drivers made any real money (certainly nothing close to what the risks they took were worth) and a certain c'est la vie attitude about the safety of both drivers and spectators. Only the truly obsessed played this incredibly deadly game.
Shot on 65 mm, it's probably always looked great, but on current Bluray/upscale/4K gear, it's just stunning. It quite literally looks like it was shot on top-tier digital last week. Because sports are a kind of news event, seeing the largely deceased male cast (and a great number of real drivers who later perished in crashes; the first recognizable face in the film is Lorenzo Bandini, who was killed at Monaco the following year) with this kind of visual immediacy is actually a bit disturbing. It's not like watching Citizen Kane; gorgeous as the current Bluray is, you never find yourself thinking "What's Joe Cotton doing alive?" You may very well have that thought about Jim Garner or Brian Bedford, as they look almost as if they are in a live feed from Monaco.
"Le Mans" is (probably) the best racing film ever made for racing fans. Grand Prix is the best racing film ever made for everyone.