Grand Prix (1966)

I’ll say it here – Grand Prix is a very fine movie about Formula One racing.  Director John Frankenheimer intended to make as real a movie as possible of what auto racing means to those who actually do it.  On the action level the movie succeeds beyond any expectations.  Scenes were filmed at actual racing venues in several different countries [Clermont-Ferrand in France, Brands Hatch in England, Spa Francorchamps in Belgium, Zandvoort in the Netherlands and wind up at Monza in Italy].   Footage from actual races was seamlessly included in the movie as well.  As for the camera work, it’s top notch.  You see what the driver sees.  You can almost feel the speed.  When the drivers race in the rain, you feel their insecurity of driving on a wet surface.  When there’s smoke on the track, you feel claustrophobic.  When there’s a yellow flag because of a wreck, there’s a real sense of danger.  The cinematography is beyond excellent – it’s top notch.  The movie was filmed in Panavision 70 rather than the normal 35 mm format.  This movie was a big event requiring a big canvas upon which to be presented.  1961 Formula One champion Phil Hill drove the camera car on the tracks, and there were many shots filmed from a helicopter.  There were a lot of quick cuts from camera-angle to camera-angle, heightening the sense of fast-paced action.  Real drivers are seen throughout – Graham Hill, Dan Gurney, Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, etc – to add to the sense of realism.  The plot, such as it is, follows the lives of four racers during a Formula One season.  For me, I could have done with more racing scenes and less off-track scenes.

In The Princess Bride, Peter Falk is reading a bedtime story to a young Fred Savage.  But there were a lot of “kissing parts” that he wanted Peter Falk to skip over.  That’s how I feel about Grand Prix.  There were too many “kissing parts” with a few action sequences thrown in to keep the guys interested.  Given the taut stories of some of Frankenheimer’s previous work with political thrillers [Seven Days in May, The Manchurian Candidate] I expected a faster paced movie, no pun intended.  Between the races, the story lines of the private lives of the races drags to the point where audience members [like my wife and me for instance] keep saying “get on with it!” 

Jean-Pierre Sarti [Yves Montand] – A Frenchman and former Formula One racing champion who is tiring of the racing season grind and getting near the end of the road.  He has a marriage in name only and has an affair with a fashion magazine writer [Eva Marie Saint].  He makes it a point of telling her that his wife never comes to races, although she runs their auto company that bears his name.  But a lot of screen time is taken by this part of the story [too much if you ask me] – see Jean Pierre teach Louise how to fly fish, see Jean-Pierre and Louise go sightseeing in the country, see Jean-Pierre and Louise in bed, etc.  ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Scott Stoddard [Brian Bedford] – An Englishman who gets badly injured in a serious wreck during the Monaco Grand Prix.  His late older brother was a racing legend who died while racing.  He’s competing with a ghost.  His fashion-model wife Pat [Jessica Walter] doesn’t like what her husband does for a living and leaves him.

Pete Aron [James Garner] – He’s an American racer in a sport dominated by Europeans.  He’s involved in the crash that injured Stoddard.  Immediately after the crash, Aron’s racing team owner fires him from the team, leaving Aron without a ride for awhile.  During the time he’s without a racing team, Aron becomes a sportscaster who by the way takes up with Aron’s estranged wife.  Luckily, Aron is soon hired by Izo Yamura as the third driver for his fledgling Formula One team, and this romantic storyline dies a quick death.  It’s as if Pat was merely something to occupy Aron’s time while he was between employers.

Nino Barlini [Antonio Sabàto] – He’s an Italian driver who is the #2 driver for the Ferrari team [Sarti is #1].  He’s a rookie who made the switch from motorcycle racing to auto racing.  He’s the stereotypical Italian playboy who hooks up with a stereotypic blonde model who doesn’t drink, doesn’t dance, and doesn’t smoke, which narrows it down to what she does do [it rhymes with “luck”]. 

One theme that runs throughout the movie is the danger involved auto racing, and the interest of the public at large in car crashes.  You hear this particular slant three times.  The first time is after Scott Stoddard has his crash, and his wife [who at the time didn’t know the crash involved her husband] opined “that’s what they came to see.”  The second time is after Pete Aron finishes second in the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch.  A fuel line broke on his car while coming down the home stretch, turning his car into a fireball as he races toward the finish line.  He’s helped out of his car as the car bursts into flames.  Meanwhile, photographers gather to see if Aron has turned into a bronto-crisp ex-racer.  The third and final time is after Sarti crashed at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.  As his blood-soaked carcass is loaded into the ambulance, a distraught Louise [who shows more concern for the dying Sarti than does his wife] shows her blood-stained hands to all the gathered photographers and screams at them to ask if “is this what you came for.”

There are non-racing parts of the story that stand up as being necessary to the plot.  While Stoddard recuperated from his injuries that he suffered at Monaco, he’s taken to his family’s mansion in the English countryside.  The room in which he sleeps is filled with memorabilia [paintings, trophies, etc] from his late brother Roger’s career.  His team owner opines that having all this stuff from his dead brother in his room was a bit morbid, but Stoddard tells him that all the memorabilia serves as a constant motivator for his own career.  Ok, we’ve established that he’s competing with a ghost.

As for Aron, we see him struggle as a new broadcaster.  Then we see him pay a visit to the Ferrari factory in Italy, where he asks his former team owner for a job.  But the team owner, Agostini Manetta, refused.  Manetta didn’t mince words. He told Aron that he didn’t appreciate Aron’s time with the team when he constantly blamed the cars he drove for his lack of success.  He also told Aron he was a reckless driver who wasn’t qualified to drive in Formula One competition.  But then Aron found a letter slipped under his door.  It was an invitation from Izo Yamura to visit the Yamura garage.  The two men talk – Yamura tells Aron about his racing philosophy and his desire to win.  After Aron is offered a spot on Yamura’s team, Aron revisits the garage, then retires to Yamura’s estate for tea.  Yamura tells Aron of his experience as a fighter pilot during World War II, during which he shot down 17 American planes.   The two men hit it off, which comes in handy when the two men review films of Aron’s performance in the Mexican Grand Prix.  It was like football players studying game film, and when Yamura points out that Aron was too reckless and spun out on a particular turn, Aron agrees with him whereas he would argue with other team owners for whom he’s driven.

The only bits we see about Barlini are when he’s racing [he wins at Brands Hatch], playing drinking games with his trophy in an English pub, dancing in a disco where he met the model, or flirting with [and exiting an elevator with] two Japanese girls.  We get the idea – he’s the Italian playboy.  Even though he is seen to win only one race during the movie, somehow he is the points leader heading into the final race at Monza.  Prior to the race at Monza he’s engaged in small talk with Sarti’s wife, but it doesn’t really add anything.  If anything, the Ferrari team owner Agostini Manetta adds more to the plot than Barlini.  After he tells Pete Aron his reasons for not wanting to rehire him, at least we’ve established there is something that drives Aron, the need to prove Manetta wrong.  Before the Monza race, Manetta brings Sarti’s wife Monique [who never goes to races – this means trouble].  To compound this sense of impending doom Manetta argues with Sarti about whether it’s time for Sarti to retire.  He also intimates that the reason for Sarti’s on-the-track troubles stems from his romance with Louise, hence Monique’s presence at Monza.  On top of this there’s a pre-race argument between Sarti and Monique.  He the point is driven home that theirs is a marriage of convenience, and as long as Sarti lives and breathes, he will be the face of the “Sarti brand.”  She’ll never let him have a divorce.  We get the sense that something in Sarti’s life is going to give, and we find out the hard way what it is. 

It all came down to the last race.  The four drivers were within two or three points of one another, so Monza was a winner-take-all situation.  Sarti had a crappy start.  His car stalled when the green flag dropped, and when he got the car restarted he was thirty seconds behind everyone.  He soon began to make up lost ground, but as he closed in on Barlini, Stoddard and Aron, one of the slower cars in front of him loses an exhaust pipe.  Sarti ran over it, which causes him spin off the high bank and go airborne.  The car leaves the track, crashes and explodes while Sarti is left hanging in a tree.  He’s fatally injured, and with Barlini leading Manetta “black flags” him, which withdrew Barlini from the race.  Unbeknownst to Aron and Stoddard, Sarti dies but they keep racing.  For the two drivers it was neck-and-neck, with each driver passing and repassing each other until the checkered flag.  Aron won by a wheel.  After Yamura told him of Sarti’s death, Aron quietly got out of the car to accept his laurels.  He asked Stoddard to join him on the winner’s podium to drink champagne.  Aron has won the season’s championship, but not in the way he would have preferred.  After the race, Aron walks the track alone, with the sound of engines still in his ears.

Grand Prix is an excellent movie that could have been better without many of the off-track stories.  Nevertheless, it is the gold standard for racing movies.