Grand Prix

According to a recent biography of Steve McQueen, Grand Prix was supposed to be a project that he and John Frankenheimer were originally to work on. But the two had creative differences and went their separate ways doing separate racing pictures. What McQueen eventually did was Le Mans. I think Frankenheimer wound up with the far better product.

Grand Prix is a Grand Hotel type film involving several people and their lives over the course of a few months on the European racing circuit. Many of the types fans of the sport will most likely recognize.

James Garner is the American driver who's had a run of bad luck. A car crash has forced him to try and be color commentator for television, a role he can't fit in. Japanese auto industrialist Toshiro Mifune is offering him a way back into the circuit.

Brian Bedford's sustained a serious crash and even before's he's healed he's driving through a lot of pain. His wife Jessica Walter thinks he's certifiable and she drifts into an affair with Garner whom she thinks is showing good sense in going for the life of sports television commentator.

Antonio Sabato, father of the famed Calvin Klein model of the last decade, is the Epicurean live for the moment driver who doesn't take anything seriously except for the time he's actually competing. Definitely not his women as Francoise Hardy finds out.

The veteran of the circuit, the Michael Jordan of the profession, is Yves Montand. The only real happiness he has is driving, not even an affair with journalist Eva Marie Saint is bringing him that. Montand is trapped in a loveless marriage to Genevieve Page who's the daughter of another automobile industrialist. His name means more prestige for daddy's firm, so she'll tolerate all infidelities.

Montand is getting old and like many afraid his reflexes won't be there for him at one critical point too many. Back then these guys were racing at speeds of 180 miles an hour. Your life saving decisions at some point are taken out of your hands at those speeds.

Whether it's the NASCAR circuit in the USA, the Grand Prix of Europe or even midget go cars, auto racing may in fact be the only truly international sport there is. It's stars come from every corner in this world except Antarctica. The sport is held in just about every country there is. It's also never become has politicized as the Olympics have become on occasion. The drivers who compete and the supporters and sponsors around them are an international fraternity that national boundaries have no meaning for.

Despite the presence of so many international names, the star of the film is the sport itself. All the stories of the players are done against that backdrop. It's a tribute to John Frankenheimer that the individual stories did not get lost in the making of Grand Prix. The film won three Oscars, for Sound, for Sound Effects, and for Film Editing.

Grand Prix is the best film on auto racing ever done. And it's presented in such a way that even people who don't follow the sport, can appreciate what the drivers go through. If possible see this one on the big screen.

The plot is ho-hum, the acting is superb, with Jessica Walter and James Garner especially terrific, but the movie is about formula 1 racing, and there has never been anything like it. The racing scenes merge image and movement and music and become transcendent. Even on the small tv screen, this movie is remarkable. But if you ever find it playing in a theatre, you'll be amazed.

Readers may not remember (or possibly even know) that when this movie was released in 1967, it played in theaters equipped with CINERAMA, and let me tell you, that was an eye popping experience! The movie played for eight solid months at the Mann Cinerama theater in Minneapolis and they packed them in every night for the entire run. I think I saw it about a half dozen times in this format (not to mention some 20 more times in other theaters, television and VCR/DVD). 1967 was also such a wonderful year in motor sport. Dan Gurney won at Spa in his Eagle, one week after winning LeMans with AJ Foyt, who had in turn won Indianapolis a week before that.

Going to a Cinerama theater in those days was a big event. You got dressed up. I still have the playbill type program for Grand Prix that you got with your ticket. I also have Maurice Jarres great sound track album as well as an interesting record associated with the movie featuring Formula One engine sounds from Monaco, Spa and Monza with narration by Phil Hill. Great stuff.

Grand Prix is one of those films that simply couldn't be made today. This fact is mentioned over and over in the extras on the excellent DVD-edition, and rightly so. Back in the 60s, F1 racing was still much more "innocent" (and more exciting) than the multi-billion-dollar media-circus it is today. Just imagine someone trying to get Bernie Ecclestone and the teams to allow a film-crew to use F1-tracks on a race-weekend or even to film in the pits/paddock-area of today's F1 - for free! Or imagine having a bunch of actors drive around in real race-cars on real tracks at break-neck speed in today's safety-obsessed world - impossible.

Well, Frankenheimer did all that back in the 60s and for that reason alone the movie is required watching for anyone who has even a slight interest in cars or motor sports. GP offers us a pretty realistic glimpse of an era gone-by - and it doesn't shy away from the gruesome reality and dangers of motor-racing in the 60s. This realism alone makes GP stand out. The filmmakers didn't simulate races, they actually had the actors racing cars on the original tracks and filmed it. The result is astonishing and really gives a feeling of what it must've been like to sit in one of those beautiful deathtraps at speeds of around 300 km/h. The excellent cinematography, editing and music add to this unique experience and they also give the picture that typical 60s-feel (the opening credits alone are worth the price of admission in my book).

On a side note: Being a racing-fan myself, I can't help but wonder why Frankenheimer didn't include the race at the Nürburgring. Back in those days, F1 still used the 20km+ Nordschleife-version of the track, possibly the most demanding and "scary" circuit ever.

Naturally: Between races the movie loses momentum. That's not so much caused by some weak dialog or the predictable plot - it's s just that those incredible scenes on the tracks simply steal the show. No wonder that I find myself fast-forwarding through a lot of the dialog.

In short: 10/10 for the action on the racetracks - 6/10 for the scenes off the track = 8/10

I won't bore you with the plotline; you can get all that elsewhere. The main reason one should see this film is for the camera effects. And remember too -- these were all done the hard way; there was no computer imaging back in 1966!

If you get the chance to see this in a theater, DO NOT BE LATE!! The opening -- with the driver plugging his ears with cotton before putting on his helmet -- is aptly appropriate. The split-screen and multiple-image effects are first seen in the opening and crop up throughout the movie -- and always to good advantage, not just a "gee whiz, look what we can do" use of technique and technology. ESPN and the other networks, in their NASCAR telecasts, have just now started to adopt techniques first used by Frankenheimer 30-plus years ago.

One of the best scenes in the film is in the early minutes. You are actually *in* the cockpit of a F-1 car as it spins out of control, slides off the track, and launches itself into the harbor. I might add that this was *NOT* done with models, but used real, full-sized cars and took long hours to produce -- and these were truly "state-of-the-art" effects in 1966 (I won't give away the secrets here but will say that if you can locate a copy of the appropriate issue of "Popular Mechanics" [March 1966?] you will enjoy the article about the film and the techniques). The end result was about 15 seconds of some of the best racing footage committed to film. Needless to say, this is a very quick-running sequence!

I saw this picture in Cinerama in 1966, and I too echo the sentiment for a re-release of this picture to the large screen. More is the pity that Cinerama is no more. There are few pictures where Cinerama could be used to its fullest advantage; the in-car and on-track sequences of this film, however, were some of those.