Le cercle infernal

Henry Hathaway's "The Racers" bears a certain comparison with Mark Robson's "The Champion" as both films deal with a man determined to raise himself from the lower level of society (no matter the cost) to win an ambitious position of wealth and respect with being a sport celebrity...

Kirk Douglas is an Italian bus driver obsessed with the desire to win the Grand Prix de Napoli with his home-built car, competing against some of the best drivers, best engines and best engineers...

It is a race of genius over machinery... Douglas has thought out each turn of the wheel, each acceleration of the pedal, each pass to perfection... From there his ambition takes no limit and his perseverance to win by ways of antagonism from fellow drivers and estrangement from the woman who loves him...

Lively directed by Hathaway and beautifully photographed in Technicolor, "The Racers" is a revival of all five senses... The atmosphere of the circuits is electric... The energy and sheer excitement from the roar of the engines and the screams of the crowds are feelings that only the CinemaScope can produce... Whether or not your favorite hero takes the checkered flag, you stand up and cheer the winner across the finish line...

But like many another films dealing with sport, "The Racers" suffers from a banal story and questionable characterizations... It tries to increase its appeal to women audience by having its attractive heroine, a ballet dancer (Bella Darvi) one interested in high fashion... In this way female viewers glimpse the flashes of color of fashion salons in addition to scenic shots of the French Riviera, Paris, Rome, and the authentic locations of the acclaimed auto racing sites...

Not only do you get the insight of a lifetime of champions (two of whom are played by Gilbert Roland and Cesar Romero) but you share many racing experiences with Lee J. Cobb who shows great aptitude as the racing manager... But again, it is the story - a routine melodrama totally unmemorable but impersonally efficient - that hangs heavy...

For those interested in sports car, speedways' drivers, and the celebrated runways of Europe, "The Racers" remains a film worth watching...

Yes, the plot and the dialogue are ludicrous. No, Bella Darvi (née Bayla Wegier) couldn't act, but the poor girl had had a very difficult life and a short and brutal movie career. Ironically, she died by her own hand, after several failed attempts, in, of all places, Monaco -- where, in the Racers, she meets our hero, Gino Borgesa (Douglas) when her poodle runs out in front of his sports car at Monaco, and he swerves to avoid the dog and crashes into the steps of the Casino. Great crowd control in those days. Yes, I said "Sports Car," for this movie, though released in 1955, has much glorious color real racing footage culled from the previous 2 or 3 seasons, and, in 1952, for the first and last time post WWII, the Monaco GP was run for sports cars (won that year by Vittorio Marzotto, the lesser known of the famed Marzotto brothers, in a Ferrari 225S).

Forget the idiotic dialogue -- the dying "Dell'Oro" (Gilbert Roland), to Douglas: "Gino, my crankcase is leaking!" as he clutches at his crushed chest; Douglas explaining to the lovely- but-crosseyed Darvi how race drivers consider it bad luck to wish a race driver "good luck": "'Into the lion's mouth!' we say, or "I spit in your crankcase!'" Forget all that and watch Fangio, Villoresi, Farina, Moss, Peter Collins, Robert Manzon and his doomed compatriot Pierre Levegh driving in real races: Spa, Nürburgring, the Mille Miglia. Check out how Maserati redecorated their cars to look like the mythical "Aquila," or whatever the hell they were, under the stern team management of Lee J. Cobb, whose turn as Maglio makes Kirk Douglas sound like a native-born Milanese.

In a sly move (or simple accident of fate) director Hathaway created a quite believable pairing that resembled WAY more than a little Juan Fangio and his constant female companion whom the contemporary press always referred to, chastely, as his "wife" (Fangio never married, and it wasn't until 4 years after Fangio's death that author Karl Ludvigsen, in his 1999 biography "Juan Manuel Fangio: Motor Racing's Grand Master" revealed the real identity of his companion (AND his hitherto unknown son). The drivers of the time certainly knew she wasn't his wife, but that was a different, in many ways more honourable time; no driver, mechanic, or pit hanger-on would have even dreamed of going to the yellow press to spread the story for money. Those men were professionals: what Fangio did off the track was his own business. Off-soapbox. The stalwart Katy Jurado was perfectly cast as "Maria Chávez," the wife of aging race driver "Carlos Chavez," played by Cesar Romero -- better known as "The Cisco Kid," and then for his defining role as The Joker in the Adam West/Burt Ward Camp-Fest "Batman" series of the '60s -- miles better than Nicholson, not nearly as dark as Heath Ledger.

Original -- though not very -- musical score by Alex North, who had done such fantastic work scoring "Spartacus" and the Burton/Taylor "Cleopatra."

The great American drivers John Fitch and Phil Hill did the stunt driving for this -- scraping the arch at Ravenna during the Mille Miglia at speed was pretty hairy stuff (done with a longish piece of wire and some fresh plaster). The overall Tecnical Adviser was the veteran racing warhorse, the Baron Emmanuel de Graffenried, AND this movie was also an early example of the title work of the incomparable Saul Bass, who made movie titling an art form in its own right with movies like "The Man With Golden Arm," "Exodus," "West SideStory," Spartacus, and the ingenious and ground-breaking title-credit sequence at the beginning of John Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix," still the greatest fictional racing movie ever made. McQueen's "Le Mans" COULD have been, but for McQueen's unbelievable and thoroughly unlikable ego and overweening insistence on his personal version of perfectionism, which, in the end, cost David Piper his leg and cost McQueen Solar Productions. When the budget went nuts and Solar Productions couldn't finance, or even FINISH the movie, let alone distribute it, CBS/Cinema Center stepped in, prolonged the sappy, wholly superfluous, and, of course, inevitable background "love story" (people ain't going' to the movies to see a bunch of goddam cars runnin' around a track, ya know!), and I believe CBS/Cinema Center were responsible for the movie-ruining 1970s-style "Carmina Burana"-meets-French-Jazz-a-la-Michel-LeGrand soundtrack. The CARS are the soundtrack, you meatheads! Off soapbox again.

Hans Ruesch, who wrote the novel and collaborated on the screenplay, had been a race driver himself, never achieving much, but even HE must have winced at "I spit in your crankcase." Skip over the Douglas-Darvi scenes and go right to the footage -- magnificent!

"The Racers" is a very routine movie in most respects, and Kirk Douglas' failure to make any attempt to sound like an Italian is lamentable.

What saves the movie, at least for me, is the rare look it provides into European Grand Prix and sports-car racing in the early '50s. For that alone, I find it worth having.

Kirk Douglas plays green upstart on the European racecar circuit, falling in love with pretty French ballerina while clawing his way to the heights of success and celebrity in Monte Carlo. Bella Darvi (a Leslie Caron lookalike) plays the love interest; Lee J. Cobb co-stars as Douglas' team manager, chomping on his stogie and bellowing orders like a drill sergeant. Despite the phony backdrops and back-projection, the noisy track action, the general overacting and all the bad French accents, this is a rousing, enjoyable drama with well-cast Douglas appropriately chewing things up as the arrogant ace. The set-bound stuff is awkward, but director Henry Hathaway keeps a lively pace and Alex North's score is first-rate when it's audible. **1/2 from ****

much more obvious that the actors aren't really driving the cars than in later films like "Le Mans" and "Grand Prix" Kirk Douglas, Bella Darvi, Lee J. Cobb, Gilbert Roland, Cesar Romero\\\ Had I never seen "Le Mans" and "Grand Prix", I am pretty sure I would have liked "The Racers" a bit more. This is because these two 1960s racing films have the most incredible cinematography you can imagine--and the stars (Steve McQueen and James Garner) did most of their own driving. Here in "The Racers", however, the scenes of Kirk Douglas and the others are OBVIOUSLY filmed in front of a screen where the race is projected--and this isn't even done terribly well. It looks fake because it is fake.

As far as the plot goes, it's very much like Kirk Douglas' earlier film "Champion". In both, he is so bent on winning that this is all there is to his life--and it obviously alienates those around him. He isn't quite as cut-throat in "The Racers", but he is pretty close. The rest of the movie is pretty much a soap opera-like affair--with Douglas and Bella Darvi in an on-again/off-again love due to his relentless pursuit of victory. It's all very adequate and nothing more. The only reason I saw it is because I try to watch all of Douglas' films I can find--even the supremely adequate ones.