One by One

While the film is a little dated, it reminds you immediately why race car drivers are considered some of the coolest and most courageous athletes in the world. The opening scene sets the tone for the film. This is no film for the faint-hearted. In fact, if you are at all squeamish about scenes of car wrecks, this is not for you. There are scenes with not only wrecks but the carnage that follows. Far from being a glorification of that carnage, the accompanying interviews with formula 1 drivers from the early 70s remind you that there are people in those cars; people who get hurt or even killed in those crashes. I would recommend this film to anyone who is a fan of racing in any capacity.

My interest in F-1 started in the early 70s. Back then, the only TV coverage of F-1 in the US, was a few minutes of Monaco on Wide World of SPorts, between other segments. Any other footage I saw of F-1 races came along once a year when Auto Expo auto show would run some of the Castrol films covering motorsports during the previous year. When One By One opened in Los Angeles, I skipped school and drove 60 miles to see it! Then went back with my parents on the weekend, then skipped another day of school the following week. I was a big fan of Tyrrell team and had been sad at the loss of Cevert at Watkins that previous year. I appreciated that the film became a tribute to him. The film had been intended to be about the passing of the torch from Stewart to Cevert.

As some have noted, the film was later released on video as "The Quick and the Dead", with that morbid addition of Tom Pryce and the course worker losing their lives. That aside, the movie captures the atmosphere of that era quite well. It was tragically common up to the early 80s for at least one driver to be killed per season in GP racing (same applied to most of the big league motorsports), and the film brings that to our attention in a very non-gratuitous way.

OK, so this was made in 1974, and, wow!, it shows! It's about 80% filler & time wasted. It's obvious the the producers & director deliberately include a lot of 70s risque crap.

What IS worthwhile is the 20% of material that shows racing, incidents, discussion of racing by the drivers, a tour of the Nurburgring with Jackie Stewart, and the display of just how primitive and chaotic F1 was at the time.

It was, compared to today, a poorly administered exercise in making rich people richer, and letting fragile egos of a few European men play with lives of drivers and the welfare of their families.

It's not a proud time for F1, and this documentary suffers mightily in retrospect for choices made to put style first over actual content. It is, maybe, an effort to celebrate excess for its own sake. At best - trying to be generous - it's an experience of F1 of the times, moreso than an exposition.

Fortunately, there are much better documentaries and far better resources for learning the history of F1.

Saw this on tape several years ago, as I'm a huge Formula 1 fan.

While this documentary is a representation of the 1973 Formula 1 season and was released in 1974, it's disturbing that graphic footage of Tom Pryce's horrifying accident at the 1977 South African Grand Prix was included.

It was probably included to make an extra dollar, but really had no reason being there as it had nothing to do with the 1973 season (Pryce wasn't even driving in F1 at the time).

Aside from that, it's a good and gripping documentary about the racers, races and season in general. There is more graphic footage of the Roger Williamson crash, where he was killed and Clay Regazzoni's crash (he survived), but the interviews with Francois Cevert are good.

If you're a racing fan and like history, this is okay, but edit out the opening sequence.

This is one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen. However, it needs to be seen by any racing fan. The version of the film I saw opens with a scene from the 1977 South African Grand Prix with footage of a race marshall being hit by the car driven by Pryce in which both were killed. This sets the tone for the rest of the film.

You can tell these guys are a bit crazy, yet extremely brave to hop into a Formula 1 car and risk their lives with every foot they travel down the track.

There are some great interviews with the drivers, and even though this stuff is from the 1973 season, the ideas expressed through the film still apply to this day. Racing is extremely dangerous.