Ferrari: Rumo à Imortalidade

What a disappointment. This is not a documentary about either Ferrari the manufacturer or Enzo Ferrari, the iconic owner. Most of the documentary is about some of the drivers in the 50's, probably 2/3 of the whole film is about Mike Hawthorn. And a lot it's very repetitive with so many other documentaries about how dangerous was F1 in the 50s. But other documentaries, take a clear storyline on that topic, take a more broad view and show how safety in the sport improved from the 50s to the 2000s, particularly during the 70s. In this case, they stay in the 50s. I was expecting learning either about Enzo (his origins, how he built the empire, his personality, the way he managed the team and the company, his quirks) or learning about Ferrari team and the evolution of it and the unique philosophy to manage competition and drivers. But nothing, besides a few short quotes and recordings of Enzo Ferrari, nothing much more about Ferrari. An absolute waste of film and time.

This was so disappointing it drove me to make an imdb account just to complain about it. From the title you might expect a documentary about Ferrari, but don't fool yourselves into thinking it will be. It's merely about Mike Hawthorn and Petter Collins.

A documentary of extreme British bias, where even a legend like Fangio only gets a passing mention to enalt "how nice" Petter Collins was.

If you're looking to know more about Ferrari, this will be a waste of time. There's nothing there. At most you will have a mention of other drivers here and there, and tasteless footage of dead bodies that was clearly included for shock value, without any consideration or respect towards the people involved.

I can't for the life of me understand why this was advertised as a Ferrari movie at all.

Very interesting picture of a decade that lived this sport with such glamour and at the same time fierceness.

One of the points that I DIDN'T like is the little spotlight director puts on Juan Manuel Fangio... documentary was like "and there's Fangio, the Scuderia leader.. meanwhile Peter Collins blabla", "and there´s Fangio, the best driver of all time, anyway here we have Mike Hawthorn", and was like "I want to know more about Fangio, damn"

But anyway, documentary was interesting, I´ve enjoyed and learned from it.

Recommended.

I generally agree with the 5 previous reviews to mine, but I loved it. It tells the story well about the risks the drivers took (and perhaps pushed by Enzo, their fans and their women), the camaraderie among drivers despite their competitiveness, and how dangerous the sport was back before crush zones were designed into the cars, tracks had runoff areas, and research backed helmets and hans devices were mandated. It's sad because it's all true, but great because it tells and shows the story. In summary:

The bad: limited coverage of Enzo, limited mention of other Ferrari drivers debatably more important to Ferrari's history than Collins and Hawthorn (which the film tends to focus on), poor editing of the new filming of the old cars in action vs the original footage.

The good: Fantastic old race footage with clean visuals and good coloring, great story about Collins and Hawthorn, good stories about a few of the other earlier drivers. Wonderful, if sad, story of how it was back then about the dangers and the drivers.

This movie is not about very badly designed and constructed racing cars in the fifties. It is more about poor judgment drivers who were regularly killed driving those flying coffins. How come this all sport was not banned at the time is beyond me. Profit above people, I guess! Enjoy if you can, but it is pure horror, if you ask me.