Sometime after watching F1: The Movie this summer, the Algorithm (TM) pushed a YouTube video my way about the making of John Frankenheimer''s 1966 Formula 1 film Grand Prix. Tonight we finally got an opportunity to watch it.
Despite being a potentially overlong (3 hrs!) and dated movie, I have to say it holds up extremely well. Yes, some of the social mores of the mid-sixties haven't aged well, particularly as they apply to gender relations, and seeing a film with not only an intermission but also an overture and entr'acte was kind of nostalgic, but the race sequences more than make up for that. I also found the Saul Bass title sequence to be a delightful throwback as well.
Nearly everything this summer's F1 did was preceded in some way by Grand Prix nearly a half-century earlier. New camera technology, almost a decade before the introduction of the steadicam, allowed smooth footage to be shot from the track as speeds never before documented so closely. The idea of mounting a camera on the Ford GT40, a beast from the LeMans races of the era, had never been considered before.
Commitment to proximity was such that the camera operator who captured so many awesome (and occasionally amazingly long) shots from helicopter, had the tips of his shoes tinted green from treetops brushing against the skid where he braced his feet.
Likewise, in addition to doing much of his own driving in a disguised Formula 3 car, James Garner also did his own stunt in a sequence where his car caught fire, such was his shared desire for verisimillitude.
As in many sports movies, there are not too many surprises, but the subplots about the various women in the racers' lives is well handled, and well acted by such legends as Eva Marie Saint and Jessica Walters.
Grand Prix was released in Cinerama, an innovative prestige format of the time which required three spearate projectors and a specially curved screen. And it sounds as marvelous as it looks, winning Oscars for Sound and Sound Effects as well as Editing, the assortment throaty ten-cylinder engines having a variety of tones that make the races almost polyphonic.
If you want to see a motorsports movie that captures the feeling of speed so dramatically that after seeing a 30-minute demo reel, Enzo Ferrari granted Frankenheimer access to not only his team but his factory, Grand Prix is worth a view.
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