The success of Rush and Ford v Ferrari has grabbed our interest in the world of auto racing. This is a sport – yes, it is a sport and you will respect it as such – that is full of power, egotism, ambition, and money. The two films are based on true stories; a Formula 1 rivalry that contrasted two completely different drivers and two men who led an expedition to take down a nearly unbeatable company that demanded nothing less than victory. Read the biographies of its lead characters because the fascination goes past beyond the screen. Niki Lauda and James Hunt of Rush was class and intellect versus the playboy rebel. Carroll Shelby was the salesman for Ford to win in Europe and Ken Miles was brash, but a brilliant driver who could tame any car at any track.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7eQkPClUyM
They are the last two dramatizations in the racing world. They weren’t the first to go into the realism of what this sport demands from everyone and the length people will go to. I’m not talking about Talladega Nights or Days of Thunder and I’m certainly not talking about The Fast & Furious franchise or that fake work from Sylvester Stallone (Driven) because they are pipe dreams of what we really think of racing. But do note that a team turned down being represented in Talladega Nights because they believed the movie would take NASCAR back a whole generation as a racing league, although it would do the opposite. As a racing fan, notably for Formula 1, here are a few other great racing films.
Grand Prix (1966)
This was one of the ultimate ensemble epics of the era, going 3 hours long, directed by the highly acclaimed John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate), scored by Maurice Jarre, and starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Tony Award-winning legend Brian Bedford (The Importance of Being Earnest), Yves Montand (Z, Le Circle Rouge), Toshiro Mifune (a bunch of Kurosawa films), Jessica Walter (Arrested Development), yé-yé legend Françoise Hardy, and Adolfo Celi (Thunderball). On top of that, actual Formula 1 racers played themselves including noted champions of the sport Bruce McLaren, Phil Hill, Graham Hill, Jack Brabham, Jim Clark, and Jochen Rindt.
The film follows four drivers, one each from the US, UK, France, and Italy, who pursue their dream of winning the Formula 1 championship while also juggling their personal lives and race politics that come in the sport. With onboard action of the actors actually racing on real racetracks, viewers are immersed in the drivers’ inner thoughts and snap decisions while all too aware of death coming at any corner. (Within a few years, McLaren, Clark, and Rindt would die in crashes.) Frankenheimer’s mastery led to three Oscars for Editing, Sound, and Sound Effects.
Le Mans (1971)
Steve McQueen, passionate about auto racing himself, was also trying to make his own racing film while Grand Prix was getting made, but numerous delays prevented filming, and yet other issues extended principal photography and ballooned an already large budget. He had a director swap in mid-shoot and went through several writers. As one person said: “We had the star, we had the drivers. We had an incredible array of technical support, we had everything. Except [for] a script.” The 2015 documentary Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans gave incredibly detailed problems from serious crashed with actual racing drivers to a crash of McQueen’s own doing which he had an assistant take the blame for.
While the film was a critical and commercial failure, it has been revisited and given positive reviews by contemporary critics, mainly because of the technical achievements and accurate racing culture that enthusiasts see as respect to legitimate racing and not fantasized by the studio. It is more documentary-like than Grand Prix and McQueen sacrificed it all to get the vision he wanted, although he never saw the success he thought he would get like his rival film.
The Last American Hero (1973)
Esquire, the magazine that published the popular piece on Fred Rogers which would be the basis of A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood, published a piece by noted author Tom Wolfe on NASCAR racing legend Robert “Junior” Johnson, who won six championships and later became influential as a team owner. His backstory as a moonshine driver racing away from police raids added to the legend of being a racing hero to first-generation fans of NASCAR. The film was semi-fictionalized as Jeff Bridges plays “Elroy Jackson Jr.” With his father in prison, “Elroy” decides to pursue professional stock car racing and fights against obstacles that don’t take him seriously. It is the all-American boy who represents the little man in his pursuit for glory and Jim Croce’s “I Got A Name” is a theme to individual recognition coming from the backroads of Carolina country.
Go to Netflix and catch a great docu-series called Formula 1: Drive to Survive that follows teams and drivers during the 2018 season and was renewed for a second season that would follow this past 2019 season. Also, a new documentary on Carroll Shelby is out on Netflix; also find 2017’s Le Mans: Racing is Everything to see more on how drivers prepare for the race in today’s standards. Auto racing is a sport and one has to be fit, intelligent, and fast to make it all the way. This isn’t something one can just jump in a car and drive. Watching slick cars and suave drivers put their necks on the line in moving bombs is an adventure to follow and feel, especially when you are at a live race as I was this year in Italy. On the screen, it is only a piece of eye candy.
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