MovieChat Forums > Le Mans (1971) Discussion > Not as good as Grand Prix

Not as good as Grand Prix

posted 9 years ago by Lokisgodhi
2 replies | jump to latest

I just watched these back to back and my conclusion is Le Mans is not quite as good as Grand Prix.

First off, McQueen was not in the same league as an actor as Garner was and it shows. Second, there literally is no actors of major stature supporting Le Mans. In Grand Prix you had a pantheon of actors who are truly legendary.

Le Mans may be a bit more technically accurate but what of it? Grand Prix utterly nailed the zeitgeist of mid 1960s F1 racing. That's far more important.

You have Aron as second fiddle to Stoddard on the British team when clearly he was the better driver. It's obvious his car wasn't being given the level of care that Stodddard's was given and it ironically cost them both cars and nearly Stoddard's life for it.

You have the thinly veiled stand-in for Enzo Ferrari, Agostini Manetta, disparaging and haranguing Sarti. Then calling in all his drivers, denying Nino Barlini the win he had earned on the track. after he got Sarti to kill himself on th. It totally captured the capriciousness and venality of both the man, Ferrari and his team. I have to wonder why anyone would want to drive for Ferrari period, no matter how good their cars were. You clearly got support or loyalty from management. Perfect casting using a Bond villain to portray him.

You have Sarti himself. Admitting to Aron about being tired of driving. The man was clearly losing his focus and in F1 where you're manhandling missiles around a track with no margin for error, a loss of focus can kill you.

Toshirô Mifune as Izo Yamura, with Yamura Motors standing in for Honda. Driven, methodical and exacting, applying science to the art of auto racing and hungry to prove his company and country was as capable as the Europeans in the king of motorsports.

Peter Aron as the American competing in what is essentially the Europeans only club of motorsports and hungry to show them he's damn better at it than they are. Most of the teams he drives for are holding him back, keeping him as second fiddle in a second rate car and effort. When he hooks up with Yamura, it's a prefect match, two outsiders determined to beat the Europeans at their game.

Second level players who have clawed their way into the rarefied atmosphere like Nino Barlini, portrayed by Antonio Sabato. He adroitly handled the stereotype of the dirt poor Sicilian kid, capable of being a winner but used and clearly viewed as irrelevant and disposable by the likes of Ferrari and company.

[–] fillshertease 9 years ago

First off, McQueen was not in the same league as an actor as Garner was and it shows.

You're a complete idiot.

We're from the planet Duplon. We are here to destroy you.

[–] Muttley_McLad 9 years ago

Purely subjective, but one thing worth considering is that Grand Prix was written as a Steve McQueen vehicle and he was due to star in it long before James Garner got the nod.

McQueen had issues with some elements of the script, particularly the off track 'soap opera' lives of the drivers. He wanted to make the film more about the racing (which granted, it's hardly short of to begin with) and take the focus off the characters. The producers however didn't want to do this and as a result there was a very bitter fall out between McQueen and the production company, eventually leading to McQueen walking out of negotiations.

That fall out with the producers was essentially the birth of Le Mans.

Make no mistake, McQueen was as much as a real life racing driver as he was a Hollywood star. He wanted to make a film where the on track action took center stage, rather than he actors themselves...and if you're going to do that, what better way to present that with a film that follows that crazy once a year weekend at La Sarthe? Every year, each running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans tells it's own story. Sometimes they are long, slow tactical races, sometimes (and certainly as of late) they are flat out 24 hour sprint races. However it is run though, one thing is constant with that race...and that's it's unpredictability.

For me, Grand Prix is certainly one of the top 3 racing films out there (not that there are many to choose from), if a little cliched at times. But the way that McQueen captures the essence of Le Mans is uncanny. It's a race that in 24 hours more often than not throws up more on track action, more excitement, more heart ache, more unpredictability and more raw emotion than an entire season of Formula One can offer. McQueen as a racing driver himself understood this, took a back seat and let the race tell its own story.

Perhaps Grand Prix is the more complete film experience, but as a pure racing film, Le Mans is unrivaled where the actors were merely a supporting cast to the story of race itself. Can you imagine, Steve McQueen who was arguably one of the biggest names at the time, not only electing to take a back seat to the race itself, but not finishing the race in the position you would think the 'star' of the film would do? Then not only doing that as an actor and producer, but entering his own race car into the real 1970 race as a legitimate contender (albeit somewhat hobbled by the front camera mount) to get the shots he wanted of the real race at real race speed...and then defying the strict instructions of his financial backers and insurance company to drive in the race himself under an alias name. The is one very brief blink and you'll miss it scene of McQueen's real life Porsche 908/2 flying past the pits in the live race as one of the Gulf Porsche 917K (ironically McQueen's characters car) is in the pits. If you freeze it at the right moment, you can just make out the helmet of the camera car's driver...the same red helmet with the white visor strip that McQueen, who remember was under strict instruction NOT to take part in the race, is seen sporting in many of the other races that he was allowed to enter.

Just the story of how the film itself was made could be a movie in its own right. But, as realistic as the on track action in Grand Prix is, for me at least, Le Mans is and has always been the purest, quintessential racing film ever made.

Plus, the sound of those 917s at full chat on the upshift...Jesus Christ! That has to be one of the greatest, most blood curdling sounds that any machine has ever made. The damn things sound like a wolf with its bollocks caught in a snare. That banshee like howl still to this day sends a shiver down my spine.

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