Grand Prix (1966 film)
Grand Prix | |
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John Frankenheimer Productions Cherokee Productions | |
Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer |
Release date |
|
Running time | 179 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $9 million |
Box office | $20.8 million[1] |
Grand Prix is a 1966 American sports
The film includes real-life racing footage and
One of the ten highest-grossing films of 1966, Grand Prix won three Academy Awards for its technical achievements.[3]
Plot
The story follows the fate of four Formula One drivers through a fictionalized version of the 1966 Formula One season:
- Jean-Pierre Sarti (Ferrari) – A Frenchman who has been World Champion twice, is nearing the end of his career and is feeling increasingly cynical about racing itself.
- Pete Aron (first Jordan BRM, then Yamura) – An American attempting to repeat past successes and overcome his reputation as a reckless, second-tier driver; he signs with the newcomer Yamura Motors.
- Scott Stoddard (Jordan BRM) – A British driver recuperating from a bad crash that left him hospitalized; he becomes dogged by recurrent pains while dealing with the emotional turmoil of his rocky marriage.
- Nino Barlini (Ferrari) – A charismatic yet arrogant Italian racer, he's Ferrari's No. 2 driver, being a promising rookie and former world motorcycle champion.
The film's subplots revolve around the women who try to live with or love the racers with dangerous lifestyles. The married Sarti begins an affair with American magazine writer Louise Frederickson, who initially has little interest in motorsports. Aron has a brief romance with Stoddard's unhappy wife Pat while Stoddard deals with living in the shadow of his family's history, being unsure if he can live up to the prestigious racing legacy of his late brother.
The story concludes at the
Cast
- James Garner as Pete Aron
- Yves Montand as Jean-Pierre Sarti
- Brian Bedford as Scott Stoddard
- Antonio Sabàto as Nino Barlini
- Toshiro Mifune as Izo Yamura
- Paul Frees as Yamura's voice
- Adolfo Celi as Agostino Manetta
- Claude Dauphin as Hugo Simon
- Jack Watson as Jeff Jordan
- Donald O'Brien as Wallace Bennett
- Albert Rémy as a field doctor
- Eva Marie Saint as Louise Frederickson
- Jessica Walter as Pat Stoddard
- Françoise Hardy as Lisa
- Enzo Fiermonte as Guido
- Geneviève Page as Monique Delvaux-Sarti
- Rachel Kempson as Mrs. Stoddard
- Ralph Michael as Mr. Stoddard
Production
Director John Frankenheimer later said when he made the film he had the "choice of making a Grand Hotel type picture or a Test Pilot type picture" and he chose the former.[4] Swedish actress Harriet Andersson was originally cast as the female lead, but was replaced by Eva Marie Saint after the first week of filming.[5]
The making was a race itself as fellow
The production team began by using connections to Grand Prix drivers such as
The F1 cars in the film are mostly mocked-up Formula Three cars made to look like contemporary Formula One models, although the film also used footage from actual F1 races.[9] Because Yamura Motors is a fictional race team, the producers struck a deal with Bruce McLaren's newly formed McLaren team to have his car, the McLaren M2B, painted with Yamura's colors. The paint scheme used was designed to resemble that used on the contemporary Honda RA272 cars competing during this period. On two occasions, because the McLaren could not take part in these races, another car was painted in the same colours: Bob Bondurant's BRM at Spa, and at Zandvoort for the Dutch GP, the Lotus 25 BRM entered by Reg Parnell for Mike Spence.
Some of the footage was captured by
The actual level of driving ability possessed by the movie's actors varied wildly. Bedford couldn't drive at all and was only ever in the car for
The blue and red helmet design that James Garner's character uses is often confused with that of then-Grand Prix race driver Chris Amon from New Zealand; the colours are reversed. Brian Bedford's character’s design was the same as real life 1966 BRM driver Jackie Stewart. As Bedford couldn't drive, this was done so that they could shoot footage of Stewart driving the BRM (with a balaclava over his face to hide that it wasn't Bedford). Sarti's helmet was John Surtees', and Barlini's was Lorenzo Bandini's.
Circuits featured in the film include
The camera cars used during actual GP races were a Lotus 25 Climax at Monaco and a McLaren M2B Ford at Spa, both driven by 1961 F1 World Champion Phil Hill. A camera was mounted at the front only at Monaco, and an additional one filming the driving wheel was in place at Spa. Aerial shots were filmed from an Alouette III helicopter. These shots were taken so close to the actual roads that the cameraman's shoes became stained with bits of greenery from the tips of nearby trees.[7] Several other camera cars were used during the shooting of staged races, including a modified Ford GT40 and an AC Cobra.
Although making various technological innovations in their filmmaking, numerous difficulties bogged down the movie's production. During filming with wet roads, several cars lost control to the point that one driver broke his shoulder bone and another nearly careened into the upstairs window of a house. The production team often decided to include unplanned accidents caught on film in the final movie, coming back hours later to shoot before-and-after scenes so that things fit in the final cut. For major accidents that were part of the story-line, the crew constructed a special cannon-like device that could fire gutted cars a considerable distance.[7]
Title designer
Reception
Box office
The film grossed $20.8 million in the United States and Canada. It was one of the
Critical
Upon its 1966 release, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called the film "a smashing and thundering compilation of racing footage shot superbly at the scenes of the big meets around the circuit, jazzed up with some great photographic trickery ... Mr. Frankenheimer belts you with such a barrage of magnificent shots of the racing cars, seen from every angle and every possible point of intimacy, that you really feel as though you've been in it. The octane pace race editing, interspersed with proper high speed car-to-car camera angles; long drivers' Point-of-View (POV) angles (try to stop your head moving in sync with the turns...); and a revolutionary split-screen device motif, further introducing car racing footage not seen before in modern film. Furthermore, the director and Saul Bass fill that mammoth screen from time to time with these split-screens and montages that made the racing sequences fairly jump with pure octane . Triple and quadruple panels and even screen-filling checkerboards ... hit the viewer with stimulations that optically generate a sort of intoxication with racing. It's razzle-dazzle of a random sort, but it works."[15] However, Crowther concluded "the big trouble with this picture ... is that the characters and their romantic problems are stereotypes and clichés... You come away with the feeling that you've seen virtually everything there is to see in grand-prix racing, except the real guys who drive those killer cars."
Variety called the film "one of those rare pictures that draws its basic strength, excitement and interest-arresting potential through the visual (the pure art of cinema) and if it lacked brilliant virtuosity in the action department it would be just another flimflam."[18] Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times called it "the new, definitive, great film about auto racing", adding that after three hours "if one emerged with the feeling that maybe there has been just too much, here is one case in which I can state happily that it is better than too little."[19] Leo Sullivan of The Washington Post wrote, "John Frankenheimer's 'Grand Prix' is brought alive with cinematic innovations and is frequently set ablaze with excitement."[20] Brendan Gill of The New Yorker described the film as "big, brave, eye-bedazzling, earsplitting, and sometimes almost heart-stopping."[21] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "The cars, of course, steal all the thunder, but one is a little disappointed to find the drivers and their private lives so little elevated beyond the level of pulp fiction. Still, as a spectacle Grand Prix is on the whole such a success that the fact it isn't anything more than a spectacle hardly matters."[22]
Forty-five years later, upon its release on
Accolades
At the
See also
References
- ^ a b "Grand Prix, Box Office Information". The Numbers. Archived from the original on June 16, 2013. Retrieved April 16, 2012.
- ^ Grand Prix (1966) – Full cast and crew Archived July 28, 2018, at the Wayback Machine. IMDb
- ^ a b Kehr, Dave (May 20, 2011). "Start Your High-Def Engines". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 4, 2011. Retrieved September 5, 2011.
- ProQuest 153254062.
- ^ https://static.library.ucla.edu/oralhistory/text/masters/21198-zz002dx5z2-19-master.html
- ^ My Husband, My Friend, Neile McQueen Toffel, A Signet Book, 1986 Archived May 15, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. thesandpebbles.com
- ^ a b c d e f Pushing the Limit: The Making of Grand Prix (DVD). New Wave Entertainment Television. Retrieved October 24, 2011.
- ^ "Puy-de-Dôme: when Yves Montand and Françoise Hardy were shooting "Grand Prix" at the Charade circuit". Franceinfo. September 18, 2018.
- ISBN 978-0810890565.
The only race shoot that did not occur at a "live" race weekend was the film's French Grand Prix. The real French race in 1966 was held at the flat and featureless Reims circuit, and so Frankenheimer staged a mock race at Clermont-Ferrand, which allowed the luxury of time to fill in many of the story elements and flesh out some of the characters.
- ^ "Phil Hill". Motor Sport magazine archive. Retrieved February 23, 2016.
- ^ "1965 FORD GT40 Mk1". August 28, 2023.
- ^ https://www.rmd.be/components/com_autostand/files/demo_cars/GT40%20P1027%20Summary%20Statement.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ^ Kent Film Office (December 21, 1966). "Kent Film Office Grand Prix Article". Archived from the original on September 16, 2015. Retrieved September 16, 2015.
- ^ Perkins, Will. "Grand Prix". www.artofthetitle.com. Archived from the original on June 13, 2019. Retrieved August 17, 2019.
- ^ a b Crowther, Bosley (December 22, 1966). "Flag Is Down at Warner for Grand Prix: Drama of Auto Racers Stars Yves Montand". The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 18, 2019. Retrieved April 17, 2019.
- ISBN 978-1-903364-66-6.
- ^ Beaupre, Lee (May 15, 1968). "Rising Skepticism On Stars". Variety. p. 1.
- ^ "Film Reviews: Grand Prix". Variety. December 28, 1966. 6.
- ^ Scheuer, Philip K. (December 23, 1966). "'Grand Prix' in Driver's Seat". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 5.
- ^ Sullivan, Leo (May 25, 1967). "'Grand Prix' Is Exciting Spectacle". The Washington Post. K2.
- ^ Gill, Brendan (December 31, 1966). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. 60.
- ^ "Grand Prix". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 34 (399): 57. April 1967.
- ^ "The 39th Academy Awards (1967) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Archived from the original on November 10, 2014. Retrieved August 24, 2011.
External links
- Grand Prix at IMDb
- Grand Prix at AllMovie
- Grand Prix at the TCM Movie Database
- Grand Prix at the American Film Institute Catalog
- Grand Prix at Rotten Tomatoes