Grand Prix Vs. Le Mans

[AZRCD]

Since the recent remasterd relese of Grand Prix, I was wondering if these two are the accepted "greatest racing movies ever" which one is greater?

For me, as a whole movie, Le Mans has great footage more togeather and has Steve McQueen.
However, Grand Prix captures something else, excitment, mood, not quite sure, in it's racing footage, that while far from a great movie as plot and lines goes for me it's the winner. Plus it has the best opening ever.

[dalyduo]

Agreed Le Mans has great footage and McQueen but there is almost no plot because there was almost no script. If you've seen the documentary about its making they shot great racing footage but changed directors during shooting because no one could find a plot in it anywhere and they were way over budget. (Like all things racing ) I believe McQueen even waived some or most of his payment to get the thing finished. McQueen wasn't a big dialogue guy and Le Mans is all about the cars.

Need to look at Grand Prix again. Don't remember it well enough but surely with Paul Newman, James Garner, and good international cast there is more service to a story line and plot. More conventional hollywood drama that isn't completely true to racing but was as close as you'd get for the time. I believe Grand Prix got both Newman and Garner hooked on racing.

[tom goodhart]

I would vote for Grand Prix overall, but Lemans has the best one liner "Racing is life, everything else is just waiting".
BTW Newman wasn't in Grand Prix, I think "Winning" was the movie that got him hooked.

[sydude]

I found them to be artful, but overly dramatic. They're not the kinds of movies that I'd like to watch over and over again, as they're not that entertaining. The movie I'd like to throw into the hat is "Gumball Rally". It's not based on a legal 'sanctioned' race, so it may be ineligible, but it does have some amazing car scenes (best one was the Daytona screaming up Park Avenue at 6AM out of the old Pan Am building, going through every light) and it's also a really fun watch.

BTW, I added these all to the Racing DVD's section.

I also added a poll to this thread, which I can upate with more titles if anyone wants. We needed a fun new one for the front page - the last one was stale.

[cdh]

Grand Prix has the best sounds of racing engines (love those 1960's GP cars).

Le Mans has the best footage of race cars, and what cars, the 917's, 512's, 908's, 365's, etc were some of the greatest sports cars of all time, my favorites anyway.

Neither has any drama or acting worth mentioning.

Grand Prix has that catchy theme song and classic 1960's multiscreen intro........I like watching both of them as any certified car nut would. I would say I have seen both of them 10+ times (thanks to fast forward).

I remember seeing Grand Prix after begging my Dad to take me to the picture house when it opened in 1966 (I was 10).

.

[AZRCD]

Paul Newman's film was Winning and it did get him into racing. McQueen was a Motorcycle guy (paied for "On Any Sunday" which is woth a see too.) As for Canonball movies my favrote was "Speed Zone" ever since I was a kid. Has John Candy too. Never seen Gumball so I guess it's not a fair shot.
Oh and "Holy shit I spawned a poll!!!!!!!!!!" Now bow to me!

[CMitchell]

I really don't see how you can even think about proposing a 'greatest racing movie ever' poll and leave Driven out of the mix...I mean come on, let's get serious.

[MJAmok]

Sorry guys, best racing movie is Faster.

[AZRCD]

Originally Posted by CMitchell

I really don't see how you can even think about proposing a 'greatest racing movie ever' poll and leave Driven out of the mix...I mean come on, let's get serious.

Your are joking right?
I'm taking it as a joke.

Faster, hmmmmmmm looks worthwhile. MJA, you seen On Any Sunday?

Also "From Dust to Glory." is great, but that and Faster and On Any... are docs. I was asking about movies in the sense of fictional. Though Le Mans treads a close line since much of the movie came from a 911 that was entered in the race to get footage.

[TomBobN20]

Many have implied that the dialogue in these two movies is lacking. I have to take exception to this. Who can forget the great moment when Phil Hill, playing a race car driver (imagine that) informs Toshiro Mifune (playing Mr. Honda) that his racecar is leaking gas. Mr. Honda then exclaims, "Gas reeking????!!!!!". While this is a moment I'm sure we've all watched over and over, it pales in comparison to the Steve McQueen soliloquy to a drippingly gorgeous Elga Andersen (she actually was dripping wet at the time) explaining why we men (and, yes, some women) need to drive so fast. Truely one of the greatest moments in any movie............Anything that happens before or after is just........yes..........wait for it...........waiting. Who needs quantity of dialogue and plot when you have gems like that. Le Mans wins as the best racing movie ever, end of argument. Besides, it has Porsches in it and Grand Prix doesn't. There is no substitute.

Now, if we open up the catagory to driving movies one has to mention Rendevous by Claude Lelouch. If you haven't seen it buy it now and turn the sound up high. Later, Tom

[cdh]

"Driven" should have been called "Drivel"

Faster is good but I don't count it in this category, 2 wheel documentary vs 4 wheel "drama" - Faster is a great flick though, don't miss.

For those who don't know Rendezvous read below - you really have to see this one, thanks TomBob

C'était un Rendezvous - The Legend

You'd be hard-pressed to find a film as steeped in myth as "C'était un Rendezvous". Filmed in 1976 by seminal French director Claude Lelouch it is regarded as the ultimate in cinema verité.

For many years it has been enjoyed as an almost Masonic secret among car enthusiasts. Whisper the words "Have you seen Rendezvous?" and you'll receive either a knowing, "No, but I've heard it's unbelievable" or a smug, "It is un-be-lieve-able".

Lack of distribution has only fuelled the myths surrounding the film.

Was Lelouch really arrested when it was first shown?

Who drove the car? Was it Lelouch or a hired Formula One driver?

What was the car? Was it really a Ferrari 275 GTB?

How did he do it?

A composite version of the rumours/myths (garnered verbally and from the web) would read something like this ;

Lelouch had made enough money from his classic "Un Homme et une Femme" to buy himself a Ferrari, which he proceeded to drive with "enthusiasm" in his native Paris.

Whilst shooting another film, a new bit of equipment was being used - a gyro stabilised camera mount. Lelouch then came up with the idea for "C'était un Rendezvous". The camera used only had a ten minute film magazine - hence the mad dash to the steps of the Basilique du Sacre Couér in Montmatre.

On first showing, Lelouch was supposedly arrested. In his defence, he proclaimed he had taken all possible precautions. This included convincing a Formula One driver to helm the car (he refused to name him).

Subsequently the film went underground - occasionally shown in front of a Lelouch full-length feature on theatrical release. Outside of this, only poor quality pirate copies on VHS or a badly worn print were available. These would be played at car club meetings and slowly the film attained its mythical status with the arrival of the internet helping to spread the word.

What we do know is that there are no special effects or speeding up the film - Lelouch simply mounted the camera on the front of the car and shot it.

This is what separates "C'était un Rendezvous" from all other films - it's "verité".

Today, the audience walks into a movie, safe in the knowledge of computer-generated special effects or a production where there's enough money to block off streets and control the traffic. Lelouch had none of this.

Richard Symons, a documentary film maker, with more than a passing interest in fast cars came to hear of it and managed to acquire a very poor 2nd generation VHS copy. He wasn't disappointed....

"I'd never seen anything like it, 9 minutes of adrenalin that simply leaves your jaw on the floor. To cut a long story short, we got in touch with the director, dusted down the 35mm negative, restored and re-mastered it for re-release - we've brought out all the details and colours and it looks stunning."

"C'était un Rendezvous" has come to represent something more than an adrenalin rush. It uniquely captures a time and a spirit that seems a long way away from today. Lelouchs' brilliant ending only adds to this - making a beautiful sense out of the preceding nine minutes.

.

[cdh]

Originally Posted by TomBobN20

...Phil Hill, playing a race car driver (imagine that) informs Toshiro Mifune (playing Mr. Honda) that his racecar is leaking gas. Mr. Honda then exclaims, "Gas reeking????!!!!!". While this is a moment I'm sure we've all watched over and over, it pales in comparison to the Steve McQueen soliloquy to a drippingly gorgeous Elga Andersen...

Huge LOL on reeking

and copy that on Elga

[sydude]

Originally Posted by TomBobN20

Now, if we open up the catagory to driving movies one has to mention Rendevous by Claude Lelouch. If you haven't seen it buy it now and turn the sound up high. Later, Tom

Even though I'm not so convinced that it hasn't been significantly 'touched up', its still a must see. Here it is, in decent web quality:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3cHX...vous%20lelouch

I also added Rendezvous to the DVD's section.

[CMitchell]

Originally Posted by AZRCD

Your are joking right?
I'm taking it as a joke.

No self-respecting racer or racing fan would ever consider Driven anything more than an unfortunate catalyst to CART's demise.

[dalyduo]

It's been so long between viewings that I melded them together. Guess I'll have to revisit them all before making further comment or voting. It's an interesting comment on racing films that the only ones we can come up with are decades old.

Originally Posted by tom goodhart

I would vote for Grand Prix overall, but Lemans has the best one liner "Racing is life, everything else is just waiting".
BTW Newman wasn't in Grand Prix, I think "Winning" was the movie that got him hooked.

[TomBobN20]

Touched up indeed. Sy, what you are saying is pure sacriledge . It is the purest form of driving. A man, his machine, 5 a.m. Sunday morning in Paris. Using people as apexes, damn the pigeons full speed ahead, red light, what red light. And in the end he did it all for love. Tres Magnifique! Nothing staged, just testiculi (Italian translation, it was a Ferrari afterall) to the firewall and a screaming 12 cylinder.

[sydude]

I submit that if you pay very close attention to the audio track, you will too often hear tire noise when there should be none. No visual touch-ups, granted, but definitely audio.

[MJAmok]

it sounds like he is going fast... and the low mounted camera gives that effect... but watch the closing rate on the scenery. I don't think he's going that fast.

[cdh]

I must admit not having seen this in years, long before I edited so many hours of race videos and I have to say the audio is very suspect in places. Sy is spot on with the tire noise. As he leaves the roundabout with the tall obelisk in the center, the car has straightened out and the tires continue to squeal.

The physics don't seem to sync up in my head at times, it SOUNDS like he should be flying, but the image betrays that expectation. And is there anything slipperier than damp cobblestone streets? At times the audio did not compute with what I was seeing.

(and the engine sounds like a V8 - OK, take your shots)

Still gets me though, a classic short.

.

[TomBobN20]

I have to admit the audio is a bit off, well, quite a bit off. Either that or he missed a bunch of shifts. Probably didn't have a mike set up with the camera. A bit of post-production going on. Still a heck of a lot faster than I'd be driving through that town.

[jcraige]

Cars.

Hands down.

It's got great tunes and a chick with a tattoo on her butt!

[Dom Bastien]

it sounds like he is going fast... and the low mounted camera gives that effect... but watch the closing rate on the scenery. I don't think he's going that fast.


Michael: You're absolutely right. At the beginning, he drives down the Champs Elysees. The distance is 1.2 miles; he does it in 65 seconds; that's an average speed of 66 miles per hour. Not a big deal at 5 am with synchronized traffic lights. Your basic cab driver in New York does that every day down Madison Avenue.

[Gerardo]

Thank you Jim!! Finally someone mentions Cars! Best racing movie I've seen in a while, although I love quoting Days of Thunder while at the track.

[macdod]

Interersting internatiopnal perspective from Pit Pass.



http://www.pitpass.com/fes_php/pitpa...s_art_id=28618

[dalyduo]

Hi Donald,

That link isn't working. Perhaps you transferred an abbreviation of the link without the underlying instructions? If that's the case you may need to copy the entire heading from the page itself and let the TJR software abbreviate it automatically.

[sydude]

I think I fixed the link. If I got the wrong article, please change it.

[dalyduo]

That must be it... interesting article... Thanks Sy and Thanks Donald.

[GEORGE]

The movie Le Mans wins, hands down. Yes there is no plot, dialogue or really good acting. But who cares, ITS RACING and those engine sounds are fantastic.
This is a neat sidebar. You know that final scene where McQueen is gesturing to the losing Ferrari driver? It seems that this is an old English gesture that the English archers would give to the French.
It seems the French would capture an English archer and cut off his first two fingers so he couldnt pull the bow string back. If the archer escaped back to England he had to find a new line of work.
It seems as though Mcqueen was more of an historian than we may have thought
This gesture made the movie for me

[AZRCD]

cooool. I knew it was a gesture specific to the English, but beoynd a general "up yours" sort of message, I never knew exactly what it ment.
On a side note it also shows up, when Alec, does it to the rest of the racers after the Jag jumps the river in Speed Zone. For thoes of you who have seen it.

[sydude]

Very cool... I never knew about that. This little bit of trivia makes this already amazing picture of MacDod that much better:

[dalyduo]

Rocket J. Squirrel to the rescue.

[GEORGE]

The intensity! The Passion! The grandeur!
Now thats ACTING!
McQueen, you are no longer our leading man

[cdh]

Review of Grand Prix from Autoweek article on DVD release

A Grand Memory - by Mark Vaughn

Grand Prix would be a great movie even if it came out today. But if it did come out today, you might assume most of the difficult racing shots had been done with special effects somewhere in the giant brain of a high-priced computer. The fact Grand Prix was filmed as you see it, with nothing digital, makes it all the more amazing an achievement, even by today’s standards.

If you saw Grand Prix when it first came out, you might remember how thrilling it was to watch, to feel like you were right there in the car racing around the most famous circuits of Europe. If you didn’t see it back in 1966 and you see it now for the first time, you might be just as thrilled.

Sure there are the clunky romance sequences and some hysteria from Eva Marie Saint, sort of the female Charlton Heston of her day, but you don’t mind because the whole story wraps you up and sweeps you along from one grand prix to the next through the 1966 season.

Warner Home Video is releasing an anniversary edition of Grand Prix on July 11, with six extras on the back of disc two that are worth the $20.97 cost by themselves. The best of those is Pushing the Limit: The Making of Grand Prix. In this documentary we learn that Steve McQueen was originally supposed to play the role that went to James Garner (McQueen went on to make his own racing movie, Le Mans, instead), Phil Hill drove a GT40 camera car for many of the racing scenes, and actor Brian Bedford could not operate a manual transmission.

It will make you long for the days before race car sponsorship took over every aspect of the sport, when telemetry meant eyeballing a corner from the cockpit, and when all-too-human drivers still did superhuman things on race day.

.

[dlippert]

I ordered the new Grand Pix DVD today on a special from Amazon that comes as a set with the DVD of Le Mans for $24 and change.

[AZRCD]

"actor Brian Bedford could not operate a manual transmission."
So they towed his car behind a GT40 to get close shots of him driving. So in all scenes where he is driving from afar you see a scarf over half his face because someone else is in the car. Also the race cars used in the film are F2 cars with body work to make them look like the F1 cars.

[oldredracer]

Somewhere between Christmas and New Years there are showings of both movies at our house. Attendence is mandatory for Grand Prix and voluntary for LeMans.
GP wins for the shots of Phil Hill's footwork, shot from a folding chair, which exactly match up with film of a hot lap at the old track with the banking. LeMans loses for the slo-mo demolition of the Porsche between the guardrails under full throttle for the whole sequence because they couldn't go to clutch and brake with the remote control setup they were using.
When those are the deciding factors between movies you can't lose either way...unless you can do lap at LR under :58 and pick up quarters on your tires at track out in the uphill and West Bend.

[dlippert]

Grand Prix is on TCM starting at 4:00 p.m. CDT today for those of you wanting to TiVo it. (That would be 5:00 p.m. in the East and 2:00 p.m. in the West).

[badgersid]

thing's must be reaaaaalllllllll slow in kansas. you need a full time job

[dlippert]

You are not among the first to make that suggestion.

[oldredracer]

Just had a student tell me that while Europe uses the same ' you're number one' single digit salute as us 'mericans, in England they use two fingers.

Either way, the message is the same.

[AZRCD]

well just bough my new Grand Prix dvd at Target for $15. Not a bad deal in my opp. Haven't watched yet, looking forward to special features.

[chsutherland]

I don't think the car in rendevous sounds like a v8, i am pretty sure it sounds just like the 275 gtb it is, however i do think that the gears in the car were changed to suit the specific run. My vote for greatest race movie has to go to lemans. sure not a lot of dialoge, but hey its mcqueen and he never talks much in any of him movies. They did destroy a GT40 making that movie. The top was cut off so a camera plate could be mounted in the middle of the car. Infact current owner left the camera plate there when he restored it.
craig

[oldredracer]

Review of my review.

Just watched Grand Prix again. Y'know, there's an awful lot of bad plot plodding around in between races. The only relief there is Graham Hill's lousy acting, in which I take special delight as Ellen always thought he was hunky.

Overall win - LeMans
Class win - Grand Prix/John Frankenheimer - for being first and for caring enough about the subject to treat it with respect.

[AZRCD]

Originally Posted by oldredracer

Review of my review.

Just watched Grand Prix again. Y'know, there's an awful lot of bad plot plodding around in between races. The only relief there is Graham Hill's lousy acting, in which I take special delight as Ellen always thought he was hunky.

Overall win - LeMans
Class win - Grand Prix/John Frankenheimer - for being first and for caring enough about the subject to treat it with respect.

GP also has the better, harder cooler footage. Otherwise you nailed the movie, great racing, boring crap elsewhere. Still gets my overall vote for best though because the excitment in the racing bit is more tangable than in LeMans.

[dlippert]

Other than the cars, what is perhaps most interesting is to see the changes in the infrastructure of each venue in the years since. In Le Mans, look at the driver's "motorhomes", basically little camping trailers, versus today's set-ups; the pit timing tables of plywood on sawhorses and in GP, the people wandering freely about the Paddock where today you can't get there without Bernie's personal approval. And then the whole safety thing . . .

[RCGRLman]

Only one name needed to respond to this question.. Steve McQueen! A man's man and any man's hero! Plot shmot, all I need to know is my wife's first response when I "made her" watch LeMans.. "You never told me this was a artsy movie.." Anything that has such great racing footage AND can make a chick say that wins hands down.. Period.

[sydude]

Randy, these guys are looking for you:

http://www.teamjuicyracing.com/forum...ead.php?t=1620

Looking forward to seeing you soon, bro.

Sy

[cdh]

I see that Grand Prix is on today - Turner Classics at 1:15 PM Eastern

[Duncan]

Having just watched Grand Prix, I finally feel qualified to comment. While a hell of a lot better than Le Mans, the "greatest racing movie ever" it ain't.

That would be Faster.

[999]

Originally Posted by MJAmok

Sorry guys, best racing movie is Faster.

I agree Duncan.... posted this in June!