Grand Prix (HD DVD)
APPROX. 176 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1966 - MPA RATING: NR
" ...you can skip the scenes you don't like the next time you watch it. Grand Prix is about Formula-One racing, and that's where the action lies.
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At the risk of sounding repetitious and ultimately redundant, I'll say it again: The better looking the print, the better looking the DVD or HD-DVD transfer is going to be. Warner Bros. restored MGM's 1966 Cinerama extravaganza "Grand Prix" from its original 65mm Super Panavision elements, and in both SD and HD DVD editions the result is some of the best-looking video for a live-action picture you'll find on any disc anywhere. Needless to say, the HD-DVD transfer is a touch better than the SD, making it superb.
Even more to the point, "Grand Prix" is the best film ever made about racing cars. Too bad it isn't the best movie ever made about people. Anyway, nobody--not Paul Newman, not Steve McQueen, not Tom Cruise--looked better behind the wheel of a car than "Grand Prix" star James Garner.
In this part-time race-car movie, part-time soap opera, Garner gets plenty of chances behind the wheel. If only the movie had left him there and de-emphasized the various personal romances, this nearly three-hour epic might have come in at a more comfortable two hours and provided a lot more thrills for the buck.
In honor of its fortieth anniversary, Warner Bros. not only fully restored it but decked it out with a goodly assortment of new documentary material. And another nice thing about owning the movie on disc is that after you've seen it once or twice, you can skip the scenes you don't like the next time you watch it. "Grand Prix" is about Formula-One racing, and that's where the action lies.
The film takes us into the public and personal lives of four fictional drivers vying for the world championship during a Grand Prix formula-one racing season. The principals are Pete Aron (James Garner), an American driving for BRM, a man who hasn't won a grand prix event since he left Ferrari three years earlier; Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand), a Frenchman, twice World Champion, now number one at Ferrari but beginning to question his chosen life; Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford), Pete's teammate for BRM, a wealthy Englishman trying to live up to the reputation of his older brother, a world champion driver killed in a racing accident; and Nino Barlini (Antonio Sabato), Sarti's teammate for Ferrari, a young, devil-may-care Sicilian, former motorcycle racer, and full-time lover.
Behind the races we meet Louise Frederickson (Eva Maria Saint), an American journalist following the racing season for a fashion magazine, who becomes involved with the married Sarti. We also meet Pat Stoddard (Jessica Walter), Scott Stoddard's wife, a woman who enjoys the high life and hates her husband's risking his life racing. When a car wreck involving her husband's racing car and Pete's car puts her husband out of action, she takes the opportunity to leave him and take up with Pete. That'll teach him. And there are Izo Yamura (Toshiro Mifune), a rich Japanese industrialist with ambitions to field a racing team good enough to win the world championship; and Lise "I don't smoke; I don't drink" (Francoise Hardy), Nino's newest girlfriend. For reasons unknown, Pete practically disappears from the movie's second half, at least up until the final race of the season, making even more room for the sudsy goings on of the other players.
Fortunately, if you can make it through all the ditzy relationships and intrigue, there are the racing sequences to enjoy, and they are most often dazzling. The director was John Frankenheimer, who gave us such films as "Birdman of Alcatraz," "The Manchurian Candidate," "Seven Days in May," and "Ronin," a man who knew his action and suspense, if not his melodramatic romances. He uses a good number of multiple split screens right from the opening titles, a convention that became quite popular in the late 1960s and 70s but has fallen out of favor in the last few decades. The director uses everything at this disposal to provide the visceral excitement of the racing events, from the aforementioned multiple screens to overheads and close-ups, plus plenty of corner camera setups and point-of-view shots. In fact, it is the first-person cockpit shots that are most riveting.
The movie takes us all over Europe, with location shooting in Monaco, France, England, Belgium, etc., and the filming is beautiful in its scope and vision. The French Grand Prix is particularly well photographed, quite poetically presented, and the Belgium Grand Prix is done up mostly in the rain, making for some breathtaking shots. Then, too, all of it is accompanied by Maurice Jarre's sometimes lyrical, sometimes evocative, always stimulating musical score, much of it reminiscent of his work in "Doctor Zhivago," with touches of "Lawrence of Arabia." I mean, you know this is an epic not only by its length but by its overture and its entr'acte music.
Racing veterans Phil Hill, Joakim Bonnier, and Richie Ginther acted as advisors on the film, with Carroll Shelby as technical consultant. Additionally, the director got real-life formula-one drivers Graham Hill, Lorenzo Bandini, Bob Bondurant, Jack Brabham, Jimmy Clark, and others to participate in a number of scenes, lending a further note of authenticity to the proceedings. Graham Hill, incidentally, was almost too good to be true, looking like a young David Niven.
Perhaps the movie's greatest achievement is in capturing the feeling of a bygone racing era, the end of an age in racing history where the competition was still a seat-of-your-pants undertaking, where racing machines were nothing more than engines on wheels, and where strict safety rules and million-dollar endorsements were dreams of the future. Today's Formula-One machines look and behave like intergalactic, science-fi rocket ships, they are so technologically advanced compared to the racing cars of 1966.
