The lives and loves of Formula 1 race car drivers and their girlfriends/wives as they compete for the title of champion Grand Prix racer or something.
Grand Prix was directed by John Frankenheimer who filmed in 70mm. Frankenheimer's team developed special camera mounts to attach to the Formula 1 cars with the actors actually in the cars zipping around the race tracks. When Grand Prix was released film critics were extremely impressed with the racing sequences. However the soap opera plot that went on in between these sequences left these same critics extremely unimpressed.
Watching this film 40 years later, it appears that the film critics at the time were pretty spot on about this film. James Garner is the American driver trying to claw his way back to the top after losing a series of races. Brian Bedford is a British driver who is recovering from an accident and has to use pain killers to get back in to the racing circuit. Bedford's wife is played by Jessica Walter who doesn't want him to race any more, she demonstrates this by sleeping around with other drivers. Some no name Italian actor Antonio Sabato is the cocky kid just asking for it Finally there is French actor Yves Montand who played the old veteran who is starting to tire of the racing game.
Yves Montand is the conscious of the film as he blathers on about what it means to race and what racing means to the crowd. In other words, Montand gets the absolute worst dialog in the film which makes him look like a shallow fool. Montand has an affair with Eva Marie Saint who is a reporter for an an American magazine. Her role is to be the stand in for the audience as Montand explains the ins and outs of formula 1 racing which is essentially you get in a car and drive around the track really fast.
These personal stories are so bad and the dialog is so awful that it's very clear that Frankenheimer poured all of his energy into staging the racing sequences.
Grand Prix is a film that wants to make auto racing into some kind of a grand statement about the need for men to test themselves under extreme conditions. Frankenheimer never really pulls this theme off.
The personal lives of the racers are just to stupid to care about. However the racing sequences which he filmed with his cinematographer Lionel Linden and visual consultant Saul Bass are spectacular to see especially on a widescreen TV since this film will never be shown in it's original 70 mm format.
179 minutes. Written by Robert Alan Arthur
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