Grand Prix was described by one critic as the best movie ever filmed around the subject of motor racing, but the worst movie ever made by director John Frankenheimer.
As a drama it works OK if you weren't/aren't familiar with Formula 1 racing, but if you are a racing enthusiast some of the situations and dialog are downright embarrassing. For motorheads, the real attractions were the racing scenes (some staged, some shot live during real races), the cameo appearances by many real F1 drivers of the time, and (of course) the beautiful women.
One chilling thing to do, though, is to count how many of the real F1 drivers who appeared in the film later died in a race car. Far too many!
[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 11-26-2006).]
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12:15 PM
jstricker Member
Posts: 12956 From: Russell, KS USA Registered: Apr 2002
This is going to date me but in 1966 we took a family vacation to Colorado. They had a Cinerama there and Grand Prix had just been released. I begged dad for two days to take us and on the third day when we were going to go to an amusement park (Eliches, IIRC) it was a cloudy, rainy day and he relented. It cost us $6 per ticket to get in, even for the kids, an obscenely high price back in 1966, and dad grumbled about it the whole time.
The movie on the Cinerama Screen (think Omnimax nowadays) was unbelievable and although they had never heard of "surround sound" they had their own version of something similar.
When we left the theater dad said it was the best movie he'd ever seen and it was the one thing of the whole vacation we all still remember. I still have my ticket stub over at my dad's in my scrapbook that mom kept for us.
I really enjoyed the commentary. I remember at the time that James Garner was doing some hobby racing but I never realized until I watched the commentary last night that he was as good as he was, judging by what was said about him from many of the techinical guys (Phil Hill, Carroll Shelby, etc.) during the commentaries. Having him answer questions during the movie breaks really worked well and didn't distract from the movie last night, and I usually hate that stuff while watching a movie. If they offered that on DVD with the commentary, I'd own it in a heartbeat.
John Stricker
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12:41 PM
jstricker Member
Posts: 12956 From: Russell, KS USA Registered: Apr 2002
Did you catch the commentary when Bruce Dern asked Garner if he thought they could make a movie comparable to that today?
Garner said he didn't think so that it would just be incredibly expensive. The movie people had pretty much free rein at the tracks and race teams and they'd never allow that to happen today. I think he's probably right. Besides, it's just not the same watching the drivers now push buttons to shift gears as opposed to seeing the linkage actually work in the movie Grand Prix, for example.
John Stricker
quote
Originally posted by Marvin McInnis:
Grand Prix was described by one critic as the best movie ever filmed around the subject of motor racing, but the worst movie ever made by director John Frankenheimer.
As a drama it works OK if you weren't/aren't familiar with Formula 1 racing, but if you are a racing enthusiast some of the situations and dialog are downright embarrassing. For motorheads, the real attractions were the racing scenes (some staged, some shot live during real races), the cameo appearances by many real F1 drivers of the time, and (of course) the beautiful women.
One chilling thing to do, though, is to count how many of the real F1 drivers who appeared in the film later died in a race car. Far too many!
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12:44 PM
fierosound Member
Posts: 15253 From: Calgary, Canada Registered: Nov 1999
The Grand Prix DVD just released in July 2006 has those commentaries and other mini-documentaries. I think it's including the information on the Making of Grand Prix DVD released last year.
While I agree the storyline itself isn't the greatest, I thought the cinematography was great. The opening race in Monte Carlo is a great start to the movie. The cameras mounted in and on the cars captured everything in the races. The water whipping off the tires when they were racing in Belgium looked great, but damn it'd be tough to drive it. It was also amazing to see how much the banked wall at Monza worked the car's suspensions.
saw the Cinerama Screen release won free tickets to the show in a slot car race tv can not compare to Cinerama had the movie on DVR but the sat/DVR box died will have get the dvd version story was typical drivel but the cars are the stars
to bad it was 66 as 67 year had even better cars love to relive the movie in the GPL sim still the best car race sim ever the ring is amazing
Did you catch the commentary when Bruce Dern asked Garner if he thought they could make a movie comparable to that today?
Garner said he didn't think so that it would just be incredibly expensive. The movie people had pretty much free rein at the tracks and race teams and they'd never allow that to happen today. I think he's probably right. Besides, it's just not the same watching the drivers now push buttons to shift gears as opposed to seeing the linkage actually work in the movie Grand Prix, for example.
John Stricker
yeah, it would be some big $$$ to try today but, you do see the many thing about the classic days of racing that made it so daring people just standing there at the edge of the track watching the cars zoom by seatbelts? we dont need no stinking seatbelts..... and, they did use fast motion. may be the bottom of the heap in special effects - but they did use it. if they had CGI - they would have used that too.
this is by far the greatest racing EVER the open wheel cigar racers
