Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3646 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-10-02
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Formats: Box set, PAL, Special Edition
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 176 minutes

Synopsis
GRAND PRIX is John Frankenheimer's film about the nine-leg world championship of Formula 1 auto racing stars James Garner as driver Pete Aron. During the opening race in Monaco, a collision sends Pete's car flying into the Monte Carlo harbor, and British driver Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford) into a wall. While Pete survives unhurt, Scott may lose the use of his legs, and many hold Pete responsible. Jean-Pierre Sarti (Yves Montand), whose marital boredom has led to an affair with fashion editor Louse Frederickson (Eva-Marie Saint), wins the next race at Clermont-Ferrand. Afterwards Pete accepts the sponsorship of Japanese business magnate Izo Yamura (Toshiro Mifune), and begins to romance Stoddard's jaded young wife Pat (Jessica Walter). Pete wins the Belgian leg of the contest, but Sarti goes into a depression after skidding on a wet track and killing two children in a crash. After Pete also takes the German Grand Prix, Stoddard amazingly returns for the Dutch event, and, driving on sheer grit, pulls out a victory. He proves it's no fluke by also winning in Watkins Glen, N.Y. and in Mexico, making the championship competitive once again. Essentially a soap opera interspersed with racing footage, the film's existence was ascribed by Frankenheimer to his fascination with the sport and a desire to spend time in Europe. That said, the racing sequences are still among the most realistic ever put on film, jammed with wide-angle helicopter shots, you-are-there car-mounted cameras, and then-fashionable split-screen sequences. GRAND PRIX is a definitely a film for racing fans.

Customer Reviews

Still the champion
Forty years on, Grand Prix is still the best motor racing film ever made. The cars may be faster now, filming techniques improved and special effects more advanced, yet the film still has a truly epic scale and a feeling of veracity down to the last gear change that would be impossible to duplicate today. It feels real because much of it is real, the actors (with the exception of Brian Bedford) doing much of the driving themselves, with the production even entering cars in real races to seamlessly match footage. The real danger is only underlined by the fact that so many of the professional drivers in the film died racing themselves (ten in the decade following the filming alone). The crashes are there, along with the knowledge that that's what many in the crowd come for, but more than that, each race has a different character: more than just a different look, they're almost tone poems at times, one race from the driver's seat, another from a spectator's, another almost inside a character's head. Yet throughout, unlike later films, you always have a clear idea of what is going on and what point the race scenes are trying to make. The sequences have clearly been thought through and designed both emotionally as well as visually, with the great use of long lenses to establish scale and speed as cars drift in and out of focus giving the film a feel at once realistic and almost dreamlike (an impression further heightened in Saul Bass' almost balletic split-screen sequence). It's still a remarkably good looking film, too, not least because it was made at a time when the cars still looked like bullets rather than vacuum cleaners.

The plot itself may be simply a globe-trotting star-studded soap opera at heart - the roadshow equivalent of a doorstop bestseller - but it's a more than serviceable framework to hang the racing scenes on: after a spectacular crash in the Monte Carlo Grand Prix that cripples team mate Brian Bedford, James Garner's Formula One tries to work his way back on the circuit by racing for Toshiro Mifune's fledgling team while having an affair with Bedford's wife Jessica Walter. But while top-billed Garner may be the nominal and not particularly sympathetic lead, it's Yves Montand's ageing champion gradually realizing the absurdity of what he does but unable to quit who makes the greatest impression: so much so that when Garner disappears for much of the last third of the movie you barely miss him. Yet the cars remain the real stars, thanks to John Frankenheimer's constantly imaginative direction and his obvious enthusiasm for the material without ever losing himself in the minutiae as Steve McQueen did with Le Mans.

The film used every 65mm SuperPanavision camera then in existence, and thankfully the widescreen DVD transfer is a considerable improvement over the TV prints. Although it hasn't restored Mifune's voice, which was reportedly in the version shown at the film's premiere but subsequently replaced by Paul Frees on all prints (Adolfo Celi is also very obviously dubbed, possibly by Maximilian Schell), it does boast a good array of featurettes covering the making of the film and the Overture and Entr'acte from Maurice Jarre's excellent score have been retained.

Stuck In Fourth
This was always one of my favourite films as a kid, so i set aside an evening to watch the 2-disc Special Edition. Now, maybe my imagination ran away with me a bit when i was younger, but i'm sure that a few of the crashes have been deleted from this particular edition. I distinctly recall an incident (probably at Spa) when one of the competitors crashes into some bails of hay, and a group of spectators rush to help. One guy carlessly chucks his fag away, resulting in car, driver and barn erupting in a fireball. Now, i know this Government doesn't want us to smoke any more (not in public, anyway) but the reason for editing this sort of stuff from films escapes me. I also remember more than one car ending up in the sea at Monaco. If i dreamt all of this, or it's from another film entirely, could someone put me straight.
Being an anal sort i am now scouring the Net for another version, as the one I have is 165? mins and the one advertised is 176 mins.
Other than that, thoroughly enjoyable !!

great bargain
Just bought this dvd for under three pounds from Amazon. This must be the best bargain ever. Not only do you get the complete film as theatrically released in the cinema (usually shown on tv in a much cut version), but a superb second disc with several interesting features about the making of the film, footage of the f1 races during the sixties and interviews with drivers of that era.

The only drawback is that you have to change discs to see the complete film, as this original print could not be accommodated on disc one, but hey so what! This is a minor quibble at this price. If you like motor racing, especially in the days when you could actually see overtaking, get this dvd while it's on offer at this giveaway price.