On G List of Movie Reviews
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Grand Prix (1966)
Rate:
4
Viewed:
6/17
6/17:
From a spectator's point of view, motor racing is one of the most boring sports.
These cars go round and round for laps and laps...200, 300, 400 of them. My goodness, I can develop Alzheimer's
by just watching them all although it's obviously more fun to be a driver. Hence, there's no reason to recapture
it in film. But it's exactly what John Frankenheimer did for Grand Prix which is the
Chariots of Fire of Formula One.
The worst part? It's three fucking hours long! Goddamn...John has to insert four soap opera storylines between
the racing scenes. They fail to keep up my interest. As the love subplots are underway, they're thus discarded
after two hours into the film, and I'm back to racing once more.
I facepalmed myself when I saw Toshirô Mifune speaking English, and I was like, "Eh?" He's just mouthing the
words as slowly as possible. That's so awkward to watch. It turns out all of his lines were dubbed by somebody
else. If Toshirô "I Shot Down 17 American Planes" Mifune was badly miscast and would wear samurai clothes(!) in
some scenes, Eva Marie Saint is even worse. She's too American to be involved with an international picture. The
difference between her and Yves Montand is night and day. He's too cool and foreign for her. Hence, it's
embarrassing to watch Eva trying to be on the same stage with Yves. Even Geneviève Page has her beat in presence
and looks.
When I read the closing screen credits, I was surprised to see Antonio Sabàto's name. The movie was made in 1966,
and he was alive that far back? It turns out to be Antonio Sabàto's father. Now, I can see where he got his
looks from, and his father was actually more handsome. James Garner is merely okay, but I like him although his
character's personality sucks. Everybody else is bland as hell. Really, I had a hard time figuring out whom I
was supposed to be rooting for, but Grand Prix never made that clear.
Finally, we come to Steve McQueen. Grand Prix was his pet project that was going to be called
Day of the Champion. But he was stuck in Taiwan and Hong Kong for the filming of
The Sand Pebbles which was originally scheduled for nine weeks that got
stretched to seven months. John Frankenheimer was literally in competition with John Sturges to get a racing
film first to the theatres. Eventually, Grand Prix was released and became a smashing success, forever
shelving Day of the Champion which led to Steve McQueen's refusal of speaking to James Garner for four
years.
Steve McQueen thought of himself a real race driver and viewed his one-time co-star an outsider to the sport.
To James Garner's credit, he started to get more involved with auto racing right after Grand Prix and
actually did his own driving for the film including the scene when his car was caught on fire. So, it wouldn't
be another five years that Steve McQueen released his own racing film called
Le Mans, but it turned out to be a huge box-office failure. By the way, out of
thirty-two professional race drivers that were involved with Grand Prix, ten died in racing accidents
within fifteen years of its initial release, showing how unforgving the sport is.
All in all, Grand Prix is no Days of Thunder as it's overlong,
tedious, dated, and soapy.