12/03/2003
FEATURE BY CHRIS BALFE
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Other than motorsport, one of my other big passions is movies.
Saying that, the last time I went to a cinema - does that word show my age? - was a fortnight ago, to see the excellent About Schmidt featuring one of my all-time favourites Jack Nicholson, while a month or so before I went to see Tom Hanks in Road to Perdition. Prior to this I don't think I'd been to a cinema for close on two years.
I guess it's a bit like F1. In the old days the entire experience of visiting the cinema was special, almost a big occasion. I grew up in the time of 'B-Movies' and Pathe News, an era when the advertisements were different to those seen on TV, anyone remember those excellent ads for Benson & Hedges featuring another hero, and fellow north London boy Peter Sellers, I loved those ads, but like F1 they never induced me to smoke.
Nowadays, much like F1, the cinema experience leaves me empty, a bit like that Chinese meal I had an hour ago, I thought I enjoyed it at the time but now I'm hungry again. For the most part the movies are crap while the ads are the same as the ones on TV but ten times the volume. It's very much style over substance, so corporate, and even the support show is missing, much like F1.
There are some movies that come out that have me thinking "I must see that", but then reflecting on my last cinema experience I opt to wait until it's shown on one of the satellite stations. More often than not I'm glad that I never wasted my time, for so many modern movies are absolute garbage.
Therefore many of the movies that I still watch, a bit like F1 again, are from the 'good old days'.
My taste is, I like to think, eclectic, though even I admit that for every classic such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest you'll find a real oddball such as the original La Cage Aux Folles, an extremely camp French film starring the woefully underrated - outside France anyway - Michel Serrault - in a movie poorly remade in Hollywood as The Birdcage. Why do the Americans insist on remaking brilliant foreign films such as Les Diaboliques, The Vanishing and the Return of Martin Guerre and remaking them as soulless pap?
Sadly, for the most part motorsport has been badly treated by the movies. The race footage in both Grand Prix and Le Mans is superb, but the scripts.. sheesh!
Then again other than the first few minutes, has anybody out there actually sat through the whole of Bobby Deerfield? Every actor has to make at least one 'turkey' in his life even Al Pacino, but why did it have to revolve around F1?
Other 'classic' race films include Checkpoint which is centred around a Mille Miglia type event, The Green Helmet featuring Carry On stalwart and Tony Hancock side-kick Sid James, and Winning, a drippy love story featuring real-life racer Paul Newman and Robert Wagner. I have intentionally omitted Days of Thunder and the even more dire Driven
Though in my humble opinion my sport has been poorly treated, cars have often played a key role in movies and in some cases starring roles.
For me, after more than thirty years one of the most exciting moments in cinema history is the moment when the Black Dodge Charger appears - on what I now know to be Columbus Avenue in San Francisco - it's two passengers intent on doing harm to the man about to get into a Highland Green Ford Mustang 390GT.
The rest is history. Over the next thirteen minutes movie fans are treated to one of the first, and still most exciting, car chases in the history of the movies, a chase that has spawned a thousand imitations.
As a kid, watching Bullitt in the Southgate Odeon, I was enthralled, Steve McQueen who had previously served as a role model in The Great Escape became a god, the 'King of Cool'. Years later I was to discover that Steve wasn't quite as cool as we thought, and that indeed two of his finest 'movie moments' were down to the skills of his friend Bud Ekins, who did the jumps in The Great Escape and much of the driving in Bullitt.
Steve did do some of the driving, but not much. If you want to know when he's actually at the wheel of the Mustang, check the rear-view mirror, if you see him he's driving, at all other times it's Ekins.
The Dodge Charger is another matter however, for this was driven by a man who was to become a real hero of mine, actor and stuntman Bill Hickman.
Prior to Bullitt, Bill had worked as stuntman on TV series such as The Fugitive and the Jack Lemmon comedy The Great Race. As an actor its unlikely you will have noticed him - he was the fellow-cop accidentally shot by Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) at the end of The French Connection - however in Bullitt, with his steely cold eyes, horn-rimmed glasses and chisel jaw, he is every inch the archetypal hired killer.
Initially, and this is hard to believe, there wasn't going to be a car chase in Bullitt since Director Peter Yates had already done what he thought was the perfect chase in Robbery, a British thriller, while McQueen was happy to rest on the laurels of The Great Escape.
Eventually however it was decided that there would be a chase and that it should be special. Originally it had been intended that the chase would include a segment on the Golden Gate Bridge but the authorities refused to give permission.
Aficionados of the movie will be aware that there are several errors in the shooting of the sequence - the number of hubcaps that fall off, the green Volkswagen Beetle that keeps reappearing - however all that aside it remains one of the hottest car chases ever.
The chase kicks into life proper with Hickman clicking his safety belt shut and gunning the 440cc engine in pursuit of McQueen/Ekins. Minutes later he's lost the Mustang which has seemingly given him the slip. As Hickman drives on, looking for his quarry, the Mustang suddenly appears in his rear view mirror.
There is much trivia relating to the movie - Ekins, who is driving the Mustang remember - is also the hapless motorcycle rider that gets unseated. Furthermore the white-haired heavy riding shotgun (literally) in the Charger was terrified when he had to climb over the back seat to 'shoot' at McQueen, the guy was quite ill and almost in tears. Furthermore when the Charger crashes into the petrol station at the end of the chase it actually misses all the pumps and as a result the scene had to be very carefully edited. Finally you may have noticed that the chase carries on to Mansell Street (check the street sign), which is in McLaren Park.
As is ever the case, everyone remembers Steve while Ekins and Hickman hardly warrant a mention. Bill was soon to (almost) outdo the Bullitt chase however when he drove a Pontiac through the streets of New York in The French Connection. Another brilliant example of Hickman 'at work' can be found in the little-known The Seven Ups another stunning New York car chase. If you remember the Mustang Mach 1 in Diamonds are Forever and in particular the sideways down-the-alley stunt in Las Vegas, that was Hickman too, a much underrated driver who died in 1986 at the age of 65.
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So, no doubt you're wondering where all this is leading.
Well, if you're a fan, like me, of Nigel Roebuck, you'll be familiar with a mini-movie filmed in Paris in1976 by Claude Lelouch, who ten years earlier had directed Un Homme at Une Femme the story of a love affair between a racing driver (Jean-Louis Trintingant) and Anouk Aimee who plays the widow of a racer killed at Le Mans. The film contains a fair proportion or racing footage both real and dramatised.
Anyway Lelouch's 1976 mini-movie C'etait un Rendezvous is like nothing you've seen before. It's said that when the movie was first screened Lelouch was arrested, consequently it was hidden away and only a few poor quality video copies have been available since.
'The Buck' has a copy of the movie and over lunch last year I asked him for a copy, he agreed but I'm still waiting. Thankfully Richard Symons, a documentary film maker came to hear of it and managed to acquire a very poor 2nd generation VHS copy.
"I'd never seen anything like it," he says, "nine minutes of adrenalin that simply leaves you with your jaw on the floor. Lelouch was supposedly arrested the first time he'd shown the film and then it simply dived underground. To cut a long story short, I tracked down the director, we dusted down the original 35mm negative, restored and re-mastered it for release - we've brought back all the details and colours and it looks stunning."
Stunning is the word. In short it is one of the most brilliant yet frightening pieces of in-car footage you are ever likely to see. What makes it frightening is that's it's for real, no editing, no streets blocked-off, no stunt drivers in carefully placed cars, this is for real. If you want a rock 'n' roll soundtrack forget it, all you get is the sound of raw engine power and tyres on the limit of adhesion.
The film is the subject of many myths not least who is actually driving what is thought to be a Ferrari 275GTB. There are some that say it is Lelouch himself while others claim it was F1 star Jacque Lafitte. Nobody is ever likely to own up for fear of further prosecution, even after more than twenty years.
What you are witnessing is complete and utter madness, recklessness and then some, as a driver races through the early morning streets of Paris to meet with who, a lover?
At the start of the movie we come out of one of Paris' many underpasses and head along what appears to be Avenue Foch, around the Arc de Triomphe (listen to those tyres squeal), down the Champs Elysees, through Place de la Concorde (hi Max), along the Quai Tuileries, through the Louvre (the grounds not the actual museum), up past Place de l'Opera then on towards Pigalle up Caulaincourt to Sacre Coeur.
Never mind the pigeons trying to get out of the way, what about the startled pedestrians on their way to work, the bus driver, the refuse truck driver. Clearly the driver of the Ferrari is racing against the clock, and nothing is going to stop him. If he needs to drive on the wrong side of the road so be it, should he need to mount pavement so what.
To those raised on a diet of 'wacky car chases', and 'most wanted', this might seem tame. However although this is just as real, you know that you're in the hands of a bloody fine driver, rather than a drug-crazed criminal fleeing the law.
On the other hand what you're witnessing is illegal and god forbid it should spawn a number of wannabees, there are enough idiots on our streets, and bodies in our morgues, as it is.
Take it for what it is, a classic piece of daredevil driving, nine minutes of motorised madness captured on film for posterity.
The video is available from Spiritlevel Films though our good friends at Sportspages will also be stocking it. As well as their website you can contact Sportspages on Tel: +44 20 7240 9604 or Fax: +44 20 7836 0104
Trust me, this is one video that you will most definitely want in your collection.
Chris Balfe
Editor
To check out Chris's previous articles.. click here