I was given the opportunity recently to see an advanced screening of Ron Howard’s much-anticipated movie Rush. I was allowed to bring a guest, so much to my wife’s chagrin, I brought along my oldest daughter, who is studying film. I think she was more excited about the premiere than I was! As we drove to the theater, I have to confess to being a little anxious, since the last feature film devoted to racing was Sylvester Stallone’s Driven, which was equally hyped in advance of its release as being the “greatest racing movie ever made” and instead ended up being a cringe-worthy parody of every bad racing movie ever made—and there have been a lot of them. The truth is—in my admittedly biased opinion—there have really only been two great racing movies.
John Frankenheimer’s seminal 1966 movie Grand Prix is still, arguably, one of the best. Filmed using a combination of period Grand Prix drivers (Phil Hill, Richie Ginther, Graham Hill, etc) and actors, in conjunction with never-before-seen high quality, in-car footage, Grand Prix was the first “racer’s” movie that gave the viewer a very real and powerful sensation of what it actually was like to be behind the wheel of a Formula One car at places like Monaco. While Grand Prix won three Academy Awards for Sound Effects, Film Editing and Sound, the movie’s tragic flaw was the underlying story itself, which featured one-dimensional characters in clichéd racing situations.
