Grand Prix is a 1966 American sports drama film about Formula One racing, directed by John Frankenheimer, produced by Edward Lewis, and written by Robert Alan Aurthur with uncredited story contributions by Frankenheimer and rewrites by William Hanley. It stars an international ensemble cast, including James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Yves Montand, Toshiro Mifune, Brian Bedford, Jessica Walter, Françoise Hardy and Antonio Sabàto.

The film includes real-life racing footage and cameo appearances by drivers including Formula One World Champions Phil Hill, Graham Hill, Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Jochen Rindt and Jack Brabham. Other drivers who appeared in the film include Dan Gurney, Lorenzo Bandini, Bob Bondurant, Ludovico Scarfiotti, Richie Ginther, Joakim Bonnier, Bruce McLaren and Jo Siffert. The film was photographed in Super Panavision 70 by Lionel Lindon and presented in 70mm Cinerama in premiere engagements. Its unique racing cinematography is one of the main draws of the film.

One of the ten highest-grossing films of 1966, Grand Prix won three Academy Awards for its technical achievements. Swedish actress Harriet Andersson was originally cast as the female lead, but was replaced by Eva Marie Saint after the first week of filming.

The making was a race itself as fellow Hollywood icons Steve McQueen and John Sturges planned to make a similar movie exploring the life of racers, with the McQueen/Sturges team initially using the title Day of the Champion. Due to the McQueen/Sturges production's exclusivity contract with the German Nürburgring race track, Frankenheimer had to turn over 27 reels shot there to Sturges. Frankenheimer got ahead in schedule terms anyway, however, and McQueen's project ran into a wide variety of financial and other problems, causing a five-year delay until the 1971 release of the retitled film, Le Mans.

The production team began by using connections to Grand Prix drivers such as Dan Gurney, Carroll Shelby and former Grand Prix World Champion Phil Hill, who all assisted them in trying to break through an otherwise reluctant European establishment. The filming process meant disrupting vital practice runs and otherwise getting in the way of the actual racers' activities. The Grand Prix team initially faced a particularly lukewarm response from Ferrari, with the firm concerned that the movie would overly sensationalize their work. Frankenheimer spliced together approximately thirty minutes of detailed footage after filming in Monte Carlo, temporarily halted the movie's production, and sent the short piece over to the company's management. He received such a positive response that he gained unprecedented access, being allowed to shoot inside Ferrari's production floor alongside the real racing vehicles. The director used this budding relationship to push other entities to help with the film-making process. Many real-life drivers of the era ended up making cameo appearances in Grand Prix, several even briefly speaking alongside the actors. James Garner is driving the following car]]

The F1 cars in the film are mostly mocked-up Formula Three cars made to look like contemporary Formula One models, although the film also used footage from actual F1 races. Because Yamura Motors is a fictional race team, the producers struck a deal with Bruce McLaren's newly formed McLaren team to have his car, the McLaren M2B, painted with Yamura's colors. The paint scheme used was designed to resemble that used on the contemporary Honda RA272 cars competing during this period. On two occasions, because the McLaren could not take part in these races, another car was painted in the same colours: Bob Bondurant's BRM at Spa, and at Zandvoort for the Dutch GP, the Lotus 25 BRM entered by Reg Parnell for Mike Spence.

Some of the footage was captured by Phil Hill, the 1961 World Champion, who drove a modified camera car in some sessions during the actual Monaco and Belgian Grands Prix. In order to realistically film the racing cars at speed, the camera car used for much of this filming was a Ford GT40, a fast and powerful endurance racing car of the same type that dominated races such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans during the last half of the 1960s. This was some of the earliest experimentation with in-car cameras for F1, particularly in terms of first-person shots aimed at putting the audience in the position of the racers. Garner's car was fitted with a higher rollbar and had no seat, since he was too tall to fit in a contemporary F3 car.

The blue and red helmet design that James Garner's character uses is often confused with that of then-Grand Prix race driver Chris Amon from New Zealand; the colours are reversed. Brian Bedford's character’s design was the same as real life 1966 BRM driver Jackie Stewart. As Bedford couldn't drive, this was done so that they could shoot footage of Stewart driving the BRM (with a balaclava over his face to hide that it wasn't Bedford). Sarti's helmet was John Surtees', and Barlini's was Lorenzo Bandini's.

thumb|left|[[Yves Montand (sitting in the Ferrari) on set]]

Circuits featured in the film include Circuit de Monaco (Monaco), Clermont-Ferrand (France), Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps (Belgium), Circuit Park Zandvoort (Netherlands), Brands Hatch (United Kingdom), and Autodromo Nazionale Monza (Italy). The Nürburgring (West Germany), Watkins Glen International (USA), and the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez (Mexico) were all mentioned in the film but there was no footage shown.

The camera cars used during actual GP races were a Lotus 25 Climax at Monaco and a McLaren M2B Ford at Spa, both driven by 1961 F1 World Champion Phil Hill. A camera was mounted at the front only at Monaco, and an additional one filming the driving wheel was in place at Spa. Aerial shots were filmed from an Alouette III helicopter. These shots were taken so close to the actual roads that the cameraman's shoes became stained with bits of greenery from the tips of nearby trees.

Critical

Upon its 1966 release, New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called the film "a smashing and thundering compilation of racing footage shot superbly at the scenes of the big meets around the circuit, jazzed up with some great photographic trickery ... Mr. Frankenheimer belts you with such a barrage of magnificent shots of the racing cars, seen from every angle and every possible point of intimacy, that you really feel as though you've been in it. The octane pace race editing, interspersed with proper high speed car-to-car camera angles; long drivers' Point-of-View (POV) angles (try to stop your head moving in sync with the turns...); and a revolutionary split-screen device motif, further introducing car racing footage not seen before in modern film. Furthermore, the director and Saul Bass fill that mammoth screen from time to time with these split-screens and montages that made the racing sequences fairly jump with pure octane . Triple and quadruple panels and even screen-filling checkerboards ... hit the viewer with stimulations that optically generate a sort of intoxication with racing. It's razzle-dazzle of a random sort, but it works." However, Crowther concluded "the big trouble with this picture ... is that the characters and their romantic problems are stereotypes and clichés... You come away with the feeling that you've seen virtually everything there is to see in grand-prix racing, except the real guys who drive those killer cars."

Variety called the film "one of those rare pictures that draws its basic strength, excitement and interest-arresting potential through the visual (the pure art of cinema) and if it lacked brilliant virtuosity in the action department it would be just another flimflam." Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times called it "the new, definitive, great film about auto racing", adding that after three hours "if one emerged with the feeling that maybe there has been just too much, here is one case in which I can state happily that it is better than too little." Leo Sullivan of The Washington Post wrote, "John Frankenheimer's 'Grand Prix' is brought alive with cinematic innovations and is frequently set ablaze with excitement." Brendan Gill of The New Yorker described the film as "big, brave, eye-bedazzling, earsplitting, and sometimes almost heart-stopping." The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "The cars, of course, steal all the thunder, but one is a little disappointed to find the drivers and their private lives so little elevated beyond the level of pulp fiction. Still, as a spectacle Grand Prix is on the whole such a success that the fact it isn't anything more than a spectacle hardly matters."

Forty-five years later, upon its release on Blu-ray Disc, The New York Times reviewed the film again, with Dave Kehr saying in 2011 "considered purely from a technical point of view, the new disc is a beauty, with crisp, richly textured images that do justice to the original 65-millimeter Super Panavision format, and a roaringly dimensional soundtrack ... As a movie, though, Grand Prix was never that grand. First shown as a reserved-seat, road-show attraction in Cinerama theaters, it is little more than a 176-minute version of the roller-coaster ride This Is Cinerama that introduced the format in 1952, a high-speed tour of the principal stops on the Formula One tour, with the spectator, as often as possible, strapped into the driver's seat."

In 2025, The Hollywood Reporter listed Grand Prix as having the best stunts of 1967.

Accolades

At the 39th Academy Awards, Grand Prix won Oscars for Best Sound Effects (Gordon Daniel), Best Film Editing (Henry Berman et al.) and Best Sound (Franklin Milton). John Frankenheimer was nominated for Outstanding Directing by the Directors Guild of America.

See also

  • Le Mans (film)
  • The Racing Scene
  • Rush (2013 film)
  • Ford v Ferrari
  • F1 (film)

References

  • Grand Prix at AllMovie