So far on DSC’s Covid Film Club, we’ve had a motorsport-related comedy (Talladega Nights), an animated family movie (Cars) and a classic (Le Mans). Now it’s time for a recent motorsport film, so recent in fact that it was released only last year, and that is Le Mans 66 (Ford vs Ferrari in certain territories).
Starring house-hold names like Christian Bale and Matt Damon, there was always a chance that it would turn out to be an over-dramatised, Hollywood-filled cheese-fest, which appeals to just about except sportscar fans. Thankfully, it was actually a success. It won two Oscars and was considered a ‘fabulous, but flawed’ movie by DSC, which attended a premier of the film in Birmingham.
Yes, one or two of the scenes were somewhat overplayed, yes the geek within us spotted a number of tiny things that only a truly pedantic petrolhead would notice (plus a few larger ones, Ken Miles did NOT miss the 1965 Le Mans 24 Hours for instance). Yes, some of the locations were, whilst well dressed, obviously not where we were meant to believe that they were. Yes some of the on-track incidents were almost cartoon-like and yes, apparently a 1966 Ford GT40 did indeed have the fabled 32-speed gearbox. But none of that mattered because this is a piece of entertainment, not a documentary.
If it is to have value to a wider audience it had to be entertaining, and it is. It has to be engaging, and it is, it has to stir emotion, and it does, and a lot more besides. The story is told based on a book that, in itself, has flaws.
But it’s not the book that’s important, it’s the back story. The pride and the emotion-driven feud between Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari, that relationship is built up and delivered beautifully as is the core ‘bromance’ between Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles both played well by (respectively) Matt Damon and Christian Bale. Get beyond Bale’s shakey British accent (particularly strange bearing in mind that he IS British!) and there are a pair of performances to savour, the flawed brilliance of Miles delivered in convincingly strong fashion, and Shelby’s famously dismissive of authority bent showing through too.
The set dressing, for the most part, is superb, and the capturing of the cars on track equally good, though the need to entertain, and at times to shock, sees reality rather enhanced at times.
‘Driven’ this is not, and it isn’t ‘Le Mans’ either, the former film an utter disgrace of a movie, the latter beautiful, iconic, but truly a work that appeals only to those who are already enthusiasts.
This is a different kettle of fish entirely, a film that is crafted to tell a multi-layered story through both dialogues, and action and it is all the better for it.
It makes the cars, and the racing look exciting and glamorous, it makes the Le Mans of the 1960s look like the world-leading event that it was, and indeed still is. And it succeeds where other films have routinely failed, putting the people and the cars that they race into a scenario where an audience can begin to care about the outcome.
All in all, this is a film that attracted an audience rather wider than the sportscar fans that are likely to read a summary/critique of it on DSC. The nuances of motorsport on film are less important than the film potentially finding new followers for the sport.
Let’s just hope that any new fans spawned from this aren’t too disappointed to find that a standard racing gearbox has somewhat fewer than 32 cogs once real-life motorsport resumes…
So go ahead and spend a lockdown evening re-watching this, then tomorrow, check back for a staggering ‘From The Archives…’ piece from DSC which investigates the (real) ending of the race featuring a substantial number of people who were there.
Le Mans 66 is available to buy on DVD and Blu Ray HERE and stream HERE.
