Features

Grand Prix (1966)
In Grand Prix we find ourselves in an era when a well-groomed moustache still counted for something and blood on the tracks was all part of the race day spectacle. What's most fascinating about the sequence from Brands Hatch (as well as all the other race venues) is the authenticity.

Filming took place before and after the real event, capitalising on the crowds already there and, most importantly, the drivers. Briefly singled out here is the legendary Jim Clark, who would die two years after the film's release in a car crash at Hockenheim, but the film also includes Phil Hill, Graham Hill and Jack Brabham among others. The Brands Hatch sequence gives a taste of the danger involved, with Pete Aron (played by James Garner) crossing the finishing line with his car on fire but escaping unhurt.

The reality was far more tragic: of the 32 stunt and racing drivers in the film, five died in accidents in the next two years and another five died in the following 10 years. The character of Jean-Pierre Sarti, played with convincing depth by Yves Montand, provides ruminations on racing at the time:

"It has always seemed to me that to do something so dangerous requires a certain absence of the imagination." Over to you, Ralf Schumacher...

Vanishing Point (1971)
If ever we needed a psychedelic paean to the virtues of speed, we got it in the sun-bleached, soul-searching Vanishing Point.

All the essential elements are here: the counter-culture hero Kowalski wearing leather jerkin and mutton chops, the gathering forces of conformity in the crew-cut cops, an acid-enthused prog-rock soundtrack, quotes from the Bhagavad Gita, even a golden-haired hippy-chick riding naked on a motorbike in the Nevada desert.

With the aid of speed of an entirely different kind, Kowalski takes on a bet to get a white Dodge Challenger (with Magnum V8 engine) from Denver to San Francisco in a mere 15 hours. He's helped by Super Soul, a blind DJ, who acts as both cheerleader and accomplice, providing information over the radio as to the whereabouts of the 'blue meanies'.

This is a road movie on a par with Easy Rider, and just as with Easy Rider, the doomed nature of the enterprise is an integral part of its romance. But Vanishing Point is, in essence, a 106-minute long car chase full of heat, dust and the heavy metal thunder of an engine being mashed from state to state.

As Super Soul himself puts it, this is a film that pays homage to "the last American hero to whom speed means freedom of the soul."