I first saw this movie when I was eleven years old. I was watching TV hoping to find some escape from the grief of losing a relative, and on that level it delivered adequately. But beyond that it meant nothing, because ultimately it's not about anything.
There are two characters in this movie: Fabian's JoeJoe and the scenery of Western Europe. Yes, there are more cast members but they are only scenery to JoeJoe. Dancers to dance with, women to bed with, other drivers to run against, team coaches to argue with and so on...but none of these are really characters anywhere near JoeJoe's level. Still, he's pretty shallow and superficial, and he even admits it. In the Madrid Bullfight arena/Jarama racetrack sequence, he calls the bull "dumb" but ultimately invites the audience to compare JoeJoe's pursuit of the Checkered Flag to the bull's pursuit of the Matador's cape. Is JoeJoe's girlfriend dumb for not making the comparison herself, or wise for making the comparison internally but not telling JoeJoe what she thinks?
I wonder if Robert Redford drew from this or likable movies when he made DOWNHILL RACER years later.
Visually, this is fabulous stuff. The race scenes are genuinely well cut and the travelogue scenes of European cities and landscapes are well worth the effort. But unlike Steve McQueen's LE MANS four years later, or Paul Newman's WINNING two years after this movie, none of this visual art is thrown in service of a plot line. This movie is a traffic circle; it ends how it begins. Neither JoeJoe nor anything else really changes that we don't expect.
The music is interesting stuff, a mix of California surf rock and Continental go-go pop for the incidentals, with some French-language pop love songs thrown in for make-out ambiance. Modern audiences would probably find the latter stuff tiresome, but don't worry about it; the two paradigms shift snappily from one to the other and back.
It's not said which racing circuit the filmmakers used for this feature, but a little research let me determine that this was Formula 2, which later became Formula 3000 and is to F1 what IndyLights is to IRL and the Nationwide Grand Nationals is to NASCAR. It looks like Fabian did his own driving in some of the scenes and I didn't notice any process shots like were common at that time. The car he has on the track is a Brabham with a Cosworth engine; it belonged to a real F2 team that won five Championship season races that year.
There are two characters in this movie: Fabian's JoeJoe and the scenery of Western Europe. Yes, there are more cast members but they are only scenery to JoeJoe. Dancers to dance with, women to bed with, other drivers to run against, team coaches to argue with and so on...but none of these are really characters anywhere near JoeJoe's level. Still, he's pretty shallow and superficial, and he even admits it. In the Madrid Bullfight arena/Jarama racetrack sequence, he calls the bull "dumb" but ultimately invites the audience to compare JoeJoe's pursuit of the Checkered Flag to the bull's pursuit of the Matador's cape. Is JoeJoe's girlfriend dumb for not making the comparison herself, or wise for making the comparison internally but not telling JoeJoe what she thinks?
I wonder if Robert Redford drew from this or likable movies when he made DOWNHILL RACER years later.
Visually, this is fabulous stuff. The race scenes are genuinely well cut and the travelogue scenes of European cities and landscapes are well worth the effort. But unlike Steve McQueen's LE MANS four years later, or Paul Newman's WINNING two years after this movie, none of this visual art is thrown in service of a plot line. This movie is a traffic circle; it ends how it begins. Neither JoeJoe nor anything else really changes that we don't expect.
The music is interesting stuff, a mix of California surf rock and Continental go-go pop for the incidentals, with some French-language pop love songs thrown in for make-out ambiance. Modern audiences would probably find the latter stuff tiresome, but don't worry about it; the two paradigms shift snappily from one to the other and back.
It's not said which racing circuit the filmmakers used for this feature, but a little research let me determine that this was Formula 2, which later became Formula 3000 and is to F1 what IndyLights is to IRL and the Nationwide Grand Nationals is to NASCAR. It looks like Fabian did his own driving in some of the scenes and I didn't notice any process shots like were common at that time. The car he has on the track is a Brabham with a Cosworth engine; it belonged to a real F2 team that won five Championship season races that year.
