Official PoCo Muse Film Critic Jeff Schultz revisits Le Mans for his September 2021 Review.
An idea came to me while I was walking through the 42nd Annual Popcorn Festival in downtown Valparaiso a few weeks ago that I regret not having earlier. About two blocks from the PoCo Muse were some inflatable bounce houses that looked similar to some of the older buildings around town. How neat would it have been to have had a bounce house in the festival this year made to look like the Premier Theatre in celebration of its 100th anniversary, I thought. Kids could climb up on the marquis to watch the parade, like some folks back in 1979, and no one would fuss since bounce houses are made to monkey around. In fact, how cool would it be to have a whole line of bounce houses based on the architectural designs of Charles F. Lembke? This would include blow-up versions of the Memorial Opera House and many others. If anyone wants to support a petition for the festival committee for next year, let me know.
Another musing I had that day was getting up before 7 a.m. is way too early for any reason on a Saturday, particularly running. Perhaps while petitioning the committee on bounce houses, a second part could be to move the 5-mile Popcorn Panic race to a more lenient start time of 8 a.m. to better meet the needs of citizens who rely on Saturdays to catch up on sleep. Ultimately my petition would be doomed for overlooking one essential element to racing which is the dedication. A superior runner knows not to complain of whether the race is at 7:00 or 5:00 for real glory takes sacrifice. Sleeping in is for the gutless. In honor of that spirit, I've selected the Steve McQueen film “Le Mans” for this month’s Going Back to the Movies, a film that required a lot of dedication. “Le Mans” played at the Premier Theatre during the week of September 9, 1971.
Audiences around this time knew Steve McQueen as “the King of Cool,” a rebel type with similarities to James Dean (incidentally, like Dean, McQueen was born in Indiana). After being discharged from the army in 1950, he went to New York to study acting thinking it would be great gig to meet girls. To earn some money, McQueen would race motorcycles at the Long Island City Raceway on the weekends. He later headed to Hollywood and landed a small role in the 1956 film “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” a film that was to star James Dean if it had not been for his untimely death. McQueen did get the lead for “The Blob” in 1958 fighting off a giant jelly substance devouring everything in its path but it was playing bounty hunter Josh Randall on the CBS series “Wanted: Dead or Alive” that the public came to know him. He essentially outgrew television making a big impression in “The Magnificent Seven” in 1960 and became a bona-find leading man of Hollywood with 1963’s “The Great Escape” where he did his own stunts on a TR6 Trophy.
The pinnacle of McQueen’s career came in 1968 with the releases of “The Thomas Crown Affair” and “Bullitt,” containing some of the most iconic imagery in cinema. The latter features McQueen as a San Francisco police detective chasing down mobsters in his Ford Mustang at speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour. It created enough momentum to get his passion project into production, a film about racing he fought to make since 1965. McQueen raced cars regularly during his time making movies and was enamored with the sport. He wanted to make a movie about the world’s most prestigious racing event -- Le Mans, the 24-hour competition where the drivers come to prove which car is the best. While McQueen was enthusiastic about the project, the studio heads in Hollywood were skeptical, leading to a troubled production. It was not clear what type of film it would be. McQueen argued with his friend and director John Sturges whether this would be a documentary or a love story with a racing backdrop. The movie essentially had to be filmed twice, once in 1969 during the race so the cameramen could test where to place cameras for the real shoot the following year. During filming, crews went on strike, Sturges dropped out, and McQueen, to show his dedication, agreed to take no pay in order to get the film finished.
Watching “Le Mans” on a big theater screen like at the Premier would have been a great experience. There is plenty of scenery in the opening scenes of the old French town as McQueen’s character Michael Delaney drives around to catch a glimpse of a lovely blond woman played by Elga Anderson who we learn in flashback is a widow of a driver killed in an accident involving Delaney in the previous year’s Le Mans race. A somber note to open on, but after we are put in the hustle and bustle of the 1970 Le Mans with a symphony of revving engines and national anthems as the drivers make their way onto the circuit. The camera zooms in and out continuously to make sure we get all the details. While there is much to hear on the soundtrack, no dialogue is directly made in the first 37 minutes other than the announcer over the loud speaker. The audience picks up the story through the images, the body language of the characters and the tension of the cars through each turn.
Directing the film is Lee H. Katzin who in the 1960s directed episodes of TV suspense shows like “Mission: Impossible” and “The Mod Squad.” Katzin directs the movie in a sort of documentary style that McQueen was going for but the execution doesn’t work as well when we are off the track. The little dialogue the movie has is usually about road conditions (a rain turns the race into a virtual deathtrap) but somewhere along the way is a confusing love story involving the widow, Delaney and a rival driver. In contrast to the scenes on the raceway, the subplots slow the movie down which is an ironic and undesirable effect in a movie about racing.
Some fans argue “Le Mans” is the greatest racing film ever made. A valid claim given the race scenes are crafted in an masterful way. Katzin films the opening race with careful precision the way Alfred Hitchcock would film a murder scene. The story the movie tells is convoluted and forgettable, however. I give “Le Mans” the same critique as I did for “Catch-22” in March. I liked a lot of what I saw and heard but the plot was lost on me, good enough for 2 out of 4 stars.
Other films came to mind while watching "Le Mans" that I liked better, particularly the recent films “Rush” based on Formula 1 drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda and “Ford v. Ferrari” that also featured Le Mans. I might propose Will Ferrell’s “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” as the greatest racing movie, but like a Premier Theatre bounce house or a later start time to the Popcorn Panic, that may be asking too much.
Special Note: Le Mans played at Valparaiso’s Premier Theatre on September 9, 1971.