GRAND PRIX  has a great ring to it as a title of an event or a movie. In this iteration we get breathtaking cinematography (credit Lionel Lindon), roaring sound effects, and a couple of hair-raising crashes. There is ample scenery and Maurice Jarre did a good job on the score. Otherwise, it’s a numbingly dull drama of the European racing circuit, a bore off the track, and the running time, four minutes shy of three hours, makes it a contest.

“The danger? Well, of course. But you are missing a very important point. I think if any of us imagined – really imagined – what it would be like to go into a tree at 150 miles per hour we would probably never get into the cars at all, none of us. So it has always seemed to me that to do something very dangerous requires a certain absence of imagination.”

Looks like she just sat through the movie

The camera dazzle gets to be repetitive fairly soon, and impact is dented watching at home anyway; all the once novel split-screen stuff suffers.  In 1966, splashed across Cinerama in 70mm, with tons of hype of the $9,000,000 production, it drew crowds, enough to make $23,800,000 in North America alone (8th place) and lapped three Oscars—Film Editing, Sound and Sound Effects.  John Frankenheimer directed, in a sudden right turn from his previous thrillers, all shot in black & white, all fairly subversive.

So,my voice will remind people of a moose? What the hell…?

The international cast are saddled with stories are so leaden in presentation that none of them raise a jot of concern or empathy. Much was made of James Garner’s actual racing skills. He eagerly did all of his own driving in the film. His seizing this role, in this type of picture, out from under his next-door-neighbor Steve McQueen resulted in being cold-shouldered by the touchy, uber-competitive McQueen—for four years. Garner loved this movie and really enjoyed and was proud of the experience: he devotes ten pages to it in his frank, very entertaining autobio “The Garner Files.” *

Shot in France, Monaco, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and England. The screenplay was written by Robert Alan Aurthur (Warlock, For Love Of Ivy, All That Jazz). In the drivers seats or the stands are Yves Montand, Eva Marie Saint, Toshiro Mifune, Brian Bedford (renowned Shakespearean stage actor who had never driven a car before), Jessica Walter (prior to psycho-glory in Play Misty For Me—it’s hard not to laugh when she blasts Bedford with “Don’t psychoanalyze me!”), Antonio Sabato, Francoise Hardy (legendary French pop singer), Adolfo Celi (‘Largo’ from Thunderball), Claude Dauphin (130 movies and as a Free French soldier, one of the first liberators to enter Paris), Genevieve Page (evil princess in El Cid), Enzo Fiermonte, Jack Watson, Rachel Kempson.  Mifune’s voice is dubbed by Paul Frees from ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’ fame, so the specter of ‘Boris Badenov’ rather undercuts his impressive demeanor.

* Garner: ” Making Grand Prix was the most fun I’ve ever had on a movie. Hell, it was the most fun I’ve ever had, period! Six months with the best cars and the best drivers on the best circuits in the world…for a guy who’d always loved cars and racing, it was a fantasy come true.”