The split second danger of auto racing—and the in-the-instant efficiency of the pit crews—was never as vividly depicted. Le Mans (1971) set the bar for racing scenes higher than any other film has reached, especially in the digital age when everything looks like a video game. Director Lee H. Katzin hurled viewers headfirst into the action with cameras hugging the roadway and drivers strapped in their capsules against the high velocity like astronauts in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Le Mans has recently been issued on Blu-ray and DVD.
The film ostensibly stars Steve McQueen as the laconic and ruggedly handsome, cool-under-pressure grand prix competitor, but the real star is the setting itself. The track announcer's voice is heard more often than McQueen or any other actor, Katzin captures much of the scenario in documentary fashion, yet the spot-on editing and shooting of cars racing around the roadway area is stylized to an acute edge of reality. Le Mans is a film of contrasts, with silence set against the shrill insistence of the engines and slo-mo against blinding speed. For a film about racing, many scenes unspool at a deliberate pace in closely observed scenes from life.
Without Le Mans, there would never have been a Lightning McQueen. Who knows? There might never have been Cars.
