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Amazon.com essential video: A classic auto-racing movie starring Steve McQueen, Le Mans puts the audience in the driver's seat for what is often called the most grueling race in the world. The French auto race Le Mans is a 24-hour affair through the French countryside, a demanding ordeal for any driver. McQueen (Bullitt, The Great Escape) plays the American driver, locked in an intense grudge match with his German counterpart even as he wrestles with the guilt over causing an accident that cost the life of a close friend. McQueen is his usual stoic magnetic self, and the racing sequences are among the best ever committed to film. A solid character-driven story combines with raw visceral power to make Le Mans a rich tapestry of action and thrills. --Robert Lane
Customer Reviews:
- simply astounding - an existenial meditation on racing: So many have already praised this movie and rightfully so. It is a remarkable film. Dedicated to the reality of racing, stripped of vehicles like standard plot lines, or contrived love affairs, this is a movie just about racing. It is a cinematographic masterpiece.
Rather than continue to gush praise for this film, I'll try to add a little background that may help other appreciate the lesser known aspects of the movie. This film attempts to capture reality in a pure unadulterated way. While a few sections and crashes were staged. The majority of the film was shot during the 1970 Le Mans 24hrs itself. The movie features the actual cars running the race itself.
The camera car used to film the 1970 Le Mans 24hrs was a Porsche 908 ( a beautiful race vehicle if ever there was one). It ran the race as an unofficial entry, and it was loaded with heavy cameras. Driven by Porsche's Herbert Linge and Jonathan Williams, it travelled 282 laps (3,798 km) and finished the race on 9th position. That's pretty great for a camera car! It would have done better, but it did not cover the required minimum distance due to long stops to change film reels. Your average race car at Le Mans tries to minimize pit stops. The camera car was burdened by cameras, controls, and mounts, AND it had to stop for lengthy changes of film. 9th place. A Porsche 908 running with Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512s. I give those drivers and that car some real credit. The footage shot by the camera car is remarkable. The sequences during the early dawn hours that capture a Ferrari 512 passing the camera car are chillingly beautiful.
The stand-in cars used for the crash sequences were real race cars, Lola T70's, modified to look like Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512s. The Lolas were used because they were less expensive to wreck than would have been the cost of sacrificing a real 917.
If you have an appreciation of racing and history's most beautiful race cars, this movie will not disappoint you. True to the famous quote from the film - racing is life, everything before and after is just waiting. This film is like that - there is the race, and then the scenes in between - which really are about waiting. They may seem slow to american audiences, but this is not really an american film. It is much more a european film, and it possesses a unique pace that is not for everyone, and is not even understood by everyone, but is valid and artistically correct for the existential meditation that this movie truly is. - Takes The Checkered Flag: Nearly 40 years since its release, Le Mans remains the best racing film ever made, because the focus is on the cars and course of the greatest endurance event in motor sports.
The major parts of the film were filmed during the June 1970 race, with cutting-edge technology used to provide the viewer a driver's view of the action.
A Porsche 908/2 - which actor Steve McQueen had co-driven to a second place finish in the 12 Hours of Sebring - was entered in Le Mans by Solar Productions and equipped with movie cameras. The camera car was driven Herbert Linge and Jonathan Williams.
With a believable, though minor, sub-plot on the tension between a wife and her husband concerning the risks & rewards from the sport, director Lee H. Katzin delivers a classic by allowing the pace of the race dictate the action. - LeMans: Plot? Who needs a plot?
This is about one of the greatest sports car races and one of the greatest battles of prototypes in sports car history, the Porche 917 and the Ferarri 512M.
The racing scenes are spectacular and the movie is more interesting if you know the stories behind the making of the film.
It is a must for true racing fans.
Sit back and turn up the volume. - Slow, yet fast: The main reason to buy this movie is to have a credible car-movie collection. There is probably only 40 lines of dialogue in the entire movie, and most of them are inconsequential. The racing shots, however, are beautiful. If you want a few hours of fast 1960s car porn, this is the movie. If that doesn't interest you, you will be bored. If it makes you salivate, make sure to buy Grand Prix as well.
- Great for it's time - would love to see an update: First a warning. DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE WITH WOMAN WHO IS NOT A RACING FAN. To be fair I should probably say don't watch this with ANYONE who isn't a racing fan.
When it was made in the early 70s this was a great effort at making the best racing movie ever. If I were rating it then I would have given it a 4 or a 5. The annoying sound track, the silly and poorly developed side story about the fellow racer's widow and the lack of updated surround sound for the race sequences limits this movies appeal when viewed today.
Where the movie still succeeds is capturing the feel of a great racing venue on race day. If you have never been to a race you might not beleive all the layers that exist around the event. I think the movie also captures the interactions between drivers and teams without the theatrics of some later movies (think Days of Thunder).
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