Le Mans (1971)

By all accounts, Steve McQueen was an ardent motor sport enthusiast - and that certainly comes across in this almost documentary style depiction of the legendary Le Mans race. There is a story, well more of a theme, but it's so peripheral as to be tangential to the real purpose of the film - a showcase of the fast and furious race, complete with some spectacular (even now) in-car coverage of the races, plenty of crashes, near misses and you can almost smell the fumes of the cars as they race past. There's no doubt the photography is superb, and the Michel Legrand score instantly recognisable. The rest of it, though, is pretty unremarkable. There is a paucity of dialogue that makes any investment by us in the characters pretty difficult, but I'm not sure Lee Katzin (or McQueen) really had characterisations in mind when they devised this adrenalin rush of a feature. It's an authentic looking and sounding delight for petrol-heads all over, but as a piece of drama it falls well short. A cynical person might call it a vanity project!