David Elliott
Flix Nosh is a personal movie menu, new
each Friday.
Note: Nosh 176 will appear on Friday, Dec. 6.
APPETIZER (Review: Ford v
Ferarri)
Ford v Ferrari
Back in the Sixties era there was a virtual traffic
jam of racing car movies: Howard Hawks’s Red
Line 7000 (1965), a hot-tires rally starring young James Caan; Grand Prix (1966), a Formula One
spin-around and carousel of stars (Garner! Montand! Mifune! Saint!); Winning (1969), with actor and actual
racer Paul Newman seeking Indy 500 glory, and Le Mans (1971) about the 24-hour French race, starring speed nut
Steve “Bullitt” McQueen. I believe
the generous term for those pictures is “road kill.” Apart from some robust
racing, they were about as dull as oil-clotted dirt. Watching, I looked back
rather fondly to Kirk Douglas in The
Racers (1955), if not to Clark Gable’s jalopy To Please a Lady (1950).
Even ladies should be pleased with Ford v Ferrari (v as in “versus”),
probably the best professional racing movie ever made as entertainment. Partly that’s because
Caitriona Balfe is not just hangin’ around frettin’ for her man, race driver
Ken Miles (Christian Bale). Balfe, the beautiful Outlanders TV star, is Ken’s wife Mollie: English, bright, caring
but not coddling. When she angrily lays down some road rubber of her own, he
gets scared. A real piston, very pedal to the rebel, Ken is weary of his sports
car repair shop. Big action returns when hard-driving auto dreamer Carroll
Shelby lures Miles into a project sparked by Lee Iacocca: to make Ford sexy by
challenging Ferrari’s dominance of prestige racing. This led team Ford to the
1966 prize at the sport’s supremely testing ordeal, Le Mans.
The movie’s strategic core is the fast and sometimes
furious bond of insolent Miles and supple, never quite corporate Shelby (Matt
Damon, as car-grooved as he was into space gear for The Martian). The mix of Damon’s spunky, all-American grit and
Bale’s feisty, fish-n-chips Brit is infallible (without getting numbingly
macho). Other winners are ace Noah Jupe as Ken’s son Peter, who loves cars but
adores his dad, and lean Ray McKinnon as the highly overhauled GT40’s
mechanical wizard, Phil Remington. The casting is terrific.
My friend Larry Marks, once a Formula One mechanic,
alerted me to the story’s nips and tucks of docu-factuals (the race’s finishing
twist can still cause rancorous debate, and Ferrari was not deeply competitive
in ’66 after its best driver, John Surtees, quit). Between bursts of bravura
road action, not too customized by special effects, FvF has the best view of corporate auto politics since Tucker (and many laps beyond The Betsy). Jon Bernthal is sly riser
Iacocca, and Josh Lucas is Ford honcho Leo Beebe, frantic to tame hot-doggin’
Miles and Shelby. At the apex is the contrast of Old World master Enzo Ferrari
(Remo Girone) and big Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts), who is thrilled by his fear
when Shelby hot-rods him in their new car. Of course there is an American bias.
Ferrari is called a “greasy wop,” but there’s no mention that Henry Ford (the
First) was a rabid anti-Semite who despised labor unions.
Director James Mangold (Logan, Walk the Line) pumps surefire adrenaline, balancing family,
buddy, auto-biz and racing scenes expertly. Often drenched in light,
decal-plated with sparkling colors, FvF
evokes a mid-century America of open horizons, bold assertion and runaway
speed. We clobbered the Axis, now let’s flatten
those Italian car snobs! This gleaming, gung-ho machine of a movie might be
just the antidote to the divisive acids of 2019. Most Americans are still car
crazy, and maybe for a few weeks Trumpies and anti-Trumpers can come together.
Hey, brother, pour me a bowl of Pennzoil, with some Chianti on the
side. Alas, rumors of a coming Edsel
v Yugo are very premature.
SALAD (A List)
Good Mileage:
12 Cool and Hot Car Movies
More or less in preferred order (with star/director);
American
Graffiti (Richard Dreyfuss/George
Lucas), The Driver (Ryan
O’Neal/Walter Hill), Bonnie and Clyde
(Warren Beatty/Arthur Penn), Senna
(Ayrton Senna/Asif Kapadia), Bullitt (Steve
McQueen, Peter Yates), The Italian Job
(Mark Wahlberg/F. Gary Gray), Genevieve
(Kay Kendall, Henry Cornelius), Mad Max:
Fury Road (Charlize Theron/George Miller) /Duel (Dennis Weaver/Steven Spielberg), Vanishing Point (Barry Newman/Richard Sarafian), Death Proof (Kurt Russell/Quentin
Tarantino) and Two-Lane Blacktop
(Warren Oates/Monte Hellman).
WINE (Vin Orsonaire
de Chateau Welles)
Surely
the finest movie speech about cars is in Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), after pioneer car-maker Eugene
Morgan is insultingly baited at a 1905 family dinner by callow, shallow George (Tim
Holt). Joseph Cotten speaks with elegant, measured dignity:
“I’m
not so sure George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward,
they may be a step backward in civilization. It may be that they won’t add to
the beauty of the world or the life of men’s souls. I’m not sure. But
automobiles have come. And almost all outward things are going to be different
because of what they bring. They’re going to alter war and going to alter
peace. And I think men’s minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because
of automobiles. It may be that George is
right. It may be that in 10 or 20 years from now, I shouldn’t be able to defend
the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with George that automobiles had
no business to be invented.” (And now, 77 years after the film’s arrival?)
ENTRÉE (Starlight Rising)
Director
Stanley Donen “could pop pizzazz. Small, cocky, alert as a ferret, he had
survived Gene Kelly’s armored ego and, irking Cole Porter, had filched ‘Be a
Clown’ from The Pirate for revamping
as ‘Make ’Em Laugh’ in Singin’ in the
Rain (for which he knew exactly how to turn sound’s traumatic arrival into
pure joy). He placed some pearls in the corn barn of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, transplanted brilliantly The Pajama Game and preserved Gwen
Verdon’s wowness in Damn Yankees.
Some later limps (Staircase, Lucky Lady,
The Little Prince) can be quietly forgiven. Donen’s Audrey Hepburn trilogy
– Funny Face, Charade, Two for the Road –
are unique entertainments. His career-prize Oscar topped the 1998 show when, at
73, he tap-danced ‘Cheek to Cheek.” (From the Hepburn/Funny Face chapter of my book Starlight
Rising: Acting Up in Movies, available from Amazon, Nook and Kindle.)
DESSERT (An Image)
A fine movie
image is more than a still, it’s a distillation.
American Graffiti, a great car movie, is surely the best film for Candy
Clark (as Debbie) and Charlie Martin Smith (as Toad). (Universal Pictures 1973;
director George Lucas, d.p. Jan D’Alquen and Ron Eveslage.)
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