motor racing – The Magnificent 60s

The Killers (1964) ****

Angie Dickinson (Jessica, 1962) is the standout as the cold-blooded double-crossing femme fatale in this slick tale of a double heist. Sure, Lee Marvin (The Professionals, 1966) attracted the bulk of the critical attention as the no-nonsense hitman and John Cassavetes (Machine Gun McCain, 1969) attempts to steal the show as the dupe, but Dickinson walks away with it. Although he makes a vicious entrance, Marvin really only tops and tails the movie.

Violence wasn’t the marketable commodity it proved later in the decade, and this was initially made with television in mind, so it’s surprising how stunning the brutality remains today. In the opening sequence, set in a home for the blind, hitmen Charlie (Lee Marvin) and Lee (Clu Gulager) knock around a sightless receptionist before moving on to shooting at point-blank range their victim, ex-racing driver Johnny North (John Cassavettes). But when they get to thinking why they were paid way over the odds to shoot North, they discover he was involved in a million-dollar heist and before you can say flashback we tumble into the story of how gangster’s moll Sheila (Angie Dickinson) lured him into participating in the robbery organized by boyfriend Jack (Ronald Reagan).

There’s nothing particularly complicated about Jack’s plan – hijacking a mail truck on a remote road – but the movie takes its sweet time getting there, focusing on Johnny’s racetrack antics and on Sheila nudging Johnny into the illegal kind of pole position. She’s pretty convincing as the all het-up lover to the extent of persuading Johnny to double-cross Jack but her convictions only run one way – to whatever best suits herself.

Eventually, it appears as if the million bucks has disappeared into thin air. Jack presents himself as an honest businessman, but Sheila only holds to the party line for as long as it takes the hitmen to dangle her from a fourth-storey window. But gangsters are rarely as amenable or as dumb as the schmucks they snooker, so Jack is more than able to take care of himself and his property (counting the loot and Sheila in that category).

There might be twists a-plenty but the main narrative thrust is which way will Sheila spin? Was she ever even in love with Johnny? Or having snared Johnny and then managed to convince him to double-cross Jack did she plan to run off with the money herself? Or was she going to double-cross him all along once his usefulness was over?

And even if her heart is in the right place, then that’s plain tragic, stuck with the lout, unable to break free, perhaps playing all the alpha males off against each other her only hope of maintaining her fine lifestyle while not ending up another casualty.

A surprising chunk of time is spent on the racecourse, not just building up the romance and endorsing Johnny’s driving skills, and as well as the tension of a specific race – and the possibility that too much loving could fatally damage the driver’s track ambitions – you are kept in some kind of narrative limbo as you keep wondering when the heck the killers are going to re-enter the equation.

Don (here credited as Donald) Siegel (Coogan’s Bluff, 1968) directs with considerable aplomb, especially as this carries a television-movie-sized budget and that he hadn’t had a stab at a decent picture since making his initial mark with Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). From the iconic opening shot of a pair of dark sunglasses to the sad greed-soaked finale, Siegel’s brilliant use of sound and movement plays in stark contrast to moments of stillness and silence. Throw in aerial tracking sequences, realistic race scenes, and one bold shot of a handgun being pointed at the audience (a similar shot in his Dirty Harry, 1971, ruffled more feathers and generated more critical note).

But the director’s cleverest ploy is to introduce the hitman, then dive elsewhere, leaving audiences begging for more. So it’s just as well that Angie Dickinson delivers in spades. You need to believe she could be as conniving as she is seductive for the entire tale to work. She is the linchpin far more than Lee Marvin.

And that’s to take nothing away from his performance, a far cry from the over-the-top villains of The Commancheros (1961) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), setting up the template for the later quiet-spoken thug of Point Blank (1967).

As highly watchable as this is, it wasn’t a career breakout for any concerned. Lee Marvin was just a supporting actor on Ship of Fools (1965) and far from first choice for Cat Ballou (1965), the movie that did make his name. Don Siegel wasn’t offered another movie for four years. Angie Dickinson tumbled down the credits, reduced to second female lead in The Art of Love (1965) and working in television or in movies as a supporting actor until the low-budget The Last Challenge/Pistolero of Red River (1967).

Ronald Reagan bowed out of the movies after this. Clu Gulager, who had a running role in The Virginian (1963-1968) only made three movies in the next seven years.

Gene Coon (Journey to Shiloh, 1968) adapted the short story by Ernest Hemingway which when previously filmed in 1946 marked the debut of Burt Lancaster with the sultry Ava Gardner as the femme fatale.

Striking, tense, and a must for fans of Dickinson, Marvin and Siegel.

Ford vs. Ferrari / Le Mans ’66 (2019) *****

So good that immediately on finishing a screening I pressed the re-watch button. But then this proved such compulsive viewing on original release that I saw it at the cinema four times in as many weeks. High-octane pedal-to-the-metal drama that easily takes the chequered flag from such illustrious predecessors as Grand Prix (1966), Le Mans (1971) and Rush (2103).

Astonishing racing footage is matched by a gripping narrative of ambition and revenge played out at the highest level by a quartet of terrific performances. Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts), humiliated by competitors in the domestic market and thwarted by his plan to take over Ferrari, decides to steal the Italian giant’s crown at Le Mans, the 24-hour race considered then the pinnacle of motor racing achievement rather than Grand Prix.

He hires Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon), the only American winner of Le Mans, who now runs a sports racing construction business and in turn he recruits maverick English driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale). Putting a spanner in the works at every possibly opportunity is oily Ford top executive Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) who constantly shifts the goalposts because he’s just mean that way or to win commercial advantage. Driven as much by personality conflict as anything else, the narrative pivots on Shelby shouldering the job of placating both big business and his maniac driver while outmanoeuvring all in sight to achieve his goals.

Jargon overload should be the kiss of death but that bold decision to involve the viewer in the minor and major technicalities of motor sport – proven and unproven techniques such as applying strips of paper to a car or battering the car boot with a hammer to increase its capacity and so comply with an arcane rule – pays off big time so that the picture can actually cover in greater depth the reality of running a racing team. Winning can be a matter of millimetres, tiny alterations amounting to massive differences during a race.

And it helps the narrative thrust that Le Mans is a single race rather Grand Prix or Nascar where over a season inevitably attention and excitement will sag. Other races are easily accommodated because they are vital to the end result, either in personal or technical terms. This is the ultimate battle against the odds, not just novice Americans taking on the big boys of Italy, but the ageing driver needing to prove himself again and again and the constructor sometimes giving in, sometimes not, to big business.

It’s pretty difficult to retain audience involvement with the competitors masked up but (as Top Gun: Maverick would later prove) little works better than having your half-hidden driver (or pilot) reveal his emotions by talking to the machine, providing a commentary on the action, though Miles’s favoured expression of “giddy-up” may not qualify as a technical term.

Interestingly enough, the principals are all indifferent, not to say occasionally shady, businessmen, Henry Ford II laboring in the shadow of his father, the repair shop run by Miles shut down by the taxman, Shelby selling the same car over and over to multiple buyers. But this is a richness of character rarely seen in action films, flaws usually restricted to sexual or alcoholic peccadilloes. Nor is there any sign of the old trope of wife/lover unable to watch drivers race, and marriages/relationships buckling under that pressure. Instead Miles’ wife Mollie (Catriona Balfe) rejoices in his skills while Henry Ford II clearly has a string of lovers.

The contrast between the romance and the reality of speed is no better expressed than when Ford is taken for a spin by Shelby or between the devil-may-care and the safe than when Shelby takes control of an aeroplane.

So many internal obstacles, Beebe’s manoeuvrings for a start, remain to be overcome never mind complications on the track that it is pretty much one twist after another with one awful ironic twist left for the climax of the race.

Christian Bale (Thor: Love and Thunder, 2022) picked up most of the acting plaudits, nominated for a Golden Globe, but I thought Matt Damon, Tracy Letts and Josh Lucas ran him close. Damon (The Last Duel, 2021) delivers a restrained performance that occasionally cuts loose to reveal the carefully camouflaged daredevil. Letts (Lady Bird, 2017), better known to me as a playwright, brings the right mixture of arrogance and power. One-time matinee idol Josh Lucas (A Beautiful Mind, 2001) eases back on the shit-eating grin and is one of the most self-righteous business bad guys you could encounter.

Sterling turns also from Jon Bernthal (Those Who Wish Me Dead, 2021) as Lee Iacocca (who later wrote a book about brilliant he was, although there’s little evidence of that here); Catriona Balfe (Belfast, 2021) and Noah Jupe (A Quiet Place, 2018) as her son. Special mentions for Ray Mackinnon (News of the World, 2020) as Shelby’s number two and Remo Girone (The Right to Happiness, 2021) as Enzo Ferrari.

Distinguished career as director James Mangold has enjoyed – from Walk the Line (2005) and 3.10 to Yuma (2007) to Logan (2007) – this has to be the peak, brilliantly bringing the human side into a movie that could easily have concentrated on the machines. He drew on an equally brilliant screenplay by Jez Butterworth (Spectre, 2015), John-Henry Butterworth (Edge of Tomorrow, 2014) and Jason Keller (Escape Plan, 2013).

Viva Las Vegas (1964) / Love in Las Vegas ***

Screen chemistry, a great racing sequence and some good songs set alight this typical Presley vehicle. Unlike previous recording giants Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley had not made much attempt to be anything other than himself on screen, nor elevated his status by taking on adaptations of hit Broadway shows, so his movies tended to need a certain extra something to set them apart, if only from his other pictures – he was churning them out at the rate of three or four a year. The certain something, a whole bag of je ne sais quoi, came in the shape of Ann-Margret.

Garage mechanic Lucky (Elvis Presley), a racing driver wannabe, gets the hots for Rusty (Ann-Margret) after he tunes up her car. Chasing her to Las Vegas where she is a swimming instructor rather than a hot-shot performer, he takes a job as a hotel waiter. He has a rival, both in driving and romance, in Count Emo Mancini (Cesare Danova). Initially, Rusty brushes Lucky and even when they get closer she fears getting too close since the consequences of falling in love with a man who chases danger are obvious.

There’s no danger of a picture like this straying from the most obvious path and helping fill in the screen time are nods to tourism, excerpts from Vegas shows, some water ski-ing and a helicopter ride over the Boulder Dam (Rusty supplying an earnest educational lecture). There is some lackluster comedy and not much in the way of subplot.

The race is well done for the times (i.e. pre-Grand Prix, 1966) with plenty of crashes, and it looks realistic enough although probably the cars were speeded up in the cameras.

But the pairing is dynamite. Rusty, all sizzle, smoky eyes and pout, dances Presley off the screen. She has the curves and she has the moves. Not a great deal of acting is required by either – they were in the early throes of an affair – but Rusty, a homely girl after all, keeps her sexuality in check long enough to hook her suitor.

The title song – shot in one take – is a winner but what lingers in the memory is the dazzling choreography (involving multiple camera) for Lucky’s dance numbers. And Lucky dancing. Only so many ways to say that that woman can shake her booty, but she shakes it in so many different ways the outcome is sensational.

But in the end just as dancing in an Ann-Margret picture was never enough to hit the box office heights so singing, except in his first screen forays, was not enough to create the longest queues for a Presley picture. Although previous Presley movies had featured the likes of Ursula Andress (Fun in Acapulco, 1963) and Stella Stevens (Girls! Girls! Girls!, 1963) none had the impact of Ann-Margret.

Perhaps fearful that audiences might respond more to his co-star, Ann-Margret’s musical contribution was limited. The pair performed a duet on one number, “The Lady Loves Me” – two other duets were recorded but dropped from the film – and she contributed two solo songs. By comparison, Presley was accorded eight solos. The theory being, I suppose, that audiences had come to hear Presley sing. And that might have been correct, in theory, but once the public saw Ann-Margret on screen they would surely have been calling for more.

It was both the shortest film of Presley’s career and the highest grossing. While Ann-Margret was entitled to have her name above the title – not equal billing as some would have it since his name came first (equal would have put them in alphabetical order) – some cinemas took matters into their own hands and on the marquees, over which studios could exert no contractual control, put Ann-Margret’s name first.

Perhaps more interesting was the question of career development. Presley kept on doing the same old stuff until Charro (1969) by which point it was too late to save his career. Within a year, however, she was moving on to more serious roles such as Once a Thief (1965) and The Cincinnati Kid (1965).

Taking the helm was veteran George Sidney who had directed Ann-Margret in Bye Bye Birdie (1962) and was also responsible for Pal Joey (1957), Show Boat (1951) and Anchors Aweigh (1945). He could have done this kind of picture in his sleep, so all credit to him that he brought it to such life.