Reviews

If you are a car racing fan, you'll love this movie automatically. If you are a cinephile, you will appreciate it technically. If you are a writer, you will spit on the script. No matter.

"Titanic" wasn't about that pathetic love triangle story. It was a vehicle to get you into the night the great ship was lost. Grand Prix uses a relatively lame storyline about the private lives of the drivers to get you into their circle. I think it's all just a part of putting the audience into the car.

And I DO mean the car. Not a green screen half car and a CGI effect. A car. Several cars. At high speed, with cameras mounted and actors trained to actually drive them. No phony backgrounds projected. Watch NASCAR or INDY coverage on the SPEED Channel any weekend and you will see on-board shots from vidcams in real time. We're used to that now. Prior to "Grand Prix", there was NO such thing. Grand Prix stands with "Bullitt" and "The French Connection" as the greatest "cut to the chase" movies of all time.

Nothing is done like this any more. If you want to see the masters at work, rent these movies. This is pure analog fun at it's best, and it just doesn't get better with the switch to digits, because the thrill leaves along with the risk factor.

So tolerate the maudlin romantic claptrap. Laugh as you watch some of the stars of Formula 1 racing standing around grimacing into the camera at the infidelities of the British driver's wife (it is a riot), but stand and applaud in awe at the astounding achievement of John Frankenheimer and company at shooting a fictional Grand Prix season against the background of an actual Grand Prix season. It is awesome and worthy of your viewing time, even though the basic story falls short of Oscar caliber scripting.

I looked over all the reviews here and so many people just LOVED this film, it was so FUNNY! What could possibly tie these reviewers together. Surely the film is too old to have the studio bribe them. They can't ALL be the writers of this whimsical farce, can they? What could it be? Then I saw it! They were all kids when The Money Pit was released. They remember their hand-clapping joy at watching a bathtub fall through several floors or seeing a staircase collapse. They were kids and kids love slapstick. Adults used to love slapstick, back when film was young and Buster Keaton was a genius.

This contrived Hollyweird potboiler is a throwback to the studio contract player days when they had to regularly crank out formulaic drivel for the masses. You know, like TV. What a piece of unwatchable crap. What a star-studded lineup of talent (look at the credits) gone to waste. What a chance to do something better with your time, like scoop out the litter box and wash the kitchen trash pail; something you can actually enjoy doing.

Matt Damon must have been doing a wonderful job portraying Tom Ripley because, after a half hour or so, I thoroughly hated him and hated this movie with an actual feeling of violence in my heart, as if I had been viewing a snuff film. I got up, leaving my wife with the other couple we were spending an evening with, and walked out of the theater, cleared my head of the images still stuck in it, then walked into a different theater in the multiplex that was showing "Galaxy Quest" and happily let this simple comedy wash my brain of any remnants of "The Talented Mr. Ripley." I can name on one hand, with a finger left to spare, all the movies I have walked out on. This one stands out above the rest. (The Money Pit, Blind Date, and Lost in America are the others. I would have walked out of Room With A View, but I was asleep.)

To this day, RWAV draws reverence as a seminal work, even being studied in film classes. It certainly broke many rules of film-making. Hardly any scene moved the plot along. Actually, there was no plot. The main action revolved around one chance encounter. The film favors style over substance and becomes not much more than a snapshot of an era. Think of one of those early Edison films; four minutes observing a Manhattan street corner in 1890. Fascinating, but tedious at an hour and a half.

Merchant Ivory are to be commended for what is probably a very faithful depiction of the Edwardian era, but modern audiences have simply seen too much and lived too fast to accept the ponderously slow pace of this 100 year old lifestyle. Pity, really. I pity myself for being unable to truly jump back into these slow times and endlessly fascinate on the minutiae of one young woman's romantic notions. The slowdown would probably do me good. As it was, it gave me about an hour's fitful sleep in an uncomfortable theater seat. Kudos to those who felt invigorated and restored by this work. I always thought I was one of your kind. I find now though, that I am a hopelessly modern man; a product of my age.

I had the distinct pleasure of being on location as this film was shot. This was the first real movie that I saw being photographed at close range and it was big. John Huston directing Marlon Brando right there in front of me. Brian Keith and Julie Harris were there, too. Elizabeth Taylor was not there, at the Nassau Community College Campus where I was a student, a former airbase that still had the military buildings. All Liz's scenes were filmed in Rome.

Watching the filming, I had no idea of the depth of darkness in the script. When I viewed the finished film I was amazed at the rich tapestry of fetish-like material tapped into by the story. Some of the deliberate actions of the characters encompassed fantasy scenes seen all over the Internet today, but were strictly taboo in 1967. Not for me, of course. I had spent a youth reading psychologist's case histories and found the deviancy fascinating.

Elizabeth Taylor carries on with Brian Keith in front of Brando, openly cuckolding him. At one point, after he has whipped her horse, she whips him soundly. Brando picks up common items dropped by his sexual love interest, Robert Forster, and fingers them, sniffs them and caresses these inanimate talismans. Meanwhile, Forster is secretly sneaking into Taylor's bedroom to caress the contents of her underwear and stocking drawer. Julie Harris mutilates her own breasts with a scissor and the only sane appearing cast member seems to be Brian Keith.

I think this film flopped commercially because it went places America wasn't ready to explore. The sexual revolution was only just getting underway. We weren't looking to celebrate insanity under the old repressive state. We were looking to be free, man. This film would have done well in the eighties or maybe the nineties, but, by then, it's stars would have been too old to carry it off.

This was a brave venture. History may yet reward it. And yes, there is nudity, if a young Robert Forster, riding truly bareback, delights you. I'm just grateful that I got to see a bit of the big bad Hollywood, up close and personal. I'll always have that.

This film, if taken standing alone, that is, without the horrifying context in which it was born but as just another plot in a million plots, is really a mediocre "B" movie potboiler. It's focus is Carolyn McCarthy, the wife of a man slain in a brutal random shooting incident on a Long Island Railroad commuter train. Her son was with the father and was also shot, but recovered from his wounds. Mrs. McCarthy went on to win a seat in Congress with a one plank platform on gun control.

Here is my problem with this film. This is a story that took place on Long Island. Six New Yorkers were killed on this black day. Many more were injured. This case shook the local population to its core. It could have happened in any suburban bedroom community in America, but it didn't. It happened here.

It most certainly was not a Canadian story. Canada has very little gun violence. It's black population did not originate as Canadian slaves. "Black Rage" as a legal defense is never employed as it was by the counsel for the shooter in this case. This was decidedly an American story, tied to the urban and suburban population of Americas most vital city.

The people of Long Island have a big stake in the movie industry. Many of us work in it. Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, who was employed as a paid advisor on the film, and whose constituency could have used the work, travelled to Canada all star struck that Hollywood was paying attention to her instead of making some deals that would have put the interiors into Kaufman Astoria or Silvercup Studios and the exteriors right onto the tracks of the actual railroad where it all occurred. All of this was possible, and she had the clout to do it.

When you watch this movie and you see the train go by, note that "VIA" on the sides of the cars stands for VIA Rail Canada. That train was one of the first vehicles to take our production jobs out of our homeland in search of Canadian government subsidized labor.

Since then, hundreds of films have followed the tracks across the border. New York ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani did not lift a finger to keep the making of "Rudy!" in New York. So scenes of one of America's most fateful days, 9/11/01, were shot in Canada. Oh, Canada! Oh well.

Me, I'm working on a new production about fur trappers in a battle with the mounties far up in the Canadian wilderness. I'm planning to shoot in Brooklyn. Why not? It's got trees!

Chris Zizzo// Christopher G. Zizzo Film & Videotape