Word: prix
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hollywood hasn't changed much in 30 years, and Grand Prix is pure formula scenes of racing car driving are alternated with scenes of the drivers' personal lives, culminating in a climactic last race which neatly resolves the conflicts of both the professional (who wins the championship) and personal elements in the script...
Given that script formula is a standard and perhaps valid dramatic device to facilitate the presentation of exciting material, Grand Prix's evil is not so much that it is an old-fashioned formula picture, but that it bungles the job miserably and wallows for 2 1/2 of its 3 hours in its own plot complications. Arthur spends too much time on his dreary characters, barely managing to solve their problems and tie-up the loose ends for the finish. He introduces an English driver (Brian Bedford) who competes neurotically to break the track record of his dead brother...
...Grand Prix's mediocrity is basically a consequence of poor photography and editing. Certainly some of the isolated shots in the racing sequences are excellent, a triumph of MGM's technical facilities. But as soon as Grand Prix leaves the track, it becomes an ugly film. There are eight directors in Hollywood who know how to use wide screen. They are George Cukor, Nicholas Ray, Otto Preminger, Douglas Sirk, John Ford, Fritz Lang, Frank Tashlin, and Budd Boetticher. Not John Frankenheimer...
...employs a split-screen technique, puttting two or more different images on the screen simultaneously, separated by black dividing lines. This enables him to avoid the challenge of coming to grips with Super Panavision. Unable to put shots together with any art or precision, he resorts to tricks; Grand Prix is filled with multiple image shots and dream shots done with prisms. His over-all use of trick photography is never relevant, always self-conscious and arbitrary. Grand Prix really has no color either, only color tone carefully inserted by the laboratories, probably when they discovered that no one involved...
What finally cripples Grand Prix, really pushing it over the edge, is that it views the world of racing so much from the outside, it fails to present any realistic or interesting detail about the profession. In a three-hour film about racing, the name Ferrari is the only noun, proper noun, and brand name appearing that has anything to do with cars. Frequently, Frankenheimer fails to establish the location of his characters, or which Grand Prix we happen to be watching. The characters never talk about racing realistically, or speak about it on a technical plane. To them, Arthur...