Rendezvous in Paris by Claude Lelouch.
On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris, early in the morning.
The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur. No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.
The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 km/h (86.99 mph) in some stretches. The footage reveals him running real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.
Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch
was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground. It is a classic. Turn on your sound and enjoy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqHrCLt3Geo
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Rendezvous in Paris
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2 comments:
The driver was obviously eager to get his enhancement cream.
Okay, friend, I have to issue some corrections to your precis. You've published the street-legend version, which is understandable given that the real story has to be cobbled together with some recondite web searches, while the legend had years to grow as Lelouch wouldn't say much about it. Here are the corrections.
Lelouch did the driving. Nice work. He drove a late '70s very top of the line Mercedes with a steadicam bolted to the front (there are pictures of it on the web). It was his own car, and the pliant suspension helped the filming. The Mercedes, a three-speed automatic, didn't have the growl and shifting that you hear in the movie, so he overdubbed a Ferrari, shifting at the right points. He used, I believe, only two lookouts on the entire course, one of whom had a faulty walki-talki, as it turned out. Very unique movie.
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