Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans

The title of John McKenna and Gabriel Clarke’s film nicely describes its two main themes – the story of actor Steve McQueen’s  obsession with competitive motor sports and that of the troubled production that resulted in the 1971 film Le Mans. Although a little too concerned with eulogizing McQueen it is a well-assembled film  that in the usual manner combines present-day interviews with some of the key players involved including Steve’s wife at the time and  his son with plentiful archival material including audio of McQueen recorded shortly before his death (he died of cancer in 1980 at the age of 50) reflecting on his experience.

After the success of Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair both which released in 1968, McQueen was the Number One box office draw and Hollywood’s reigning sex symbol. He decided to parlay his use his clout to produce film about his first love, motor car racing, and in particular the 24-hour endurance race, Le Mans.  He set up his own production company and started filming the 1970 race. The fact that he didn’t have script didn’t phase him as he figured that could be fixed later.  Big mistake. As McQueen became increasingly imperious his director John Sturges, who had guided the actor in his breakthrough hits The Great Escape (1963) and The Magnificent Seven (1960) walked away and as the budget spiralled to the heavens the film’s financiers removed McQueen from his producer role.  Adding to the debacle, his wife left him after she learned that he was playing the field with breathtaking success and there was a nasty accident in which one of drivers recreating the race scenes lost his leg. Unsurprisingly, on release the film was praised for its racing segments but it was impossible to deny the fact that as a drama it was a nullity (direction was credited to television director, Lee H. Katzin, and the script to Harry Kleiner who had co-written Bullitt).

As a study of a vanity project gone wrong the film presents, almost needless to say, a fascinating story although McKenna and Clarke, who received the cooperation of McQueen's family, tend to be too keen to present McQueen as a misunderstood genius rather than a man who paid the price for indulging his over-weening ego. Perhaps this is just as well as it leaves us to draw our own conclusions (and an evidently contrite McQueen never raced again). Fortunately McQueen’s downfall was short-lived as Sam Peckinpah and Ali McGraw were on the horizon with The Getaway (1972) a combination that would no doubt have gone a long way to expunging the bad taste of McQueen's unhappy experience in the driver's seat.

 

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