Insane 8-minute drive through Paris for a romantic rendezvous
"C'était un rendez-vous" ("It Was an Appointment") is a short film by Claude Lelouch (1976) that has become a legend among car and movie lovers alike.
It is illegal, uncompromising, highly dangerous documentary, shot in one take, without any special effects... as the director starts his car early in the morning and races through Paris with complete disregard for traffic lights, one-way streets, cars, buses and pedestrians - to meet with his wife 8 minutes later in one intensely romantic ending.
Make sure to check out the comments at imdb and the movie's trivia page.
The length of the film (and of the race) was limited only by the short capacity of the reel of film - 9 minutes. The soundtrack opens with a beating heart and proceeds to sing the exhilarating song of the Ferrari engine: some people call it the best soundtrack ever created.
(image credit: Les Films 13)
Claude Lelouch drove his own "Mercedes" with the camera attached to its front bumper, reaching speeds of 150 km/h (this page gives a speed breakdown) - but then the ride was repeated a week later on Ferrari to use the sound of its engine for soundtrack.
Lelouch was arrested after the first showing of the movie, and so the footage spent many years underground, and only recently was re-released on DVD. Also, in 1992 Pyramid Film and Video released a low-quality tape priced at fifty dollars, making it one of the most expensive videos to obtain.
The Route.
Starting at Porte Dauphine, through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur. Going wrong way on the one-way narrow streets of Montmartre, dodging buses and garbage trucks, this is a hair-raising ride even at 5:30 in the morning. (no streets were closed, because Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit). Just like Jeremy Clarkson once said, "It makes Bullitt look like a cartoon".
Brian Hendrix has created a "mash-up" of the movie with the Google Maps of Paris, where you can track the route synchronized with a video: Click here for this compelling experience.
The Cars of "C'était un rendez-vous"
Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9
Not an ordinary car, by any means. Quite the opposite: one of the most extraordinary and refined cars ever made. It was director's own car, chosen for its smooth suspension (providing a steady camera image). Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 was produced between 1975 and 1981 in extremely limited numbers, sporting a revolutionary suspension technology and handling that allowed to "toss it about like a Mini." The powerful 6.9-liter V8 engine achieved an output of 286 hp and assured a top speed of 150 mph (241 km/h).
The price was just as extra-ordinary. At the time when luxury limos went for about US$16,000, the 6.9 listed for around $40,000, more than most Rolls-Royces. The interior was refined, but somewhat understated for such a pricey vehicle:
"Car and Driver" magazine calls it "the greatest Mercedes-Benz ever built"... Director John Frankenheimer used a 6.9 in a chase scene in his 1998 motion picture "Ronin".
1965 Ferrari 275 GTB
(images credit: S. Morliere)
The story behind the film
The whole thing was done on a whim, after shooting something else with a car-mounted camera, and using a leftover magazine of film.
From the review in November 2003 issue of "Automobile":
"His inspiration came when he found himself running late for an appointment and drove across Paris like a madman to be on time. The idea came to life in 1976, after Lelouch had finished directing Si c'était à refaire (If I Had to Do It All Over Again). At the end of the shoot, he had nine minutes or so of film left over and some time before he had to turn in his equipment. He had enough footage remaining for one take.
City officials rejected Lelouch's application to close the necessary streets. Undaunted, he decided to do it without permission and take his chances, reducing the risks by shooting at 5:30 on a morning in August, the month when almost all of Paris shuts down for vacation. The most dangerous part of the route would be the ticket-window area at the Louvre, where there was zero visibility at the courtyard's exit onto the Rue de Rivoli. An assistant, Elie Chouraqui, stood watch over the exit with a walkie-talkie...
The shoot went off as planned. With no signal from Chouraqui as he approached the exit of the Louvre's courtyard, Lelouch floored it and roared through the gates. After the rendezvous, Lelouch headed back to collect Chouraqui and found him fiddling with the walkietalkie. "What's up?" Lelouch asked. "It's this piece of crap!" replied the assistant, pointing to the walkie-talkie. "It broke down at the start of the take!"
Lelouch confessed to being the driver: "Of course. People were exhilarated by the action but morally outraged by the method. I can't say I blame them. It was my film, and I was fully prepared to take the risks." He was also arrested for his exploits. "They took a look at the film, and the chief of police called me in;" Lelouch recounted. "He read me a list of all the offenses I'd committed. It was never-ending. When he finished, he gave me a black look and asked for my driver's license. He contemplated it for a few moments, then gave it back with a large smile on his face. He said, "I promised I would take your license, but I didn't say for how long." I was stupefied. It was a symbolic punishment. Then he added, 'My children love your little film.'"
The Making of the "Rendez-Vous":
(courtesy http://www.axe-net.be/rdv/)
Finishing the interview, Claude Lelouch said: "Yes, I was scared. I was scared of running out of film."
All legality and moral considerations aside (don't be a fool to try it yourself), the film poses a tintilating question: what would YOU do if you really wanted to meet someone, in the name of love?
Paris looked so quiet and deserted back then... Even at that time of day, nowadays this stunt would be impossible to perform. There's ALWAYS too much traffic to do something like this now.
Of course he was a selfish, reckless bastard. But sometimes, one needs to be... ;-)
In the interview he talks about the one turn he aborted (at Rue Lepic) because another garbage lorry was in the way...you can notice it in the film at about 6:15. He had to divert through the Cemetery and was afraid of running out of film. Amazing stuff...j'aime Paris!
There's a pretty good quicktime version of the film here, as well as lots of good info on the facts about the filming, as revealed by director Claude Lelouch himself.
The British army used pink for desert patrol vehicles during the Second World War and continued to do so for some time after. Not just slightly pink, either, but /very/ pink. They were known as Pink Panthers.
One of the primary objectives of dazzle camouflage was to prevent effective use of optical rangefinders. It was also important to confuse observers as to course and speed so many camo schemes incorporated false bow waves or false bow and stern outlines. As an aside, sometimes camouflage can be too good. The multi color scheme developed for the Denny Steam Gunboats in WWII was so good that two gunboats ran into each other while on patrol because neither one saw the other.
Pink is a popular color in the military. Robyn Miller, co-creator of the game Myst, has a truly wonderful article on other pink military vehicles here. http://tinselman.typepad.com/tinselman/2006/04/war_pink_peace.html
I need to repaint my bedroom, and Medium Lavender Mauve Grey looks just the ticket. Hurrah for battleships.
Bedrooms aside, dazzle camouflage actually turns out to have been pretty effective, as slow joe crow points out. It was meant to confuse rather than conceal, and did its job very well. (After all - we did *win*.) Many of those patterns created one or more fake bows, which confused submarine periscopes trying to aim for the ship's weakest spot. I do wonder whether the general designs chosen would have been different if the prevailing artistic movement at the time hadn't been modernism (and if you look at paintings by people like Bawden and Ravilious you can absolutely see where those boldly hatched patterns came from aesthetically).
They will definitely have a hard time being hit by torpedoes.
BTW, we have received some emails pointing out that we misidentified the HMS Argus as the HMS Sargus. I'm sticking to my theory that this, too, was part of the camo.
Avi, the picture caption that reads 'The HMS "Sargus"' should say 'HmS Argus'. HMS, standing for His (or Her) Majesty's Ship, does not have 'the' in front of it.
Not sure if that last comment was meant as a contradiction, but just to clarify: no-one would say "the Her Majesty's Ship Whatever visited port today", and even if "popular usage" saw a lot of people abusing the language in that way, it would not suddenly make it acceptable :-P
I always thought that dazzleflage was pretty cool to look at and something that might serve a useful purpose today. Watching a program on sharks a while back some scientists conducted an experiment where they tossed two pieces of wood, one shaped like a seal and one a square. Naturally the shark attacked the seal shape but pretty much ignored the square because it didn't look natural. Imagine if you were to do a dazzle pattern on a wetsuit and/or the bottom of a surfboard and actually make it visible when viewed from below I wonder if it would help to prevent surfers and snorklers from being mistaken for seals by sharks since their outlines would be completely broken up and look completely unnatural to a hungry shark.
I don;t think you did all your homework on this one. The British Admiraly studied Dazzle painting after WW1 and was unable to find one incident in which is helped throw off a U boat torp. Thus they declared it a failure.
However, it had an interesting secondary impact in that it provided a major morale boost to the sailors on the ship (thinking they were safer). Thus they kept doing it for that reason alone.
So, no. The official Royal Navy report says that it was NOT effective.
Not entirely true, Jon. The Brits couldn’t prove it worked, but they found it didn’t make the vessels more of a target, either, so as it didn’t do any harm, and could be said to be a morale booster, as you mention, it was kept. Proving its effectiveness was always going to be difficult though – the idea was to prevent or delay an attack in the first place, not throw the submarine’s aim off. Since a vessel would have had no idea it was being targeted until it saw torpedo tracks in the water, the Admiralty could only measure reports of actual attacks, not attempts.
Conversely, the US Navy decided Dazzle WAS effective!
An additional comment. Warfare did not originally mean concealment. Both land and naval forces clearly announced their presence before battle by flags and banners. Only after trench warfare became the order of the day, did camouflage become standard. Compare any Civil War Movie with any WWII movie. One has armies marching in formation towards each other, the other has small groups sneaking up on each other. Different uniforms for different tactics. Ditto for Naval forces. Zouave units were formed in honor of Algerian infantry which had covered itself with glory. There were many Zouave units in the Civil War on both sides. They were considered elite units, much like paratroop or special forces,wearing berets rather than helmets. When weapons became long range so warfare was no longer face to face, camouflage became important. As mentioned, the dazzle pattern also confused range finding, there was no radar or sonar, only optical range finders. So correct focus was very important, but the dazzle made it difficult to focus correctly making accurate range estimates impossible. By WWII, 16 inch naval guns had a range of 25 miles. The visual horizon is 6 to 12 miles, depending on how high above sea level you are.
YouTube offers up some additional Southwest Airling commercials worth the watch, but the final word on host stewardess attire would have to be SARSair.com
Thanks for heads up on this, retrokatze. The offer comes from reputable ad network, so we have no reason to suspect otherwise, but we'll look into this.
That video is directly from Planet Earth, Episode 1 - Pole to Pole, and is one of the many species of bird of paradise. It's a great miniseries (11-episode documentary) by Discovery Channel and BBC.
Those russian PBF masks crack me up - it's like they deliberately went out to design something more half-life than half life!
They do look very mickey mouse with a helmet on tho ... and those masks are available on ebay so you can too! Handy for fancy dress or just for nipping to the shops after the bomb drops ;)
Those St. Petersburg cars are having to deal with ice in many of the crashes; you can tell by the glide. However, many of them are also driving too fast for the conditions. "Drive as though you have no brakes— because you don't."
Hawai'ian people worship Pele, (pronounced [ˈpɛlɛ] in Hawaiian, /ˈpeɪleɪ/ PAY-lay in English) is the goddess of fire, lightning, dance, volcanoes and violence. She is a daughter of Haumea and Kane Milohai, and her home is believed to be the fire pit, Halema'uma'u crater, at the summit caldera of Kīlauea, one of the Earth's most and continuously active volcanoes; but her domain encompasses all volcanic activity on the Big Island of Hawai'i.
There are several traditional legends associated with Pele in Hawaiian mythology.
One thing never to expect of the Hawai'ian people, Move your BBQ if you have those fake volcanic looking rocks in them. They have a taboo against moving the volcanic rock period. (I know, was stationed at Hickam and could NOT get my grill moved with the fake lava rocks in it.) :D
"QUANTUM SHOT" #316
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12 Comments:
And now check out the Snow Patrol Video for „Open your eyes“...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l5ipSldZNI
Just thought of this movie three days ago for the first time in years! Found it on YouTube and was going to blog about it, but you beat me to it!
"It was my film, and I was fully prepared to take the risks"
Very kind of him to assume anyone he could have hit was prepared to take his risks with him.
In the name of Love?
Well, I'd call them and tell them I was gonna be 5 minutes late...
As an automobile enthusiast and a lover of my wife; that was and is one of the most beautiful films that I have seen and heard in my life.
Paris looked so quiet and deserted back then... Even at that time of day, nowadays this stunt would be impossible to perform. There's ALWAYS too much traffic to do something like this now.
Of course he was a selfish, reckless bastard. But sometimes, one needs to be... ;-)
For a fascinating article on a cross-USA drive inspired by this movie, see
http://www.wired.com/cars/coolwheels/magazine/15-11/ff_cannonballrun
31 hrs, 4min at >90mpg AVERAGE speed.
Raises the same kinds of ethical questions.
You should see the "Getaway in Stockholm" movie. At least first 3 parts.
I wonder what Googlemaps says it takes to drive this.
Its a mercedes but its not real sound... Sound from ferrari...
In the interview he talks about the one turn he aborted (at Rue Lepic) because another garbage lorry was in the way...you can notice it in the film at about 6:15. He had to divert through the Cemetery and was afraid of running out of film. Amazing stuff...j'aime Paris!
There's a pretty good quicktime version of the film here, as well as lots of good info on the facts about the filming, as revealed by director Claude Lelouch himself.
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