On an August morning in 1976, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB. He had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris.
On an August morning in 1976, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB. He had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris.
No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit. No dialogue, just the squeal of tyres and the roar of the engine.
The story goes that in August 1978, a time long before GoPro cameras, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch adapted a gyroscopic camera in front of a Ferrari 275 GTB and invited a friend, a professional Formula 1 driver, to drive through the heart of Paris at the highest speed possible just before dawn.
The route was from Porte Dauphine through the Louvre to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.
Lelouch did not get permission to close streets on the perilous journey. The driver completed the circuit in less than 9 minutes.
The film shows him passing red lights, dodging pedestrians, scaring pigeons, and circulating the streets at dawn in a unique sense.
When the film was first presented to the public, Claude Lelouch was arrested, but he never revealed the driver's name.
It is speculated that it may have been René Arnoux or Jean-Pierre Jarier. The film was banned and would only be shown in underground cinemas. it was a major hit in the underground movie scene in the late 1970’s and the early 80’s.
It is all in one mesmerising take; there is no dialogue and no driver in sight.
The only person you see is a blonde woman approaching the car in the final moments - hence the name C’était un Rendez-vous. Translated to English, the title means “It was a date”.
According to the producer, Claude Lelouch, the intention was to capture the urgency of a young man who rushes to pick up his beautiful date. It is just as much about sex and desire as it is about driving.
“A guy who is going to meet a girl can take unnecessary risks because he doesn’t want to make her wait.”
The entire movie, from start to end, is in one long shot.
There are no cuts and no special effects. What you see is exactly how that early Sunday morning in Paris was, including the pigeons, buses, and pedestrians. The 18 red lights that the car accelerated through were also very real.
Many details about the movie were shrouded in mystery, and few knew how it had been made. Numerous rumours circulated, one that the director’s friend and racing driver Jacques Lafitte was speeding the car through Paris that morning and that the car driven was a Ferrari 275 GTB.
None of this is true.
The truth is that the car used for the movie was Claude Lelouch’s Mercedes-Benz 450 SEL, which has a 6.9-litre V8.
The Mercedes was built as a high-performance version of the W116 S-Class saloon. During its entire production run—1975 to 1981—the Mercedes-Benz M100 6.8-litre V8 was the largest V8 engine ever built by Mercendes-Benz and by any European manufacturer since the Second World War.
The Mercedes had hydropneumatic suspension (thank you, Citroën) and was better for driving on the cobblestone streets of Paris at high speed. The camera was mounted on the front of the car. The car was driven by Claude Lelouch himself and not a racing driver.
The woman at the end of the movie was his Swedish girlfriend, Gunilla Friden.
She had no other instructions but to wait at a designated spot and walk towards the car when Claude arrived.
The engine noise and tyre squeals were all added in post-production using Claude’s Ferrari 275 GTB. The route is 10.597 km long, which indicates an average speed of 80 km/h (50 mph), not the claimed speeds of over 200 km/h in some parts. Looking at the movie, you see that overtaking traffic is not done with a big speed difference.
There were only two people who knew the exact route except Claude.
They were placed along the route with walkie-talkies in two blind junctions to warn of other traffic.
However, the walkie-talkies did not work, and Claude assumed the crossings were clear. It was a miracle that no one was hurt during the shooting.
Of course, the method of shooting this film caused public outrage, and there was ample evidence of multiple serious traffic offences; this became a problem for Lelouch.
One famous incident was when Lelouch was pulled over by a policeman in Paris who recognised Lelouch and seized his driving license.
Moments later the driving license was returned, the policeman later stated that he had orders to take the driving license from Claude, however, since he was a big fan, he returned it after a few minutes.
In theory, he had complied with the orders from the Ministry of Justice. In 2009, Lelouch explained: "I made the movie as a gift of this moment of madness. It is very symbolic of my life. We did many forbidden things in the film, as I have often done in life."
