Rendezvous (original title C’etait un rendez-vous) is famed French
director, producer and writer Claude
Lelouch’s 1976 nine-minute legendary mad dash through the early-morning streets
of Paris. The dash across the capital started in Porte Dauphine with no regard for
traffic lights, other drivers or pedestrians on the eastward journey to the Basilique
du Sacré-Coeur. Reaching speeds of up to 145 mph, the driver has some very near
misses on the way to the rendezvous with his girlfriend Gunilla Friden in front of the Basilique. The car used was
allegedly Lelouch's own Mercedes 450 SEL, with the sounds of a Ferrari V12
engine dubbed later, although this fact has never been confirmed. Neither has
the claim that it was Lelouch himself driving. However, there have always been
suspicions that former Formula 1 star Jacques Laffite was behind the wheel.
This
is cinema verité in its purest form: strap a camera to the front of your vehicle
and off you go. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what speed the
anonymous driver was driving at - it’s the visceral thrill you get from
watching (and re-watching) this nine-minute classic that is important. This is
what cinema did in its very earliest days, when the sight of a train arriving
at a railway station on the screen was allegedly enough to have an audience
fleeing from their seats. We’ll never again be fooled the way they were but, by
watching films like this, we can at least experience something of the
excitement they must have felt as we see Parisian streets vanish beneath the
bottom of the screen, hear the gears growl as tight corners and narrow tunnels
are negotiated with pinpoint precision, see the obstacles provided by other
early-morning motorists avoided by switching to the wrong side of the road and
watch startled pigeons sent hurtling into the dawn sky.
Labels:
action, auto-racing, Paris, short
