As Advertised
Incredible footage of fantastic cars. Le Mans lives up to its reputation as the best racing movie ever.

Before there were in-car cameras...
I've been a sportscar racing fan since I was a child. And since my childhood was during the late 1960s and early 1970s, there really isn't any way to explain the impact the onboard footage had upon us back then.

I once raced sportscars as an amateur in the SCCA. There is no way on earth I can tell you what it actually feels like to go "out there", but at least in this film you can see what it looks like..

Yes, there's no love story...but don't ever say there's no plot. This film is a "fictional documentary". A study of a very misunderstood sport by a man who loved it so much he just wanted everyone to know what it was really all about. It is our (the racers' "our") good fortune that this man was a popular actor with enough financial backing behind him to make the attempt.

Great car movie
As a Porsche owner I really enjoyed this movie. The racing scenes are amazing for the vintage of the film. Steve McQueen's acting is, well, Steve McQueen, but he drives like a pro.

Super!
This is a great movie if you like racing, if not, forget about it! I am a big fan of the Gulf Porsches, and the 917's, so this was right up my alley. The acting is ok, the race announcer sounds like an idiot, but the racing footage is spectacular.

simply astounding - an existenial meditation on racing
So many have already praised this movie and rightfully so. It is a remarkable film. Dedicated to the reality of racing, stripped of vehicles like standard plot lines, or contrived love affairs, this is a movie just about racing. It is a cinematographic masterpiece.

Rather than continue to gush praise for this film, I'll try to add a little background that may help other appreciate the lesser known aspects of the movie. This film attempts to capture reality in a pure unadulterated way. While a few sections and crashes were staged. The majority of the film was shot during the 1970 Le Mans 24hrs itself. The movie features the actual cars running the race itself.

The camera car used to film the 1970 Le Mans 24hrs was a Porsche 908 ( a beautiful race vehicle if ever there was one). It ran the race as an unofficial entry, and it was loaded with heavy cameras. Driven by Porsche's Herbert Linge and Jonathan Williams, it travelled 282 laps (3,798 km) and finished the race on 9th position. That's pretty great for a camera car! It would have done better, but it did not cover the required minimum distance due to long stops to change film reels. Your average race car at Le Mans tries to minimize pit stops. The camera car was burdened by cameras, controls, and mounts, AND it had to stop for lengthy changes of film. 9th place. A Porsche 908 running with Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512s. I give those drivers and that car some real credit. The footage shot by the camera car is remarkable. The sequences during the early dawn hours that capture a Ferrari 512 passing the camera car are chillingly beautiful.

The stand-in cars used for the crash sequences were real race cars, Lola T70's, modified to look like Porsche 917s and Ferrari 512s. The Lolas were used because they were less expensive to wreck than would have been the cost of sacrificing a real 917.

If you have an appreciation of racing and history's most beautiful race cars, this movie will not disappoint you. True to the famous quote from the film - racing is life, everything before and after is just waiting. This film is like that - there is the race, and then the scenes in between - which really are about waiting. They may seem slow to american audiences, but this is not really an american film. It is much more a european film, and it possesses a unique pace that is not for everyone, and is not even understood by everyone, but is valid and artistically correct for the existential meditation that this movie truly is.