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Much of the film is faithful to those drivers who suffer from their addiction to speed and the danger that comes with it. In one scene, Mann shows his nightly running ritual of writing a letter to his loved ones in case they die. Dempsey proved incredibly valuable in training his castmates on what those introspective moments would look like.
As a pilot, it’s every cinematographer’s dream. “He’s capable, if not more so, than any of our doppelgängers of performing such exact maneuvers,” Messerschmidt says. At the end of both takes, Dempsey would go back to look at the footage and take notes on how he might shake the car a little more in one case or look at the camera in another.
The Bologna, Ravenna and Rome scenes were shot in the city centre of Modena, while many more were shot in the nearby countryside, on the precise roads where Ferrari carries out its tough tests. “You have to realize that Ferrari and Modena go hand in hand; “He’s like a king,” says specialist coordinator Robert Nagle. “This call carries a lot of weight. It literally wasn’t that hard to get what we needed. Location director Janice Polley captivated the merchants and worked on the city’s busy summer festival schedule to book some weekends.
From there, it was up to Nagle to prepare the roads for any danger, since cars circulated through the center of Modena at 80 or 100 km/h. “I hire drivers who probably wouldn’t crash into 600-year-old buildings,” he says. , but he was worried about cars hitting cobblestones that could fly through the air or create an unforeseen indentation. Hay barricades were the art department’s solution to hiding discordant elements of modernity, such as unsightly drainage.
The most unsettling task was to create original crowds, as Mann doesn’t like to use computer-generated imagery. They are all genuine extras from Modena lined up on the street, dressed in period costumes, with professional specialists in the row closest to the action. Further afield, you might see the locals of Modena who came here just to watch, though Mann ended up doing a bit of virtual magic to fill in the gaps.
If you look at modern racing, in which drivers flee hot shocks in their fireproof suits, it’s hard to realize that in 1957 race car drivers didn’t wear seat belts. “They really thought it was better to be ejected from the vehicle than “What they didn’t need was to be trapped in the burning car. “So, to maintain the accuracy of the periods while also ensuring the protection of his drivers, Nagle created a system of five-point protection harness that drivers would wear under their uniforms.
Every violent, brutal crash in the movie is based on historical newsreel footage, including an early one in which a driver hits a curb and his car gets launched against a wall. To re-create it, a replica car made of aluminum was thrown into a building with a crash dummy inside. And because the stunt team only had two copies of the car, it had to get it right. “At that point in the movie, it was really important to illustrate just how dangerous and fragile this world is for these guys,” Nagle says. “Most drivers didn’t retire back then. The attrition rate was ridiculous.”
“Ferrari” test: no one is behind the wheel of this vehicle
During his research, Mann became fascinated by an eyewitness account of this initial twist of fate through Maserati star Jean Behra, who went on to compete in the 1957 Mille Miglia and died in a race in 1959. when he was ejected from his Porsche against a flagpole.
In this film, however, Mann says, the protection of the actors and stuntmen is paramount. “I’ve never noticed any damage in a movie,” he adds, adding ‘The Last of the Mohicans,’ which is treacherous because we were filming on that mountainside trail. “For about two weeks,” he says. I think the biggest injury we’ve ever had was a woman who broke her ankle at one point because she fell off a golf cart. “
This film, for Mann, boils down to the power of chasing a high. It’s one he experienced during those years of racing in the amateur Ferrari Classic. There was a tricky three-turn sequence on his practice track that he’d attempt 75 times a day, and got right, he thinks, only once. But that one time was pure ecstasy. “And given the imagination of a director,” he says, “all I have to do is do it once to get an idea, ‘Oh, I can project what it must feel like if you do it right all the time.’”
A previous issue of this article incorrectly stated that the Mille Miglia was 1,000 kilometers long, or about 1,000 miles. The article has been corrected.