Written by: Iván Santamaría (RS: @gasandroads)
August 1976, 5:30 a.m., while the city of Paris still sleeps.
The French film director Claude Lelouch, along with his two assistants, Jacques Lefrancois and Henri Cayrol, set out to record “C’était un rendez vous” (It was a date)”, a tour of the city of Paris at high speed. The tour is planned a few days before, and only Claude and his two assistants know the details.
They have to cross Paris from one extreme to another in the shortest possible time. The recording will be done in one shot, without errors, without stops of any kind. Skipping over 15 traffic lights, with no possibility of repeating.
As if it were a huge “GoPro”, they hook a 35mm Eclair cameflex camera to the bumper of the car, a powerful Mercedes 450SEL 6.9, owned by Claude Lelouch.
The tour starts from a tunnel near Porte Dauphine and ends at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, where a woman meets the “mysterious pilot”. The 10.5km route takes only 8 minutes and 7 seconds, reaching speeds greater than 120 km / h (75 mph). All this through emblematic sites such as the Arc de Triomphe, the Champs Elysées, the Plaza de Concord, and others.
Here is the complete route planned for the drive.
Due to the large number of traffic offenses committed throughout the short film, after almost 40 years, the real identity of the pilot has not yet been discovered. However, in an interview, Claude Lelouch confesses that the driver was himself. Even so, the rumor continues today that the pilot was really a Parisian taxi driver or even a well-known Formula 1 driver of the time.
The only modification that was made in the short film was the “soundtrack” that stars the sound of a 3.3 V12 engine belonging to a Ferrari 275 GTB. This kind of dubbing was done to further enhance the feeling of speed.
All this “was an appointment” according to the French filmmaker, who ended up being arrested for reckless driving. According to an interview with Claude, his license was removed for only a few minutes, since the children of the officers who stopped him were big fans Claude’s work.
Interesting, right?
Here is the video!
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