Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans
Steve McQueen died long enough ago (November 7, 1980) that his legacy may not resonate with the two subsequent generations that have come forth since.
One day Steve McQueen had a quixotic notion that he would make a film about his passion – auto racing. The resultant film exists in the world of cult movies but the reality was that the experience was fraught with disaster and dissention.
This weekend the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will screen two Steve McQueen related films. The documentary Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (2015) unwinds on Friday, March 18, and the narrative feature Le Mans (1971) spins out on Saturday, March 19.
A good place to research the details behind McQueen’s obsession with this particular racecar film is the book “A French Kiss with Death” by Michael Keyser with Jonathan Williams. The production went from good to bad in a switchback turn. Accidents were a plague and the prestigious director McQueen had chosen, John Sturges, quit during the production.
Sturges had helmed McQueen in films as influential as The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape.
Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans resonates with a kind of institutional memory of the image of the King of Cool reduced to a man determined to achieve his vision at any cost. Only his muse had taken a left turn.
McQueen the actor has to be experienced in Bullitt, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Getaway and a couple of others. The documentary Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans places the persona of McQueen in the context of his output. McQueen didn’t compete in the actual Le Man yet filmed the spectacle of the oldest and most respected automobile race in the world during its 24-hour 1970 edition. Over the next few months the production filmed a fictional account of a race driver caught in the Le Mans. The film was released in 1971 and played with the kind of austerity that an art film in the current day shows off by playing for a week and disappearing.
Gulf gasoline stations joined in on the promotion of Le Mans, and in fact the posters that were given to regular customers are now fodder for eBay.
McQueen was a one-of-a-kind cinematic phenomenon and his reputation is only going to get bigger as cinema gets older. Watching McQueen in the Le Mans films only reinforces that notion.
— Michael Bergeron
