Ferrari: Race to Immortality

This movie is not about very badly designed and constructed racing cars in the fifties. It is more about poor judgment drivers who were regularly killed driving those flying coffins. How come this all sport was not banned at the time is beyond me. Profit above people, I guess! Enjoy if you can, but it is pure horror, if you ask me.

What a disappointment. This is not a documentary about either Ferrari the manufacturer or Enzo Ferrari, the iconic owner. Most of the documentary is about some of the drivers in the 50's, probably 2/3 of the whole film is about Mike Hawthorn. And a lot it's very repetitive with so many other documentaries about how dangerous was F1 in the 50s. But other documentaries, take a clear storyline on that topic, take a more broad view and show how safety in the sport improved from the 50s to the 2000s, particularly during the 70s. In this case, they stay in the 50s. I was expecting learning either about Enzo (his origins, how he built the empire, his personality, the way he managed the team and the company, his quirks) or learning about Ferrari team and the evolution of it and the unique philosophy to manage competition and drivers. But nothing, besides a few short quotes and recordings of Enzo Ferrari, nothing much more about Ferrari. An absolute waste of film and time.

Glorious 16mm and specially 35mm footage from one of the most aesthetically pleasing eras in motorsports history. Harsh testimonies of what racing was all about back then. The movie is a tremendous showcase of a bygone era we will never come close to.

Of course the movie is absurdly British, specially considering the topic (they care more about Stirling Moss than about Ferrari's Alberto Ascari). If you have ever watched motorsports-related media, you would already know nothing ever gets produced if there are no Brits triumphing in it either at the wheel or as a manager.

Those cars, those courses, those people, the absolute "vibes" as the kids would say... Tremendous through and through, horrific at times, and it is all presented with great competence.

I generally agree with the 5 previous reviews to mine, but I loved it. It tells the story well about the risks the drivers took (and perhaps pushed by Enzo, their fans and their women), the camaraderie among drivers despite their competitiveness, and how dangerous the sport was back before crush zones were designed into the cars, tracks had runoff areas, and research backed helmets and hans devices were mandated. It's sad because it's all true, but great because it tells and shows the story. In summary:

The bad: limited coverage of Enzo, limited mention of other Ferrari drivers debatably more important to Ferrari's history than Collins and Hawthorn (which the film tends to focus on), poor editing of the new filming of the old cars in action vs the original footage.

The good: Fantastic old race footage with clean visuals and good coloring, great story about Collins and Hawthorn, good stories about a few of the other earlier drivers. Wonderful, if sad, story of how it was back then about the dangers and the drivers.

This motor racing doc about the Ferrari team in the 1950s is purely for the fans-an excuse for digging through archive footage of daredevil driving, sleek cars, and the sight of a winner being handed a bitter pint on Silverstone's finish line. It is based on' Mon Ami Mate' by Chris Nixon, a biography of Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins drivers from Ferrari, both a picture of blond-haired boyish charm and reckless ambition. Win or die, you're going to be immortal,' Enzo Ferrari told his stable drivers-and a shocking number of drivers died. Between 1950 and 1960, 39 motor-racing drivers were killed behind the wheels of cars that we consider to be as robust as baked bean tins. Ferrari's image emerging from the talking heads is a guy with a huge appetite for glory: when a driver was killed during a test drive, he would have said, "What is the car?Tales of past gentlemanly sportsmanship remain here, but the price of motor racing was high, not just for the drivers. During a crash in the Le Mans race in 1955, a car's front torpedoed the crown Director Daryl Goodrich has access to all the right people, and his video is well curated, but it is doubtful that ' Ferrari ' will convert non-petrolheads.