Detour #91: Rendezvous in Paris, France
Craig Philbrick / Unsplash
Claude Lelouch’s dawn dash across Paris has become movie and automotive legend. Gavin Conway attempted the devil-may-care drive himself, one fine summer morning.
Many of us will remember exactly where we were when we first saw C’était un Rendez-Vous, director Claude Lelouch's audacious 14 minute cinema short, featuring a pre-dawn dash across Paris. My mother, concerned that my 12-year old self didn't seem to want to watch any movie that didn't feature a car chase, bought us tickets to La Cage aux Folles to broaden my perspective. She didn't know about the Lelouch short that played before the main event.
Lelouch's premise was brilliantly simple. Take one Ferrari 275GTB, one pre-dawn city-of-lights, and one completely deranged producer with a plan to create a scene where a car screams across Paris to a lovers’ meeting at the Sacre Coeur basilica. It wasn't entirely legal.
Spirit Level
Lelouch had the camera mounted low under the car's bumper, amplifying the impression of speed. It's mouth-open viewing. And it's become one of the most discussed shorts in car movie history. It was also insanely dangerous, which Lelouch believed bolstered the filmic beauty of the piece.
The car hit terrifying speeds - 200kph (125mph) as it approached Place de la Concorde. It touched 125mph again on the Quai d’Orsay. To enhance the visceral experience even more, a bellowing sound track (not from the actual car), cleverly edited to match speeds and gearchanges' completed the illusion.
And because the new-tech camera would only hold 10 minutes of film, they would have to do the run in that time or less. Lelouch had stationed assistants with walkie-talkies who would give warnings to the onboard assistant. But only if something was coming.
Adrien Olichon / Unsplash
Half way through the route, Lelouch blasts past the Louvre, where, on the engine soundtrack, he inserts a fairly convincing missed gear. He then shoots through an arch before coming out blind straight onto the Rue de Rivoli. This was the route’s most dangerous point, and only afterwards the crew found that the walkie-talkie used by the look-out at the arch was broken and had been completely useless.
I so wanted to replicate that pre-dawn sortie with, preferably, a little less drama. I chose a 4.0-litre 390bhp straight-six TVR Tuscan S, which was perfect (and yes, quite dramatic). As a spiritual successor to the original, the Tuscan is more viscerally raw and vital than any of the then current crop of large GT Ferraris. It also made a noise to inspire a whole new generation of Rendez-vistes.
Nirmal Rajendharkumar / Unsplash
The summer morning of the off is the most beautiful I have ever seen in Paris. A purple shroud of sky fades to gold as we fire the Tuscan up. Roof off, we begin to follow the Rendezvous route, picking our way toward the Champs Élysées. The Tuscan grumps and spits through narrow canyons of intricately balustraded buildings.
And suddenly, I get it. I am on an absolutely deserted Champs Élysées and the Arc de Triomphe is visible in the distance. The Tuscan’s engine is the only noise I hear, and on this broad avenue awash in golden light, the desire to put on some big revs in the lower gears is far too powerful to resist. When I hit the empty road around the Arc de Triomphe, the confluence of place, car, time and memory momentarily overwhelms my detachment. This is why that guy drove the Ferrari the way he did. Not just for the camera but for the sheer joy of it through a perfect Paris dawn.
I was able to get in a few more full-throttle moments, but nothing like what the original driver accomplished. Plus, I didn't go the wrong way down a one-way at Montmartre as the original driver had, because they were running out of time and film.
I head for the Sacre Coeur basilica, final scene of Rendezvous. Through the narrow streets leading to it, the Tuscan’s vicious blare bounces off the wall and stops pedestrians in their tracks. I wheel the car around the final corner and my heart just about stops. The scene is just exactly as Claude Lelouche had left it all those decades earlier, tall columns of the church entrance to the left of frame, steps overlooking the city to the right. But instead of the young woman in a sundress, I get a very fat Russian tourist shooing away a guy offering to sketch him in charcoal. For 15 Euros.
Some 45 since its release, C’était un Rendez-Vous is still the subject of intense rumination amongst car folk. And so there have been surprisingly robust myths around the short: It was banned (no it wasn't), it featured a nameless F1 driver (no it didn't), the car was a Ferrari 275GTB (no it wasn't), the driver hit 150mph on the Champs Élysées (no he didn't).
The biggest true reveal, though, was that Lelouch himself had been driving. And even though he owned a 275GTB, he used his Mercedes 450 SEL with its 6.9 V8 to make filming logistics easier (and to throw les flics off the scent).
When Mom and I got back from the movie that night, my Dad asked how it had gone. I said it was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen and could I go again and do you think they really did it or was it a camera trick and oh-my-god, what a noise! My mother added quickly that we thought ‘La Cage aux Folles’ was quite good, too.