Man and Machine: C’était un Rendezvous
Picture the scene here: Paris just before dawn. You are at one end of the city, at the other side of Paris awaits a beautiful maiden wanting to catch the sunrise with you in her arms. Between you and her, is a Paris that is just about to wake up. You check the time and discover you got less than 10 minutes to traverse the City of Lights. What do you do? You drive like the wind of course.
That, is the entire premise of C’etait un Rendezvous. (It was a date in English speak.) A man driving very fast across a nearly-deserted Paris just before dawn to meet up with a maiden atop a hill to catch the morning light.
A sub 10 minute short film, that has since been used as the background to many a music video, C’etait un Rendezvous was the brainchild of Claude Lelouch. Shot in 1976 by the academy award winning French film maker, at a time where you could still get away with such reckless driving, it has become a cult classic among the petrolhead fraternity, and has spawned countless remakes, but none as good as the original.
To those who skipped through the video above, I urge you to just watch it to savour its magnificence, but if you are somewhat engaged in other activities that does not allow you to watch the video, the premise of the film is thus:
The film opens with the distinct high notes of a highly tuned Italian (read: Ferrari) V12 going at full chat emerging from a tunnel and flying onto an on ramp, with tires squealing. The film progresses briskly, with the driver continuing his manic dash across the city. Taking in the major Parisian landmarks like the Arc de Triomphe, Opéra Garnier, Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Élysées in quick succession.
Early morning pedestrians and motorists are terrorised out of the way of the speeding car, while the driver is continuing his relentless charge across the city. Continuing at full tilt, even the birds on the streets are getting out of the way of the mad man who has also blown past several red lights and even mounted kerbs (at speed!) on occasion. The viewer is given the impression that this man just wants to make his rendezvous. All care for public or personal safety is ignored.
The sky in the background getting ever so slightly brighter as the man continues at speed through the narrow Parisian back-lanes and alleyways. Tension rises as the lanes gets increasingly narrower and he starts his ascent up the narrow lanes to the top of the hill, and it all comes to a happy end with the man getting out of his car. Just in time for his rendezvous with a pretty lady, who incidentally just walked up the steps to meet him atop the hill.
That’s about it. A petrolhead’s fable over in just over 8 minutes.
Being a short film, especially being one of French origin. Some artistic license has been taken by the producer.
That being said, the film, incredibly, was not sped up. It says in the title card: “le film sue nous allez void a été réalisé sans aucun trucage ni accéléré”, which roughly translates to mean: The film you are going to see was made without any special effects or was sped up. Which means the sensation of speed you felt was really at 1x speed, which is mad…
… but, back to the flair, the artistic license was instead used on the audio. The high pitched Ferrari V12 wail that was the auditory accompaniment to this mad dash across the city, was a dub, along with the associated gear change and tire squeal. To be frank, the entire audio track was a dub taken from Lelouch’s own Ferrari 275 GTB.
So there wasn’t a Ferrari being driven, as God intended, through the dawn light of Paris. Even though rumours were abound when the film was released that it was indeed shot using a Ferrari with a race car driver at the helm. However, the truth to what car was actually used in the making of this legendary run across Paris will make you appreciate the film more as this is one of the few times when the truth was more interesting than the rumour, as you will discover below.
Editor’s note: The facts surrounding this film, unsurprisingly are still shrouded in mystery so there will be a light sprinkling of allegedly around all these film ‘facts’.
C’etait un Rendez-vous came about after Mr. Lelouch was left with about 1000ft of film from another movie he had just shot. (This was still back in the day when film was still actual film) Not wanting to be wasteful, he decided to finish up the roll of film. Any sane person would have shot some stock footage but not Claude Lelouch. Being the petrolhead that he is, he had worked out that this was just enough film to shoot a one-take mad dash across Paris.
Hence, with Lelouch's girlfriend at the time, Gunilla Friden (incidentally Miss Sweden 1967) informed to be at the steps of the Sacré-Cœur in about 10 minutes. Lelouch mounted his film camera (a gyrostabilised Eclair Camaflex) mounted at the front of his Mercedes 450SEL 6.9, and shot off into the dark for his rendezvous at the Sacré-Cœur.
Ignoring the fact that it is the director himself was piloting his own car across Paris with a huge and heavy film camera mounted to the front of his large car, there was some method to his madness in performing this automotive feat in a huge luxobarge (which in itself actually makes this feat even more impressive). The self-levelling hydro-pneumatic suspension that came standard in this particular big Merc provided a stable enough platform for the camera to be mounted on, which came in especially useful when driving (at speed) in the cobbled Parisian alleyways.
Another fascinating aspect of this fated run was that, as it was a spur of the moment decision, no one really knew about it. It’s one thing in the pre-health and safety gone mad days that the authorities weren’t informed, but Lelouch also performed this run with hardly any external assistance. Apart from the aforementioned Ms. Gunilla awaiting Lelouch at the steps of Sacré-Cœur, only other 3 people were roped in to help with the production and knew about this daring run.
The first two were his cinematographer and his key grip that came along for the mad dash across the city, handling the remote to control the camera’s aperture. The other one was a spotter.
In the film, there was a scene where the car sped into a narrow one-lane archway. This narrow archway was the Lourve’s Rue de Rivoli entrance, and there was supposedly to be an assistant at the archway warning the speeding Benz whether there was outgoing traffic or pedestrians. However as luck would have it, the assistant’s walkie-talkie broke. The arrangement was that the assistant was to signal to Lelouch if there was any oncoming traffic, but as the walkie-talkie broke, Lelouch took it as there was no car entering the one-lane tunnel at the time, so the mad Benz charged through the tunnel completely blind.
Inevitably, once the film was released, there had been some backlash from the authorities and the more sensible people in the world, with words like unsafe, insane and sacré bléu often used in association with this film. Apparently speeding through a city in a huge luxury sedan at dawn, reaching speeds of (allegedly) 142 mph on occasion, running 18 red lights and generally being a maniac on the road is considered anti-social behaviour.
Lelouch was also allegedly apprehended by le gendarmerie after the film’s release with the long-standing rumour that Lelouch was imprisoned. This turns out not to be totally true. Lelouch was indeed arrested and his license was taken away, but only for it to be given back to him by the chief of police.
Lelouch recounted that the chief of police called him into his office and said to him: ‘‘If the film hasn’t been done without any effects, then all the red lights you ran were definitely real. So, if the red lights are real, I should take your license 18 times, and it is my duty to take your license.’ He demanded my license, Lelouch gave it to him, he then looked at it and said, ‘You know, my children loved your film. I’ve taken your license and now I’m giving it back.’”
After reading all this, what exactly makes this film (which is essentially about a car being driven very fast in an unsafe manner through a built up area) a cult classic, especially amongst the petrolhead community?
Maybe it is the purity of it all. It may seem boring on the face of it, with no special effects, no jump cuts, no voice acting, no humans even. The only noises you hear are the engine revving and tires squealing. It is even all just one long take, from one camera angle from the point of view of the front of a car. It is essentially an early version of the dash cam footage of a car being driven very fast across a (nearly) empty city.
More likely however is that this film is the undistllled embodiment of freedom, the danger and the thrill of the chase that comes along with the collective passion of the petrolhead — driving. When the film starts, if you don’t speak French, you will just enjoy the car going very fast and breaking all the rules of the road, which speaks to our inner 12 year old who is giddy at the fact that someone is actually doing the things he wish that the adult versions of us don’t do in real life. If you do speak French, you will still be giddy at the fact that someone is actually doing the things you do in the video games in real life, but with the added tension on whether he’ll make it to his rendezvous on time, and in one piece.
Being the petrolhead nutter that he is, Lelouch has proclaimed that C’etait un Rendez-vous is the proudest film of his career, as it taps into the inner madness that all petrolheads have.
It is also one of the most recreated pieces of film in Lelouch’s archive. C’etait un Rendez-vous has spawned various personal and corporate recreations and homages, most of them have been entertaining with every homage or recreation having a different take on the original masterpiece. The more memorable ones include is a recreation done using a Bugatti Chiron through Turin seen on The Grand Tour, which incidentally was the inspiration to write this piece you are reading now, but none thus far has been as satisfactory as the original.
Being in the modern health and safety conscious times, a run like Lelouch’s will be nearly impossible without involving an army of cops, a mountain of bureaucracy and planning, to do this by the books; and if anyone were to try to do this off the books, they’ll soon discover that cities nowadays are much more crowded at any time of the night as compared to 1976, and that the police are much more capable of tracking a lunatic on the road as compared to yesteryear.
C’etait un Rendez-vous lives on as a legend among the petrolhead community. A cornerstone to all future automotive shenanigans that goes on through the lenses of a dash cam. Every few years, there will be another homage to this legend of a short, so to those who are planning so, bonne chance!