Sunday Drivers

Claude Lelouch is a French film director who is probably best known in the U.K for two films - Un homme et une femme (which has that annoyingly catchy theme tune) and the 1981 muscial epic Les Uns et les Autres.

Thanks however to the band Snow Patrol his most famous 'underground' work is now getting overdue attention. In 1976 Lelouch made C'etait un rendez-vous, its is a dawn journey through the streets of Paris, which Snow Patrol have edited down to meet the timings of Open Your Eyes, the latest single to be lifted from the album of the same name. After the film had been shown in France for the first time Lelouch was arrested, an arrest based on claims that the Ferrari 275 that was used in the film was driven at speeds approaching 140mph.

Lelouch has claimed in the last few years that the driver of the car is not a Formula 1 driver as was reported at the time nor was the car a Ferrari 275GTB but a Merc 450SEL driven by himself with the sound of the Prancing Horse dubbed over the top.

Shot in the days before video and speed/traffic light cameras it shows how far one man will go to persue his art. In art context is everything and without Snow Patrol's music the journey is mesmerising. The part of the film where the car mounts the pavement to avoid the refuse collection vehcile proves to me that it wasn't a Ferrari, the ground clearance on the sports car would have left it dangling cartoon like on the edge of the Parisian walkway.

You can see the whole eight and a half minutes
here