Steve McQueen: The Film of his Life

“Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting,” says Steve McQueen in his role as Michael Delaney in Le Mans. And the audience indeed has to wait. There isn’t a word spoken in the first half an hour of the film, and McQueen, the leading actor, has less than twelve lines in the entire production. In fact, people only speak when it is absolutely necessary. But the film wasn’t about the people anyway.

Steve McQueen was not only the highest-paid actor in Hollywood at the time, but also an extremely successful private driver who was crazy about racing cars and motorcycles. His passion for what was then the toughest sports car race in the world was almost instinctive. He simply had to make this film. With its brittle documentary style and wordless scenes, Le Mans then became as unwieldy as it was courageous and unconventional.

At the time of the film’s release, the critics were just as unhappy with the result as the movie-going public. The equally ambitious and insane project ended up being a tremendous flop. There was no story, people complained, nobody understood the film’s claim to authenticity, and the unconventional style was criticized for being boring and pretentious. Only gradually did audiences develop an understanding for McQueen’s intentions, ultimately leading to a different appreciation of the film’s significance. Today, it is precisely the lack of narration that is valued just as highly as the unembellished dramatization. Le Mans is now regarded not only as an irresistible documentation of motor racing, but also as pure avant-garde. Even the culture pages, which are often latently critical of motor sports, have long since become reconciled to the film’s importance.

A plot? Kind of. And when shooting began, there wasn’t any real plan or even anything like a script either.

The film begins on the morning...

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