TAKEN FROM MOTOR SPORT, AUGUST 2016

He was a big-picture man with visions of grandeur, willing to risk his hard-won credibility as a director and his studio’s money to create the greatest motor racing movie of all time.

John Frankenheimer was nothing if not ambitious. Conflicted and conflict-inspiring, the New York-born auteur went for broke, refusing to let technology’s inability to keep pace with his imagination stop him from creating his masterpiece. Half a century on from the release of Grand Prix, this celluloid classic is the most fondly remembered film from his bulging back catalogue; one that packed as many hits as misses.