Le Mans
1971 · 104 min
Directed by Lee H. Katzin. Written by Harry Kleiner. Starring Steve McQueen, Siegfried Rauch, Elga Andersen, Ronald Leigh-Hunt.
Filmed during the annual 24-hour endurance race at Le Mans, Michael Delaney is a Porsche driver haunted by the memory of an accident at the previous year's race in which a competing driver was killed. Delaney also finds himself increasingly infatuated with the man's widow.
Critics 71% · audiences 79% · streaming on Pluto TV
How it got made
Le Mans was filmed on location on the Le Mans circuit between June and November 1970, including during that season's actual 24 Hours of Le Mans race in mid-June. McQueen had intended to race a Porsche 917 together with Jackie Stewart, but the #26 entry was not accepted. Instead, he is depicted as starting the race in the blue #20 Gulf-Porsche 917K driven by Jo Siffert and Brian Redman. The race-leading white #25 Porsche 917 "Long tail" was piloted by Vic Elford and Kurt Ahrens Jr.
The Porsche 908/2, which McQueen had previously co-driven with Peter Revson to a second place in the 12 Hours of Sebring, was entered in the race by McQueen's Solar Productions, complete with heavy movie cameras capturing actual racing footage. This #29 camera car, which can be briefly seen in the starting grid covered with a black sheet (at approximately 17:51), and again at just before the 79-minute mark (at 1:18:42) racing past the starting line, was driven by Porsche's Herbert Linge and Jonathan Williams. It traveled 282 laps, or , and finished the race in 9th position, but it was not classified, as it had not covered the required minimum distance due to the stops to change film reels. It did, however, manage to finish second in the P3.0 class.
Additional footage shot after the race used actual Porsche 917 and Ferrari 512s in competition liveries. In the crash scenes, comparatively expendable technologically obsolete Lola T70 chassis were fitted with replica Porsche and Ferrari bodywork.