C’était un Rendez-vous

Claude Lelouch

This is probably the most irresponsible and likely one of the most morally indefensible bits of film ever produced by a major filmmaker, and though I hate to admit this, it is a lot of fun. It’s one shot and lasts only eight minutes and forty seconds, but it is the ultimate adrenaline rush for anybody who likes to drive fast. Jeremy Clarkson, the man/boy on Top Gear, said this about the film: “it makes Bullitt look like a cartoon.”

The film, C’était un rendez-vous, whose title translates “It Was A Date,” consists of a very fast car, with a camera attached to its bumper, racing through the early morning (5:30am) streets of Paris at ridiculous, life-threatening speeds. Claude Lelouch, a fast-car nut (in his best known film, A Man and A Woman, the lead male is a race car driver), did this piece of stunt filmmaking without permission or warning. Supposedly interested in testing a new gyro device to steady film images in ‘jittery’ environments (this was prior to the invention of the Steadicam), he decided to mount the device, a camera with one 10-minute reel of film inside on the front bumper of his car. He had a route mapped out — allegedly there was an assistant at one blind corner to radio him of any obstacles — got into the car and gunned it. The route takes him racing down the Avenue Foch towards the Arc de Triomphe, and finishes several kilometres later at the Basilique de Sacré-Cœur. It ends with, of course, a girl awaiting his arrival. He steps out of the car, they embrace and fin.