MARK KERMODE’S TOP CAR MOVIES
The critic’s classic-packed favourites, from American Graffiti to The Hitcher
Any time spent with Mark Kermode inevitably leads to conversation about films, in our case those involving cars. “American Graffiti and Two Lane Blacktop are each great films that you can watch over and over again,” he says. “Cars play a crucial role in both, although they’re much more than just ‘car movies.’ The choreography of The Italian Job is a joy – you can’t help but feel proud to be British when you watch those Minis dance around Italy. Although it’s hardly Route 66, I’ve always liked
Radio On and its journey from London to Bristol in a Rover 105S. I love the scene where the camera is focused on a jukebox while it plays Whole Wide World by Wreckless Eric.
“As chase scenes go, there are few – if any – to rival The French Connection. Bullitt is a classic, but the streets are largely empty. Phil D’antoni, who produced Bullitt, told William Friedkin he wanted him to top his most famous film. There was no car chase in the script for The French Connection, but D’antoni and Friedkin took a walk under New York’s elevated railway and came up with the idea of a car chasing a train. Bill Hickman was the stunt driver, and the most memorable shots were done without permission on crowded streets. Friedkin thought that some of the early runs didn’t look dramatic enough, which was a red rag to Hickman. He said, ‘You wanna see something? Get in the back of the car.’ And then he raced through 10 or 15 city blocks. The scene where they crease the city bus? That’s real. And the scene where a car pulls out in front of ‘Popeye’ Doyle’s car? That’s real, too!
“In contrast, Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver was crafted like a ballet – less The French Connection than An American in Paris; Gene Kelly rather than Gene Hackman. The opening is as good as you’ll see in any heist movie. He’d used that idea some years before in a pop promo for Mint Royale’s Blue Song, using Noel Fielding from The Mighty Boosh dancing in a waiting getaway car. Edgar told me he thought he’d blown a great idea for a feature film. But so few people saw the video, he was able to re-use it in Baby Driver, where Ansel Elgort lip-syncs to
Bellbottoms by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.”
Other more ‘culty’ Kermode car favourites include Alex Cox’s Repo Man; the horror thriller
The Hitcher, with Rutger Hauer and C Thomas Howell; and, more recently, Nicolas Winding Refn’s
Drive: “But, bizarrely, the car film I’ve always found most intriguing is David Cronenberg’s Crash. It’s a brilliant adaption of JG Ballard’s ‘unfilmable’ novel, and it was a huge scandal when it was first released. The film has a love/hate relationship with automobiles – the way they isolate you, but also their weird seductive power. Cronenberg has always been fascinated by cars. He made the race-car film Fast Company back in 1979, and tried for years to make Red Cars, about the Formula One Championship of 1961. Crash is a film that only he could have made.”