Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley and Patrick Dempsey are the protagonists of a feature film that tells the story of the summer of 1957 at an automaker in Maranello, between corporate and family crisis.
“I found men who undoubtedly loved cars as much as I did. But perhaps I did not find others with my stubbornness, animated by this passion that dominates life, which took away my time and taste for almost everything else. I have no interests other than racing cars.”
These words sum up the whole philosophy of Enzo Ferrari. And a film by Michael Mann in competition at the 80th Venice Film Festival (SPECIAL), brings back to us all the magnificent obsession of the founder of the automaker Maranello. On the other hand, this is a project that the American director was thinking about back in the early 1990s. After Pledge (2006), director Heat tHe then returns to the beach with a feature film based on the book Enzo Ferrari – Man and Machine, but the focus of the film is 1957, a seminal year for the former driver and builder of the world’s most famous cars.
Ferrari movie plot
Already from the opening credits, with grainy black-and-white images of cars speeding along to the tune of an old song that mentions the jungle, tigers and lions, it becomes clear how ferrari is an epic, spectacular and passionate declaration of love to the glamorous and risky world of auto racing in the 1950s. And thanks to the costumes of Massimo Cantini Parrini (he also designed the costumes of the Comandante) and the amazing sound design, the film takes us to Modena in 1957. The city’s football team is doing very poorly. But Enzo Ferrari’s life is even worse. The company he built from scratch ten years earlier is in a very serious crisis. Maserati, thanks to talent jean “Jeannot” Marie Berat seems invincible. Jaguar overtook competitors and increased sales several times. Ferrari, on the other hand, is in danger of going bankrupt. As if that wasn’t enough, the marriage to his wife Laura also falls apart following the departure of their only son Dino (who died of Duchenne dystrophy) and the discovery of the existence of Piero, Ferrari’s son from an extramarital affair. with Lina Lards. In search of redemption, Enzo decides to bet everything on a high-speed race held in Italy: the legendary Mille Miglia. Because “Drake” (as he was called) does not participate in auto racing to sell cars, but sells cars to participate in races.
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Venice Film Festival: Presented by Ferrari with Adam Driver. LIVE
Ferrari, from Adam Driver to Penelope Cruz, the cast of the film
Interpreting the Enzo Ferrari of that summer of 1957 was not easy at all. Journalists of the time compared the owner of a house in Maranello to Saturn killing his children (intended as pilots), or called him a widower. Adam Driver wins a bet on a plausible interpretation of a character for whom, to quote Enzo Biaggi, “there was only the noise of his machines and the silence of his thoughts”. He was not a cheerful Emilian, he was a man who lived on his own and kept a reasonable company. It is held by the consistently stunning Penélope Cruz as wife Laura Garello. Shailene Woodley’s choice to play Lina Lardy’s mistress and Patrick Dempsey to play pilot Piero Taruffi were right.
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Venice 80, the red carpet of politicians, from Renzi to Salvini. PHOTO
From Paris or Kara to the garden of my heart
From the scene that takes place in the theater during the performance of “La Traviata” with the verses of the aria “Parigi o cara”, which seems to have something in common with the personal story of Enzo Ferrari, to the reconstruction of the horrific accident that occurred during the “Mille Miglia” on Goitese. the road near Guidizzolo (which cost Spanish pilot Alfonso de Portago, American navigator Edmund Gerner Nelson and nine spectators, five of whom were children), Mann’s film does not spare strong emotions. And at the end of the race we were left out of breath. , as Gianni Agnelli says in the film and in business, every day is a new day. And perhaps this is a maxim that can also be adopted in life, minus pain, mourning and tragedy, perhaps with the help of the notes “In the garden of my heart” – a poignant song that accompanies the end credits of the film.
