1: Life at the Limit – review by David Tremayne

The new movie documentary about the history of F1, called “1: Life at the Limit” is now out. I could not get to the launch of the movie, but my friend and colleague David Tremayne was there and has reviewed the film for me, including interviewing the director Paul Crowder.

1: Life at the Limit – a review by David Tremayne

“If I made a Formula 1 movie,” Bernie Ecclestone told director Paul Crowder after listening to his initial pitch for 1: Life at the Limit, “this would be the one I’d want to make.”

Narrated by acknowledged petrolhead Michael Fassbender, Crowder’s latest film hits the cinemas in the UK this Friday. It tells the story of the F1 safety crusade that was initiated by Jackie Stewart and Jo Bonnier in the Sixties and Seventies, and continued by Bernie Ecclestone, Prof Sid Watkins and Max Mosley in the Eighties and Nineties.

Playing it out against a colourful kaleidoscope of snappy if slightly machinegun-fire yet spectacular moving imagery and a driving soundtrack, Crowder effectively lets the story tell itself via the comments of those who were there – Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti, John Surtees, Ecclestone, Mosley and, most movingly, tough old Sid Watkins who weeps quietly as he describes all the young men for whom he cared as his “boys.” Fassbender’s contribution is minimalist, yet still effective.

Along the way we are reminded again and again of the spectre of death that so haunted the sport in these darker days that for four terrible consecutive months in 1968 a driver died; the fifth month coincided with the wet German GP at Nurburgring, surely a recipe for further disaster. Stewart won by four minutes and the first thing he asked entrant Ken Tyrrell when he’d pulled up in the pits afterwards was: “Who died?” The answer this time was nobody, and the tragic spell was finally broken.

Of course much time is devoted to Roger Williamson’s accident, and Francois Cevert’s, both in 1973, but I was touched that the oft-forgotten Helmuth Koinigg was also remembered. And even more so that all of the tragedies, which were a key part of the story, were treated with respect. Several joyous scenes of myriad drivers’ victory celebrations follow a litany of the unhappy stories, illustrating the transient nature of a sport struck through with rollercoaster emotions in a perfect encapsulation of the paradox of triumph and tragedy, and the price and the prize.

As Stewart said at the end, the progress that the sport made finally freed it of “the consistency of death.”

There are some gems along the way, such as the 1978 German GP when the race director demanded that Watkins leave race control immediately prior to the start. Ecclestone stood firm and instructed all of the teams to start packing up. Without Watkins where he belonged, there would be no race.

“What am I going to tell 80,000 angry Germans?” the race director plaintively asked Ecclestone.

“Tell them to go stuff themselves,” Bernie replied, albeit in slightly stronger terms. Watkins stayed put.

The movie opens with Martin Brundle’s spectacular accident in the 1996 Australian GP in Albert Park, and ends with it, too, cleverly setting the scene and then drawing things to a conclusion that underlines the massive progress made in four decades.

The only thing that spoiled it for me was Mosley’s self-serving preening. He rightly deserves huge credit for grasping the nettle and initiating the necessary changes after the events of Imola in 1994, which have ensured that no driver has died in an F1 car since. But to suggest that he was a grand safety crusader prior to his spell as president of the FIA was at best naïve. Some of us also remember that the man who in the film describes Williamson as “a close friend,” actually left Zandvoort immediately after the accident. It was thus dear old Tom Wheatcroft, who had lost a fabulously talented young driver he regarded as a second son, whom the police arrested afterwards. As a lawyer, Mosley surely had to have known that Dutch law, like Italian, demanded that the man nominally in charge would initially be held culpable.

1: Life at the Limit, is visceral, violent and tragic, but it is also tasteful yet spectacular and stands as a moving epitaph to the fallen and a celebration of how their individual sacrifices were an integral part of so much that has moulded the sport into what it is today.

You may have watched the wilfully inaccurate hype that was Rush; now go see the real thing, told by a filmmaker who really understood what he was working with and respected it.

An interview with Paul Crowder

What made you choose F1 as your subject?

“Well, I was an F1 fan in my teens in the 80s era. But prior to that I remember there were a couple of occasions that really resonated with us. There was Roger Williamson’s accident, which we’d seen on the news, and I remember talking in the playground, specifically; why didn’t they stop the race? Then I was a big fan of James Hunt, who always had a girl on each arm and looked like a film star/rockstar. There were reports that he was partying here and partying there, and then he was winning races. As a teenager that was exciting. Being a film-maker I like to make films that are exciting, and after I’d done Once in a Lifetime, a film about the New York Cosmos, I got together with Jonathan Bracey-Gibbon, who was an ex-flatmate of mine together with Michael Shevloff. We used to live together; they were Piquet fans and I was a Mansell fan and we would argue about who was right. And I was always right! After Once in a Lifetime, Jonathan said I want to make an F1 film that has that energy and excitement. Jonathan and Michael became producers on the film and we developed the idea with Mark Monroe, my business partner, and took it to Spitfire Exclusive Media and got the financing.”

You make that sound easy. Was it?

“That side is very difficult. The luck I had was that I’d just made a film about The Who with them, Amazing Journey, which I made to complement The Kids are all Right. The F1 idea intrigued them.”

The biggest thing was getting in front of Bernie, right? How did that happen?

“Michael’s father was an old family friend of Herbie Blash and we got to Bernie through him.”

How long did that process take?

“We asked for a meeting in January and had it with Bernie in early March, and within 10 minutes he said he wanted to do it. When we pitched him he said if he was going to make an F1 film, that was the one he’d want to make. What he really wanted to get to the public was the role that Max [Mosley] played.”

What was your main aim with the movie?

“We wanted to recreate that rollercoaster of emotions of being an F1 fan back then, of enjoying it and having fun, and suddenly being slapped round the face: one of them’s gone now. Williamson’s gone. Cevert’s gone. Pryce…
“Then in 1994 you’re having your Sunday dinner, and suddenly someone’s dead… We wanted to show how F1 stopped asking the question of why did he crash, and started asking instead why did he die?”

Was it an emotional experience for you?

“Yes. It was up and down in different ways. When I was interviewing Emerson Fittipaldi in Bahrain I was like a Cheshire Cat with this smile stuck on my face and he was very happy to talk for hours, but when it got to the tragedies there were these very intense moments and some of the interviews were exhilarating but also emotionally draining. The great sport that we have today sits on this amazing legacy of people who have made it what it is, some of whom paid with their lives. The tragedies that we talk about are not there to titillate or give you something gruesome to watch. They had a knock-on effect and everybody who suffered around them and who witnessed them had to deal with the emotions and the after-effects. Every one of those tragedies helped step the sport further forward to the goal that it has got to. We really wanted to show that rollercoaster, that’s why it’s so important that we told these stories.”