Ferrari movie now on home video:

Home Video? What is this, 1993? Can we go rent it from Blockbuster?

j/k, I'll buy it next time I'm at the 'Mart...

 

It's down to $6 on Prime video to rent, $15 to buy.

 

EV shill Dan Neil reviewed it for TWSJ, so he must have been the one so impressed by the movie.

 

Just bought it off Amazon Blue-Ray $17.50 total... adding it to my Ferrari library

 

Article is behind a paywall.

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/cars/ferrari-film-review-dan-neil-first-great-car-movie-83f68bd1?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1

I’ve Written About Cars for Over 30 Years. Here’s Why ‘Ferrari’ Is the First Great Car Movie
Delving into the details of Enzo Ferrari’s midlife crisis, Michael Mann’s film, opening in December, masterfully captures the tragedy of the Italian sports car founder’s double life, writes Dan Neil. And there’s no shortage of speed.

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By

Dan Neil
Oct. 19, 2023 at 5:15 pm ET

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MAXIMUM FERRARI In a scene from director Michal Mann’s ‘Ferrari,’ Piero Taruffi (played by Patrick Dempsey) drives his 315 S to victory in the 1957 Mille Miglia, the famous 1,000-mile road race around Italy. PHOTO: EROS HOAGLAND/NEON


IT’S 1957 AND ENZO FERRARI (Adam Driver) is running late. The founder of the famed Italian racing and sports-car manufacturer rises from his mistress’s bed, steps into his trousers and tiptoes out the door, pushing his Peugeot 403 down the driveway before starting the engine. Another day of lies begins.

Director Michael Mann’s concours-quality “Ferrari,” opening in December, finds the 59-year-old Il Commendatore in midlife crisis. The Great Engineer has a second family—including an illegitimate son, Piero—an empty bank account and an estranged wife/business partner, Laura (Penélope Cruz). She’s waiting at home with a Beretta.

I was invited to a screening at the New York Film Festival last Friday on the grounds that I knew something about Ferrari. The cars, sure. I’ve been to Maranello many times to test the latest hardware. Ferraristi will recognize the company gates on Via Abetone and the colonnaded streets of Modena, where Ferrari lived. I’ve also interviewed Piero Ferrari, now vice chairman of the company and multibillionaire, which is nice for him.

But, like most enthusiasts, what I knew of the man behind the sunglasses came from two books: Brock Yates’ magisterial “Ferrari: The Man and the Machine”; and Ferrari’s own “My Terrible Joys.” These books nail down the established facts of the man who built the greatest team in the history of motor sports and the most valuable luxury brand in the world.

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FAST AND FURIOUS Enzo Ferrari, seen here at age 21 competing in the 1919 Parma-Poggio di Berceto hillclimb, gave up racing after his son Dino was born in 1932. PHOTO: ALAMY


Also established: Ferrari was a well-dressed, fastidiously groomed maniac, a tyrant, obsessed with winning, indifferent to death and suffering and generally scornful of the rules that bind others. Ferrari admits as much.

So not an easy guy to live with. Troy Kennedy Martin’s screenplay puts a glass to the couple’s bedroom door, reconstructing the private drama behind this very public name, drawing on months of research in Emilia-Romagna and interviews with everyone they could find who knew them personally. Interiors included his son Dino’s mausoleum and Laura’s bedroom, a shuttered space decorated in funereal blacks and browns.

In many ways the film belongs to the other Ferrari, Laura. After all, Enzo doesn’t really have an emotional arc—racers typically don’t. He doesn’t change, doesn’t learn, doesn’t grow except to become more inscrutable, his froggy eyes hidden behind trademark sunglasses.

Laura is distraught when she learns of Piero—a living heir to the kingdom she was building for Dino. At that moment she has the power to bankrupt Enzo and every reason to do so. But she doesn’t. She can’t. It’s her company too. As the only condition for bailing him out, Laura insists that Piero not be given the Ferrari name until after her death. Needless to say if there were a Constructor’s Championship for faces, Cruz would win easily.

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FIT FOR A KING In a scene from Michael Mann’s ‘Ferrari,’ opening in December, Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver, left) arrives at the factory in Maranello to hand over the keys of a yellow 335 S to King Hussein of Jordan. PHOTO: LORENZO SISTI/NEON


Aficionados know that the real Laura Garello later provoked the great walkout of 1961, when Enzo lost some of his most talented people. But that’s inadmissible cinematic evidence.

All events lead to the 1957 Mille Miglia, a bloodthirsty 1,000-mile road race around Italy. Ferrari’s accountants have told him he must win. The factory team, Scuderia Ferrari, enters five cars, including a 335 S driven by Marquess Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leon), a 28-year-old Spanish sportsman.

Thirty miles from the finish, a front tire of De Portago’s Ferrari explodes, sending the car scything into spectators at more than 150 mph. Nine are killed, including five children, and 20 more injured. Co-driver Edmund Nelson and De Portago are also killed, the latter cut in half at the waist. Mann’s camera moves slowly over, if not dwells on, this slaughter, the human wreckage typical of what we now think of as the golden age of motor sports.

In Brescia, Ferrari’s Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey) takes the checkered flag with teammate Von Trips coming in second. But there is no joy in Modena. Amid public outrage and calls for Ferrari himself to be jailed, Italian authorities ban racing on public roads.

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HOT WHEELS In an image from 1965, Enzo Ferrari points out some of the features of the Ferrari Dino 206 S to singer Pat Boone, a driving enthusiast who owned several Ferraris. The Dino model was named in honor of Ferrari’s son, who died in his 20s of muscular dystrophy. PHOTO: ALAMY


Every frame of this film will make car-lovers want to roll around like a cat on catnip. Scaglietti-bodied Testarossas, Fantuzzi-bodied Maseratis, Jaguar D-Types, Mercedes 300 SLs, all glowing in the rich, reddening light of Emilia-Romagna. According to Mann, the stunt cars were all exact replicas with the exception of Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason’s Maserati 450 S, which was the real thing, worth tens of millions.

Stirling Moss’s stringback gloves, Taruffi’s shock-white hair, carburetors by Weber, gauges by Jaeger—all period correct. The filmmakers even re-create the famous “Kiss of Death” moment, when De Portago’s celebrity-girlfriend Linda Christian was photographed kissing him for good luck.

Going in I was skeptical whether any racing film could attract a general audience. Few movies set in a racing milieu hold up as cinema. Actually, most of them are ridiculous. Mickey Rooney in “The Big Wheel,” Sly Stallone in “Driven.” Fuhgettaboutit. Steve McQueen’s beloved “Le Mans” is just stupid, a petulant farce wrapped around racing footage.

I am now prepared to declare “Ferrari” the best car movie ever made—maybe even the first great car movie. It’s a spectacular piece of filmmaking, worthy of the legend.

I do have one note. That tall, broad-shouldered man with the gorgeous brown eyes and wandering Italian accent, he’s supposed to be Enzo? Because, well, Enzo was not a handsome man—bulging eyes, droopy lids, bad teeth, a schnoz like Cosimo de Medici. And a half-foot shorter.

For a production otherwise devoted to looking-glass verisimilitude, the presence of the tall, dark and bankable Driver fairly reeks of commercial considerations. I suppose it’s to be expected—cinema and racing are both necessarily expedient—but it took me out of the dramatic moment. Apparently both Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale were previously attached to the project.

They don’t look much like Enzo, either.

Corrections & Amplifications
The Ferrari driver who was in a fatal accident in the 1957 Mille Miglia, a 1,000-mile road race in Italy, was Marquess Alfonso de Portago. A previous version of this article mistakenly identified him as Count Alfonso de Portago.

 

Just picked it up at the Walmart tonight, will watch it this weekend with the wife. $17 for the Blu Ray.

 

I have it on Amazon... I think its a very good movie - but only if you are a Ferrari history buff. If you dont know about him at all, it may be boring.... but it is very accurate with only minimal Hollywood sensationalism.

 

I’m about 1.5 hours into the movie…even knowing much of the story it is a very slow moving movie…