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1962 Tour de France details from Wikipedia

Top three finishers:
Jacques Anquetil (FRA)
Jozef Planckaert (BEL)
Raymond Poulidor (FRA)


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Bill  On The Road

 by: Bill Oetinger  3/1/2012

Vive le Tour!

Call this a movie review, or perhaps simply a recommendation. But it's not a review of a new film. This one has been around for almost half a century. The film is Vive le Tour! It's an 18-minute documentary about the 1962 Tour de France, or more generally, about bike racing. The film was created by celebrated French director Louis Malle, and it is as much homage as documentary. Malle’s love of the sport is obvious in every frame. It’s clear he understands bike racing and has a deep regard for the hard men who are its practitioners, its road warriors.

Vive le tour! from Bear Thunder on Vimeo.

Malle was well launched on what would become a great career as a filmmaker in 1962. He had already directed two films starring Jeanne Moreau, launching her career as well as his own. He has also made the delightful sight-gag comedy Zazie dans le Métro, which I will also recommend in passing…a wonderfully goofball and thoroughly French farce. In the summer of '62, he did what newly successful directors sometimes do: flush with prestige and money, he took a brief hiatus from big films and tossed off a little art piece for his own satisfaction. He indulged himself in his personal passion for the world of bike racing by filming during the race in July and then editing that footage down to this delightful little vignette, this window onto the world of racing, in all its gritty glory. (Considering the fairly primitive state of the cameras at the time, and the frenetic, fast-paced hurly burly of life within the peloton, his cinematographers did a remarkable job of filming, recording steady, crisp images that capture the color and intensity of this most grueling of challenges.)

There is a narrative track overlaid on the visuals. It's in French, but it's not essential to understand the language to fully appreciate the film. The visuals do all that is needed to sell the subject, and the whimsically gallic musical score by Georges Delerue adds all the sound track we really need, aside from the sounds of cycling. The voice-over is almost redundant, or at any rate is merely stating the obvious. If you really need to know what is being said, and your French is not up to it, there is an English transcript of the narrative at Wikipedia's page for the film.

This is not a journalistic account of the 1962 Tour de France. It doesn't report on the daily stage victories, on time gained or lost, on team tactics or favorites or decisive moments. Indeed, the winner and the final podium are shown only briefly and in an intercut collage of little snips of images, just in the last minute of the film. It seems to suggest that the final victory is less significant than the journey leading up to it. When you consider that there are 150 individuals in the race, riding 22 stages totaling 2650 miles, and how each of those riders suffers and struggles and occasionally triumphs, it becomes clear that the overall story--the human story--is about much more than who stands on the final podium in Paris. The old saying, "It's not who wins, but how one plays the game" is one of the most shopworn truisms in all of sport, but it is nevertheless a true truism, and never more so that when the "game" is almost a month long and covers a distance that would span a large continent.

The film is evocative of cycling in the early '60's, but it might just as well be of any other time in the history of the sport. There is a timeless quality to the action. The things that mattered then are the same ones that matter now. Yes, they're wearing wool jerseys--and how classy they look!--and the bikes are slightly different, as is the follow fleet of team and official cars. But overall, there is more that is the same than is different. They still have the crazy-fast sprints, the daunting, exhausting climbs, the perilous, hairball descents, the crashes, the bonks, the manic crowds…

So you don't really need to know much about the '62 Tour to understand and appreciate this film. I'm going to assume that, if you're reading this column, you already know something about cycling and bike racing, so you don't need the fundamentals explained. You may or may not be a diehard fan, with encyclopedic knowledge of what makes races happen. Probably a relatively small number of you are students of the history of the sport…and yes, a half-century ago is more-or-less ancient history. So, to enhance your enjoyment of this piece, I will add just a few minor details…

The race was won that year by the great French Champion Jacques Anquetil, the first rider to win the Tour de France five times. He first won le Tour in 1957 and then four years in a row, from 1961 through 1964, which makes this 1962 event his third Tour victory. He was definitely the class of the field. Although he was built like a classic climber and was better than average in the hills, his real strength was in the time trials, where he was known as Monsieur Chrono. In fact, in this Tour, he won the final time trial by over five minutes--a ridiculous amount--and that was more than enough, all by itself, to secure the overall victory ahead of Belgian Jo Planckaert and Frenchman Raymond Poulidor, who finished second and third.

The 1961 World Champion was Belgian Rik Van Looy. He doesn't play a significant part in the '62 Tour, but you will see him in one particular scene that is quite powerful. You'll know him by his World Champion's rainbow-stripe jersey. He's a very handsome man and a superbly fit rider…another of the sports superstars in that era, and a legend now. Remember that when you see him during his brief moments on the screen. You will come away with a more profound appreciation for what it means to be a professional bike racer when you see this.

My favorite portion of the film follows along right behind the Van Looy moment. It's about bonking and exhaustion; about being all used up and not having what it takes to continue. I don't want to give too much away and ruin the suspense, the emotional impact of the moment. But there are two scenes that stand out. First is one with a rider on the Wilier team--I'm sorry to say I don't know his name--who parks his bike on the side of the road and slumps down on the grassy berm. His team soigneur runs up to him and tries to encourage him to get back on his bike. But he simply shakes his head: no…I cannot go on. He shakes his head twice, and the expression on his face says it all. His look of vacant exhaustion is so poignant, so sad, so final… If you have ever gone one ridge too far, on a day that was too hot, when your A game deserted you, and you stared over the edge, into the abyss, then you can identify, at least in an amateur, approximate way, with that haggard rider.

After that scene is another one, somewhat longer and more involved. I won't say much about it. But the rider involved, in the red-and-black Ignis jersey, is an Italian named Giuseppe Zorzi. I confess I was not familiar with him, but my friend Emilio, my best reference on Italian racing, says he was more than just a gregario, a water-carrier. In fact, in that same summer, in June, just before the Tour, he won the first Stage of the prestigious Dauphiné. So he was a player. He may have had some hopes of doing well in the big stage race. He may have fancied his chances. Bear all that in mind as you watch the film and his moments in it.

I didn't know the first thing about bike racing in 1962. I was just getting ready to begin high school that summer. Of course I had a bike and I rode it everywhere. But the exotic, esoteric world of European bike racing was as far away and as unfamiliar as the Amazonian rain forest or the steppes of Mongolia. Bike racing, once such a popular sport in our country, had ceased to matter at that time. Without television coverage, without newspaper reports, and without the internet, one would have had to be a dedicated, somewhat offbeat fan to dig up the results of the Tour de France and, moreover, to understand what they meant. And that would be only the results…the finish and not the journey; not the epic spectacle and the struggle and survival.

Fortunately for us, we latter-day race fans, Louis Malle was there for us. His Frenchman's passion for the sport dovetailed with his skills as a documentary filmmaker, and this little time capsule is the treasure that resulted. I only discovered the film a few months ago when someone posted a link to it at our club’s chat list. A few of us with an idle moment to spare that day hit on the link, watched the film, and then got back on the list to encourage our biking buddies to please watch this film. Every serious fan of cycling agrees: it is quite simply the best 18 minutes of bike race culture ever put together.

A few months ago, in a commentary on last year's Vuelta a España, I suggested that watching two particular stages of that wonderful race--Stages 15 and 17--would convince any doubter or nay-sayer of the magical, mythical qualities of top-level bike racing. I want to amend that suggestion now: watch this little movie first, to get the full flavor of the sport. Then watch the Vuelta hilltop finishes. If you're even a half-baked, luke-warm fan, you will be pleasantly entertained, and if you are a hardcore fan, you will be in hog heaven. As we head into springtime, with all the great racing action of the season just heating up, let this little gem of a film whet your appetite for the excitement to come.

Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net



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