The 1957 Mille Miglia crash sequence is one of the film’s most impactful moments.

By Patrick Cremona

Published: Friday, 29 December 2023 at 07:00 AM

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Perhaps the most impactful moment in Michael Mann’s new film Ferrari comes late in the runtime: the fatal crash at the 1957 Mille Miglia road race, which killed racer Alfonso de Portago and 10 others.

The crash and its aftermath are recreated in shocking, graphic detail, and prior to the film’s release, Mann spoke exclusively to RadioTimes.com about how he approached putting the scene together.

“The first step is… what really happened?” he said. “And I always go there, sometimes I find out what really happened [and] I reject it, [but] usually what really happens or the way people really are is very impressive and is better than stuff people make up.”

He went on to explain that a member of staff at Ferrari’s Classiche Department – where they do restorations – had gone to the prefecture in Mantua, where the accident happened, and had pulled out the actual files from the time.

“[There were] reports, diagrams, blueprints of exactly that accident which they investigated for two years,” he said. “And so, we knew exactly the distances and we duplicated all the distances.

“What happened to [De Portago] historically has always been misstated, and in the forensic report we found out exactly how De Portago ended up and that’s how I staged it and duplicated it.”

He added that while he was preparing for the sequence, he had also looked at another horrendous crash that had occurred at the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in 1955, which had killed 83 spectators and French driver Pierre Levegh.

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“The way that’s photographed is so… the impact, the horror of that crash is so powerful because there is no camera trickery,” he said.

“It’s just some newsreel camera that’s been pointed down the road and it just pans [to] this flaming Mercedes as it moves through the people.

“And in its ordinariness of how it’s shot, the content is fully meaningful. It’s a horror, and it’s also real, so completely authentic. So I wanted that. I wanted to shoot this exactly the same way, which is just to let the meaningfulness in the frame.

“There’s no trickery, there’s not a lot of fast cutting, [not] a lot of nifty camera angles or any of that… I think it’s dramatically more powerful.”

Meanwhile, Mann also revealed that a conversation he had when he went to visit the scene of the crash in Guidizzolo persuaded him to add another angle to the sequence. 

“When we were at the house, this elderly gentleman with a cane came out… and we told them this is the site where the crash happened.

“And he said, ‘I know, I was there.’ He was three at the time and heard the first cars coming in, the neighbours were gathered on the roadside, [and] he ran out, [and] his older brother ran out and was much faster… his nine [year-old] brother got to the edge of the road… and was one of the ones who got killed.

“And so that’s why we created the scenes with a family and a three-year-old kid who runs out and all that.”