30 years in the making
Ferrari, as a marque, is no stranger to the cinema screen. Whether it’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Miami Vice, The Rock or even National Lampoon’s Vacation, the silver screen has often been scarlet red.
Ferrari the man, though? That is rarer by far. The enigmatic Enzo has appeared on screen, both in fact and fiction. He was played by Italian actor Remo Girone in 2019’s Le Mans ’66. In that film, there was some fact, and much fiction — Ferrari himself never attended the 1966 Le Mans 24 Hours, for instance.
He has also been played as a fictional character, by Adolfo Celi in 1966’s Grand Prix. While the Ferrari team plays itself, Celi plays a character called Agostini Manetta, but he’s clearly meant to be Enzo.
Ferrari’s life swerved so much between triumph and tragedy that you’d think him an automatic choice for a big screen biopic, but director Michael Mann —of Heat, Miami Vice and Last Of The Mohicans — has only succeeded in getting his film of Enzo’s life made after 30 years of trying.
Indeed, the length of time that Mann has been trying to make the film for is evinced by the fact that the screenplay is still credited to British writer Troy Kennedy Martin, who also wrote the screenplays for The Italian Job and Kelly’s Heroes, but who sadly passed away in 2009.
First trailer released
The new film is simply titled Ferrari, and a trailer has just been released. While it lasts a full 90 seconds, there is only one line of audible dialogue. The rest is all engine sounds, as various Ferraris whip past the camera while intercut with a series of images of Star Wars star Adam Driver playing Enzo Ferrari at various points of his life. Originally, Mann had Christian Bale in mind for the role, and then Hugh Jackman.
The synopsis of the film says that it charts Ferrari’s life up to the running of the famed Mille Miglia 1,000-mile road race across Italy in 1957. Sir Stirling Moss famously won that race at a record speed in 1955, but after the 1957 event it was cancelled following a horrific crash that killed Ferrari racer Alfonoso De Portago, his co-driver Edmund Nelson and nine spectators, five of them children.
For true motor racing historians, then, it’s obvious from the opening seconds of the trailer that this will be a film with a tragic ending — the first image is that of De Portago’s number 531 Ferrari 355S powering along a narrow Italian road, hemmed in by tall trees.
There will be more than racing tragedy on show here, too. The trailer puts Penelope Cruz and Shailene Woodley front and centre. Cruz plays Ferrari’s wife and the mother of his son Alfredo – or Dino. Dino died tragically young from muscular dystrophy and left the elder Ferrari distraught. Enzo also famously had an affair with Lina Lardi, whom Woodely is playing, and she gave birth to a son, Piero. Today, Piero Lardi Ferrari is a billionaire who owns a substantial chunk of the Ferrari car company. So, there’s going to be a family melodrama thrown in with the racing action.
Lots of driving action
There promises to be plenty of racing action, though. There are shots of both the Mille Miglia and Le Mans, as well as what appears to be a massive accident involving Grand Prix cars, which may well be a recreation of the accident that took the life of the great Alberto Ascari at Monza in 1955.
Other big names involved in the film include Patrick Dempsey — himself a racing driver and team owner — portraying Ferrari racer Piero Taruffi, while Britain’s first F1 World Champion, Mike Hawthorne makes an appearance played by Swedish actor Samuel Hubinette.
The most intriguing member of the crew is also sadly deceased — Brock Yates. The great American motoring writer – who invented the real Cannonball Run and collaborated on those comedy films — is credited as one of the screen writers (alongside Mann and Kennedy Martin) because the film is based on Yates’ biography of Ferrari. As biographies go, Yates’ take was incredibly unflinching, and was hugely critical of Ferrari, essentially accusing him of causing the deaths of drivers by pushing them too hard.
A tiny flash of this flinty Ferrari attitude is shown with the only audible dialogue in the trailer — right at the end, Enzo — seemingly in a contract negotiation with an unseen driver, with someone who appears to be wearing a neck brace sitting next to him — menacingly says: “If you get into one of my cars, you get in to win.”
That was certainly Ferrari’s attitude in life, and it will be fascinating to see how much the film leans into or shies away from Enzo’s harder, darker side. Given Mann’s track record, and assuming that an actor of Driver’s calibre isn’t going to be interested in playing a glossy puff-piece version of Ferrari, this could shape up to be one the most purely dramatic films of the year.
Ferrari doesn’t yet have a firm release date, but it’s expected to be in cinemas by Christmas Day this year.
- If you enjoyed reading about the new film about Enzo Ferrari, you might like to read a profile of ‘Quadrifoglio’ — Alfa Romeo’s sporty sub-brand
- Also check out F1 legend Alain Prost’s signed Ferrari F40, which was expected to fetch up to £2.6m at auction
- And don’t miss Lamborghini’s Le Mans hypercar with which the famous rival plans to take on Ferrari in 2024
Keyword: First trailer for Michael Mann’s ‘Ferrari’ film released, starring Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz