"Sunday Morning": The Mass of Wallace Stevens

"SUNDAY MORNING": THE MASS OF WALLACE STEVENS

I originally wrote this essay for the exacting eye of Professor Carlos Baker of the Princeton English department in March 1975 while a sophomore. The leading Hemingway authority at the time, Carlos was teaching a course in Modern Literature, and I chose to write about one of the greatest and most beautiful poems of the twentieth century, Wallace Stevens’ “Sunday Morning,” a poem that ranks with Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and Yeats’ “The Second Coming" as a masterful achievement of literary modernism.

Stevens was totemized in the emerging yuppie Seventies as the poet who wore a business suit and went to the office every day. (This Vincent Van Gogh bohemian thing just isn’t working out.) There are two stories about Stevens’ dual career as a prominent Hartford insurance executive and poet. Factoid One says that no one at the office knew he was a great poet. Factoid Two asserts that everyone in the office knew he was a flaming genius, and he was a terrible insurance executive to boot, but they kept him on out of respect and awe of his amazing talent and his international stature as a great artist.

According to his kids, he came home from the office, closed the door to his private study, and wrote poetry; they never saw him.

Strangely enough, my mother’s family might have known him. Her family, the Merrows, were fairly prominent in the Hartford area at the time; they owned the Merrow Sewing Machine Company in nearby Merrow, Connecticut, almost as big as Singer, known for its over-and-under stitch. Virtually any article of clothing with a spangle on it bears a Merrow stitch. During the Civil War, the family made its fortune manufacturing socks for Union soldiers, and as a result, my great-great uncle Joseph was eulogized in the New York Times as “the last of the self-made men.” The Merrows purchased Nook Farm from the Twain estate after Samuel Langhorne Clemens died, and my mother grew up playing in Mark Twain’s house.

To make my essay easier to understand, I’m reproducing Stevens’ actual poem “Sunday Morning” both before and after my essay, so you’ll have a chance to appreciate what I’m talking about when I refer to specific passages. “Sunday Morning” is a supremely beautiful poem, and I think you’ll enjoy reading it.

In 1975 at Princeton the poem went a long way toward shaping my emerging worldview. It illuminated two issues that were and are of vital importance to me—the death of Christianity and the death of God, and now what is to be done—and you'll see that thematically this essay ties in with my previous posts dealing with religious and spiritual subjects. You’ll certainly see Wallace Stevens’ visionary secular humanism reflected in my novel Saint George and the Dragon (see the chapters Confrontation, Apocalypse in Pennsylvania, and Phoenix on this blog.)

* * * * *

Sunday Morning

1
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound.
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

2
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

3
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

"The Palm at the End of the Mind" is both the title of one of Stevens' most famed poems and a popular collection of his works

4
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

5
She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

6
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

7
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

8
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

* * * * *

Listen to Freddie Hubbard's beautiful jazz composition "Sky Dive," which captures the rapture and tenderness of "Sunday Morning." The birds swoop

"SUNDAY MORNING": THE MASS OF WALLACE STEVENS

"After one has abandoned a belief in god [sic]," Wallace Stevens wrote in the "Adagio" section of aphorisms published in Opus Posthumous, "poetry is that essence which takes its place as life's redemption." (1) Nowhere does he better express his conviction that art is the religion of the creative personality than in his 1915 poem "Sunday Morning."

"In an age of disbelief, or, what is the same thing, in a time that is largely humanistic, in one sense or another, it is for the poet to supply the satisfactions of belief, in his measure and his style," Stevens wrote. (2) How does he supply these satisfactions?

Largely, “Sunday Morning” is the artistic realization of the poetic dictum he set forth that constitutes the credo of his artistic religion: "The relation of art to life is of the first importance especially in a skeptical age since, in the absence of a belief in God, the mind turns to its own creations and examines them, not alone from the aesthetic point of view, but for what they reveal, for what they validate and invalidate, for the support that they give." (3) In "Sunday Morning," the mind's search for these supports is as much Stevens' as the woman' s.

"Sunday Morning" takes the form of a woman's musings on a Sunday morning. Stevens uses her as the projection of his consciousness as he used the Third Girl to voice his feelings in "The Plot Against the Giant." She leads a life of comfort, as did Stevens and as do many of his middle-class readers, and so she feels guilty enjoying the breakfast: "Complacencies of the peignoir and late/Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair” while the devout attend Mass.

While her thoughts drift and she reflects on the Passion, her mind focuses on Via Dolorosa’s morbid aspects, which make worship distasteful to her: "She dreams a little and she feels the dark/Encroachment of that old catastrophe" and, "The pungent oranges and bright, green wings/Seem things in some procession of the dead” as she reflects on "silent Palestine, /Dominion of the blood and sepulchre." (Italics mine.) As the poet asks at the beginning of Stanza II, "Why should she give her bounty to the dead?"

Stevens offers fragments scattered throughout the poem that, when pieced together, present a cohesive picture of the moral universe in which the poem is set. As he writes,

We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable. (Stanza VIII)

In other words, having inherited a civilization no longer supported by religion and so operating on total insecurity, we live in a ruined world where we are forced either to blindly live every day as it arrives, or exist trapped in a prison of isolation if we choose to search for meaning. As a result, we yearn for something to fill our vacant souls; as Stevens expresses it, in terms of the objective correlative, we are forced to become like

rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang. (Stanza VI)

How does the poet propose that this spiritual hunger be fed? In Stanza II, rejecting sacrifice to "the dead"—meaning both Christ and the religion He founded—he provides for her "Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven" in the secular joys of the "balm and beauty of the earth." "All pleasures and all pains," "These are the measures destined for her soul."

When the poet begins Stanza III with the assertion, "Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth," he means, "The people, not the priests, made the gods." (4) Absorbing the force of our own creation ("our blood, commingling, virginal/With heaven"), we so hungered for another, newer god that we created one in Jesus Christ, and our wish "brought such requital to desire/The very hinds discerned it, in a star."

"Now that myth, like all myths, has lost its compelling force,'' Stevens observed. (5) So that when he says,

Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?

he is drawing from the line in the preceding stanza, "Divinity must live within herself," in the hope that man will realize that his blood, without the intercession of any deity, is so precious as to be divine. If only we can realize that, then

The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

Again Stevens employs the objective correlative. Unpeopled by gods, the sky seems indifferent; and serving as a barrier to heaven, it appears dividing.

In Stanza IV, the poet answers the woman's doubts of an afterlife by discarding the "silent shadows and dreams" of past paradises in favor of peaceful memories and the enduring cycle of the return of spring. In Stanza V, in answer to her need of "some imperishable bliss" in the present, he offers the pleasure tinged with sadness we receive from enjoying life, which we know will pass so quickly, and which is full of things we love that we know will also fade:

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires.

Like Eliot in "The Fire Sermon" of The Waste Land, Stevens identifies sex as the force through which life expresses itself; and one of life’s great pleasures is desire, which we feel when confronted with its opposite, death.

Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Son"

Regarding Death, he says,

She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

"Lady Lilith" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

It is as if the plums and pears, products of the fertility that nature has brought to the spring, served as an aphrodisiac for the maidens. Unspoken is the comment that the "dead" religion of Christianity has failed to provide a fertility rite to serve as an outlet for these natural impulses.

Carrying the image of fruit as a symbol of life over into Stanza VI, Stevens mocks our idea that paradise must embody eternal perfection and will manifest itself in terms cozily familiar to us.

Is there no change of death in paradise
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging...
Alas, that they should wear our colors there....
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes:

The idea becomes the more ridiculous when we realize that the laws of nature present such a mystery to us that we must ask the question, "Why set the pear upon those river-beds/Or spice the shores with the odors of the plum?" But Stevens understands why we form such misconceptions:

Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

In the face of the mystery of death, we can only create comforting illusions based on earthly sights and scenes.

Stanza VII, presenting Stevens’ only substitute for paradise that has religious overtones, provides his idealized alternative, in symbolic form. Our new object of devotion, he is saying, should be as the sun god is to his worshippers; he is a source and a symbol of life, and they as votaries are "Supple and turbulent," not rigid and reserved, in their celebration. Stevens offers the source of consolation they turn to as an example for us. It is

Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky....
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they come and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

For them the sky is "A part of labor and a part of pain." They shall know the fellowship of men that have perished, because they are men that have lived. As for the two cryptic lines that end the stanza, the men have dew upon their feet because their bare feet (their naked freedom) have trod the earth in the morning, during the new day they are setting out to create. Their progress can be charted by their wet footprints, because these are men who live in the physical world and who are concerned with the present, not with life after death. Stevens hints that we should live with the same attitude as these men.

With Stanza VIII, the woman's mind returns from the realm of her imagination ("that wide water without sound") with a dramatic realization from within that dispels any mystical trappings from the Passion. As it dawns upon her, after her concentrated reverie, that she is living in an age whose idols have passed their twilight, where she must choose between existence in a quotidian world and spending a life alone, she comes to accept the wonders of life that nature has surrounded her with, and she accepts the ambiguous fate of the swallows, which is tied into two preceding images.

First, she realizes that she enjoys "the green freedom of the cockatoo" of Stanza I. Second, in the last stanza, the pigeons, like the swallows of Stanza IV, are diving into the evening (the "darkness" of Stanza VIII). In Stanza IV, the wings are in a state of "consummation"; in Stanza VIII they are "extended." In both cases, the birds are making their descent into the darkness with wings spread out like outstretched arms, a symbol of acceptance.

Justin was meeting his fate. For a brief moment I caught a fleeting glimpse of the Lamb of Wilmington as he shot over the crashing falls in the deepening dusk. In that second his rippling body was perfectly outlined against the violet twilight. His arms were flung out in a generous embrace, like wings outspreading. Head thrown back, he was still belting out his exultant cry—a rebel yell, almost a joyous alleluia! That moment is forever imprinted in my memory. I will never forget the wonderful sight of Justin rushing to his death, unafraid, triumphant. That's how I'll always remember him—rearing back, poised on the brink of the waterfall, like an ecstatic Cowboy astride a bucking bronco he has just broken. Then the stop-action frame jerked and he vanished and the rolling thunder of the water swallowed him up.

Apocalypse in Pennsylvania, Saint George and the Dragon

Like the birds in flight, plunging into the unknown, Stevens is saying, we too must move into the dark mystery waiting for us, whether it is the future or death. The old gods are dead; and we, privileged to live in an age where we can mold the gods of the age to come, must grope through the shadows, accepting life as justifying its own worth, in search of our personal gods who will make our lives worth living.

Many believe Wallace Stevens wrote his acclaimed poem “The Man With the Blue Guitar” after viewing Picasso’s “Old Guitarist”

For Wallace Stevens it was enough to impart this belief to us in beautiful, vivid, compressed language that produced a magnificent poem. He made his muse—poetry—his god. His art was his religion. And the finest example of his devotion is "Sunday Morning."

* * * * *

ENDNOTES

1. Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous (New York, 1957), p. 158.
2. Ibid., p. 206.
3. Ibid., p. 259.
4. Ibid., p. 208.
5. A. Walton Litz, Introspective Voyager (New York, 1972). p. 47.

"Sunday Morning" originally appeared in Stevens' landmark 1923 collection, Harmonium

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Litz, A. Waiton. Introspective Voyager. New York, 1972.

Stevens, Wallace. Opus Posthumous. New York, 1957.

Stevens, Wallace. The Palm at the End of the Mind. New York. 1971.

Sunday Morning

1
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound.
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

2
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

3
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

4
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.

5
She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

6
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

7
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

8
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

GRAND PRIX - FRANKENHEIMER'S DAY AT THE RACES

by Nick Zegarac

“I feel that my job is to create an atmosphere where creative people can do their best work. In other words, I have to create an atmosphere where these people feel safe, where they feel respected, and where they feel that they can contribute.”

– John Frankenheimer

In 1966, director John Frankenheimer debuted one of the most exhilarating and immersive 70mm film experiences in modern screen history. In many ways, the film Grand Prix was a departure from the expected ‘norm’ in Hollywood’s take on auto racing. To be certain, films about racing and its unsung heroes were nothing new.

In one of filmdom’s most celebrated examples; Clark Gable exploited the, then minor, allure of Formula-1 racing while wooing Barbara Stanwyck in the potboiler, To Please a Lady (1950). Yet, if race cars appeared at all on the big screen, they were usually as backdrop – a stylish and gleaming prop, photographed against rear projection with little regard for accuracy, or to capture the reality and the experience of the actual moment on film.

At the time Grand Prix was set to go before the Cinerama cameras it was being touted in the trade papers as one of MGM’s big road show ‘landmark’ movies of the decade. By the mid-1960s, MGM – the studio that had once boasted ‘more stars than there are in heaven’- had succumbed to relentless cost-cutting brought on by an ever revolving line of replacement executives who came and went almost as quickly as their name plates could be removed from the front office doors.

Profits from, and output of, studio produced films had dwindled to less than half of what they had been a decade earlier. As a result, by 1966 each film that MGM produced assumed the responsibility to maintain that precariously balance of keeping the studio in the black, based almost solely on the success or failure of one or two big scale movies released per annum.

With Grand Prix, John Frankenheimer and MGM (the studio footing his bills) effectively moved Formula-1 racing out of that relative autonomy it had enjoyed; seen only in fuzzy black and white newspaper clippings, but now brought into the extreme and visceral focus of a genuinely nail-biting motion picture. Both a fiscal and critical success, Grand Prix earned MGM millions, temporarily staving off the inevitable demise that would become the studio’s final act before its sad and hostile corporate takeover.
Determined, as he was, to capture a Cinerama experience of the actual 1966 race on film, Frankenheimer allowed for the insertion of fictional characters and a compelling back story that, for many a racing enthusiast since, has served as a snap shot and time capsule for the end of that transitional period, when Formula One (F-1) racing left its ‘independent’ roots and became a worldwide commercial phenomenon.


THE FORMULA
of FORMULA ONEGrand Prix motor racing originally began in France in 1894. Quickly, it escalated in appeal from a simple vehicle race into an extreme test of physical endurance for both driver and car. Innovations in automotive design ever increased the stamina of both throughout the early part of the 20th century, and by 1920 spectators had already seen records of 100mph readily challenged and broken.

Despite these advances, Formula One racing circa the early 1960s had very much retained that elusive quality of belonging to a quiet inbred sect for true thrill seekers and minor celebrity champions. Driving vehicles that, by today’s standards were perilously unsafe, with very little control over breaks and grip – and at speeds topping over 150mph, F-1 drivers were amongst the most honored and respected sportsmen, at least within their chosen profession. This gregarious brotherhood of wild and crazy personalities bred its own mythological characters; all under a sustained camaraderie of loveable and flashy expertise being tested, matched and outperformed on the race track.

It was the Cooper Car Company’s evolution in performance – brought on by the relocation of F-1 engines behind the driver - instead of in front – that began this new era in racing. Within a few short years, rear engine design had become the accepted standard and, by the mid-60s, the 1 ½ liter engine had given way to a deluxe 3 liter model, adding to the complexity of engineering.

In this pre-commercial era of F-1 driving, cars were primarily built by individuals – not car companies; Ferrari being the one exception to this rule. F-1 racer Jack Brabham, as example, built the car that won him the 1966 Grand Prix, the year the fictional Pete Aaron (James Garner) took home the trophy in the film, Grand Prix.

The men who designed these vehicles were interested in only one criteria of performance: speed. It was a recipe for disaster. In excess of 180mph, and on race courses that had not been designed with such velocities in mind – let alone properly maintained between races – F-1 drivers of this ‘golden period’ owed much more to the unhinged daredevils of the early 1920s than the Jeff Gordon’s of today. In less than capable hands, no aspiring wunderkind could hope to compete. Under a seasoned veteran, one could ostensibly at least hope to finish the race alive.

If racing displayed the most foolhardy of general road conditions, it also cultivated a distinct roster of rugged personalities behind the wheel. Total originals like Dan Gurney, Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, Phil Hill and Bob Bondurant became enigmatic emcees of the sport – shiny superstars fueled by a love affair with their cars and overwhelming machismo. There was a sense of personal investment in these men – a commitment that far outweighed the dangerous aspects of their chosen profession.
Though love of craft may have resulted in F-1 cars of this vintage bearing a more esthetically pleasing outward appearance this photogenic quality came at a great expense to life and limb. The lack of uniform fabrication of these vehicles on a mass scale – with all the prescreening and crash-testing that occurs today during the design stages - yielded to a virtual litany of guaranteed mechanical failures during every racing season. Some were minor disappointments. Most, however, proved fatal.

For example, one of F-1’s most celebrated champions, Sir Stirling Moss broke both his back and legs when the wheel of his Lotus came off at 150mph. Moss survived the ordeal and continued to race, eventually racking up 525 competitions, all of them without the benefit of a seatbelt. The reason for this latter omission seemed prudent at the time; a wipeout almost always involved the car catching fire; hence a driver needed to escape his vehicle quickly – if, in fact, he could do so at all.
Today, this lack of general safety seems utterly appalling. Yet, in the climate of competition, and, without the luxury of professional sponsorship, this absence of common sense is almost forgivable. In point of fact, safety had never been an issue in Formula-1. The cramped nature of each car’s thin skeletal metal cocoon, that separated its human element from flashes of speeding pavement only inches below, trapped the driver in an aluminum skin encompassed by highly flammable reserves of fuel. Roll bars – designed to protect the driver in the very real event of a wipe out – were often lower than the driver’s own head.

With such disregard for driver safety and the increasingly severe and unpredictable state of racing conditions, F-1 racing practically guaranteed a few men would die each season. Those odds exponentially grew with each year that a driver remained accident free. For example – ‘veterans’ of the sport had little more than five years of experience behind them. Titans could proudly claim that they had survived ten years with life threatening injuries as their badges of courage and honor. Reporters assigned to cover these races often focused more intensely on the casualties, rather than the survivors – or even the winners, for that matter. After all, disaster sold copy.

JOHN FRANKENHEIMER
- A CAREER

At the start of Grand Prix – the movie, director John Frankenheimer could have so easily chosen to open his fictional story with various shots of his actors preparing for the fictional race. He did not. Instead, Frankenheimer used legitimate shots of crowds and actual F-1 drivers, mechanics and pit crew preparing for the 1966 Monte Carlo race. At once, the genius and mystery behind his storytelling prowess is established. As an audience, we are pressed to the question; Is this a movie or is this reality?

Frankenheimer had always exercised a penchant for capturing the realities of life within that strained confine of predigested fiction that is Hollywood film making. In his search for reality on the set of Grand Prix, Frankenheimer broke new ground – introducing F-1 racing to the widest international audience it had ever known until that moment in its history, and, in Technicolor, stereo and 70mm Cinerama the experience proved an exhilarating wonderment to behold.Born on February 19, 1930, John Frankenheimer had initially toyed with the prospect of becoming a professional tennis player. Though his interest in the movies would eventually surpass this early pursuit, another real love for the young man was racing. “I learned early on that I lacked the genuine skill required to become a pro,” Frankenheimer would later muse.

Yet, his general fascination for the automobile remained reticent, if in the back of his mind. During WWII, Frankenheimer honed in his talents with a camera as part of the Motion Picture Squadron for the Air Force – a tenure that directly launched his career in television in 1953 – directing the ‘You Are There’ series for CBS, under the guidance of Sidney Lumet.

Frankenheimer’s first filmic endeavor, The Young Stranger (1957), was a hateful experience, only partly for the fact that unlike television, he had been suddenly forced to work with only one camera at his disposal.

“I became a director at twenty-four…” he would later muse, “…which is probably pretty good (except that) everybody thought I was an inexperienced kid who didn’t know what the hell I was doing. The only way I could get it done was to just say (in a commanding tone) ‘Do it!’…and I’ve never stopped that.”

Frankenheimer’s disillusionment on The Young Stranger considerably impacted his career. He remained absent from film work from 1954 to 1960, concentrating instead within his comfort zone on television, accruing152 live television shows to his name.

In 1961, Frankenheimer once again took a chance on films – this time with The Young Savages. The experience proved so rewarding, it effectively launched Frankenheimer on a distinctive and highly profitable career in movies. He was both acknowledged and respected primarily for his subtly in expressing complex philosophical ideas and social issues in an uncomplicated and highly entertaining way.

His biggest successes prior to Grand Prix materialized with a pair of superb political thrillers; 1962’s The Manchurian Candidate and 1964’s Seven Days in May. Having already proved he could do witty – Frankenheimer next decided that it was time for him to try for ‘gritty.’ After all, there was no subtly to Formula-1 racing.

GRAND PRIX
– THE RACE BEGINS

“The idea was to put the audience in the car!” – John Frankenheimer

Actor Steve McQueen had always been Frankenheimer’s first choice for the part of American driver, Pete Aaron. Initially, McQueen had expressed a genuine interest in making Grand Prix. Unfortunately, for Frankenheimer – he sent assistant Eddie Lewis in his stead to iron out the contractual negotiations. Reportedly, McQueen took an instant dislike to Lewis on sight, thereafter dropping out of the project. The part of Pete Aaron went to James Garner instead.
Garner always felt he had been foisted on Frankenheimer’s good graces by the studio who, after several solid efforts felt confident in his box office clout. Though director and star eventually fell into a syncopated rhythm of working together, Garner would later muse that Frankenheimer ran roughshod over most of the cast, including him.

In service to Frankenheimer’s quest for authenticity, the rest of Grand Prix’s star roster was rounded out by an international cast; including French matinee idol Yves Montand (as introspective driver and ladies man Jean-Pierre Sarti), Japan’s Toshiro Mifune (as automotive designer Izo Yamura), England’s Brian Bedford (Scott Stoddard), Italy’s Antonio Sabato (ego driven, Nino Barlini) and Eva Marie Saint (fashion writer, Louise Frederickson).

The one cheat in Grand Prix – in other words, the only aspect of its production that was not in keeping with Frankenheimer’s ascribed pursuit of exact recreation - stemmed from his decision to use Formula-3 cars outfitted to look like Formula-1 racers; a choice made more for consideration of where and how to mount the weighty Cinerama cameras rather than for mere artistic license. In the film, these replacement vehicles are indiscernible in either appearance or performance to their F-1 counterparts, so the cheat – if necessary, is nevertheless forgivable.

Meanwhile, principle cast – except for Garner - were remanded into the care of Jim Russell’s racing school for an intense three week training session on how to drive the hairpin turns and twists of each course in the circuit. Frankenheimer absolutely refused to use doubles during these races, though he was eventually ‘convinced’ to accept Russell’s recommendation that actor Brian Bedford was hopelessly out of his element. He simply could not learn to shift gears. Aside: The Grand Prix at Monte Carlo alone requires no less than 250 gear shifts! As a result, professional racer Phil Hill doubled for Bedford in the film, wearing dark goggles and a face mask.

As for Garner; he was assigned F-1 champion Bob Bondurant as his driving instructor. The two spent a month driving various professional cars at Willow Springs, at the end of which Bondurant gave a glowing review of his student’s capabilities: “If he is in a real race he would have been able to beat several drivers. In Formula-1 that’s saying a lot!”

As cast continued to hone their racing craft, Frankenheimer was enduring a bit of negative press at Monte Carlo. The director’s penchant for doing things his own way (some would suggest ‘the hard way’), coupled with a certain dispensation for the niceties and his own maniacal quest for total perfection, circulated the rumor and buzz that Frankenheimer could be counted on to be utterly rude towards cast and crew.

In an interview conducted at the time, Frankenheimer publicly apologized if his gregariousness had leant itself to such interpretation. But behind the scenes, he continued to craft his production according his own likes and with the same clear-eyed sense of determination that had been misinterpreted as ‘rude.’

In retrospect, this snap assessment of Frankenheimer’s general demeanor seems quite unfair. After all, Frankenheimer was an artist, and artists are regularly allotted a certain margin for temperament. Yet, even prior to rekindling the reputation for being difficult, Frankenheimer quickly discovered a genuine and growing animosity towards his involvement.

“Everbody was skeptical about another movie being made about racing,” Frankenheimer confided many years later, “As a matter of fact, Ferrari wanted nothing to do with it.”
The rebuke from this automotive designer and manufacturer is significant – since without Ferrari’s participation, Grand Prix lacked that air of authenticity indigenous to F-1 racing that Frankenheimer so desperately wanted to include in his film.

But Frankenheimer was also encountering skepticism from professional racers who had already decided and misperceived that Hollywood had decided to horn in and cheapen the sport. The one Formula-1 racer on Frankenheimer’s side was Carroll Shelby, who proved to be the lynch pin in securing drivers Dan Gurney and Phil Hill to a two year exclusivity contract. Eventually, pro drivers Graham Hill and Bruce McLaren were drafted into service to add more authenticity to the proceedings.

Still, the grumbling continued. After all, allowing Frankenheimer’s crew to shoot key sequences along the circuit just hours before the actual race, meant less time for the real mechanics and drivers to test the course prior to the real thing. The Monte Carlo shoot was further complicated by a minor internal feud between the two ‘owners’ of this coastal principality; with both the Onasis and the Grimaldi families quietly refusing the director access to portions of the streets necessary to shoot the race on the same day.

For the most part, Frankenheimer kept his cool throughout these minor gripes and groans, although at one point, the film’s star, James Garner had unkind words of his own to pass along to Monte’s shop keepers. The incident began innocently enough with a negotiation between Frankenheimer and a small band of local shop keepers.

The production unit manger had paid compensation to them all to stay indoors and keep their shops closed while Frankenheimer restaged portions of the race for the benefit of close ups and in-car shots. However, upon further consideration, a few of these owners felt that more remuneration was in order.

Meanwhile, Garner – who had been dunked into the Mediterranean and loaded onto a boat for a key sequence, was quietly freezing himself in a corner. After thirty minutes of this stalemate between Frankenheimer and the shop keepers, Garner ordered his boat back to shore, whereupon he made it quite clear in no uncertain terms that unless the shop keepers cleared the premises immediately, he was prepared to start tossing each and every one of them into the Mediterranean.

As the actual Grand Prix got underway, Frankenheimer found yet another form of opposition brewing from the local officials in Monte Carlo. His cameraman, John Stevens had been outfitted on a rig inside an Alouette-3 helicopter for aerial photography. But the pursuit of cars around the difficult terrain and winding streets necessitated the copter swooping down on crowds at very severe and dangerous angles. Publicly, Frankenheimer instructed the pilot and Stevens to remain more removed from the action – then, in private, demanded they both come as close as possible to the spectacle of it all: the result, some of the most breathtaking racing footage ever captured on film.To stage the initial horrific accident that cripples fictional character Scott Stoddard, Frankenheimer and special effects man, Milton Rice came up with the inspired notion of removing the engine from one of the cars, creating a mock up with a dummy on board, then firing the car from a hydrogen canon. The final effect proved startlingly real. However, there is a postscript of irony pertaining to this event but removed from the actual film.

During the planning stages for this catastrophic wreck, Frankenheimer had walked the Monte Carlo course with F-1 driver, Lorenzo Bandini to make inquires as to where on the actual course such an accident would be most likely to occur. Bandini prophetically directed Frankenheimer’s attention to ‘the Dog Leg’; a perilous twisting stretch of road that would claim his life two years later under an almost identical set of circumstances as depicted in the film.

Immediately following wrap up on the Monte Carlo location, Frankenheimer rushed to complete what would ultimately become his ‘minor miracle.’ Frenetically cutting together the first thirty minutes of the film, including its racing footage, the director telephoned Ferrari with an invitation to a private screening of the assembled sequence.

Though the word on high was at first as cold as the initial reception, Ferrari eventually relented to the request after Frankenheimer, a projectionist and all the necessary equipment were flown out to Ferrari’s estate for a private screening. Any apprehensions Frankenheimer may have had going into the screening were immediately quashed after the house lights came up.
Not only was Ferrari overwhelmingly impressed with the footage and Frankenheimer’s direction, but the wily automotive pioneer immediately provided the film crew with complete access to his facilities and the right to use the Ferrari name in the rest of his production. At last Grand Prix had the official seal of authenticity that Frankenheimer had hoped for. It would be the last bit of positive news for the rest of the film shoot.

GRAND PRIX - FRANKENHEIMER'S DAY AT THE RACES: PART II

WIND IN HIS HAIR, WIND AT HIS BACK

“It's very eclectic, the way one chooses subjects in the movie business, especially in the commercial movie business. You need to develop material yourself or material is presented to you as an assignment to direct.”

– John Frankenheimer

The beauty, or perhaps the curse, inherent in the Grand Prix circuit is that no two courses are alike. During the mid-60s, when the film Grand Prix was being prepared, the course at Spa in Belgium was considered amongst the most dangerous – not the least for its unpredictable weather conditions. True to form, Spa had another surprise in store for Frankenheimer’s cast and crew.

With cameraman John Stevens mounted inside his helicopter perch, the staged race necessary for capturing close ups of the stars driving their vehicles in excess of 150mph began in earnest. However, midway through the shoot cast and crew suddenly found themselves at the mercy of an unexpected torrential rain. The intensity of the storm proved such a concern that at one point Phil Hill’s camera car accidentally passed Dan Gurney’s racer. In a moments notice, other racers began to pile up along various points of the embankment.

F-1 racer cum stunt man, Jackie Stewart lost control of his vehicle, breaking his shoulder in a wreck along the route. Bob Bondurant missed a turn and became trapped beneath his car when it flipped upside down. Most of those who remained in the race did not make it past the third lap. Upon viewing these wrecks, spectacularly captured by Stevens in the helicopter, Frankenheimer was suddenly faced with an esthetic dilemma.
In editing the footage together, the rain storm seemed preempted by no dramatic signifier. It simply appeared out of nowhere. Quickly, Frankenheimer improvised a close up shot of his own hand holding a starter’s watch – dropping a few beads of water from above and off camera. Later, in post production, Frankenheimer and sound editor Gordon Daniels would add the audio of a thunder clasp to signify the beginning of the storm.

Production advanced to Brands Hatch in England where James Garner found himself the unwitting participant in a stunt sequence gone wrong. Originally, Garner’s racer had been rigged with butane to catch fire as his car rounded the final lap. At first, the effect seemed to go off without a hitch. As Garner came into camera view around the last hairpin turn, the leaking gas suddenly caught fire, blazing a trail behind him. What came next, however, was unexpected.

The sequence called for Garner to propel his racer to the sidelines and quickly disembark so that a waiting crew of men with fire extinguishers could put out the controlled blaze. However, as the car came to a halt, an unexpected breeze fanned the flames into frenzy. A fireball erupted, temporarily engulfing the car with Garner still inside. Frankenheimer chose to have the footage remain in the film, and although Garner emerged from this stunt relatively unscathed, a distinct burn mark can be seen on his neck in the close up that concludes the last shot in the film.

As principle photography wrapped up, Frankenheimer turned his attention to the daunting task of beginning post production. Designer Saul Bass was called in to begin the arduous process of editing the raw racing footage into an eclectic series of visceral montages. Noted for his unusual fast paced editing (most recently admired in the shower scene for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho 1960), his impressionistic main title sequences and a dizzying array of chopping together tri panel action into cinema art, Bass undertook a monumental risk in creating an intricate tapestry out of Formula-1 racing, for which the ultimate result would yield no two sequences being alike in their rhythm, pacing or tempo.

Composer Maurice Jarre, fresh from his collaborative work with director David Lean on Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965) was hired by Frankenheimer to augment the action with an orchestral score. Jarre’s rousing ‘Grand Prix’ theme – part march/part ballad proved the ideal musical companion.

In point of fact, Jarre’s music was much more prominently showcased during the film’s lengthy overture and entr’acte than anywhere else during the action – the one exception being a beautifully staged sequence by Bass for the third race in which the multiplied images of cars tearing up the scenery is transformed in slow motion into almost ballet of automobiles with Jarre’s fairytale-like rendition of the march playing as the only sound on the soundtrack.

Meanwhile, sound effects editor, Gordon Daniels was busy combining the various real life sound elements captured from the actual races. Daniels had placed a sound recorder inside each vehicle prior to the race, documenting the distinct noise of each engine and subtle nuances of gears shifting, axels grinding and tires screeching. In the final sound mix, the full girth, depth and intensity of auto racing came to life as few could have imaged. Certainly, nothing like Grand Prix’s sound edit had ever been experienced in theaters before.

With its 100 foot wide curved Cinerama screen divided into various portioned observations by Bass, Grand Prix became a truly immersive film going experience. Conscious of the fact that all this graphic movement caught through the Cinerama lenses might prove too much for some, the road show engagement of Grand Prix came equipped with ‘barf bags’ attached to the back of each seat in the theater to accommodate those weak of stomach.

A TESTIMENT TO SPEED

While many racing purists criticized and even denounced Grand Prix as sensationalizing the dangers of Formula-1 racing, the truth of the matter is that Frankenheimer had meticulously researched F-1’s history. The recreated wrecks in his movie were actually ripped from sports newspaper clippings, interviews and relayed accounts from the real drivers, some of whom had watched helplessly as their colleagues slipped into that margin of error and lost their lives.

As though to prove the point, on April 7, 1968, F-1 racing lost one of its most enigmatic personalities, Jim Clark in a horrific accident – ironically played out on an inferior F-2 course in Germany. Later attributed to mechanical error, Clark’s demise sent shockwaves throughout the sport. Considered an ‘untouchable’ with superior racing talent and at the pinnacle of his career, Clark’s death impacted F-1 racing considerably.

Most immediately, it forced engineers to redesign the tires of all racing vehicles. Until Clark’s time, tires were apt to fly off a car when pressed to service under extreme mechanical duress. After Clark’s death, all F-1 racers were required to have their tires bolted to their suspension.

In the wake of Clark’s loss, another driver, Jackie Stewart emerged as the unsung crusader for more advanced safety measures. In fact, Stewart made it his personal manifest to rid the sport of such unbearable calamities. Initially, he met with vehement opposition from fellow racers. Eventually, Stewart became successful in enforcing the sport to accept secure barriers and seatbelts as part of the accepted standard practice.

Today, Formula-1 racing is no longer the sport of a true adventurer attempting to beat another’s record, but the capitalized commercial hybrid of corporate ventures destined to flex their engineering muscle. The majors in automotive design have transformed those rickety amateur creations into supercharged, high tech advertisements.

In reflecting on the film Grand Prix today, only this obvious transformation of the sport into a high priced commodity event seems to peg Frankenheimer’s movie as a 60s time capsule. Otherwise, it remains as compelling, unhinged and exhilarating as ever. Undeniably, the skillful editing of Saul Bass; diverse performances from principle cast and Maurice Jarre’s melodious orchestral arrangements immensely contribute to Grand Prix’s timeless appeal.

Yet, at the heart of the film there is but one name to which almost all of the credit must remain ascribed, and it is Frankenheimer’s. In his committed detail to really getting down to the nuts and bolts of F-1 racing, his unforgiving focus that became misconstrued as belligerences along the route, Frankenheimer’s perseverance as a film maker have stamped the film with a hallmark of excellence that few movies – racing or otherwise – can lay claim.

In a sea of marginal copies depicting life behind the wheel, Frankenheimer’s is the one true testament to the greatness within the sport, and, as time goes by, there is little to suggest that another such celebration will come along to better his efforts.
“When I look back…” Frankenheimer mused years after the thunder and roar of racers had ceased to echo in his ears, “…I don’t know how the hell we ever did that film!”

Fifty one years later, racing enthusiasts and film fans alike remain eternally grateful that Frankenheimer dared to try. Gentlemen…start your engines.

Nick Zegarac 2007 (all rights reserved).