Louis Malle’s Vive le Tour!, a 19-minute homage, chronicle, and examination of the 1962 Tour de France, does not adhere to the typical sports documentary structure or formula. The viewer is never told where or when the race takes place, who is competing (only Van Looy’s name is mentioned), what stage of the race it is, or what the standings are. It doesn’t follow a linear sense of time, focus on or highlight the pivotal moments or key individual battles (such as in Joel Santoni’s La course en tete), nor follow a specific rider or team of riders (like Pepe Danquart’s Hollentour, or Hell on Wheels); and although there are lyrical qualities to its editing, cinematography, and narration, it is not a visual poem (such as Claude Lelouch’s …Pour un Maillot Jaune). Shirking a traditional narrative, Malle creates a montage of random, individual moments connected mostly by their idiosyncrasy. We see the drinking raids, where riders loot bars and restaurants for drinks (beer, lemonade, champagne, etc.), and we watch as the motorcyclists following the pack try to pick up the cyclists’ food bags with their feet. We see two riders share a Fudgesicle, one rider hold another’s seat steady as he tries to pee and pedal simultaneously, and a rider with a fractured skull muttering “My head is cold. Cover my head with something. I’m cold” as he is airlifted away from the course by helicopter. In weaving these vignettes together, Malle creates a layered emotional palette that captures everything from the short, subtle moments of humor of the Tour, to the darker, more tragic ones of pain and struggle.
Despite not adhering to the typical sports documentary formula, Vive le Tour! still captures the intensity, tension, and drama of the race. At one point the music stops, and we hear only the sound of wheels, pedals, and gears in motion. The riders’ lax style from before has disappeared, and now they are leaning forward, their weight shifted towards the front of the bike, their eyes narrowed and focused on the road ahead of them. The physical strain is unimaginable as they climb from 600 feet to 6000, then descend to 800, and then climb again to 9000. Malle cuts in on the faces of the different individual riders, and we watch as they struggle for breath, their mouths open and white around the lips, their eyes bulging and their veins popping from their neck and face. For each moment of light hearted humor there is one of struggle, physical and emotional strain, and tragedy. Riders crash, and even some of the toughest are carried off in ambulances. One racer, his face and shirt covered in blood, pedals on as he is being bandaged up. Another, pushed beyond his limits from doping (or, as Malle calls it, “charging”), quits, claiming he’d “eaten some bad fish.” In one of the film’s most extended and dramatic scenes, a rider, virtually unconscious from exhaustion, climbs back onto his bike and attempts to ride on, eventually collapsing on the side of the road.
Malle works on another level in the film, though, demonstrating his skills as a filmmaker. In the opening segment, he chooses not to focus on the riders or the race itself, but instead the spectacle that surrounds them, the carnival-like atmosphere, the anticipation and celebration of that brief moment when the riders pass by. We see a nun giving a thumbs up, a man eating a sandwich, a group of boys wearing paper hats, the parade of cars and floats, and the swarms of people lining the street. This spectacle is lost on the riders, though. As Malle tells us in voiceover, they “…can’t see the crowd. They think, ‘I’ll see my wife or my mom,’ but they don’t see a thing.” On the word “think,” the perspective changes. The camera shifts from static shots of the crowd as the blur of riders passes by to the point-of-view of the riders themselves. The camera moves quickly down the road here, the crowd now transformed into the blur of figures and colors. We are brought into the internal world of the cyclists; we hear what they hear (the “incredibly loud” sound of the crowd around them), we see what they see (the camera becomes their eyes), and we think what they think (Malle’s voiceover telling us what runs through their minds). Malle thus presents us with two different perspectives, two alternating realities that he will shift throughout the film. By doing so, he moves beyond the typical, objective portrayal of the Tour de France and allows us to see it from multiple viewpoints, to experience it as both observer and participant. Malle is thus able to capture in 19-minutes what few filmmakers are able to in 90, presenting us with a layered and captivating examination of one of sports’ most intense and historic competitions. He does not simply document the race, highlighting the significant moments and characters, but instead gives us a complex and unique experience that alternates between comedy and tragedy, subjective and objective, spectator and racer.
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