that wheel-to-wheel action

It was directed by Pierre Jouve, a French writer, international journalist, photographer and television director. He made several documentaries about French political figures, such as Mitterrand and Chirac. Notably in his résumé is his long-term collaboration with psychoanalysts and his in-depth study of violence and the post-war traumas.

I think that's precisely why this docu stands out among countless prosenna documentaries, even to the point of seeming bizarre: it often cuts to black, some clips are almost meaningless, and some photos and shooting angles are weird. I feel it somewhat overuses montage, maybe that resulted in an uncomfortable viewing experience as well.

In terms of narrative logic, it seems Jouve wanted to compare two main threads:

Senna's death and Frank Williams surviving but paralyzed, to explore the "mythology" and "psychology" inside F1, trying to understand why people become so addicted to these extreme machines, get themselves into this dangerous, violent sport with passion, flirting with death. Also, television, the new media world played what kind of role in it, and how it changed motorsport.

Unfortunately, maybe he wanted to express too much. So I kinda get his point...but not really🤣

However, the interviews are precious!

I don't know what questions were asked, but from some on-the-spot guidance of the director and the answers all the guests gave, I consider they are good ones.

And, as Bernard Dudot says in the docu,

a person's answer to a question often depends on the timing of the question, and is different each time.

At that time, Williams was in a lawsuit (you can see Frank's caution when talking about Imola), Renault felt guilt, and a change of the public reactions was strongly felt by Alain.

*Compare to Alain's interview, May 2, 1994

(he must have realized then that Senna's death affected him far more than just his career. And he said their story was "poetically beautiful" at the end of the docu??? Such a description I could never have dreamed up myself was actually pointed out by the man himself?! To appreciate everything as if he wasn't someone actually in that story, this is crazy...)

Anyways, nearly a year after Senna's death, I think that was quite a special timing.

So much abt the documentary itself.

2 years ago, I first read a retrospective on Senna and Prost written in 1995 by Russian journalist Olga Linde (Ольга ЛИНДЕ)

In short, most of the "quotes" and "events" in that report do exist, but the author overinterprets and embellishes them a lot (I certainly mean no criticism, I enjoyed it! appreciate her passion as a fangirl a lot! She's definitely one of us👏🏻)

but being objective, this is, basically, a fanfic built on solid ground, not professional journalism. Out of curiosity, I wanted to verify some of the quotes and did some background checking on Linde.

She changed her career to become a reporter and her coverage is rather extreme and lacks objectivity. So she never made it into any major newspaper in her country. What stuck with me was a Russian fan who mentioned her and said

She seems to have some misunderstanding about the two (Prost & Senna), in her account they are too much affectionate, whereas in fact those were two men who were always ready to kill each other with their bare hands.

Also, quite typical I would say, after Senna's death she seemed to lay the blame on Schumacher and wrote lots of biased articles attacking him. I think that said a lot abt her.

And I'm particularly interested in this docu that she mentioned in her report, tho she called it "F1: the great decade", I don't know why.

Anyways, if comparing the original interview and quotes in her report, it's really NOT the same thing.

This 👇

And 👇

Linde said that the above "words" from this docu were the "confirmation" she needed.

But as you see, the original wording was not like that! !

I think, at least for me, no matter how enjoyable it is to read as a fanfic, I don't think it's appropriate, such misleading quotes in a professional journalist's factual report 🙏🏻

And, speaking for myself, what fascinates me the most abt prosenna is the "uncertainty", just like we'll never know what secrets Senna confided to Prost that he decided to take to the grave. It is the blankness that gives the imagination wings, right? If anything is confirmed, wasn't prosenna just another cliché love story? (I guess that's the subtlety of RPS, we better leave those to fanfics kk!)

It took me so long to finish all the translation, God I watched it 2 years ago! It was difficult! and I'm not very good at it, English and French aren't my first language as well, so there may have been times I get it wrong or I misheard, please feel free to point out any mistakes! No beta I die like...

One special note:

Sentences I marked with ❓ in the pic make no sense to me, grammatically wrong in the original french, so I could only roughly translate it by referring to Linde’s report saying “the director corrected that Alain was still using the present tense.”

Tho I'm sure the last "quote" wasn't there!