That Gut-Wrenching Tragedy In Ferrari Happened In Real Life
Content warning: This article discusses the death of a child and contains spoilers for "Ferrari."
Director Michael Mann is back with his first feature film since 2015's "Blackhat." This time, the acclaimed filmmaker is bringing a long-gestating passion project to the big screen in the form of "Ferrari," a biopic about famed car maker Enzo Ferrari, played by Adam Driver. Specifically, it chronicles a very tumultuous period for the historical figure that takes place in the summer of 1957. It all leads up to one of the most horrific accidents in the history of racing — one that Mann captured on screen in gruesome detail.
Anyone who has seen the movie knows the scene: Alfonso de Portago (portrayed by Gabriel Leone in the film) is racing in the Mille Miglia during the film's climax. After his tire is punctured, the car is flung into the air and smashes into a group of onlookers, including an eager young boy who runs up to see the cars driving by. The aftermath is horrific and Mann opts to show the audience what happened, with body parts scattered on the road. "Out of respect, I wanted to shoot it very factually, as if we were a newsreel camera who saw this coming and just followed it," Mann said of the gut-wrenching scene speaking to Entertainment Weekly. The filmmaker also shared how he came to learn of the boy's tragic story.
"When I went to the site at Guidizzolo where it actually happened, there's a long straight road and a farmhouse. An elderly gentleman came out of the house and asked what we were doing, in Italian. Through translators, he told us that he was there at the crash. He said that he was three years old. They were having a typical Italian Sunday dinner at about 4 o'clock. His older brother, who was faster than him, ran out because the cars were coming and got killed. That's when I decided I wanted to have the scene with the family and the three-year-old toddler."
'That's how we knew exactly what happened'
During the summer of '57, Enzo Ferrari was in crisis as bankruptcy loomed while he and his wife Laura were struggling in their marriage while mourning the loss of their son. His drivers were lusting to win as Ferrari pushed them to the edge to beat out the competition. He put everything on the line in an attempt to win the treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy.
Rather than do a more traditional biopic chronicling the person's whole life, Mann opts to focus on a very specific moment in his life. It helps to narrow the focus while also painting a picture of the man in question. The filmmaker and his team put in a lot of work to do their research and get it right. To that end, years of research were put into the crash alone. As he said:
"There were many different accounts of what happened in that crash. A gentleman at the Ferrari factory named Gabriele Lolli, who's one of the people who run their restoration division, went to the prefecture and dug up all the police reports. He investigated the accident for three years. It's the most detailed forensic examination you can imagine, and that's how we knew exactly what happened: that the tire got punctured, that it hit a mile marker that launched the car in the air, that it was doing between 140 and 160 when it hit a telephone pole."
Mann also added, "You encounter these things when you do the research. And I was just emotionally moved to create that scene." Brutal though it may be, the scene is a carefully constructed recreation of a real-life event, one that is very much a part of Enzo Ferrari's story.
"Ferrari" is in theaters now.