| Vive le Tour | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Louis Malle |
| Written by | Louis Malle |
| Music by | Georges Delerue |
| Cinematography | Ghislain Cloquet Jacques Ertaud Louis Malle |
| Editing by | Suzanne Baron Kenout Peltier |
| Distributed by | the Criterion Collection (USA) |
| Release date(s) | 1962 |
| Running time | 18 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
Vive le Tour is a 1962 French documentary by filmmaker Louis Malle.[1] It chronicles the Tour de France and focuses on issues such as providing food for the racers, dealing with injuries and doping. The New York Times describes the film as containing "ebullience, whimsy, jet black humor, awe and unspeakable tragedy" and as "a worshipful documentary of a sport made by a man who knew it intimately and loved it."[2] Vive le Tour won the Dok Leipzig Golden Dove award in 1966.[1]
The 18 minute film is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection as part of their Eclipse series and is available in its entirety on YouTube or Vimeo.
Translated by Greg Emerson Bocquet, November 4 2011
2:00
From the peloton, we don’t see the crowd, either. The riders tell themselves, “I’ll see my mom, I’ll see my wife, I’ll see my aunt,” and then they don’t see anything at all.
But they hear it though – they hear the crowd. Because the crowd makes a fantastic noise, even in the peloton.
The guys on motorbikes are part of the family. The riders know them as well as they know their competitors.
They are part of the peloton. They pass through the peloton as if they were riders. They have their place.
3:00
They understand all the riders’ behavior, and so they are absolutely not in danger.
When they arrive at the feed zone, each rider knows exactly where his man is: It’s either at the beginning on the left or at the end on the right. And you must certainly not miss the musette. If you miss the musette, it’s the fringale and the fringale, that’s 20 minutes lost at the finish line – sometimes even an hour.
Obviously you can always find a friend who grabbed two musettes, but it’s never a sure thing.
In the musette it’s always pretty much the same thing: It’s a meal based on fruit, rice, and sugar.
4:50
This is one of the most important moments in the Tour de France: the hunt for the drink. They enter a bistro, they shove everyone. They don’t go so far as to steal but they beg. They take whatever – red wine, champagne, beer, even water, when you don’t find better. Generally what they should be taking is water…
And then they leave, very often without paying. It should be noted also that at the end of the Tour de France the director receives quite a few bills.
Sometimes they lose up to two or three minutes, so they have to chase for 20km to come back afterwards, but they have an excuse. They sweat so much that it’s been calculated that in a hot stage of the Tour de France, a rider can lose up to 4 kilos - that means 4 liters of sweat. So you have to drink, you have to drink.
You have to drink or you have to drench yourself.
But drenching yourself is dangerous too; first because you can catch a cold, … and then if you wet your feet then they crack in the sun and they’re too small.
6:30
The ones that drink the least are the champions (team leaders). You can say they’re lucky because they are entitled to cool drinks and drinks chosen for them by their water carriers. That’s why those are the ones who at the end of the stage are fresh, available, ready to attack.
The stage finishes in the Tour de France are something unimaginable. Even the riders are surprised by the speeds they reach. It finishes at 60kph. The last hour is 60 per hour.
7:30 (rider comments, some inaudible, some w/ strange accents)
“… it’s too bad about that breakaway – I would have been able to go…”
“… my thighs hurt because I’m badly seated on the bike so I take these positions that hurt my thighs…”
“… we weren’t going more than anyone else…”
“… my rear end hurt so much…”
8:30 (journalist comments)
“… Anquetil-issimo…”
(English) “… doping or not doping – that is the question…”
“… I repeat: the eagle has overtaken the angel of the mountains…”
“Bahamontes – phenomenal”
9:00
The crashes always come when you least expect it. And very often it’s when the peloton is moving very slowly. Because the peloton falls asleep, the reflexes fall asleep – everyone in the peloton is asleep and then POOF everyone falls.
And then the peloton collapses like a house of cards. One rider, a second one, then there are 30 on the ground. And sometimes it’s serious.
“that’s probably the day that Rik van Looy was the most afraid of his entire life.” … “and still Van Looy, he didn’t wait.”
10:30
There’s nothing uglier than crashes in the Tour de France. It’s not so much the pain – they know how to suffer through that – but the person who falls, he doesn’t sleep. And the person who doesn’t sleep will have to abandon after two or three days.
“We now have to talk about doping. Doping in cycling jargon is called la charge. And the charge poisons this profession. Now, behind each abandon is a layer of doubt.”
“This rider told us that he ate contaminated fish. And this day, more than 10 men will abandon, and each one will say that they ate contaminated fish.”
“Doping, contrary to what we believe, does not give the rider new strength ¬– it simply suppresses the pain. The doped athlete no longer knows the limits of his strength. He’s nothing more than a pedaling machine.”
12:00
What’s terrible is that once they see the bike they have to get back on. “Don’t abandon” and then “hop”…
14:00
Without mountains there would be no Tour de France. it’s in the mountains where the peloton cracks – it’s there where everyone gets scattered.
15:00
You can say that in the Tour de France the little pushing doesn’t play a large role. The last ones are pushed, but for the first 15 the race is totally by the book, they are never pushed. Absolutely not. The last ones are pitied, so they are pushed.
And the spectators end up more tired than the riders.
We don’t realize either the differences in temperature and pressure that a rider undergoes in just one mountain stage. They go from an altitude of 200m to 2,000m, back down to 250m and climb again to 2,800m. It’s terrible.
Podium: 1. Jacques Anquetil (Fra.) 2. Jef Planckaert (Bel.) 3. Raymond Poulidor (Fra.)
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