C'etait un Rendezvous

Rendez-vous (Claude Lelouch 1976)

Early one August morning in 1976 the French director Claude Lelouch mounted a camera to the front of his Ferrari and filmed his breakneck drive through the streets of Paris, from Porte Dauphine to Sacre Coeur. After "C'etait un Rendezvous" was shown publicly Lelouch was arrested and the car confiscated.

Not long after it was released our local library had a copy, and my brother and I used to get our dad to rent it constantly, every chance we got. Back then renting movies was a little more complicated, as the movie was an actual big can of film, and my dad would have to lug out the movie projector and thread the film, while we'd set up the giant silver screen on its rickety aluminum tripod. But when the lights went out and the movie started rolling, nothing beat sitting on the carpet staring up at the screen with a permanent smile for 9 minutes, the smell of dusty electricity, the smooth clacking of the projector, and the loud Ferrari engine blaring through the steel speakers.
Happy Bastille Day!
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