Contacts

Raymond Depardon, Le Mans, 1970

In our series delving into the contact sheets of famous photographers, we tell the story of Steve McQueen’s notoriously troubled movie Le Mans

Words by Alex Moore

French photojournalist Raymond Depardon, 79, began his career working in conflict zones in Algeria, Vietnam, Biafra and Chad, where he covered the kidnapping of a French ethnologist, Françoise Claustre. He later made the story into a film, La Captive du Désert. Depardon’s gritty style of reportage took him around the world – but his subject matter wasn’t all urban wastelands and war. Indeed, he once said: “I don’t regret the numerous pictures of Brigitte Bardot, but I’d rather have a good photograph of my father.”

He also dipped his toe into the world of motorsports. In 1988 he spent a season tracking the Brazilian Formula 1 star Ayrton Senna; in 1990 he shot the Paris-Dakar Rally; and in 1970 he joined American actor Steve McQueen on the notoriously troubled set of racing movie Le Mans. This shot shows a shirtless McQueen with supporting actor Siegfried Rauch and the film’s second director, the pipe-smoking Lee H Katzin – its first, John Sturges, famously walked off the set, saying: “I am too old and too rich to put up with this shit.”

For McQueen, Le Mans was a passion project, a way to combine his two great loves. It was also his first (and last) attempt to call the shots as a producer. Not long before this picture was taken, Cinema Centre Films – which had invested $6m in the production (equivalent to $42m today) – had attempted to replace him with Robert Redford. McQueen steadied the ship, but was forced to surrender his fee. The movie was a flop and the great actor never really recovered from the ignominy. He failed to show up for the première and, as his first wife, Neile Adams, recalled in 2015, after that “the world became a different colour to him”.

The film has since become a cult classic. If nothing else, McQueen achieved his goal of giving audiences a naked, raw portrayal of the sport he held so dear. And who could forget the film’s most famous line? “When you’re racing, it’s life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting.” magnumphotos.com.

MAGNUM PHOTOS