Although it hasn’t quite been a week, I am officially going through Tour de France withdrawal… and it is still a long time until the start of the Vuelta a Espana. There really is nothing like waking up to live sports on television, especially when those live sports are a major international competition like the Tour. To help me get over my withdrawal symptoms, to offer some sort of closure, I sat down to watch Louis Malle’s fantastic short documentary, Vive le Tour (1962) today, a perfect film for this close-up series.
Malle’s film covers the events of the 1962 Tour de France, but rather than a strict reporting of the racers and the results, Vive le Tour approaches the world-famous spectacle from a number of different angles, including crashes, injuries, feeding, and doping. All is presented amid the backdrop of the 1962 Tour, offering glimpses of some of cycling’s greatest legends: Federico Bahamontes (“The Eagle of Toledo”), Raymond Poulidor (“The Eternal Second”… who actually placed third), and five-time champion Jacques Anquetil (“Monsieur Chrono”). Seeing these legends in action is reason enough to check out Malle’s documentary, but the rewards of this short film don’t stop there.
The most winning aspect of Vive le Tour is writer-director Louis Malle’s clear passion for the sport of cycling, evident in every frame and in every line of Jean Bobet’s voice-over. For someone like me, who already loves cycling’s greatest event, it is a joy to watch the product of a fellow enthusiast. For someone unaccustomed to the thrill of the Tour, I can imagine that it would be hard not to be charmed and intrigued by Malle’s obvious love of the sport.
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