Tomorrow's TV celebration of the roles cars have played on the big screen misses the point of our relationship with the automobile, writes Donald Clarke
During Pope-picking time it is customary to describe the college of cardinals as the world's most sophisticated electorate. At the other end of the scale, it appears, we have the brotherhood of fanatics - selected, perhaps, from halfway houses for the partially bewildered - who vote in Sky One's various 100 Best Things Channel 4 Hasn't Got to First. Jason Barlow, the predictably Northern Irish presenter of Sky's Movies' Greatest Cars, tomorrow night, does a very poor job of hiding his contempt for the less deserving films at the top of his list. 2 Fast 2 Furious? Gone in 60 Seconds? The aesthetic sensibilities required to prefer either one of those fiascos to any film apart from the other are apparently denied even to motoring journalists.
Here I should, perhaps, declare a lack of interest. Despite being a 41-year-old man with functioning limbs, I cannot drive and have never felt the urge to learn. In Northern Ireland - home not only to Mr Barlow and the independent production company behind Movies' Greatest Cars but also, originally, to me - a lack of interest in motor vehicles is regarded as sound evidence of sociopathic tendencies. By contrast, a propensity to place Smokey and the Bandit and Cannonball Run towards the top of such a list does not single one out for even the mildest ridicule.
Though I can reassure myself with the knowledge that the people behind this show are sufficiently unsophisticated to spell Ian Fleming's name with two m's, it remains slightly frustrating to be shut out from their puzzling expertise. There are decent films in the programme, but the talking heads - Jeremy Clarkson's two cupbearers, that woman who does the motor racing on the telly, the vampirically oily Quentin Willson - make it clear that no non- driving communistic pantywaist will ever properly appreciate the value of these classics. "It's fitted with a super-heated Mrs Slocombe block," somebody doesn't say of Steve McQueen's car in Bullitt. "And the reverse double-Peacock shaft goes like a Russian streetwalker after downing a samovar of piping-hot rocket fuel."
The point is that the cars themselves matter as much as the quality of the film. The petrol-heads quite correctly eulogise the nauseatingly bumpy chase in Bullitt, but The French Connection, which features surely the most exciting motorised pursuit of all, is not even mentioned. This, we must assume, is because McQueen's Mustang is in some way more appealing than whatever it was Gene Hackman drove in William Friedkin's film.
Throughout cinema history exciting things have happened in and to motorcars. The Keystone Kops greatly enjoyed ramming huge, boxy vehicles into lamp posts. Truck driver Yves Montand ferried nitroglycerine through mountainous regions in The Wages of Fear. Others drove by night in They Drive by Night. But it wasn't until the late 1950s, when Americans young enough to become aroused by such things gained access to more suave vehicles, that film-makers began to seriously fetishise cars. If I knew or cared what model James Dean raced in 1955's Rebel Without a Cause I might use that as an example.
The fast car eventually became the outward expression of the existential nothingness that cools the core of the modern hero. (Or something.) James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, characters so vaguely drawn they were barely visible, zoomed across America in 1971's Two-Lane Blacktop. That same year, Barry Newman, another spiritual cripple, this time driving a Dodge rather than Chevrolet, travelled empty roads in Vanishing Point. James Bond, whose Aston Martin manages to stimulate even non-drivers, was more mainstream, though no less dead within. Frank Bullitt wasn't cosy either. This pattern continues today. Nicolas Cage in Gone in 60 Seconds loves vehicles more than Angelina Jolie. The heroes of 2 Fast 2 Furious have carburettors where others have souls.
An alien, forced to draw conclusions about the human race from popular cinema alone, might be surprised to learn that most cars are used to ferry groceries or commute to work.
In real life, few vehicles find themselves being driven through stacks of boxes as a way of counteracting the terrifying awareness of coming oblivion. Where is the film eulogising the surprising amount of boot space offered by Volvo saloons? Why have film-makers continued to ignore the fuel efficiency of the Honda Civic?
Speaking for non-drivers, I might further ask why directors have been so reluctant to focus on the galloping nausea that results from being trapped in a hot metal box scented by whiffs of exhaust fume and the sickly aroma of last year's Milky Mints. In Withnail and I, Richard E Grant, his head pounding furiously, his eyes gloopy as old oysters, awakes from a drunken stupor and asks Paul McGann if they're there yet. "No we're not, we're here," his friend replies.
As well as featuring this writer's favourite movie car - a Jaguar, whose one working headlight and one functioning windscreen wiper are on different sides - Bruce Robinson's picture nicely catches the tedium and queasiness that this unappealing mode of transport so often induces.
I am the passenger. I ride and I ride. Then I have to stop for a cup of tea and a Dramamine.
Movies' Greatest Cars is on Sky One tomorrow at 9pm
10 CAR FILMS FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN'T TELL A PORSCHE FROM A PANDA
Genevieve (1953) Lovely old John Gregson races lovely old Kenneth More to Brighton in his lovely old car. Lovely mouth-organ music by Larry Adler. Lovely.
Wild Strawberries (1957) Angry old buffer has visions as he drives across Sweden in a car that, like death, is big and black. Does feature a crash, but, this being an Ingmar Bergman film, there are no fireballs.
Withnail & I (1987) Everything, including Paul McGann's bruised Jaguar, is gorgeously decrepit in Bruce Robinson's hilarious tale of booze, Baudelaire and burglary.
The Cars that Ate Paris (1974) The inhabitants of a small Australian town tear passing vehicles to pieces - and do worse things to the drivers.
Weekend (1967) Jean-Luc Godard's didactic fantasy - arguably the director's last sane film -- features cinema's most appalling traffic jam. A weekend in the country ends in cannibalism and revolution. Quite French.
Summer Holiday (1962) Yes, we know it's a bus. But Peter Yates's Cliff Richard, ahem, vehicle is worth including to point out how intriguingly it compares with his later classic Bullitt.
Death Race 2000 (1975) Five years ago society had deteriorated to such a degree that a race was staged in which contestants gained points for running over pensioners and children. Doesn't ring a bell? Perhaps you were too busy watching the first Big Brother.
The French Connection (1971) An obvious choice, but not obvious enough to attract the Movies' Greatest Cars electorate. Can a car beat a train across a crowded city? It is astonishing that Jeremy Clarkson hasn't tried this yet.
Taste of Cherry (1997) Meditative Iranian puzzler - winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes - in which a sad man drives around a mountain asking people to help him commit suicide. Rarely confused with The Love Bug.
Crash (1996) Cars as sex toys. Accidents as aphrodisiacs. Banned by blue-rinse councils throughout these islands, David Cronenberg's revolting classic went on to influence 1,000 car commercials.