The Tortoise and the Hare

“A huge articulated Pirelli truck and an E type Jaguar car pass and repass along Italy’s breathtaking Autostrada Del Sole, to the accompaniment of jazz, pop and Vivaldi music.”

This short film, released in 1966, was directed by Hugh Hudson, Etonian and Dragoon Guards. I saw it at school in the 1960s and have never forgotten it.

“For all of our hi-tech drone technology nowadays, I doubt we’d ever be able to make a more enjoyable travelogue of Italy as we follow the glamorous young Liz Allsop in a stylish E-type Jaguar as she crosses the country in a sort of race, but not really, with Gino Gottarelli who is at the wheel of a lorry barely capable of making a minimum speed limit never mind a maximum one. As both make their way, they encounter each other whilst the accompaniment plays us a wide variety of Italian (and other) popular and classical music. Aside from being quite a testament to the construction of the Autostrada Del Sole through some of the more hostile geography of this mountainous land, it also serves to show off just how beautiful Italy can be – both in it’s ancient towns and villages with the pink stone and slate glinting in the sun through to the jagged mountain tops and sunsets that split the forests with a perfectly photographed brilliance. There’s a little mischief, loads of product placement and I couldn’t help but wonder why they picked a British car to tour a nation of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Alfa Romeo but the pace of their respective travels works engagingly here. It’s clearly designed to showcase all things Italian from the landscape to the Gucci and the Pirelli, and if you just sit back and let it wash over you, then the least you will want is some Chianti with your Mozzarella.”

“Pirelli had presented films before, but never one like this. The earliest document ever filed in the archives of Cammell, Hudson and Brownjohn Associates was a two-page, dog-eared typescript marked ‘The Tortoise and the Hare: An Idea’…This was a film the associates had always wanted to make. Derek Forsyth who was Art Director for Pirelli at the time recounts: ‘We had a rough storyboard, a shooting script and we went off with Hugh and a small crew to shoot the film in Italy. The story was inspired by Aesop’s fable. Based on La Fontaine’s updated story. The fable is about two mismatched animals racing against each other. The tortoise is fed up with the boastful hare and challenges him to a race. Of course we all know that, through perseverance, the tortoise wins in the end. In the Pirelli film the tortoise is the truck driver and the hare is the E-type Jaguar driven by a girl (played by Liz Allsop – a famous model at the time in London). The girl is leaving the south of Italy to drive home in a white E-type Jaguar and there is a truck alongside her. And she makes stops to have lunch or look at the scenery while the truck carries on. There is a bit of innuendo, the driver stops by the side of the road to shave, she passes him and gives him a wave, and so on. At the end of the film she puts herself and her car on a train and as the train enters the tunnel, the truck passes her for the last time and the driver waves. We were cutting the film in the Cammell Hudson and Brownjohn studios on Chelsea’s Shawfield Street, and BJ was around so he was the obvious person to do the titles. He saw the film and he had the idea of putting the credits on moving trucks. It was such a clever and spontaneous idea. There wasn’t any kind of presentation, not storyboards or any of that crap, he just had the idea and found the money. Then we had to find a lot of trucks and rent an airfield. Bob Freeman (the Beatles photographer) was the cameraman and Hugh directed. It was the hardest thing because the titles kept falling off the trucks!’. The whole thing involved the complex choreography of various cars, lorries and industrial trucks. BJ also designed the companion road map that went along with the Pirelli promotional film. The map displays the route taken in the movie and the front and back covers show stills from the titles. The film and titles won the First Prize at the Venice Film Festival, the British Industrial Award and was nominated for a 1966 British Film Academy Award.”

It is the greatest film you have never seen. Maybe it’s good training to make ads? Here is another Hudson mini epic and, as you know, he went on to direct Chariots, Greystoke, etc,