Long before Fast and Furious, the Ghost Rider and other YouTube’s overabundant homemade videos of insane street driving, Oscar-winning director, Claude Lelouch, shot C’etait un rendez-vous (It Was an Appointment), a 9 min short.

The only point of view is from the front bumper of a car, crossing Paris at very high speed, taking one way streets in reverse and running red lights. Only at the end do we understand why the driver was in such a hurry: he didn’t want to miss his rendez-vous with his loved one.
When the movie was first shown, Claude Lelouch was arrested, but got away since the police didn’t have any evidence. At that time, he said that the driver was a professional Formula 1 pilot. Years later, he confessed that the mysterious driver was himself. He had installed a single gyro stabilized camera on his own Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9., which was “dubbed” with the sound of (apprently) his own Ferrari 275GTB. That’s why the car on the poster looks like one of the race cars from Modena… It was shot in only one take, early in a morning of August (when most parisians are out of the city) 1976.

After a long wait, thanks to its cult following, the movie got out on DVD, but you can also watch the entire video after the jump, along with a shorter version used as a music video by the UK band Snow Patrol.

Sources: Wired, Wikipedia

Watch the videos after the jump!

The movie:

Snow Patrol’s music video: Open your eyes

Lelouch setting the camera on his Mercedes.

Links:
The itineray on Google map.

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