Michael Mann's 'Ferrari' Movie Captures the Drive and Tragedy of the Name behind the Prancing Horse
Unlike some recent automotive biopics, 'Ferrari' is thrilling and true to the spirit, if not the details.

BY STUART MILLERUPDATED: OCT 21, 2023
michael mann's 'ferrari'
EROS HOAGLAND
There are no 250 GTOs in Michael Mann's new Ferrari movie. No Daytonas or Testarossas either. That's not just because Ferrari—which stars Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari and PenélopeCruz as his embattled wife, Laura—takes place almost exclusively in 1957, years before those cars were birthed. Mann strives to get inside the mind and soul of the legendary Enzo Ferrari, and beneath his showy surface. Ferrari cared little for the cars he sold to civilians; as he declares in the movie, other companies raced to help sell their cars, while he sold cars only to help him afford to keep racing.



adam driver as enzo ferrari
ADAM DRIVER AS ENZO FERRARI.
LORENZO SISTI; COURTESY OF NEON
The film resembles those iconic Ferraris: It's meticulously designed and constructed, beautiful to look at, and often exhilarating to experience. But it also resembles Enzo himself, shaped partly by myth and hard to pry open, occasionally more slick and sleek than emotionally moving.

Mann's starting point was Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine, the 1991 biography written by longtime Car and Driver writer and editor Brock Yates. The book is filled with astute character analysis—Yates slams Ferrari's callous attitude toward women and sex, critiques his reputation as an innovator and designer, but credits him as a force of nature and a dream builder. The power of Ferrari's engines and the relentlessness of his competitive nature were an undeniable presence throughout the racing and automotive world for decades, but Yates also says easily seduced American journalists helped create the Ferrari persona that has "fascinated, charmed, and deluded Americans to this day."

The book is also 400-plus pages of historical context, coverage of dozens of races, and details of mechanical aspects of Ferrari's cars and the intricacies of his business negotiations, which for obvious reasons, didn't all make it into the film. Speaking at a press conference, Mann, who tried for years to make this movie, said he wasn't interested in a linear biopic. Troy Kennedy Martin's screenplay captured Ferrari's character by compressing the entire story into one turbulent year. The movie fudges the time frames of certain events, but given Ferrari's penchant for self-mythologizing, it's easy to imagine that he'd rather have a movie deemed a winner than one that's wholly accurate.