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Ferrari’s Slow-Motion Crash in Nine Steps

Michael Mann’s re-creation of a horrifying moment in car-racing history is one of the best cinematic sequences of the season.

While scouting the site of the original crash, Mann and his location manager Janice Polley were approached by an elderly man with a cane who told them he witnessed it when he was 3. Mann made sure there were rows of cypress trees, as the original road had, because he wanted it to feel like de Portago was driving down a “tunnel of fate” to his death. Working from archival photographs, Mann and his team stuck close to the images of the wrecked Ferrari in the aftermath of the crash—from its final resting place right down to the bent steering wheel.

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