A former racer turned entrepreneur pushes himself and his drivers to the brink in Director Michael Mann’s biographical drama, Ferrari.
Mann’s film tells the story of Enzo Ferrari, who in the summer of 1957 finds his auto empire in crisis. To regain his status, he enlists his team in the Mille Miglia, a treacherous 1,000-mile race across Italy.
On December 10, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Mann discussed the making of Ferrari during a Q&A moderated by Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu (Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths).
During the conversation, Mann spoke about his use of color and composition to drive the narrative.
“There was a very specific plan. I wanted very classical, static compositions, mostly in the dialogue scenes. And these are questions we all ask ourselves [as Directors]. Here’s the scene, here’s the action, here’s what I want the audience to feel at the end of it. The scene with the confrontation between the two of them, the maximum irresolution possible comes from her condemning him for the death of Dino because he was distracted. I wanted those environments to be monochromatic in typical monolithic colors — burnt auburns, browns and there was not a lot of color contrasts. And then the partial resolution of these dramatic and highly emotional conflicts and stakes is gonna play out in racing. And for that I wanted everything to be like I know racing is, which is kinetic, and in a word ‘agitation.’ To subjectify the audience and put them in the cars was the idea, and here are these primary reds slashing across the screen. So, that was the basic design of it.”
Mann’s other directorial credits include the feature films Blackhat, Public Enemies, Miami Vice, Collateral, Ali, Heat, The Last of the Mohicans, The Keep, Manhunter; the movie for television L.A. Takedown; and the pilots for the series Tokyo Vice and Luck. He was nominated for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures for his 1999 feature, The Insider. He won the 1979 DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Specials/Movies for TV/Actuality for The Jericho Mile.
A DGA member since 1977, Mann has served as an alternate to the DGA National Board, as a member of the Western Directors Council and the Theatrical Creative Rights Committee and on various Guild committees including the Negotiating Committee and the Task Force on Violence and Social Responsibility. He also serves as a Board Member of the Franco-American Cultural Fund (FACF), a partnership of the DGA, the Motion Picture Association, France’s Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (SACEM), and the Writers Guild of America, West and in 2019 was appointed to the rank of Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) by the Ambassador of France to the United States.