Director Michael Mann’s new film Ferrari zeroes in on one summer in the life of the Italian car brand’s enigmatic founder Enzo (played by Adam Driver) as he confronts a frankly nail-shredding to-do list of obstacles in his professional and personal life.
Biopics which try to cram an entire life into one linear movie tend to feel like a skim job, while Ferrari’s micro approach allows a deeper dive into the man behind the man. For those who don’t know much about Enzo’s story in the first place though, you are left with a few questions as the credits roll, some of which we have attempted to answer here.
Why choose this period to focus on?
“I wouldn’t have been interested in some lengthy biopic,” Mann told the Guardian. “Those are documentaries that belong on the History Channel. They never work.” Instead the events of 1957 allow him to pile on the drama – and melodrama – at every turn. Mourning his beloved son Dino who died just a year before, a marriage to wife and Ferrari co-partner Laura (Penelope Cruz) in its death throes, a second family squirrelled away down the road and that’s all before you’ve even started on those gleaming red cars. Enzo is already 59 years old as we join the story, but given he was still ‘Il Commendatore’ right up to his death at age 90, this is a pivotal summer. “Within this four-month period, all the dynamic forces of Enzo’s life are compacted and in collision,” said Mann.
What happened to Enzo's sons?
Enzo’s first son Dino was a promising engineer who was being groomed as his successor, but died at just 24 of muscular dystrophy in 1956. Enzo was so devasted he almost quit completely. He maintained daily visits to the cemetery, where his parents and, later wife, would all be buried. The Ferrari Dino engine which he designed ran in different forms for 40 years and the 206 GT launched in 1968 was a Ferrari that was badged as a Dino.
His other son Piero, a 12 year-old boy in the film, inherited Enzo’s 10% stake and is the current vice-chairman of Ferrari SPA.
“We had lovely and sad moments,” said Piero of his father. “The best memory I have is when he was sitting on a Sunday watching the race on TV and no one could comment, but I was sitting behind him and sometimes he would ask me: ‘What do you think of that car?’ That was good, watching the races with him.”
What happened to the Ferrari company?
Another plotline in the film is what will become of Enzo’s then niche road car business. Enzo puts out a story that he is talking to Ford as an investor in order to tempt Fiat to invest as a matter of national pride. As it was, Ford did come close to a major deal for Ferrari in 1963 and Enzo was keen to transfer the stresses of the road car side of things but a last-minute hitch over a clause that gave Ford final say over the Ferrari race team was too much of a threat to Enzo’s autonomy. His furious response ignited a personal feud between Enzo and his counterpart Henry Ford II that would spill onto the racetrack at Le Mans, as told in the 2019 film Ford v Ferrari. Fiat started to accumulate shares in the fall-out and became a 50 per cent stakeholder in 1969, upping it to 90 per cent over the next two decades. Enzo, then Piero, kept the other ten.
What happened after the crash in the 1957 Mille Miglia?
The second half of the film is dominated by the famous Italian road race of 1957 that Enzo hopes will put Ferrari back on top. It features some of the film’s most compelling racing for which Mann is in his element, and later the film’s most unforgettable scene, when a Ferrari crashes into the crowd, killing 12 including nine spectators. Enzo was depicted as heartless at the time but others say it had a heavy impact on him. Death was ever-present in Enzo’s life, having lost his father, brother, son and multiple friends and drivers in regular order. “One must keep working continuously,” he once said. “Otherwise one thinks of death.’’ He also faced a four year manslaughter trial as a result of the crash and would have gone to jail if found guilty but was acquitted of all charges. The Mille Miglia was discontinued as a result.
Why did the film take thirty years to come together?
The script from British writer Troy Kennedy Martin who also wrote the original The Italian Job has been around since the early Nineties, using Brock Yates’ 1991 biography of Enzo as its primary source.
Mann, a car nut who owns two Ferraris himself, has been involved from the start but it wasn’t until the popularity of Formula 1 in the States exploded thanks to Netflix series Drive To Survive that the studios decided to greenlight. Christian Bale was originally cast in the role of Enzo but pulled out during re-production in 2016 over reported concerns of gaining the necessary weight to play the part. The film was back on track after Driver was cast.
