Steve McQueen is ideally cast as a champion race car driver, participating in the famed 24-hour race headquartered in Le Mans, France. Though dedicated to Going for the Gold, McQueen finds time to romance widowed Elga Andersen. The dramatic angle to this plot wrinkle is that McQueen may well have been responsible for the death of Andersen’s husband during a previous car pile-up. Director John Sturges, who’d previously helmed Steve McQueen’s legendary motorcycle chase scenes in The Great Escape, was originally slated to direct Le Mans, but withdrew from the project; it was then taken over by Lee H. Katzin.

The feature-film debut of famed director Louis Malle is an interesting, modern film noir with the classic theme of lovers plotting to kill the husband and make it look like suicide (reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice). Jeanne Moreau gives an astonishing performance, perverse but naive as she leads her young lover down a path that can only lead to doom for both of them.