Humanity lost one of its greatest treasures with the passing of actor Patrick Stewart yesterday at the age of 86. While best known for his roles as Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Professor X in the X-Men movies, he also appeared in a supporting role in a 1984 film about motorcycle racing. Races was a Japanese and West German co-production staring Hiroyuki Watanabe and following the nomadic life a privateer motorcycle racer.
Based on the Yuji Izumi novel Windy, the movie tells the story of a rider named Kei Sugimoto (Watanabe), whose career and marriage took a nosedive after a racing accident that took place years before the film begins.
Now a divorced privateer, he is single-mindedly fixated on regaining his former glory by winning a Grand Prix. His lonely life consists of living out of his Mercedes T1 van, driving across Europe to each race with Yamaha TZ250 in tow, and drumming in a German jazz band during the occasional jam session.
Stewart plays Charles Duffner, a race photographer whose own son was a championship rider who died tragically in a race. He also follows the Continental Circus, a nickname for the various teams that roam from circuit to circuit.
Kei’s life is complicated when his daughter Anna (Chris Addison) shows up to spend the summer with him. Despite being so stoically Japanese and obsessed with riding to the point of being a jerk to everyone around him including Anna, freelance mechanic Sam (Leslie Malton), and Gaines (Dean Reed), an ex-manager that now runs a factory Yamaha team, somehow continue to help Kei through all his trials.
Stewart’s role is rather minor, but he plays it with his trademark Shakespearean theater gusto. He acts more like a grandpa to Anna, and slowly unwinds the tale of Suho and the White Horse throughout the film as a parable for motorcycle racing that we didn’t quite grasp. It also turns out that he owns a winery, just like his Earth family did in Star Trek.
Will Kei succeed without abandoning everyone who wants to help him? Will he prevail against the condescending superstar rider for the Yamaha team? Will he stop breaking promises to his daughter who idolizes him? Well, while there is a loosely constructed plot, that’s not really the point.
Races is more of a slice-of-life movie, in which major plot points happen without much fanfare. It depicts what life was like for GP riders back in the heyday, when riders like Kenny Roberts and Freddie Spencer were as famous as Nelson Piquet and Alain Prost. Director Masato Harada filmed at actual circuits like Hockenheim, Zandvoort, and Nürburgring during real Grand Prix races, enshrining the chaotic buzz of the paddocks and starting grids. He then cleverly spliced the footage with scenes of the characters’ speeding bikes to create the illusion that they were racing at the actual events.
Harada beautifully captures the early 80s golden era of motorcycle racing, just before corporate sponsors came waving dollars at factory teams. Before long, privateers like Kei would be priced out of the sport. The Continental Circus — with its lifestyle of border-hopping road trips, transient racers crossing paths at campsites on the way to the next race, the children of rival teams playing together — would soon fade away.
If nothing else, watch it for the picturesque European landscapes and background cars. It’s a visual feast for fans of European cars of the 70s and 80s, though there’s the occasional Honda, Toyota, or Mitsubishi Fuso in the background.
The same year Races opened Stewart had a supporting role as Gurney Halleck in David Lynch’s Dune. A few short years later, he would land his breakout role as Captain Picard. Even finding a copy of Races was apparently fairly difficult. Someone has uploaded it in its entirety, but it apparently required sourcing and combining two deteriorated Laserdiscs to make one watchable version, which you can view on YouTube here.
