It’s amazing to think that we are going to be seeing the century mark for many, MANY automotive firsts. The automobile might have been around for many years prior, but the 1910s-1920s saw the automobile turn from a toy for the wealthy to the standard for transportation for the world over, displacing trains, ships, beasts of burden and plain, old-fashioned walking. From basic transportation comes the sporting events, from sporting events comes all-out competition, and from that moment forward we have auto racing.
The Monaco Grand Prix started out in 1929 and is still going today, serving as one point of the Triple Crown of Motorsport, together with the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of LeMans. It’s a demanding, narrow street course that runs under the FIA’s 190-mile minimum race length (it’s mapped out at just under 162 miles) and it’s seen it’s fair share of incidents over the years, including a train station, trees, and in the case of Alberto Ascari and Paul Hawkins, straight off into the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Until 1973, Monaco remained just as it had been since the first race in 1929, which you’ll get to see a bit of here.
The movie itself is set up like a typical silent film: house music over otherwise silent footage. The cars are the kind that are barely more than an engine, frame and wheels and the men driving them were only there by invitation. The winner was William Grover-Williams (using the pseudonym “W. Williams”). He raced until the later 1930s, and found himself working with the French Resistance during World War II up until he was captured by the Nazi intelligence agency Sicherheitsdienst and killed in a concentration camp in 1945. Other drivers included Mercedes driver Rudolf Caracciola, the Baron Phillippe de Rothschile (under the psudeonym “Georges Phillippe”). The results for that first race: Williams first, in a Bugatti T35A; Georges Bouriano second in a Bugatti T35B, and Caracciola third in a Mercedes SSK.
