Brazilian Speed

construction and deconstruction of the automobile idol in the documentary O fabuloso Fittipaldi (1973)

Abstract

This is an evaluative review of the documentary “The Fabulous Fittipaldi”, directed in 1973 by filmmakers Roberto Farias and Hector Babenco. It looks at a film made more than half a century ago and its motivation for analysis is based on the fact that it is one of the first films to give cinematic treatment to a racing driver and one of the greatest national motoring idols, the middle-class São Paulo native Emerson Fittipaldi. Directed during the dictatorship period of the early 1970s, when three-time world champion soccer hegemonized the attention of Brazilian society and imagination, this audiovisual record is analyzed as a significant cultural asset for the construction of the persona of the sports idol and for understanding the idolatry surrounding this form of professional sport in the country, whose passionate appeal is governed by the fascination surrounding the machine-car, its respective motorized speed and even the risk of death on the track. The aim is to follow the film narrative in order to examine how the central character is framed and constructed. To this end, our central argument is that the film, against the backdrop of a traditional format for building up the figure of the idol, offers equally less predictable and more interesting elements for deconstructing the idolized protagonist. Thus, at the moment when Fittipaldi wins his first Formula 1 world title (1972) and reaches the summit of international prestige in the category, the documentary-makers depict his trajectory as immersed in family indecisions, personal hesitations and full of questions that deconstruct common sense about predestined genius or the biographical illusion that reconstructs the previous and well-known path of a champion.