Le Mans movie - Question
 

I just got the DVD from ebay (that truthfully looks almost original but that's another story) and I have watched it like 3 times already.. it's amazing!

Anyway, the question I have is:
What's the meaning of the two finger salute that McQueen signals to the Ferrari driver after the race finished? The hand sign is with the index and middle finger pointing up and hand gesture from down up direction...

Is that a European thing? Or a racing thing? Or Usual middle finger sign but slightly changed for TV?

Stupid question I know.. but I need to know.

When the English were captured by the French many moons ago, the French would cut the index and middle finger off of the English bowmans hand. The English would taunt the French, by holding up the two fingers in a V. Myth ;)

WOW....which butt cheek did you pull that out of?:D

That's apparently true. It is an English taunt which stems back from the days when England and France were at war. The English bowmen were devastatingly accurate and feared by the French. Consequently if the French captured any of the bowmen they would cut off the two fingers that would be used to draw back the bowstring. So it became a popular insult to raise those two fingers as a taunt in a show of superiority or defiance. It is very common still in England, much like the middle finger here.
However, in the movie I don't know if Delaney would have been expected to know that but it is possible that it was intended as such or it may have just been a taunt meaning 'second'. Who knows for sure...

McQueen sort of gestures twice, in an in your face sort of way like an Italian would in traffic...and his Italian opponent grins back at him...

i always thought it meant p i s s o f f :D

That's the story of the battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French had the English outnumbered something like with something like 20 maybe 30 000 vs the english with 5900 men(mostly archers, hardly any cavalry), and had sent the message to the English, that they would cut off the finger of each captured long bow archer... The French nobility and knights were so convinced of the victory, that they were more worried about the action being over before they'de be able to get to join in..
The English, being English, figured it was more appropriate to taunt the frogs with the 2 fingered salute rather then surrender.
The King had managed to set up position inbetween 2 forrests, so the french couldn't surround them, and the long bows pretty much decimated the french army... 7 to 10 thousand casualties, mostly dead for only 112 to 450 english casualties

Furthermore, as the first battle was finished, they had captured knights and noble men, as was the custom at the days, for ransom.
But there was a false message that their basecamp was being attacked, and they figured they couldn't both fight and take care of the prisoners, so they kinda did a no no in terms of battle/war etiquette, and butchered the lot of them...

so the rumour is about the English taunting the French, but the French never got a chance of taking those fingers...


Now the English think they were like the first to do something like this
but essentially they forget that the Flemish had done it all before in 1301, The French had come with an army of 2500 mounted knights, and 1000 crossbows, 2000 lancers, and 3000 more enlisted infantry... The Flemish had just 9000 men , mostly untrained footfolk with clubs... and maybe 450 nobles with horses.. not outnumbered , but definately not as trained, or equipped..

When the French came to the battle, the infantry attacked, but this worried the nobility , thinking they wouldn't be able to get to the battle because of the infantry trotting about, they charged head first, got stuck in the Flemish Mud.. and because the Flemish were like not in the mood... got murdered instead of captured... and their Golden spurs were hung up in the Church of Courtrai...

Killing French knights instead of ransom...
that's how we roll here in Flanders :D

the Scotts and English just copied it from us