Crash
While David Cronenburg's cinematic treatment of the book may be much better known, the BBC's earlier short film 'informed' by JG Ballard’s Atrocity Exhibition is well worth investigating.
The Harley Cokeliss-directed Crash! of 1971 is a collection of fragments extracted from Atrocity Exhibition (Crash! originated as a chapter in Atrocity Exhibition, before becoming a novel in its own right).
Most striking is the on-screen presence of Ballard himself, at the wheel of an American automobile as he explores themes of automobile styling, eroticism, the technological death-drive and mass consumerism, while on London's Westway, or in a multi-storey car park. Two years later, these ideas would be crystallised in Ballard's Crash.
'I remember seeing some films on television of test crashes a few
years ago. They were using American cars of the late '50s, a period I
suppose when the American dream, and American confidence, were at
their highest point.'
JG Ballard, Crash! (1971)
The definitive cult, post-modern novel a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism.