Bullitt

In the late 1960s, Hollywood was undergoing a significant change. The studios had lost touch with what moviegoing audiences wanted to see. By 1969 and the release of Easy Rider and its subsequent success signaled a seismic shift in cinema, making way for a myriad of unusual films that were pushed through the system throughout the following decade. Actor Steve McQueen was at the height of his powers during the transition period with a toe in each era. He had risen to prominence during the ‘60s with such films as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963), which transformed him into a bonafide movie star but, at heart, he was a Method actor serious about his craft. He used his newfound clout within Hollywood to produce two films that catapulted him to the next level, The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt, both released in 1968.

Bullitt is a perfect example of the aforementioned transitional period that was going on in Hollywood. It is a studio movie, specifically a crime thriller that sees McQueen as a police detective, however, he cut a significant amount of his character’s dialogue to suit his particular style of acting. In addition, he had the production shoot on location in San Francisco (uncommon at the time) and adhere to strict authenticity when it came to police procedural details. One of the most important aspects of this shoot was the show-stopping car chase scene that eschewed traditional Hollywood techniques in favor of cars at actual high speeds on actual city streets. This not only added to the film’s realism - it gave the sequence a visceral thrill that hadn’t been done before.

The opening credits employ a fisheye lens, mixing black and white with color as Lalo Schifrin’s cool, jazzy score sets a stylish vibe. Initially we have no idea what is going on; the action that occurs during this sequence is without dialogue. Who is chasing whom and why? Even when dialogue is finally spoken, just before director Peter Yates’ credit, it is unclear exactly what happened.

Lt. Frank Bullitt (McQueen) is tasked by Senator Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) with protecting the star witness – Albert "Johnny Ross" Renick (Felice Orlandi) – in a big trial against the Mob, known here simply as The Organization. He has to keep him safe for 40 hours. What seems like a routine assignment turns out to be much more complicated: the witness and the police detective guarding him are critically injured by two hitmen in a situation that reeks of a set-up. Why would the witness let these two men into the apartment? Frank’s boss (Simon Oakland) tells him to investigate further and do it by the book… but, of course, a maverick cop like Frank goes his own way, authority figures be damned. As he puts it, “You work your side of the street, and I’ll work mine.” It is a beautifully succinct line that sums up Frank’s ethos as a cop.
 
What is so fascinating about McQueen’s performance is his choice to emphasize facial expression and body language (or the lack thereof) over dialogue. When a fellow cop is injured in the line of duty, he says little to the man, except to ask the identity of the person who shot him. The rest of the scene shows Frank reacting to what happened, the grave concern that plays across his face. No trite words of comfort are needed – the expression on McQueen’s face says it all.
 
This technique is used again when Frank revisits the crime scene where Ross and the cop were shot. No dialogue, just him looking over the scene and thinking about what happened, trying to piece things together. Typically, a scene like that would have a voiceover or Frank would be talking to himself or someone there explaining what he’s doing. Instead, the filmmakers assume the audience is smart enough to figure it out.

This being McQueen, Frank is a hip guy. He dresses stylishly and takes his beautiful girlfriend (Jacqueline Bisset) to a snazzy jazz club for lunch. Even his introduction is as low-key as the man himself: his partner (Don Gordon) wakes him up after a long night (he went to bed at 5 a.m.). Frank isn’t much for small talk and that’s all we know about him; their relationship is all business. They aren’t friends that crack jokes together or are at odds with each other like buddy cop movies of later decades. It is an underwhelming introduction that gives no indication of what kind of cop Frank is – we find out over the course of the film. This is quite unusual for a mainstream studio film at the time, which traditionally spelled everything out – this is not the case as Bullitt adopts its leading man’s less-is-more aesthetic, extending to its very economic use of dialogue. When Frank goes to dinner with a group of friends, his girl by his side, we see them all talking but don’t hear their conversation as the jazz music drowns out their voices. What they’re saying isn’t important, only that we see what Frank does in his off-hours.
 
For the most part, Jacqueline Bisset is saddled with the thankless token girlfriend role. Late in the film, however, she gets a moment to showcase her acting chops when her character confronts Frank about his job, after seeing a crime scene where a woman was brutally strangled. She tells him, “Do you let anything reach you – I mean really reach you – or are you so used to it by now that nothing really touches you?” She continues, “How can you be part of it without becoming more and more callous?” referring to the violence and ugliness of his job. He has no answer for her. She cannot reconcile the vast difference between her world and his, asking, “What will happen to us in time?” to which he replies, “Time starts now.” If up until now he’s kept her at arm’s length about the harsh realities of his job, perhaps now that she has gotten a glimpse of it, she understands why he doesn’t share the ugly details with her. Bisset does a fantastic job in this scene and one wishes she was given more to do in the film.
 
Yates shows off the hilly streets of San Francisco beautifully. You get a real sense of place and the city becomes another character unto itself. We see the neighborhood convenience store where Frank gets his groceries and the grubby, hole-in-the-wall hotel room in which the witness is hidden away. Throughout Bullitt, the director demonstrates his considerable skill at visual storytelling. A key example of this takes place at the hospital, when Frank shows up to check on the condition of the witness with Dr. Willard (Georg Stanford Brown). In the foreground of the shot Frank is eating while Willard is nearby. In the background we see and hear Chalmers tell a nurse that he wants Willard replaced as Ross’ doctor because, “He’s too young and inexperienced,” and he would prefer his own surgeon to take care of the man.

Frank and Willard exchange a look that indicates they know the real reason: he’s black. It’s not spelled out and nothing is said between the two men but they know and we know it, too. It also reveals Chalmers’ unsavory side that had not been revealed up to this point. Frank was already unsure of him because he came off as a smug prick, but this clinches it: Chalmers has his own agenda and is not to be trusted.
 
The film rights to Mute Witness by Robert Pike had sold five times with McQueen’s Solar Productions being the last buyer. Initially, he didn’t want to play a cop as he felt it would hurt his counterculture/rebel reputation. Over time, he changed his mind, reasoning that an authentic performance might change people’s opinions of the police. He enlisted Alan Trustman, who wrote the screenplay for The Thomas Crown Affair, to write a treatment for Bullitt. McQueen wasn’t crazy about the complicated plot that the writer created.
 
While that was being worked on, he and producer Robert Relyea saw Robbery (1967), a heist film directed by Peter Yates, which contained a car chase sequence that impressed both men. Relyea said, “Yates had a car chase in that movie that involved cars moving along very fast, then cutting to these children at a crosswalk. It made you so nervous you couldn’t see straight.” The director was sent the script for Bullitt and thought it was “awful.” He was asked to re-read it and replied, “I’m not coming to America to make that kind of film!” He was eventually coaxed to fly to Los Angeles to tell McQueen and Relyea what he thought of the script and within hours signed on to direct the film.

While the script was being rewritten, McQueen was hands on with the casting, handpicking Robert Vaughn, Simon Oakland and others. Vaughn actually turned down the project three times and agreed to do it only after talking to McQueen, his agent and then Yates. For his partner in the film, McQueen cast long-time friend Don Gordon, whom he had known since the late 1950s when they were working in television. It was his first film role and gave his career a boost.
 
For the role of Frank’s girlfriend, McQueen cast Jacqueline Bisset because he was attracted to her, claiming that she was the most beautiful co-star he worked with up to that point in his career. He made excuses to his wife to keep her away from the shoot while he conducted an affair with Bisset during filming. He also thought she was an excellent co-star: “She catches good. She can throw it back to you with a great depth for a girl of that age.”
 
Yates thought it would be good for McQueen and Gordon if they researched their roles. They went on ride-alongs with San Francisco police officers. Yates said, “Steve and Don Gordon really had down their procedures. I thought it would be more exciting, and it was.” The two cops assigned to McQueen hazed him a bit to see if he was just another poseur actor and took him to a morgue. He was up to the challenge, showing up with an apple, eating it while being shown cadavers. Gordon, meanwhile, was taken out on a real drug bust and given a police I.D. card and carried a badge and a prop gun. He was even recognized by a suspect on a bust.

Up to this point, McQueen had a good relationship with the studio and its head, Jack Warner, who quickly agreed to make Bullitt and was hands off, trusting the actor. As production ramped up, Warner sold his stock and retired. Kenneth Hyman and Seven Arts took over and told McQueen that they wanted to be more hands-on. Relyea said, “We came in with one understanding and then found ourselves in another, it led to misunderstandings on both sides.” The studio told McQueen that his six-picture deal was now going to be a one and done deal.
 
Filming began in February 1968 and finished in May of the same year. The pressure of the new studio regime and his reduced deal weighed heavily on McQueen. He didn’t display the good humor he had on other sets as the pressure of carrying the film affected his day-to-day mood – but it did not deter him from fighting for what he wanted. The studio wanted Bullitt shot on the lot but McQueen pushed to have it shot entirely on location. Yates said, “My biggest concern was that if we were to make a picture totally on the lot, that it would look like a television series.” San Francisco’s mayor Joseph L. Alioto was very accommodating and the studio backed down. As a result, Bullitt was the first film to be shot on location with an all-Hollywood crew, a major feat unto itself.
 
Yates encouraged the actors to ad-lib and was not afraid to change a scene if it wasn’t working. For example, in the scene where Frank meets his girlfriend for dinner, McQueen didn’t feel comfortable with the dialogue as written. Yates told him and Bisset to act as if they were having a real dinner and filmed them from the outside.

During filming, the studio rode McQueen hard about the budget. Whenever a studio executive would show up on location, the actor would kick them off. The studio claimed that the production was going over budget while in actuality there was no real projected budget! In the end, the studio claimed that the budget went from four million dollars to six million when it actually only cost five million.
 
Some of the stunts that were performed during the production were quite dangerous and they didn’t always involve cars. In the scene where Frank pursues Johnny Ross on the airport runway and goes under a Boeing 707 passenger jet, the stunt involved 240-degree heat blasts from the engine with unpredictable cross winds. Stuntman Loren James talked to the FAA and pilots and was told that it couldn’t be done. Eventually, he found a pilot that was willing to do it and the stunt was done in one take. James was paid $5000 for the death-defying stunt.
 
The film’s famous car chase sequence was saved for the last two weeks of filming with the studio threatening to deny it if the production went over budget. Screenwriter Alan Trustman claims that the car chase was in the script but Yates has said that it was producer Phil D’Antoni that pushed for it. Yates had just done one in a previous film and didn’t want to do it. McQueen was prepping for the car racing drama Le Mans (1971) and didn’t want to do it either. Stunt driver Carey Lofton was brought in to coordinate the chase. He had known McQueen since the late ‘50s and they had a good relationship. The actor wanted to make the best car chase depicted on film and Lofton told him, “I knew a lot about camera angles and speeds to make it look fast. You can underground the camera so you can control everything in the scene.” Lofton told McQueen it would be expensive to do. The actor replied, “Money is no object here.”

McQueen wanted to do his own driving and Lofton spent four days trying to convince him otherwise. It wasn’t until he crashed into another car three times that Lofton asked McQueen’s friend Bud Elkins to double for him. Elkins said of his friend, “He took the corners too fast and he overshot them and crashed into cars.” The climactic explosion at a gas station was, not surprisingly, the most expensive aspect of filming and could be done only once. It was shot on the last day of filming. Even though the car overshot the gas pumps, clever editing covered this mistake.
 
The final showdown where Frank chases his suspect on a busy airport runway and beyond is more than a little reminiscent of the climactic showdown between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). This, coupled with the all-business Bullitt and the attention to procedural details, influenced filmmakers such as Walter Hill and the aforementioned Mann; both are fascinated by the machinations between cops and crooks.
 
Bullitt had its premiere on October 17, 1968 at Radio City Music Hall. Roger Ebert gave it four out of four stars and wrote, “The beautiful thing is that Yates and his writers keen everything straight. There's nothing worse than a complicated plot that loses track of itself.” In her review for The New York Times, Renata Adler wrote that it was a “terrific movie, just right for Steve McQueen: Fast, well acted, written the way people talk.” The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “Apart from specific business assigned, McQueen is able to convey the same depths of complexity in close-up reactions throughout the film’s action, which stresses brutal action no less efficiently than the political intimidation, and opportunistic legal maneuvers which are the cool menace of Vaughn’s tactics.” In his review for Artforum, Manny Farber wrote, “in a long, near-silent and very good stretch in U.C. Hospital, which is almost excessive in the way it sticks like plaster to the mundaneness of the place, the movie hits into about seventeen verities: faces looking out as though across the great divide of 20th-century lousiness.”

 
After watching this film, audiences questioned: what was the point? Was Chalmers in league with The Organization or merely an arrogant and inept politician? Robert Vaughn keeps his cards close to his vest, never giving us a clear indication of his character’s true motivations. He maintains a slick, impenetrable façade that the actor does a great job of maintaining throughout the film. Bullitt simply ends with Frank returning home, his girlfriend asleep in his bed. He washes his face and looks in the mirror, a grim expression looking back. One wonders if this befuddled audiences at the time. It certainly isn’t the happy ending most expected with this kind of a film and again, it is further proof of the winds of change going on in Hollywood where McQueen could push a film like this through the system. It isn’t as radical as something like Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), but it is groping towards that kind of reinvention.
 
 
SOURCES
 
Terrill, Marshall. Steve McQueen: Portrait of An American Rebel. Plexus. 1993.

The Thomas Crown Affair

On paper, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) must’ve looked like a sure-fire hit. Its stars – Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway – were coming off highly regarded films – The Sand Pebbles (1966) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967) respectively. Behind the camera, director Norman Jewison had just completed In the Heat of the Night (1967) and brought cinematographer Haskell Wexler and editor Hal Ashby along for the ride, injecting dazzling style into the heist film antics of this new project, which included the much-lauded use of the split-screen process, giving key scenes more importance. The end result was a fun ride and a classy popcorn film.

Thomas Crown (McQueen) is a suave, very wealthy playboy that confidently makes and breaks deals every day. In his spare time, he orchestrates complex heists with a team of men that never know his identity. Jewison first employs the split-screen technique during this sequence so that we can see everyone in action simultaneously. He uses it judiciously, however, so that it doesn’t wear out its welcome. The team of four men are the epitome of professionalism, knowing exactly when the money will be available, how to neutralize the bank guards, and then how to make their getaway, ditching their disguises and disappearing into the busy Boston streets – all during the daytime!

It’s not like Crown needs the money – far from it. He gets off on the challenge of outwitting the law and the thrill of getting away it. For him, it is all a game and he meets his match in the form of independent insurance investigator Vicki Anderson (Dunaway) who is brought in to crack the case and recover the money. She is just as well-dressed, cultured and intelligent, exuding the same slick confidence. Naturally, these two beautiful people are attracted to each other and engage in a battle of wits that is fun to watch.

She teams up with police detective Eddie Malone (Paul Burke) and initially they don’t have much to go on. They put their brains together and try to figure out how it was done and who did it. The scene where they brainstorm ideas is a good one because it shows them trying to figure it out. Jewison also shows the legwork involved as they go over photographs and records, narrowing down the suspects.

Known for playing rough and ready, down-to-earth characters, McQueen is quite effective as a refined man so smart and wealthy that he creates elaborate schemes to steal money he doesn’t need simply to amuse himself. The actor plays Crown as an enigmatic character whose motivations are enticingly elusive and McQueen brings all of his considerable movie star charisma to the role.

Dunaway is his ideal foil as she plays a smart investigator that knows how to get Crown’s attention and engage him intellectually as evident in their first meeting where they flirt with each other while coyly probing to see what the other knows. Vicki is a beautiful and confident woman and the actress is clearly having fun in the role as evident in the mischievous smile that occasionally plays across her face. Both are willing to skirt the law to get what they want and she’s not afraid to admit that when Eddie calls the investigator on her questionable tactics.

The Thomas Crown Affair is a master class in editing as evident in the memorable scene where Jewison cuts between Crown and Vicki playing chess as we get close-ups of her mouth and his eyes mixed with shots of them playing as she uses all of her considerable charms to seduce him by coyly running her hand up her arm, running a finger slowly over her lips and suggestively stroking a chess piece. He fights off her advances for a little bit before succumbing. This is all done over Michel Legrand’s jazzy score, which epitomizes late 1960s cool. Jewison handles it all with a fantastic light touch as we watch these two beautiful people mess with each other and maybe even fall in love.

Boston lawyer Alan R.Trustman got the idea for The Thomas Crown Affair (originally entitled, The Crown Caper) one Sunday afternoon in 1966. He was bored and decided it would be fun to write a screenplay. He worked on it on Sundays and a few nights a week for two months until it was finished. He sent it to the William Morris Agency and got an agent. They, in turn, offered it to director Norman Jewison, fresh from The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966) at the end of March 1966. Given very little time to decide, he agreed to direct almost immediately. According to Jewison, Trustman’s script was more of a legal brief than anything else. It was 30 pages and what got the director’s attention was the central storyline and the two principal characters. He then worked with Trustman on and off for 15 months, transforming the brief into a script. Immediately, he recognized that the movie would be a “matter of style over content,” but the bank robbery was “ingenious” and the characters were “charismatic.” He credited Trustman’s legal training and “clever imagination” with creating a flawless bank robbery. Together, they fleshed out the characters.

Steve McQueen wanted to play Thomas Crown very badly and begged Jewison to cast him but the director wanted Sean Connery for the part. Trustman even had the latter in mind when he wrote the script! Connery wanted to take some time off after making the latest James Bond movie and so Jewison considered other actors rather than McQueen whom he felt was wrong for the role. The actor was determined and met with the director. He was struck by the actor pleading his case in person and that it “wasn’t about money or the deal or stardom. It was about the role.” He was impressed by the actor’s passion for the project and gave him the part.

Having worked with him before, Jewison knew that McQueen was a man of few words and had Trustman turn Crown “into a more laconic character.” The writer wasn’t happy with the casting of the actor but ended up watching all of his movies to get an idea of the man’s sensibilities. Trustman then rewrote the script with the actor in mind. McQueen was drawn to the part because he had wanted to change his image for over a year and saw Crown as “a rebel, like me. Sure, a high society rebel, but he’s my kind of cat. It was just that his outer fur was different – so I got me some fur.” To get ready for the role, he learned how to play polo in three weeks. Jewison remembered, “He was so competitive that he got out on the polo field and played until his hands bled.”

For the role of Vicki, Jewison wanted a European actress to play the role and considered the likes of Julie Christie, Vanessa Redgrave, Anouk Aimee, and Samantha Egger until Brigitte Bardot, whom Jewison also contacted, suggested the role by played by an American without an accent. He agreed and considered Sharon Tate, Candace Bergen and Raquel Welch. By mid-1967 he still hadn’t found the right actress. He wanted a beautiful woman with charisma and acting chops that could hold her own with McQueen. He had seen Faye Dunaway in an off-Broadway play a couple of years before and thought that she was good. He met with Arthur Penn who was editing his film Bonnie and Clyde and saw some of her scenes. She looked great and held her own with co-star Warren Beatty and he cast her as Vicki. She was drawn to the character because she was “an audacious woman who stopped at nothing. A risk-taker she was, always one jump ahead of everyone else. She was smarter than any of the boys, classier than any of the girls.”

Principal photography was scheduled to start in June ‘67 and by April the script was ready. In search of style over content, Jewison took cinematographer Haskell Wexler and editor Hal Ashby to Expo 67 in Montreal in June where they saw a short documentary entitled, “A Place to Stand” by Chris Chapman that employed multi-image screen techniques that impressed Jewison. He thought, “We could use the same technique in our movie, not as a gimmick but as a legitimate editorial tool and stylistic storytelling device.”

Jewison shot the first robbery with concealed cameras known only to the crew, the bank guards and the tellers. “Our actors scared a lot of customers and pedestrians who thought they were seeing a real robbery. But oddly, no one tried to interfere. I think they were afraid to get involved.” They spent three days shooting the famous chess scene. The kiss itself took a full day to shoot because Jewison wanted to get the lighting just right for the moment. According to Wexler, there was genuine heat between the two actors but off-camera she kept McQueen at arm’s length. Dunaway said of the scene: “Every man I’ve ever met since then, if we talk long enough, has mentioned the chess scene to me. And every man I’ve known since then who has been in love with me has loved that movie.”

The Thomas Crown Affair was made for $4 million and grossed $14 million at the box office but critics weren’t crazy about it. Roger Ebert gave it two-and-a-half out for four stars and felt that it was “possibly the most under-plotted, underwritten, over-photographed film of the year.” In her review for The New York Times, Renata Adler said it was “just the movie to see if you want to see an ordinary, not wonderful, but highly enjoyable movie.” Pauline Kael provided one of the more perceptive reviews when she wrote, “If we don’t deny the pleasures to be had from certain kinds of trash and accept The Thomas Crown Affair as a pretty fair example of entertaining trash, then we may ask if a piece of trash like this has any relationship to art. And I think it does.”

The joy of watching The Thomas Crown Affair is seeing Crown and Vicki get the upper hand on one another over the course of the film as we try to figure out if he will get away with it or if she will catch him. We also wonder just how personally involved each of them are – when does it stop being a game and get real? For some cineastes, “light entertainment” is a dirty phrase that connotes compromise and complacency but stylish trifles have their place too. The Thomas Crown Affair isn’t particularly deep but it isn’t supposed to be. Jewison’s film is a well-acted, beautifully shot piece of entertainment featuring two attractive leads engaged in a playful game of cat and mouse. Sometimes that is enough.

SOURCES

Dunaway, Faye with Betsy Sharkey. Looking for Gatsby. Simon & Schuster. 1995.

Jewison, Norman. This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me: An Autobiography. Thomas Dunne Books. 2005.

Terrill, Marshall. Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel. Plexus. 1993.

Le Mans

If Michael Mann were to ever direct a racing car film it would probably resemble Le Mans (1971), a passion project for its star Steve McQueen, himself an avid racing car enthusiast. Much like Mann’s recent work, Le Mans eschews conventional narrative storytelling in favor of an impressionistic approach with an emphasis on visual storytelling and a surprising lack of dialogue. In some respects, McQueen is the auteur of the film, committing so much time and resources that it bankrupted him because the actor refused to compromise the vision he had for it – the beauty and a sense of purity in racing. McQueen believed in the relationship between man and machine and the notion that you’re not only racing against an opponent, but also yourself in terms of mental and physical endurance, which Le Mans explores in fascinating ways.

Known as the 24 Hours of LeMans, it is the oldest active endurance racing sports car race in the world. It began in 1923 near the town of Le Mans, France and occurs during the European summer in June. The race starts in mid-afternoon, runs through the night and finishes the next day at the same time it started. Racing teams maintain a tricky balancing act between speed and the car’s capacity to run for 24 hours. Also, the drivers are put to the test, often spending more than two hours racing before stopping in the pits to switch control over to a relief driver.

Le Mans prologue establishes its unconventional approach as Gulf Porsche Team driver Michael Delaney (Steve McQueen) cruises through the French countryside. He spots Lisa Belgetti (Elga Anderson) buying flowers, which provokes him to drive to the scene of an accident that occurred during the previous 24 hours of the Le Mans auto race where he was injured while rival driver Piero Belgetti was killed. The entire sequence and subsequent flashback Delaney experiences is all conveyed without any dialogue as the film shows us everything we need to know, like a shot of the new section of guardrail that was replaced after the accident. The flashback itself is an almost abstract collection of sights and sounds: round circles of light at night to the roar of engines taking us back to that fateful time. The crash is not actually shown, but conveyed through editing with a shot of Belgetti’s frightened face, a shot of the guardrail, a fiery explosion, a stray tire rolling away, and ending with a shot of the man’s racing helmet lying on the ground, the flaming wreck reflected in its broken visor. Whether he was responsible for it or not, Delaney feels some burden of guilt for what happened.

The opening credits play over the sleepy French town of Le Mans before the race starts with many spectators camped out in tents from the night before. We see the town come to life as preparations for the race are depicted documentary style over the snazzy jazz soundtrack by Michel Legrand. The filmmakers immerse us in the sights and sounds of the event so that we almost feel a part of it. Like many films from the late 1960s and early 1970s, Le Mans adopts a cinema verite style to create a sense of immediacy and realism by mixing actual footage of the race with staged scenes that dramatize Delaney’s story on and off the track. In this respect, it resembles Medium Cool (1969), which preceded it, only doing for car racing what that film did for politics and journalism.

Instead of using title cards or have some character explain it, the rules for the race are explained by the race announcer as we see various drivers getting ready. This is a wonderful example of the narrative economy at work as the filmmakers opt to show us as much as possible and tell us little, leaving it up to the viewer to pay close attention to what is going on. The way a character moves or how he acts or reacts to others tells us what they are feeling at a given moment. This unusual approach takes some time to acclimatize to as we are used to most films telling us everything, spelling things out so that there is little nuance or ambiguity – something that Le Mans is steeped in.

A stretch of the race becomes increasingly dangerous with the onset of rain and this not only makes the roads wet, but very difficult to manage. Visibility is poor as the Porsche and Ferrari teams engage in a battle of wills as the respective team managers see who will bring their team in last and switch tires to compensate for the weather. Then, it becomes a contest between who has the more efficient pit crew as we see these men hard at work, the camera lingering on the minutia of their actions. This sequence is cinematic catnip for gearheads and racing enthusiasts.

With the character of Lisa, Le Mans shows how the car racing lifestyle affects the loved ones of the racers. She looks a little haunted, walking through the staging area, watching her husband’s team go on without him. In between racing shifts, Delaney sits down with her at a cafeteria and they finally cut through the tension between them. Not much is said, but the looks they exchange speak volumes. Delaney and Lisa reconnect after he crashes his car later on in the race and in his trailer she asks him, “What is so important about driving faster than anybody else?” He replies, “A lot of people go through life doing things badly. Racing’s important to men who do it well. When you’re going racing it … it’s life. Anything that happens before or after … is just waiting.” This is a beautifully acted scene, especially by McQueen who delivers this iconic line almost matter-of-factly, spoken by a man who has seen the highs and lows of racing and continues to do so because he is in the pursuit of excellence. He wants to be among the very best of his profession because he feels compelled, he’s driven to do it and this is something few people truly understand and appreciate. It really is the key line of dialogue that defines the film and explains Delaney’s motivations.

Le Mans shows how a seemingly minor mistake, like overcompensating just a little to avoid a stalled out car or being briefly distracted by a crash, can result in a fiery crash that is edited rather dramatically. The crash itself is a noisy affair, but as the dazed driver crawls out of the wreckage and attempts to get away, there is no sound, which only enhances the unbelievable tension until the car explodes, sending its driver sprawling. During this sequence, the editing depicts it rapidly from several different angles in a very kinetic and visceral way that would anticipate what contemporary action films would do by many years.

Le Mans also touches upon the parasitic nature of the press corp. that swarms all over Lisa after Delaney’s crash. She is blindsided by a barrage of flashbulbs going off and questions directed at her until Delaney steps in and protectively leads her over to a car so she can escape. When a journalist asks Delaney how this crash compares to the one last year that involved her husband, he just gives the reporter that trademark intense McQueen look and walks off.

As far back as The Magnificent Seven (1960), Steve McQueen had wanted to make a racing movie with John Sturges, who had worked with the actor on the aforementioned film and The Great Escape (1963), directing and Warner Brothers distributing. It was to be called Day of the Champion and was to be made after McQueen had finished making The Sand Pebbles (1966). However, MGM was making a racing car movie called Grand Prix (1966) starring James Garner, which was able to get into production before McQueen’s film. The actor was upset that he found out about this in a newspaper and that Garner, a friend of McQueen’s, didn’t tell him. As a result, McQueen didn’t talk to Garner for an entire year.

McQueen was determined to make the definitive racing movie and felt that Le Mans was the best race to depict because it represented the spirit of auto racing. After Warner Bros. canceled Day of the Champion, CBS’ film division, Cinema Center, agreed to finance his racing film, now called Le Mans, for $6 million with Sturges still on board to direct. Amazingly, the project was given the go-ahead without a finished screenplay as McQueen and Sturges disagreed over the content. The director felt that the film should feature a love story while the actor wanted to go the pseudo-documentary route.

Principal photography began on June 6, 1970 with 20,000 props and 26 race cars to be driven by 52 world-class drivers. The film crew was a mix of French and Americans with crowd extras that sometimes exceeded more than 350,000 people. During filming, three different writers were hired to create their own versions of the script. Incredibly, they were competing against each other instead of working together.

Unfortunately, the production couldn’t use any of the footage Sturges had shot prior at the 1969 Le Mans race because the Gulf-Porsche Team that McQueen’s character was a part of had been eliminated early on when their car crashed. A mock race would have to be staged, adding millions to the budget. In addition, Sturges was having difficulty directing McQueen. At that point in his career, the actor was a big movie star and according to the director, McQueen was “in a power position, so if he didn’t like a line, he didn’t read it. If he didn’t want to say anything, he didn’t.”

The budget continued to grow as some of the best drivers in the world had been hired at considerable expense and a crash involving six cars, each one of them costing $5,000, was added to the shooting schedule. Word got back to Cinema Center that the production was out of control and executives soon arrived on location much to McQueen’s chagrin. The production was shut down for two weeks and Cinema Center even toyed with the idea of replacing McQueen with Robert Redford.

McQueen was under a lot of stress and didn’t want to shut down his passion project. He agreed to forfeit his $750,000 salary and any points he’d get in gross profits as well as relinquishing creative control. Sturges wanted to work on the script with McQueen, but the actor was taking his wife Niele to Monaco in an attempt to salvage their marriage. The director felt that the actor was being very unprofessional and this was the final straw. He left the production. The producers had to scramble to find a new director and Cinema Center enlisted Lee Katzin who was about to shoot a television movie for them. Three days after getting the call, he was in France. McQueen resented Katzin being imposed on him and was difficult to work with for the first six weeks. Then, one day, while Katzin was trying to figure out what to shoot, McQueen approached him and said, “I see what you’re trying to do and I’m going to work for you and not against you.”

To add to the production’s woes, Le Mans still didn’t have a lead actress. McQueen wanted Diana Rigg, but she was unavailable. The studio brought in Maud Adams, but once McQueen saw that she was taller then him the actor wanted someone else, which ended up being German actress Elga Andersen (Bonjour tristesse). Meanwhile, the production was plagued by two accidents. A Porsche caught on fire and was ruined. Fortunately, the driver escaped serious injury. During filming, another Porsche hit a guardrail at 200 mph and broke into several pieces. The driver survived, but his right leg had to be amputated below the knee.

Principal photography dragged on – originally scheduled to end in September 1970, but continuing on into November. Even while trying to salvage his marriage, McQueen was having an affair with actress Louise Edlind and other women. Niele and their children came to visit McQueen in France and he admitted to seeing other women, which understandably upset his wife. She admitted to having an affair herself and an angry McQueen put a gun to her head. Not surprisingly, she and the kids went back to the United States soon afterwards.

Filming was finally completed in November and the production had gone $1.5 million over budget. It took over six months to edit 450,000 feet of film into something resembling a story with the studio shutting McQueen out of the post-production process. Le Mans was released in June 1971 and the critics were not kind. The New York Times’ Howard Thompson wrote, “Racing buffs will probably flip over it but mostly it’s a bore.” In her review for the New York Daily News, Kathleen Carroll wrote, “There was no attempt at characterization. Le Mans is an excuse for Steve McQueen to indulge his passion for auto racing and to show off his skills as a racing driver.” Finally, Time magazine’s Jay Cocks wrote, “Le Mans may be the most famous auto race in the world, but from a theater seat it just looks like a big drag.” The film made $19 million worldwide, but McQueen ended up owing the IRS $2 million in back taxes. He was forced to shut down his production company and turn over any profits to the government.

At its best, Le Mans recreates what it must’ve been like to not only witness this famous race, but actually be in it. The race sequences are dynamically shot, alternating between long shots of the action and you-are-there point-of-view shots that do an excellent job of conveying the speed and intensity of the race. Very little music plays over these sequences in favor of the deafening roar of the car engines. Legrand’s music has a swanky ‘60s Euro jazz vibe that suits the film quite well. Throughout, Le Mans subverts the expectations of a stereotypical racing film, right down to the ending, which doesn’t see Delaney win personally, but his teams does, which is something a more traditional movie like Days of Thunder (1990) doesn’t do because it is all about the flash and the spectacle. There is a reason why Le Mans is still admired by racing enthusiasts after all these years – it is a pure expression of what it means to race at very high speeds and put your life at risk.

SOURCES

Terrill, Marshall. Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel. Plexus: London. 1993.

Steve McQueen Blog-a-thon: The Getaway

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of the Steve McQueen Blog-a-thon being coordinated by Jason Bellamy over at The Cooler.
By the time he made The Getaway (1972), Steven McQueen was in desperate need of a commercially successful film. His last three were box office flops, especially his last one, Junior Bonner (1972). Incidentally, Sam Peckinpah, who directed both films, was also in a need of a hit and saw this project as a way to show Hollywood that he could make a box-office hit. In doing so, the director once again was forced to compromise his vision for someone else’s – in this case, McQueen who did everything in his power to make The Getaway his ticket back into the elite, A-list club of major Hollywood players.

Carter “Doc” McCoy (Steve McQueen) is a career criminal just released from prison after serving time for armed robbery. The opening credits play over a montage of the repetitive grind of life in prison for Doc as symbolized by the monotonous clacking of the machinery he works with during his time spent there. We get glimpses of his daily routine and the things he does to try and pass the time but they do little to ease his frustrations. With the help of his beautiful wife Carol (Ali MacGraw), who has sex with local corrupt politician Benyon (Ben Johnson), Doc is released early for “good behavior.”

Carol and Doc are reunited and they celebrate by going to a park, an idyllic setting where they spontaneously decide to go for a swim. Doc revels in his freedom. He and Carol seem happy. They share a rare, tender moment together at home when she comforts him and he confesses to her how prison has changed him. He’s even apprehensive about making love with her because so much time has passed but she is loving and patient with him. The next morning we see them briefly experiencing domestic bliss as Doc makes breakfast for Carol. There’s an incredible intimacy displayed during these scenes and McQueen conveys an astonishing amount of vulnerability. This is the first and only time we’ll see them this carefree. It’s fleeting as the rest of the film will see Doc in professional criminal mode.

Indebted to Benyon, Doc meets with him about a potential job. Ben Johnson plays his character with the smug confidence of a man who knows that he has power over others. As Benyon tells Doc at one point during their meeting, “You run the job, but I run the show.” Benyon orders Doc to rob a bank that has over $500,000. He assigns him two accomplices, Rudy Butler (Al Lettieri) and Frank Johnson (Bo Hopkins). One look at these two hired goons and you know that they can’t be trusted. Doc is a smart guy and realizes this as well but what choice does he have?

In a nice attention to detail, we see Doc and his crew thoroughly plan and prepare for the job. Both he and Carol check out the bank in order to see how many employees it has, what kind of security they have, the local police presence, and so on. It becomes readily apparent that Doc leaves nothing to chance. He’s efficient and well-prepared. However, despite all of his meticulous planning, the heist does not go smoothly and a bank guard and Jackson are killed. Not surprisingly, this sequence allows Peckinpah to cut loose with some of his trademark slow motion mayhem, including a fantastic bit where Doc plows through the front porch of a house with his getaway car. Peckinpah’s films are always a marvel of editing and this one is no different. During the bank heist, he uses editing to ratchet up the tension. Because of the rhythm of the editing he employs in this sequence, you intuitively anticipate that something bad will happen at any given moment and when it does, it almost comes as a relief akin to a release valve.

Doc and Carol rendezvous with Butler and the latter foolishly tries to double-cross the former. Doc shoots Butler and leaves him for dead. The rest of the film plays out their attempts to escape for the border and safe haven in El Rey, Mexico, and also Butler’s pursuit for revenge.

Steven McQueen brings his trademark cool and intensity to the role of Doc and is not afraid to play a relatively unlikable character. We don’t know what Doc was like before his prison stretch, only how he behaves once he gets out. McQueen plays him as someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. I find it interesting that two of his strongest performances came from back-to-back Peckinpah films: Junior Bonner and The Getaway. The former featured a very nuanced, introspective performance from McQueen, while this one is all on the surface as he plays an irredeemable criminal.

Ali MacGraw faced a lot of criticism back in the day for being a lightweight actress out of her depth in this film but she does a good job, especially in the scene where Carol exacts retribution on Benyon and then in the follow-up scene where she tearfully confronts Doc about what she had to do in order to get him out of prison. He lashes out at her, repeatedly slapping Carol, reducing her to tears in a truly uncomfortable moment. Peckinpah is never afraid to expose raw emotions. Doc knows how to switch his emotions on and off at will but Carol doesn’t work that way. MacGraw does a nice job of portraying a woman that feels out of her depth in a world filled with hardened criminals and this mirrored the actress’ own experience making a film she clearly was not comfortable doing in the company of people that intimidated her.

When you have someone iconic like Steve McQueen as your protagonist, you better have someone who can match him as the antagonist. Peckinpah found that in Al Lettieri who plays the ruthless Rudy Butler. The actor brings an uneasy intensity to his sociopathic character. Butler only cares about the money and getting revenge while also delighting in tormenting a couple he takes hostage along the way. There’s a seedy ugliness to the scenes where takes advantage of a veterinarian (Jack Dodson) and his wife (Sally Struthers) that would be taken up another notch in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).

For some time prior to The Getaway, McQueen had been encouraging his publicist David Foster to become a film producer. Foster’s first attempt was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) with McQueen starring alongside Paul Newman but 20th Century Fox did not want Foster as part of the deal. The project fell apart and while McQueen was making Le Mans (1971), Foster acquired the rights to Jim Thompson’s crime novel The Getaway. Foster sent McQueen a copy of the book and urged him to do it. The actor was looking for a good/bad guy role and saw these qualities in Doc. McQueen admired Humphrey Bogart since he was a child and patterned his performance from Bogart in High Sierra (1941).

Foster began to look for a director and Peter Bogdanovich was brought to his attention. He and McQueen screened Bogdanovich’s soon-to-be-released The Last Picture Show (1971) and loved it. They met with the director and a deal was made. However, Warner Brothers approached Bogdanovich with an offer to direct What’s Up Doc? (1972) with Barbra Streisand but with the stipulation that he would have to start right away. The director wanted to do both films but the studio refused. When McQueen found out, he was very upset and told Bogdanovich that he was going to get someone else to direct The Getaway. Foster and McQueen hired Jim Thompson to adapt his own book into a screenplay which he spent four months writing. However, they did not like the ending where Carol and Doc “descend into a nightmarish physical and spiritual hell” in Mexico and fired him from the project.

McQueen had just worked with Peckinpah on Junior Bonner and enjoyed the experience. He recommended the director to Foster who then approached Peckinpah. He agreed to do it. The filmmaker had read the novel when it was originally published and had even talked to Thompson about making it into a film when he was starting out as a director. Foster and McQueen then met with screenwriter Walter Hill and hired him to adapt Thompson’s novel. Peckinpah read the screenplay and Hill remembers that he didn’t change much: “We made it nonperiod and we added a little more action.” After Junior Bonner, Peckinpah wanted to make Emperor of the North Pole (1973), a story set during the Depression about a railroad conductor obsessed with keeping hobos off his train. Foster made a deal with Paramount Pictures’ production chief Robert Evans who would allow Peckinpah to do his personal project if he would helm The Getaway.

For the role of Carol, Peckinpah wanted to cast Stella Stevens whom he worked with on The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) with Angie Dickinson or Dyan Cannon as possible alternatives. Foster suggested Ali MacGraw, a much in-demand actress after the smash-hit Love Story (1970). At the time, she was married to Evans who wanted her to get away from being typecast in preppy roles and set up a meeting with Foster, McQueen and Peckinpah to talk about the film. According to Foster, she was scared of McQueen and Peckinpah because they had a reputation for being “wild, two-fisted beer-guzzlers.” When McQueen met MacGraw there was a very strong, instant attraction between the two. She was unsure about the project because of her attraction to him. She said, “He was recently separated, and free, and I was scared of my overwhelming attraction to him.”

For the role of Rudy Butler, Peckinpah wanted Jack Palance but could not afford his salary. Impressed by his performance in Panic in Needle Park (1971), Walter Hill recommended Richard Bright. He had worked with McQueen 14 years ago but did not have the physique that McQueen pictured for Butler. Peckinpah got along famously with Bright and ended up casting him in a smaller role of a small-time grifter that tries to steal the bank heist loot. Al Lettieri was brought to Peckinpah’s attention by producer Al Ruddy who was working with the actor on The Godfather (1972). Ruddy showed the director footage of Lettieri and Peckinpah knew that he wanted him to play Butler. Like Peckinpah, Lettieri was a heavy drinker and this caused problems during filming due to his unpredictable behavior. The director, on the other hand, drank all day but did not appear drunk.

A potential roadblock arose in the form of a conflict between Paramount and the film’s budget. Peckinpah was dismissed from Emperor and was told that Paramount was not making The Getaway either. McQueen’s agent had 30 days to set up a deal with another studio or Paramount would own the rights. Fortunately, his agent was inundated with offers and went with the First Artists group because McQueen would receive no upfront salary, just 10% of the gross for the first dollar taken in on the film – very profitable if it was a box-office hit.

Principal photography began on February 7, 1972 in Huntsville, Texas. Peckinpah shot the opening prison scenes at the local penitentiary with McQueen surrounded by actual convicts. During the course of filming, McQueen and MacGraw fell in love. Naturally, Foster was worried that their relationship was going to have a negative impact on the production by causing a potential scandal with the media ruining the reputation of the film.

McQueen and Peckinpah got into occasional heated arguments during filming. The director recalled one such incident: “Steve and I had been discussing some point on which we disagreed, so he picked up this bottle of champagne and threw it at me. I saw it coming and ducked and Steve just laughed.” Despite these disagreements, McQueen had his moments of brilliance. He had a natural aptitude with props, especially the guns he used in the film. Hill remembered, “you can see Steve’s military training in his films. He was so brisk and confident in the way he handled the guns.” It was McQueen’s idea to have Doc shoot up two squad cars in the scene where his character holds two police officers at gunpoint.

MacGraw got her start as a model and her inexperience as an actress manifested itself on the set where she struggled with the role. According to Foster, Peckinpah and MacGraw got along quite well but she was not happy with her own performance. She said, “I looked at what I had done in it, I hated my own performance. I liked the picture, but I despised my own work.”

Under his contract with First Artists, McQueen had final cut on The Getaway and when Peckinpah found out he was very upset. Richard Bright said that McQueen chose takes that “made him look good” and Peckinpah felt that he played it safe: “He chose all these Playboy shots of himself. He’s playing it safe with these pretty-boy shots.” McQueen also used his clout to replace Jerry Fielding’s completed score with one by Quincy Jones.

There were two preview screenings, a lackluster one in San Francisco, and a more enthusiastic one held in San Jose. However, critics were less than jazzed with The Getaway. Roger Ebert gave the film two out of four stars and called it, “a big, glossy, impersonal mechanical toy.” Time magazine described McQueen as having “primarily a deep-frozen presence,” and called MacGraw’s screen presence “abrasive. As a talent, she is embarrassing.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “The action and the violence of The Getaway are supported by no particular themes whatsoever. The movie just unravels.” After everything was said and done, The Getaway was the second highest grossing film of the year, making $18 million domestically and $35 million worldwide. McQueen was back on top and a major Hollywood player once again.

Peckinpah never forgets what kind of film The Getaway is – a crime thriller – but still manages to inject his trademark stylistic flourishes and thematic preoccupations while still fulfilling all the necessary conventions of the genre, especially in the exciting, bullet-ridden climax. The Getaway may have been a paycheck film for Peckinpah but he still found ways to make it his own despite McQueen’s tinkering.

SOURCES

Simmons, Garner. Peckinpah: A Portrait in Montage. Limelight Editions. 1998.

Terrill, Marshall. Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel. Plexus: London. 1993.