1966 Drama
From Columbia Pictures
Directed by Arthur Penn
Starring
Have you seen it? There have been several movies with this title and all probably have more to do with actually chasing someone than this one does. But let it be said that none attracted the high-calibre, big-name cast that this one did. Brando, Fonda, Redford... yeah, just top that.
There's little doubt that any of the three of them would have included this movie as part of those films they wanted to brag about or had included as part of a retrospective. I get it. I might not name it myself for any of them and yet it's an intriguing little piece, tense, entertaining as hell with lots of name actors and glorious character actors.
The story concerns mob rule and the focus is on Redford's character, Bubber Reeves, who hails from a small Texas town that is apparently full of nothing but drunks, cheaters, gossips, carousers and troublemakers. Bubber and another prisoner have escaped and as we meet them they lie on the ground pretending to be injured or dead. When a motorist stops to check them out, the other guy accidentally kills him and then takes the car leaving Bubber behind. We've been made aware Bubber's fingerprints are everywhere. On foot he heads for his hometown.
Redford doesn't meet up with the rest of the cast until about halfway through. While he's on the run, we meet the townsfolk, most of whom seem to have some connection to Bubber. The reason for the town's existence falls on the shoulders of oilman Val Rogers (Marshall) who seems to own everything in sight and everyone kowtows to him. Well, not Sheriff Calder (Brando).
Calder lives with his wife Ruby (Dickinson) in a few rooms attached to the police station. He is his own man who can get unruly when anyone accuses him of being in the pocket of Rogers. He doesn't believe Bubber killed anyone and he's even suspicious of Bubber's guilt on his initial crime that landed him in the slammer.
Bubber is married to Anna (Fonda) who lives above her stepfather's (Cabot) cafe and has been involved with Val's son Jake (Fox) since they were teenagers. She was after Jake for years to marry her and when he kept putting it off, she married Bubber. A few weeks later he married Elizabeth (Hyland). His marriage annoyed the hell out of Anna but she and Jake continued as though neither was married. Old man Rogers can't stand the low-rent Anna but is unaware that she and his son are still involved.
At Val's bank we meet his two right-hand men. Edwin (Duvall) is clearly in the wrong town. The worse thing that can be said about him is he is too passive. His boldly trampy wife Emily (Rule) is the squeeze of the other right-hand man, Damon (Bradford). He is married to Mary (Hyer) who is shamelessly alcoholic because she is so neglected. The entire town seems to know of Emily and Damon and they pay no mind.
We meet Bubber's parents (Hopkins and Atterbury) and it appears as though both have not done right by their son but especially his mother. She and the sheriff get into a heated verbal exchange that fired me up.
There's Mr. Briggs (Hull) and his wife (Jocelyn Brando... yes Marlon's real-life sister) who have little to do except hang out in the town square and gossip. Damon has two pals, Lem (James) and Archie (Ihnat), and as a trio we're quite sure they will figure more into the drama as things move along.
Two of the most sympathetic parts are played by black actors Fluellen and Renard. Both, of course, are harassed by the evil trio and one of them, who eventually hides Bubber when he comes to town, takes the story into its final chapter.
It's Saturday night as Bubber gets closer and the sheriff is aware of his progress because he is informed by some who spot him. The townsfolk also get wind of it and as their drinking, anger and gun-shooting reach a peak, the evil trio corners the sheriff in his office and beat him mercilessly and then form a vigilante pack to bring in Bubber.
The finale is worth the wait, coming in two parts. One might even call it explosive... or maybe frentic. But it might be said that what went on behind the scenes was more interesting than what they filmed.
Ace novelist/playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote wrote the book in the early fifties and later the play. Gary Cooper commissioned a script which he envisioned for him and Montgomery Clift but it was not to be. Enter mega-producer Sam Spiegel who had headed the productions of The African Queen and On the Waterfront and would soon add The Bridge on the River Kwai, Suddenly Last Summer and Lawrence of Arabia to his resumé. He purchased the rights in the fifties to The Chase as another hoped-for blockbuster.
The tough-minded playwright Lillian Hellman was brought in to shape the script. She softened the character of Bubber and in general brought her liberal-bent to describe a decidedly not liberal town or its citizens. She had strong feelings on gun control and racial bias but it was apparently the fetish behavior she gave to some of the minor characters that caused the director to discard some of her work and bring in other writers. Still, Hellman is the only one to receive writing credit.
Spiegel and Brando had a workable relationship on Waterfront and the producer wanted to hire him to play Jake Rogers. He also wanted Marilyn Monroe to play Anna. But things still didn't get moving along until 1964. He still wanted Brando but by now both agreed he was a little long in the tooth to play Jake so he was offered the part of Sheriff Calder, a strait-laced, by-the-book character as different as anything he had played. I am not a Brando fan particularly and while this isn't anywhere near his best role, it's one in which I enjoyed him. He's one of the few characters here who has any common sense. Now that's acting.
Brando did not like the part of the sheriff but he needed the dough, saw it as not requiring much for him to do and was especially keen on doing something to live down the (still) bad press from his time on Mutiny on the Bounty two years earlier. He knew some of the cast already... he and Fonda, Rule, Marshall and Dickinson were from the Actors Studio and of course his sister was there... so he expected a good time. Brando was aware that most of the cast drooled in his presence. Some trembled in his golden light. It was known that a number of his costars and a trail of groupies stopped by his trailer for inspiration.
Brando became less and less congenial as time went on. A lot of it aparently had to do with his old buddy Spiegel acting more like a director than a producer. Brando came to think of the movie and his work in it as crap. He must have forgotten that he wanted to live down his Mutiny on the Bounty experience. He became contentious at every turn and there were several who said it was uncomfortable being around such a baby. Redford apparently said he was mean-spirited and Fonda called him a major disappointment.
Spiegel said he wanted Redford because women were nuts about his looks. He judged that especially by those who worked for him at the studio and noticed their reactions when the actor entered the room. While Redford thought the property showed great character insights and was an unflinching look at human behavior, it was Bubber that he wanted to play. Bubber was the renegade and that was something with which the actor could identity.
Being only his third movie, Redford had not yet come into his own but he soon would. The same could be said of Fonda and although this was her 10th film, she didn't particularly expose her eventual extraordinary talent in any of them. She was little more than an ingenue in this one and she didn't have as much screen time here as Dickinson or Rule. Fonda and Redford formed a lifelong friendship and had many things in common although at the time she was far more uptight than he was. He perhaps taught her to loosen up and find some humor. They shared many political views although neither had become the activists they soon become. This was the first of their four films together although there was a fifth... he had an uncredited role as a basketball player in her first film, Tall Story.
This was also only the fourth movie for Duvall. He didn't particularly stand out, I suppose, because his character is dull although he does finally have a flair for revenge. His first film, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), was based on a screenplay by Foote and Duvall would win an Oscar in 1983 for another Foote-scripted film, Tender Mercies. It would take him a number of years to become a big star.
Who did stand out is Rule. In fact, I thought she does the best job in the whole damned thing... utterly fun and watchable as a mean-mouthed adulteress. While Brando plays against type so do Hyer and Dickinson. I'm almost surprised these two actresses didn't change roles. Dickinson almost gets lost in the proceedings as the sheriff's devoted wife, a far cry from the sexpot roles she usually played. Hyer, on the other hand, plays a fall-down, slobbering drunk, not even a whisper of the uptight, haughty roles she usually played to perfection.
Britisher Fox finally got the role that no one else wanted to play, Jake, the uncooperative son of Marshall, lover of Fonda and childhood friend of Redford. Critics mentioned how bland he was but there wasn't much he could do with the part besides learning a Texas accent and dying his blond locks dark brown. (There's to be no competition with Redford in the blond male department, thank you.)
Marshall registers as the rich man who wants nothing more than to have a positive relationship with his son but hasn't a clue as to how to accomplish it. Hopkins, in her pentultimate film, enjoys a showy role as Bubber's guilt-ridden mother. Bradford, making his film debut as the head villain, the instigator of the town's vengeance, is properly smarmy. I've always wondered why he didn't have more prominent roles.
The remainder of the large cast handle their parts with believability. It's always fun being surprised finding a younger version of a later famous person tucked away in some film. Here it's singer-songwriter Paul Williams. Though 26 at the time, his diminutive size allows him to play a 15-year old. What a hoot.
In a film that hired a lot of newcomers, director Arthur Penn was one of them. He'd come from television, although he did only quality stuff, like those famous anthology series of the day. The Miracle Worker is arguably his best work and his next film after The Chase is nothing to ignore, Bonnie and Clyde. I might claim it as his best work but I suspect Warren Beatty was really the boss.
Penn was apparently excited about doing The Chase... it was a story he wanted to tell. Bubber is a character whose been wrongly accused of something by a town that not only turns against him but seeks to mete out his punishment. It's about martyrdom, gun control, no self control and how an event can bring about a loss of innocence. It occasionally feels like an homage to the Kennedy assassination.
The director was apparently pleased with his work throughout the film although he did not get along with the cameraman, Joseph LaShelle. Spiegel, who would not allow Penn to be involved in the editing, took the film with him to England and had it cut his way. Penn was livid. He felt the producer selected the worst takes, cut some scenes prematurely and ruined the rhythm of the piece. He tried everything he knew to have what he made be the final product and when that failed he disowned the film and never mentioned it again in public.
There are those who feel Horton's original work became just a little too steamy, a little too sultry... the Texas redneck version of Peyton Place. Despite the impressive cast of actors, writers and others behind the scenes, they gasped that it turned out to be a soap opera. So what? Don't we need good soap operas?
Now then... in closing... there is that finale again. It seems like It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World done as a drama. There are guns drawn, shots fired, booze bottles broken in the street, people hanging on cars, kissing anyone who's near, others running, running all over the place, bloodlust everywhere. Brando's character says some of those people out there (in the town square) are nuts. Indeed they are. Madness runs rampant. Watching it one has to almost take a big breath.
Then for my further amusement, Rule's lusty Emily speaks of some talk about someone shooting a man because he slept with another man's wife. That's silly, she purrs, the whole town would be wiped out.
Here's a trailer:
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A good review, but I believe the whole movie is so overwrought and over the top that it becomes almost a parody....
ReplyDeleteI really have no problem with your point of view and I know it is shared by many, including a few who made the film. I still found it entertaining and of course I am just a fool for those big casts.
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