Peter Viney's Blog

The Chase
1966

The 60s films revisited series continues… .

Directed by Arthur Penn
Produced by Sam Spiegel
Screenplay by Lilian Hellman
From the novel by Horton Foote

Soundtrack by John Barry

CAST:

Marlon Brando – Calder, local sheriff
Jane Fonda – Anna Reeves, Bubber’s wife
Robert Redford – Bubber Reeves, escaped convict
E.G. Marshall- Val Rogers, local rich guy
Angie Dickinson – Ruby Calder, Calder’s wife
Robert Duvall- Edwin Stewart
Janice Rule – Emily Stewart
Richard Bradford – Damon Fuller
James Fox – Jake Rogers, Val Rogers’ son
Miriam Hopkins – Mrs Reeves, Bubber’s mother
Marha Hyer- Mary Fuller
Diana Hyland- Elizabeth Rogers
Henry Hull- Briggs
Jocelyn Brando- Mrs Briggs
Clifton James – Lem
Joel Fluellen – Lester

I was persuaded that this was an essential part of my 60s Films Revisited series. The thing is, I don’t think it’s revisited. I don’t think I ever saw it before. It now has legendary status as Arthur Penn’s film before Bonnie and Clyde. I suspect it did less well in 1966 in England – the DVD is still relatively difficult to find. I looked in several major DVD stores over a month before I gave up and ordered it from amazon. Reviewers in the 60s, 70s and 80s thoroughly disliked it. Bob Thomas’s 285 page biography of Marlon Brando, Brando, deals with the film in less than a page.

Expensive but shoddy exercise in sex and violence with Brando as sheriff lording it over Peyton Place in all-but-name. Literate moments do not atone for the general pretentiousness, and we have all been here once too often.
Halliwell’s Film Guide, 6th Edition 1987

Angela & Elkin Allan were kinder in 1973:

Enormously interesting failure to say something profound about the nature of evil and the American South … The movie itself is marvellous in places, and if you share any of Brando’s masochism, very exciting.
Sunday Times Guide to Movies on Television.

The cast list looks impressive, though Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda were the A listers. Jane Fonda had just come from Cat Ballou which had propelled her career upwards. Marlon Brando? A mildly unexpected choice from him. On the other hand his Sheriff Calder was squarely in his outsider role, this time the outside was being the only good guy in town.

It was an early major role for Robert Redford, whose first five years as an actor were mainly TV until Inside Daisy Clover in 1965 … which is one I should do in the series. However, he was everyone’s tip for major stardom at this point. Angie Dickinson was also better known on TV at this point.

It points the way to the violence of Bonnie & Clyde in the beating to a bloody pulp of Calder by the Good Ol’ Boys. The Texas small town setting is more Deep South than dusty West Texas (and was filmed in California).

The first trouble was the Hellman script, which depicted the inhabitants of a small Texas town with unrelieved meanness. Then Spiegel decided that most of the action could be photographed on the back lots of Columbia and Universal studios, thus eliminating any atmosphere of reality.
Bob Thomas, Brando, Portrait of The Rebel As An Artist, 1973

Arthur Penn also bemoaned the location. James Fox (Jake Rogers in the film)  described spending three months being coached in a Texan accent in Hollywood, but wondered whether the American cast, mainly being New Yorkers with a theatre background, actually had a genuine accent. To me it sounds “generic Southern” rather than Texas. Fox was a late replacement for Peter O’Toole. Fox also pointed out that Redford did virtually all the location work – it’s late in the film before he interacts with any of the major stars in the cast.

Angie Dickinson always facially reminds me of Faye Dunaway too, and Robert Redford, like Warren Beatty had the matinee idle looks, though most of his acting here was turning those blue eyes to camera. Dunaway auditioned for Ruby Calder, didn’t get the part, but was noted by Penn. The cars are carefully cast, as in Bonnie & Clyde though early 60s rather than 30s.

Tarl, Texas, the small town in portrays has the Southern Gothic edge of To Kill A Mockingbird, and the 1962 film of that was scripted by Horton Foote, whose 1952 play and 1956 novel The Chase was adapted for the movie. The original play only ran for thirty-one performances, so was not a hit. The Chase in its turn was scripted by veteran screenwriter, Lilian Hellman, one of the leading victims of the House Un-American Activities Committee. It used to be felt that a second mind was useful in adapting a book to screen, and that the original author was too close to the story to adapt it sufficiently, even if, like Horton Foote, they were a successful screenwriter. Hellman shifted the plot considerably …in the 1956 novel, Sheriff Calder was the one Bubber wanted revenge on.

Some of the most memorable scenes in The Chase are the racist ones, linking it again to To Kill A Mockingbird. At first viewing, I thought it was influenced by To Kill A Mockingbird but given the 1956 date of the Horton Foote novel, it may be that Harper Lee, writing in 1960, was the one who was influenced.

I was interested in views of the 1960s when I started this series, but the 60s in this Texas town are the pre-Beatles, pre-Hippy “Swingers” 60s … more Rat Pack fans than rock fans. Several reviews namecheck Peyton Place. The main occupation in town is getting paralytically drunk and screwing each others’ wives. The party in the Stewarts 30-something swingers house is next door to the young folks party and they seem to be frooging or whatever – dancing incredibly badly in close proximity. Edwin’s wife, Emily, is clearly disparaging about her husband’s virility.

What a swinging party this is: Robert Duvall and Janice Rule as Edwin & Emily Stewart

We start out with Bubber (Robert Redford) and another convict breaking out of jail. They hi-jack a car, and the other convict kills the driver (possibly accidentally) and flees. Bubber is alone and on the run. While on the run he does the classic / cliched running along the train roof bit before plunging from the train into a river.

Back in town people are worried about Bubber’s return, especially Edwin (Robert Duvall). Bubber’s first reformatory term was for stealing $50 and Edwin admits to Sheriff Calder (Brando) that it was himself who took it. Later, another offence was pinned erroneously on Bubber, and now the killing will be. Three times loser and it was never him. As well as Edwin, Jake Rogers (James Fox) has reason to be scared … he was Bubber’s best friend but has spent the last two years screwing Bubber’s wife, Anna (Jane Fonda), who is in love with both of them. No one seems to feel that Bubber is a silly name for an adult male.

The general feeling in town is that Calder is an employee of Val Rogers the local oil baron (E.G. Marshall is as ever, perfect). They have it wrong. Calder is the only good guy in town.

Good Old Boys: we’re rednecks, we’re rednecks, we don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground, we’re rednecks, we’re keepin’ the n****er down.Rednecks, Randy Newman

Add in the nasty Good Ol’ Boys and their extreme racism. The town is subject to mob rule. When Bubber finally gets back to town, he hides in the automobile junk yard belonging to Lester, a black friend who should be high on the cast list, but isn’t (Joel Fluellen). The black guy goes into town and falls foul of the Good Ol’ Boys and is rescued by Calder who takes him to the cells and tells himself to lock himself in.

Calder lives over the jail with Ruby (Angie Dickinson). He then has to protect his prisoner, and so gets beaten half to death. This scene was particularly effective, and was done by the assailants acting in slow motion with all the blows actually making contact – very slowly. Then it was speeded up. Penn says the way it was filmed was Brando’s idea.

Brando after the beating

Anna and Jake go to find Bubber. Surprisingly, Bubber doesn’t seem to mind their affair. Prison has changed him. He had to escape after being told to eat “pork on a plate” which may or may not be a euphemism. He wishes them well, and Anna says she’ll come and find him. He seems a mild-mannered amiable fellow, not the terrifying spectre that has the town in terror of his return. Perhaps it’s those pretty blue eyes.

Eternal triangle: James Fox as rich boy Jake, Jane Fonda as Anna, Robert Redford looking handsome (about all he does) as Bubber Reeves.

The whole drunken town load arrives at the junk yard, firebombs it and sends in blazing tyres. Bubber is cornered in a pond and saved by Calder. Calder takes him into the police station … there is a bewildering conversation with Mr & Mrs Reeves, apparently willing to sell their house to get Bubber a lawyer, but he seems completely uninterested in speaking to them.

Marlon Brando as Calder, Robert Redford as Bubber

On the police station steps one of the Good Ol’ Boys shoots Bubber dead – I had assumed it was Edwin what with him being scared of Bubber, but my wife disagrees and adds it was extremely bad plotting not to let us see clearly who did it. According to Wikipedia’s plot summary, Arthur, one of the Good Old Boys killed him. We have no idea why. But there are all sorts of unexplained red herrings throughout the film. Henry Hull and Jocelyn Brando (cast by her brother) wander about and through scenes as Mr and Mrs Briggs, kind of faded Southern gentry, him with white suit and cane, to no particular effect.

Brando was against himself beating up the guy who shot Bubber at the end, protesting that Calder was the only adult in an infantile community and that it was uncharacteristic. Calder and Ruby depart the town in their old car. The end.

Watching dispassionately, it has the political awareness on race of the time though Hellman’s agenda on the Southern town was relentless and entirely negative. It also echoes the Kennedy assassination.

We both felt again and again they blew dramatic moments, and failed to cut sharply and dramatically enough.

We also felt Brando emerged with credit, but that’s a given. James Fox did particularly well too. Arthur Penn disowned it and says he was barred from the edit which Spiegel screwed up … I agree that the editing was a major downside.

Arthur Penn: I have never made a film under such unspeakable conditions. I was used merely to move the actors around like horses.

We had felt that about the edit. When you see a rough cut of film, each scene is a couple of seconds, or maybe only a few frames, too long. The editor tightens it all up including the close ups switching from one actor to the other. Rough cuts always feel somewhat flat. I’ve watched what a good director can do in the edit. Here, the good director wasn’t allowed to do it.

Arthur Penn: They made selections that I never would have made.I would have used other takes or other emphases in a scene. It’s not so much a question of leaving material in,or taking material out, it’s a question of tonality … I think they used the less colourful material (takes) and the less original acting material … I think they (in editing) deprived the picture and Brando of what was potentially one of the more extraordinary performances he’d given in his life
Interview in the Blu-Ray edition booklet.

Penn wasn’t the only unhappy one. Spiegel, Pen, Brando AND Hellman were at four-way loggerheads during the production.

Lilian Hellman: Decision by democratic vote is a fine form of government, but it’s a stinking way to create.

Marlon Brando: Fuck ’em. If they’re going to be so stupid, I’ll just take the money, do what they want and get out. I don’t give a damn about anything.
Said on the film set of The Chase. Quoted in Bob Thomas,Brando, Portrait of The Rebel As An Artist, 1973

The “money” in this case was $750,000. Robert Duvall got $30,000.

Brando was moody and uncommunicative during the filming. As he always did when he found himself in an uncomfortable position, he mumbled.
Bob Thomas,Brando, Portrait of The Rebel As An Artist, 1973

James Fox (on the muted critical reception): Redford was obviously headed for stardom, but I don’t think it (the movie) did any of the rest of us any good.
Featured interview on Bu-Ray.

Ruby (Angie Dickenson) and Calder (Marlon Brando). No chemistry.

A major downside is the lack of any sexual chemistry between the pairs of stars.

John Barry’s soundtrack is sleazy swinger territory or dramatic spy film, recycled James Bond, far removed from anything Americana.

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Performance (1970)