The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 56, No. 16, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 16, 1969 Page: 4 of 8
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fine arts
'Bullitt' is sustained by location filming and self expression
By GORDON BRADEN
"Bullitt," the film now play-
ing- at the River Oaks, may very
well be some kind of small mas-
terpiece.
It is eclectic and opportun-
istic, but that is fairly basic
to its nature.The artistry and
even the competence involved
are for the most part marginal
—nobody but the special effects
men can be said to be doing
a notably good job—but the
energy and frequent good sense
of the assembling of: the diverse
elements constitutes something
very close to a definitive re-
forming of the Hammett/
Chandler/Bogart detective film.
In its shallow but solidly male-
volent way, this is one of the
most gripping movies to come
along in some time.
Independence or co-optation?
The advertisements ("There
are bad cops and there are good
cops—and then there's Bullitt")
show that somebody in the front
office thinks of the film as
more or less a transposition of
the archetypally independent
private eye (or secret agent)
into the public police role;
Stanley Kauffman, I notice,
reads the same line exactly up-
-ide down, seeing the film as
essentially a co-optation of the
outsider into the establishment.
This' is part of the story" but
not ail of it. for the hero, rather
laconically played by Steve Mc-
Queen, actually declares him-
self only a few inches above his
milieu: he wears turtlenecks,
drives a Mustang, beds openly
with his girl friend, and tells
an unctuously influential poli-
tician to go to hell—but a little
thought will show that as dis-
plays of psychological indepen-
dence these are all (with the
possible exception of the last,
and in it lie is subtly backed tip
i>y his supervisor) fairly mild
and in fact something very close
:o an approved ''normal."
('outrolled desperation
Trie film is centered on him
only in a functional sense; ho
is simply not interesting enough
for us to say that the plot
exists, as it does, for example,
-ii "The Big Sleep,'' to give us
a chance to watch the main
' ::aractcrs in action. On the
< '.her hand, the plot lias far
*00 many obscurities and mar-
ginalia in it to be its own justi-
: if;:lion.
What sustains the film are its
moments of habit and routine
activated but not especially
changed by an extraordinary
plot, situation. The five minutes
or so in the hospital when a
gunshot victim has a cardiac
arrest and becomes the center
of considerable desperate but
perfectly controlled activity is
a.i excellent example; it leans
for its dramatic effect on a col-
lection of technical commands—
given in monotone—rand instru-
ment readings, all of which are
probably incomprehensible to the
audience but communicate al-
most entirely by virtue of their
low-key authority. At best we
are convinced that the perform-
ers are almost certainly non-
professional actors and very
possibly genuine hospital per-
sonnel.
The scene is not exceptionally
good, nor is it especially in-
novative: we have seen similar
scenes on any number of TV
documentaries. But it is not a
scene that Howard Hawks would
even have thought of filming,
whereas here it is part of the
supporting fabric of the whole
show.
Realization of environment
Of much the same origin
are scenes such as the police
doctor's recording of an autopsy
description, Bullitt's off-handed
grocery shopping, or his super-
visor's shepherding his family
to church on Sunday; this last,
before it bogs down in Robert
Vaughn's sarcastic snottiness,
even approaches the luminosity
of the birthday message in
"2001." The import of these
moments is essentially a char-
acterological extension of the
whole idea of location photo-
graphy—and this film is done
almost entirely on the streets
of San Francisco, while Bogart's
were done primarily in the stu-
dio, or on the back lot.
Explicit murder
With such a basis it is not
too surprising that most of the
real talent is shown in the 2nd
unit direction and special ef-
fects. If we give him^he ben-
efit of the doubt and assume
that the. movie's silly title was
beyond his control, director
Peter Yates commits only' one
major faux pas: a prissy dis-
cussion between McQueen and
his girl Jacqueline Bisset on the
subject of violence and dehu-
manization.
However, none of his drama
can compete with his hardware.
The killings are the most power-
fully explicit since "Bonnie and
Clyde"—better, in fact, because
they lack faintly romantic aes-
iheticism of that film; it is
good to be reminded just •what
a bullet (or in one case, a gar-
rote) can do to a human body.
The long scene toward the
end in which McQueen and his
quarry run around under the
bellies of the taxiing planes at
the San Francisco airport is a
bit ridiculous, but is redeemed
by the scene that follows: a
long, slow build-up in a crowded
waiting room, converging 011
about five seconds of hyperbolic
violence.
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And then there is the auto-
mobile chase.
That 10-minute chase, about
half-way through the film, is
becoming more famous than the
movie itself, and with a certain
amount of justification. The
whole idea of racing a car on
San Francisco's vertical streets
is hair-raising enough; by some
bizarre camera conceptions
Yates and his crew have man-
aged to drive the neural strain
almost beyond the lines of sani-
ty. Most of the sequence is
photographed with telescopic
lenses, so that while the roar-
ing soundtrack proclaims speed,
the objects on the screen drift
almost gently. This is syncopat-
ed with enough normal shots to
throw everything off balance,
and instead of building grandly
to a Hitchcockian climax, the
film skids across every nerve
end within reach and finally
just explodes like a madman
having a convulsion.
"Bullitt" is perhaps at its
deepest in a few superb seconds
of crowd reaction to the final
shoot-out; some fifty or so in-
nocent bystanders give us some
fifty versions of disguised or
partially disguised shock or
horror in one of the most effec-
tive uses of an anonymous
group I have seen. Their mosaic
of fragmented responses is far
more powerful than the hero's
own moral dilemma, which they
are supposed to underscore.
John Frankenheimer brings
in a crowd at the end of "The
Fixer" (now at Meyerland Cine-
ma) for much the same function
of establishing this personal-
social axis, but the effect is
nowhere near as great. Frank-
enheimer's crowd is an obliga-
tory movie crowd, wildly cheer-
ing and moved about in sweep-
ing, quasi-epic gestures pre-
sumably inspired by a bad me-
mory of Eisenstein.
Hardware to hubris
The makers of "Bullitt," from
purely commercial motives, have
let their minds tune to certain
resonance frequencies of our
McLuhanesque climate. Frank-
enheimer, who has tip to now
been a fairly interesting direc-
tor of hardware ("The Train,"
"Grand Pi-ix"), has tried far
more hubristically to tell a
story admirably important by
all the best humanistic canons.
The result of this reversal of
roles is, if not always tepid,
yet curiously uninteresting.
The story, from Bernard
Malamud's novel, concerns a
reasonably innocent Russian
Jew (Alan Bates) charged by a
fairly stupid and anti-semitic
czarist bureaucracy with the
"ritual murder" of a child, in
the hopes of thereby obtaining
excuse for a general pogrom.
The prisoner, however, proves
surprisingly resistant to con-
fessing, and becomes more so
with torture and deprivation;
things begin to acquire pseudo-
mythic proportions.
Hypnosis
Pauline Kael has some exact
comments in "The New Yorker"
on the nature of the sedulous
dullness of Trumbo's dialogue;
the main effect is to throw all
the weight onto a director who
is probably just as hypnotized,
and the actors.
The actors actually come
through rather well, though not
as well (for the sake of com-
parison) as they did in "A Man
for All Seasons" with Robert
Bolt's dialogue behind them.
Bates gives the first thoroughly
fine performance of his film
career, and his scenes with Dirk
Borgarde, as his defense coun-
sel, are good enough to suggest
the film that Frankenheimer
probably thought he was mak-
ing.
Unfortunately, the skill with
which Frankenheimer construct-
ed his adventure films seems
to have dissipated into some
hazy idea of greatness. The
editing is often confused—par-
ticulary the pogrom scene
near the beginning, where dead
bodies keep appearing but no-
body is seen being killed—and
he seems constantly unable to
make up his mind what he
wants shown explicity and what
he wants described. This badly
disrupts the later part of the
film, where Bates' inner strug-
gle and transformation must be
indicated by a careful rhythm
of externals.
Environmental oblivion
The situation of Borgarde's
death is far more perplexing
to us—in a purely steric sense
we don't know just where we
are—than it is to Bates. On the
other hand, the final escape
from death is dovetailed with
idiotic neatness.
But probably worst of all is
the failure to make contact with
environment. The movie was
filmed in Hungary, and much of
the background is arresting and
could not have been obtained
in any of the more familiar lo-
cation sites, but nothing- of this
actually comes into play in the
foreground.
The film functions as if it
were in a studio, and the indi-
vidual against the state remains
a paradigm, not an expression
of the photographic situation.
That is why "Bullitt" is finally
a much more interesting film,
because for all its smallness it
trusts its own expressive nose
and follows it, rather than at-
tempting to act out an eternal
story in an arbitrary landscape.
Columbia film develops contrasts
By ADRIAN ABEL
In the light of continuing and
often sadly misinformed criti-
cism of the New Left in general
and the Columbia rebellion in
particular, the Newsreel film
cooperative has produced a 50-
minute live documentary film,
"The Columbia Revolt." The
film is important both in the
interest of historical accuracy
and, in the words of the pro-
ducers, as an "inspiration for
the scores of Columbias which
are to follow."
The film develops three major
themes: the senile rigidity and
decadence of Western society,
symbolized in the film by the
robot factories which pass for
colleges; the irresistible hunger
for freedom and dignity that
gnaws at the young; and the
possibility and workability of a
non-competitive, collective soci-
ety that insists on singing, danc-
ing, and voting—on everything,
represented in the scenes from
the Mathematics Building Com-
mune.
Contrasts
The technique used to illus-
trate these themes is that of
contrast. A series of platitudes
on the value of the university
by former Columbia President
Grayson Kirk opens the film,
which is then followed by a dis-
closure of the "realities" of the
university, including shots of the
garish new Schools of Law,
Business, and International Af-
fairs, a roll call of the corpo-
rate barons serving as Colum-
bia's trustees," a reference to the
school's affiliation with the In-
stitute for Defense Analyses
(IDA), and a reminder of its
ugly treatment of the Harlem
residents whose homes and park
space it needs for expansion.
The latter, which is dramatized
by black mothers sitting in front
of bulldozers at the infamous
gym site, actually begins the
film's action.
Thereafter the pace mounts
quickly, moving onto the occu-
pation of the five buildings, the
sing-dance joy that pervaded
the occupations, and the bloody
maul by the police in the pre-
dawn of April 31. Later, the
starched commencement cere-
mony at St. John the Divine,
featuring both an army of cops
and the traditional march-scored
"Pomp and Circumstance," is
cast against the radical stu-
dents' own ceremony—a street
march in caps and gowns, fists
raised, with a black woman lead-
ing the processional singing a
spiritual.
Crowd emphasized
The richness of detail which
is the origin of much of the
power of the film is further en-
hanced by a strict adherence to
the actual sequence of events—
nothing is juxtaposed through
editing for the sake of effect.
There is no concentration on
leaclers. The center of action is
always the crowd, the camera
continually sweeping from a
given speaker back to the mass,
dramatizing the interaction.
Such sweeps are often jerky, al-
most crude, corresponding to the
harsh spontaneity of the rebel-
lion itself.
The narration, too, composed
for the most part of voices taped
during the struggle, seems un-
rehearsed, though nonetheless
political, reflecting the mount-
ing degree of consciousness that
characterized the rebellion.
The most poignant details are
those surrounding the candle-
light wedding in Fayerweather
Hall,' following which the bride
expresses deep satisfaction at
having been "married at home
with our family."
This contrasts with a shot of
a blackboard in the students'
headquarters on which is
scrawled the name of a i*ebel
along with the words, "Your
father-in-law is looking for
you."
There seem to be flaws in
the content of the film. Little
is shown of the black commune,
and no mention is made of, the
errors which have led to the
partial decline of the student
movement at Columbia.
The technical "flaws" of the
film derive in part from the
aesthetic of the production it-
self: the Newsreel people were
much more concerned about
filming the Columbia rebellion
as it was, rather than as an
audience or the American public
in general might like to imag-
ine it.
the rice thresher, january 16, 1969—page 4
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Bahler, Dennis. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 56, No. 16, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 16, 1969, newspaper, January 16, 1969; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245045/m1/4/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.