![\"Chase1966_BR\"](\"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Chase1966_BR.jpg\")
Film: Very Good<\/p>\nFilm: Very Good<\/p>\n
Transfer:\u00a0Excellent<\/p>\n
Extras: Excellent<\/p>\n
Label:\u00a0Twilight Time<\/p>\n
Released:\u00a0October 11, 2016<\/p>\n
Genre: Drama<\/p>\n
Synopsis: The imminent arrival of as escaped con inflames a town, and exposes long-seething rage.<\/p>\n
Special Features:\u00a0Audio Commentary with film historians Lem Dobbs, Julie Kirgo, and producer Nick Redman \/ Isolated Stereo Music Track \/ Theatrical Trailer \/ 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by film historian Julie Kirgo \/ Limited to 3000 copies \/\u00a0Available exclusively from Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a> and www.twilighttimemovies.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Review:<\/p>\n Note: This review contains significant spoilers, including the ending<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n By the late fifties and early sixties, racial strife was among the decade\u2019s the hot topics, and several filmmakers – up-and coming and a few veterans – figured it made sense to investigate facets of social ills that ran generations deep in the United States.<\/p>\n Some\u00a0stories simplified a drama to lure audiences into theatres for what ended up being a modest moral lesson \u2013 a white man is chained to a black man after a prison escape, as in Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones<\/strong> (1958) \u2013 or by dramatizing an event that appeared to have broader ramifications, such as the dependence of poor blacks on white land owners when the primary drama dealt with a stubborn white woman unwilling to move before\u00a0a dam project is completed, as chronicled in Elia Kazan’s slow-burning Wild River<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1960).<\/p>\n Racism could also be an element in a broader drama about the torment from decades-old persecution – Sidney Lumet’s emotionally brutal The Pawnbroker<\/strong> (1964), which folds together inner-city issues with a Holocaust survivor being overwhelmed by suppressed PTSD – or an issue that only comes to the forefront when it\u2019s picked up by a lone individual, such as a black man\u2019s friendship with a blind girl desperate to flee her abusive family in Guy Green’s heartbreaking\u00a0A Patch of Blue<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1965).<\/p>\n Comedies, wry social dramas, and exploitation vehicles thrived in the early seventies, but near the end of the sixties came star-studded soap operas masquerading as the Great Message Picture, but more than a few ended up being deeply flawed blunders.<\/p>\n That seemed to be the initial critical consensus when The Chase<\/strong> was released, and the film\u2019s sort of gone through reassessments largely because director Arthur Penn was responsible for a string of modern classics that outlived their original detractors. The weirdness of the dreamy Mickey One<\/strong> (1965) is now an avant garde mini-masterpiece, and the once-vilified Bonnie and Clyde<\/strong> (1967) lay bare America\u2019s violent tendencies using splendid and influential editing and slo-motion\u00a0techniques.<\/p>\n Penn\u2019s later efforts were never as good, but they were generally interesting, including the bizarre The Missouri Breaks<\/strong> (1976), where Marlon Brando wanders through the movie in contempt of the filmmaking process, arguably cheating audiences from a tense drama with weird improvisations (and at one point doing so in a housemaid\u2019s dress).<\/p>\n But when Brando made The Chase<\/strong>, he was still waffling between hating his profession and occasionally finding something of worth in a commercial property. He was oddly well-suited in Bernard Wicki\u2019s grim boat drama Morituri<\/strong> (1965), a film he\u2019d just completed and claimed was as much fun to make as pushing a prune up a mountain with one\u2019s nose; and after The Chase<\/strong>, he would find refuge by rebelliously giving a one-note performance as the brooding Mexican in the overdrawn drama The Appaloosa<\/strong> (1966), where director Sidney J. Furey placed the camera in ludicrously pretentious positions, including the P.O.V. of a scorpion under an arm wrestling duel, and a horse\u2019s ass.<\/p>\n The Chase<\/strong> was a project that may have\u00a0offered Brando an intriguing character trapped in a swirling drama about seething racism, but according to Twilight Time’s trio of commentators, because Penn was scheduled to direct a play soon after filming wrapped, producer Sam Spiegel (The African Queen<\/strong>, Lawrence of Arabia<\/strong>) supervised the editing, and Penn claimed takes with intriguing improvised bits were left on the cutting room floor.<\/p>\n Sheriff Calder isn’t a high point for Brando, but there are residual gestures which show the actor trying to convey a man chosen by the town’s industrialist as its head lawman and being regarded as a joke among townsfolk. Where Brando erred is in developing an accent that sometimes renders dialogue slurred, if not wholly unintelligible, and the overuse of the name ‘Bubber.’<\/p>\n The Chase<\/strong> began as a play by Horton Foote, which he later expanded into a novel that Spiegel optioned and had wanted to film for several years. Ostensibly about a felon (Robert Redford) on the run and whose return home one hot night exposes every ugly conflict and dark secret in town, Foote’s drama was adapted by former blacklisted playwright \/ screenwriter Lillian Hellman (The Little Foxes<\/strong>, Toys in the Attic<\/strong>), and her script was reportedly rewritten, although whether the film was always intended to run 2 hours and 15 mins. isn\u2019t known.<\/p>\n The shooting script is still about seething rage that tears up\u00a0a relatively prosperous small community in what critic Robin Wood<\/a> somewhat aptly described as \u2018the first American apocalypse movie\u2019 but it\u2019s also a bloated, overlong potboiler that should\u2019ve been trimmed\u00a0down to 115 mins., particularly in parts of the opening where the central character of Charlie ‘Bubber’ Reeves (Redford) is seen in teasing shots of running from a prison dragnet, hopping a train, and eventually reaching his home town at the film’s 100 min. mark; and in some areas in the midsection that lag and dwell too long on party scenes and repeated moments of simmering tempers and near-fisticuffs.<\/p>\n Even with the slow opening, the first hour is a beautifully constructed glimpse into the private lives of citizens whose fates are tightly intertwined. Small town characters wander or bump into another, setting off other rounds of small scenes designed to set up divisions and jealousies, and more importantly, reveal a wellspring of cuckolded men, seductive temptresses, and virile bullies. It’s a textbook example on how to introduce every major and minor characters in a complex story within the first half hour.<\/p>\n Hellman apparently enhanced the sexual drives and impotence of the warring factions, which director Penn furthered by casting macho, beautiful actors with muscles (Brando, Robert Redford), sleek tans (James Fox), veteran actresses as drunks\u00a0(Some Came Running<\/a><\/strong>‘s Martha Hyer),\u00a0and up-and-comers as sexpots (Janice Rule, whose salmon summer skirt seems always ready to slide off due to impossibly low cleavage).<\/p>\n To the opposite end of hot & bothered characters is Calder and his homey wife Ruby (Angie Dickinson, who’s quite good in a minimal role), and the town’s chief employer, industrialist Val Rogers (E.G. Marshall, with silver-painted hair), who steers away from his son’s marital infidelity by focusing on pure business activities, like the bank he owns, and plans for a new university designed to stop the local brain drain to big cities.<\/p>\n The real problem is the character of escaped convict Bubber (Redford), who’s quickly blamed for the murder of a motorist committed by a fellow escapee. Even when Bubber finally reaches town and confronts his wife Anna (Jane Fonda), who\u2019s been sleeping with their best friend Jason \u2018Jake\u2019 Rogers (Fox), Bubber remains a flat character. When he’s killed in a scene\u00a0patterned after Jack Ruby’s shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, his demise is a wan attempt to cap the film with one more heavy-handed tragedy.<\/p>\n Bubber\u2019s killer comes in the form of Archie (Steve Ihnat), a slick racist whose dialogue was either pruned down to a sparse sentence or two, or a character designed to be a physical representation of angry white rage in a southern suburban setting.<\/p>\n There are many traces of grave drama in The Chase<\/strong>, but they\u2019re sometimes weakened by directorial and editorial approaches that overstate\u00a0performance nuances as Deeply Meaningful and Very Important.\u00a0In the overwrought department, Bubber\u2019s mother (Miriam Hopkins) screams too much, and her decision to sell the family house to the scoundrel realtor (Henry Hull, in his final film) for Bubber\u2019s defense fund is one of many\u00a0rash decisions made by townsfolk; cuckolded bank geek Edwin (Robert Duvall, with hair!) cackles when he tells wealthy boss Val Rogers that his son his sleeping with Bubber\u2019s whore wife Anna (Fonda); and Edwin\u2019s wife (Rule) dances, drinks, and taunts her husband by flirting with co-worker Damon Fuller (slimy Richard Bradford), who ridicules his own<\/em> wife Mary (Hyer), a withering beauty who pickles herself in booze by the end of the picture.<\/p>\n Realtor Briggs (Hull) wanders through town with his wife (played by Brando\u2019s older sister Jocelyn) reminding unfortunate people that when they get desperate, he\u2019s the only one willing to give them cash for\u00a0a quick below-market sale; and Anna\u2019s stepfather Sol (King Kong<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s Bruce Cabot) would clearly love to screw his stepdaughter the way he\u2019s screwing her out of an inheritance, but he settles for hunting down a black man, local junk dealer Lester Johnson (Joel Fluellen), with a drunken posse made up of Damon, Archie, and gun-toting Lem (Clifton Brewster).<\/p>\n When Lester\u2019s arrested by Calder, Sol and his posse break into the jail, and while Val beats Bubber’s hiding spot\u00a0out of Lester, Sol & Co. then beat Calder to a pulp for being uppity. The quartet then quickly regroup and head for Lester\u2019s junkyard, where they attempt to use fire to scare out \/ incinerate Bubber like a hunted animal.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of leadened\u00a0material in The Chase<\/strong>, and the symbolism gets gargantuan once the drunken town refocuses their Saturday night fun towards the hunt for Bubber. Their apathy for any wounded character is dragged out by Penn in a scene where a bloodied Calder stumbles out from the police station and attempts to redress himself in his uniform and side arm while the townsfolk stare blankly, some sucking on their pop-sickles with indifference.<\/p>\n Robin Wood\u2019s \u2018apocalyptic finale\u2019 is a great sequence: trapped among wrecked cars representing the crushed American Dream (what else could it be?) are Bubber, Anna, and Jake, while fire-lit gasoline trickles around them, and teens (including a ridiculously young Paul Williams<\/a>) gleefully fling Molotov cocktails and blazing\u00a0tires into the yard.\u00a0When Bubber is shot on the steps of the police\u00a0station, he becomes Christ figure \u2013 a good boy with too much rebel in him, mowed down by silent yet smirking\u00a0Archie.<\/p>\n The Chase<\/strong> is convoluted but not incomprehensible, but on first viewing it\u2019s a dizzying effort\u00a0to dissect and detail the various characters whose lives bump & grind, bruise & bloody, coalesce and shatter during the film\u2019s running time. What\u2019s striking is how composer John Barry (making his American film debut) wrote so little music; most of what\u2019s on the soundtrack album represents the full score, which is essentially the same theme beaten to death, except for the assassination finale.<\/p>\n Amid the film\u2019s sleazy characters, there are some striking, affecting moments. Calder\u2019s quiet anger eventually makes wife Ruby change from a dress bought by Val into a cheaper outfit bought by Calder; it\u2019s a quiet, simple scene, and expresses the friction Val seems to exert on every town citizen after doing them a favour.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also Calder\u2019s confrontation with Bubber\u2019s mother (Hopkins) in the station, which is a fascinating explosion of two acting styles: the former steeped in the Method, the latter from a stage actress known for her grandiose histrionics (such as Becky Sharp<\/a><\/strong>). Lastly, there\u2019s Calder\u2019s severe and truly epic beating by Damon in the sheriff\u2019s office that’s cross-cut with Ruby banging on the door outside.<\/p>\n British actor Fox seems like an\u00a0odd choice to play Val’s privileged son Jake, but it doesn\u2019t take long to acclimatize to his southern accent, and the actor has some understated\u00a0scenes with Marshall and largely silent actress Diana Hyland, the latter playing Jake’s long-suffering wife who remains inert towards\u00a0his weekly Saturday night hotel rendezvous with Anna.<\/p>\n TT’s commentators are correct in labeling The Chase<\/strong> as one of the most extraordinarily cast films: besides the headliners, many veterans pepper small and even minuscule roles, including prolific Malcolm Atterbury as Bubber’s silent father, Brando’s elder sister Jocelyn (The Big Heat<\/a><\/strong>), Paul Williams (Phantom of the Paradise<\/strong>) in his film debut, and\u00a0unbilled\u00a0Eduardo Ciannelli and cartoon voice actor-comedian Billy Bletcher as Val’s birthday guests. In spite of his underwritten part, Redford manages to make Bubber relatively sympathetic, and the actor was daring enough to perform some stunts including an elaborate escape from a freezer car, and jumping from one train car to another in one long beautiful wide shot.<\/p>\n Redman feels the glaring\u00a0flaws in The Chase\u00a0<\/strong>make it both great and terrible, if not deeply compelling: \u00a0there’s Foote’s original concept struggling to remain coherent in a bloated running time; the Spiegel-authorized rewrites of Hellman’s script which may be responsible for the film’s sagging spots; Penn’s direction that consisted of ‘finding’ the film while directing; Brando’s neutered performance from Spiegel’s supervised editing; and the odd pacing. In opening up the play and novel, more details may have been drawn out, but the repeated insertions of ‘Bubber on the run’ feels like Spiegel’s efforts to reassure audiences that the film will deliver the titular ‘chase’ and live up to the trailer’s inflammatory images and sounds.<\/p>\n The \u2018scope cinematography by Joseph LaShelle (Laura<\/a><\/strong>, Hangover Square<\/strong>, The Apartment<\/strong>, Barefoot in the Park<\/strong>) is stunning, and his compositions are truly artful. Producer Spiegel seemed to spare no expense, hiring not only James Bond composer Barry for the score, but Bond title designer Maurice Binder for the title sequence (which director Penn reportedly detested).<\/p>\n Penn would move on to Bonnie and Clyde<\/strong> the following year, whereas producer Spiegel never managed to top his biggest critical and commercial successes \u2013 The Bridge on the River Kwai<\/strong> (1957), and Lawrence of Arabia<\/strong> (1962). His following ventures included the flat war drama The Night of the Generals<\/a><\/strong> (1967), the un-hip youth drama The Happening <\/strong>(1967), Franklin Schaffner\u2019s elegant flop Nicholas and Alexandra<\/a><\/strong> (1971), Elia Kazan\u2019s directorial swan song The Last Tycoon<\/strong> (1976), and one final production – Betrayal<\/strong> (1983).<\/p>\n Janice Rule would appear in Frank Perry\u2019s cult film The Swimmer<\/a> <\/strong>(1968), and Fonda and Redford would reunite in Barefoot in the Park<\/strong> (1967). Fox made a few more American productions before stepping away from films in 1970 after Performance<\/strong>. He\u00a0returned to acting several years later, often excelling in portraying arrogant, aristocratic shits (with\u00a0Gandhi<\/strong> being a high point). Veteran actress Hopkins would appear in the grand old crazy dame thriller Savage Intruder<\/strong> (1970), and retire from film, passing away in 1972.<\/p>\n This was Hellman\u2019s final screenplay, whereas actor Duvall would appear in Horton Foote\u2019s\u00a0Tender Mercies<\/strong> (1983). Foote also wrote the racial drama\u00a0Hurry Sundown<\/strong> (1967) for producer-director Otto Preminger, which also starred Fonda, and marked another attempt by a maverick filmmaker to curry the interest of audiences with a steamy, sleazy story set in the deep south.<\/p>\n Veteran William Wyler would similarly take a crack at the genre with\u00a0The Liberation of L.B. Jones<\/strong> (1970), as would Richard Fleischer with Mandingo<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1975), neither of which moved audiences with their budgets and sweaty sex. Perhaps the best film on race relations from this period remains the multi-Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1967), a police procedural that peels away layers of hate and contempt yet remains an intimate character-based drama. What Penn choreographed in a fiery junkyard sequence was simplified by Norman Jewison to a pair of face slaps.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a9 2011 &\u00a0revised 2016 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n External References:<\/strong> The Chase was a project that may have offered Brando an intriguing character trapped in a swirling drama about seething racism, but according to Twilight Time’s trio of commentators, because Penn was scheduled to direct a play soon after filming wrapped, producer Sam Spiegel…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[396,4841,283,398,399,397,400],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-H0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2666"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2666"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14972,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2666\/revisions\/14972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/Chase1966.gif\" "\\"Chase1966\\"")
Sony’s\u00a0HD transfer is a real stunner, filled with fine colours, shades, and detail denied by their 2004 DVD. Twilight Time’s presentation includes a stereo isolated music track of Barry’s score, but the real gem among the extras is the commentary track with Lem Dobbs, Nick Redman, and Julie Kirgo. There are two types of films that compel historians and fans to mine production minutia and opine with passion: films they love, and films they acknowledge are grand failures that nevertheless retain a special allure.\u00a0The Chase<\/strong> is a prime example of a deeply flawed production that still holds its own in spite of its compelling failings.<\/p>\n
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\nEditor’s Blog<\/a> — IMDB<\/a>\u00a0 — Soundtrack Album<\/a>\u00a0— Soundtrack CD Review<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a>
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