Classic Movie Review: Bullitt (1968)

Bullitt (1968) 

Directed by: Peter Yates.

Written by: Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner based on the novel by Robert L. Fish.

Starring: Steve McQueen (Bullitt), Robert Vaughn (Chalmers), Jacqueline Bisset (Cathy), Don Gordon (Delgetti), Robert Duvall (Weissberg), Simon Oakland (Captain Bennet), Norman Fell (Baker), Georg Stanford Brown (Dr. Willard), Justin Tarr (Eddy), Carl Reindel (Stanton), Felice Orlandi (Renick), Vic Tayback (Pete Ross), Robert Lipton (1st Aide),Ed Peck (Westcott), Pat Renella (John Ross), Paul Genge (Mike), John Aprea (Killer), Al Checco (Desk Clerk), Bill Hickman (Phil). 

 

Bullitt is primarily infamous for the car chase sequence that is right in the middle of the two-hour film. If you’ve never seen that chase, than watching it is thrilling – it really is one of the greatest car chases in cinema history – a chase that starts as a game of cat and mouse of the streets of San Francisco, and minute after minute builds its tension, excitement and speed – heading out to the freeway, and ending in explosions. It is a long car chase – and director Peter Yates let it play out for all that time. The style is the opposite of the quick cutting that dominates today’s action sequences – shots often last seconds at a time (Michael Bay averages under a second per shot) – and its all the more exciting for it. When movie car chases are mentioned – Bullitt’s almost justly ranks alongside the likes of William Friedkin’s The French Connection (1971) as the top two in history (depending on the list, either can take the top spot).

 

What’s strange about watching Bullitt though is the rest of the movie around that car chase – which has about 50 minutes on either side of that chase. In it, Steve McQueen plays the title detective in San Francisco. He is assigned to protect a witness at the behest of a politician – Robert Vaughn – who shows up repeatedly throughout the movie to remind everyone he needs this witness alive. Unfortunately, he’s dead pretty early on in the film – dead of Bullitt’s watch. But Bullitt doesn’t want to give up that easy – and disguises the body as a John Doe, and throws it in the morgue, as he tries to figure out what really happened. In terms of plot, well, there’s both a lot of it in Bullitt, and yet it doesn’t really matter. It’s not overly complicated – it could probably easily be the plot of a one-hour police procedural TV show, and not a particularly memorable one at that. What’s interesting in the rest of the movie is McQueen himself.

 

But this point in his career, McQueen was one of the biggest movie stars in the world, with one of the biggest egos. What’s interesting about his performance in Bullitt is how uninteresting a character Bullitt is. He is an emotionless void of a character – McQueen does nothing to try and bring him further into focus. In one of the most thankless roles in movie history Jacqueline Bisset plays Bullitt’s girlfriend Cathy – who complains about Bullitt and that emotionless void I talked about – and he cannot even really argue with her.

 

Perhaps this sounds like a criticism of McQueen – and to be fair, with most actors it probably would be. But not with McQueen – who could make even playing an emotionless void interesting. He plays Bullitt as a man with no emotions – one who is dead inside, who has seen it all, and none of it affects him anymore. I’m not sure you could find a better example of that mid-20^th Century American male tendency to not show weakness, to bury all the feelings deep inside, and not let anyone see it than McQueen in general, but certainly here.

 

The film was directed by Peter Yates – one of the better journeymen directors of the 1960s-1980s – making films like Breaking Away or The Dresser, along with my personal favorite The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) – featuring the best late period Robert Mitchum performance. He perfectly handles that car chase – which is probably the single reason why the film won the editing Oscar that year – not to mention its climax, which almost certainly influenced the climax of Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). But he also knows just what to do with McQueen – who could take what could have been a dull role, and imbued it with something altogether different and interesting, by draining all the emotion out of it.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: The Dresser (1983)

The Dresser (1983)
Directed by: Peter Yates.
Written by: Ronald Harwood based on his play.
Starring: Albert Finney (Sir), Tom Courtenay (Norman), Edward Fox (Oxenby), Zena Walker (Her Ladyship), Eileen Atkins (Madge), Michael Gough (Frank Carrington), Cathryn Harrison (Irene), Betty Marsden (Violet Manning), Sheila Reid (Lydia Gibson).

The Dresser is about the stereotypical egotistical actor who cannot see any of the people around him except in the way they can serve him – and about his ever loyal dresser who gets him through one performance at a time with his complete and total devotion to him. It an over the top theatrical melodrama/comedy that stays just this side of becoming ridiculous – and anchored by two great performances by Albert Finney as the actor, and Tom Courtenay as his ever loyal dresser.

The movie takes place over two nights – beginning as a performance of Othello is just wrapping up, and then involving taking everything apart and travelling to a different theater in a different city to put on a performance of King Lear. Albert Finney’s Sir is an actor who always seems to be “on” – he is larger than life in everything he does – from putting on his performances on stage, to the way he deals with the other actors off stage, to simply putting on his makeup. He is clearly not well – on the day he is supposed to play Lear, he goes crazy in town, and has to be hospitalized briefly. But nothing can keep him from the stage – not even himself. He is convinced he cannot possibly go on, but Norman, his dresser, will not let him give up. Despite the fact Sir doesn’t even know what play he is supposed to be putting on (he starts putting on black face to play Othello again), or that even when he does realize that he is supposed to play Lear, cannot remember any of his lines, Norman will not let him give up – getting him ready by sheer force of will, and assuring everyone else that Sir is fine, when he clearly is not.

The supporting cast is filled with interesting character who get a few good scenes – Edward Fox as a resentful supporting player who thinks he should be the star, Zena Walker as Sir’s wife, who cares for him in a way, but knows he would probably wouldn’t notice if she was gone. Eileen Atkins as the stage manager who has held a not so secret love for Sir for years. And Cathryn Harrison, as a young actress who thinks that Sir may be in love with her, when really, he just thinks that because she is skinnier than his wife, she would be easier to carry on stage when he needs to.

Yet as good as the supporting players are, this is really a two person show. As Sir, Albert Finney is a great, boisterous presence who commands every scene he is in. He is a man of massive ego who doesn’t seem to realize just how much everyone around him has to do to make sure the plays go off without a hitch – in his mind, he’s the center of everything. And Tom Courtenay is even better as Norman, his dresser, who lets Sir think just that. He has devoted his life to Sir, but sees himself as the real heartbeat of the theater – Sir would be nothing without him, and he is sure that Sir sees it the same way. The fact that Sir cannot seem to be bothered to care about Norman at all, never seems to dawn on him. Courtney’s final scene is when he finally gets to see everything as what it really is – and it’s devastating to him.

 
The film was directed by Peter Yates, who was an under rated director, perhaps because you never really knew what to expect from him on a movie by movie basis. He made two great films – the crime film The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) that gave Robert Mitchum one of the best roles of his career, and the small town biking drama Breaking Away (1979) about the rivalry between the townies and the students in an University town. In The Dresser, he spends a great deal of time focusing on the backstage drama – the details of what needs to get done to put on a play – and there are some great moments (a highlight would be what needs to be done to create the sound effects for the storm scene in Lear). But he also clearly sees this movie for what it is – a character study of a man, Norman, who doesn’t realize how the rest of the world, especially Sir, sees him, and how it destroys him to find out. You go through The Dresser thinking it is an entertaining backstage comedy, and then realize just how deeply felt it is only at the end.

DVD Views: The Friends of Eddie Coyle

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) ****
Directed by: Peter Yates.
Written By: Paul Monash based on the novel by George V. Higgins.
Starring: Robert Mitchum (Eddie 'Fingers' Coyle), Peter Boyle (Dillon), Richard Jordan (Dave Foley), Steven Keats (Jackie Brown), Alex Rocco (Jimmy Scalise), Joe Santos (Artie Van), Mitchell Ryan (Waters), Peter MacLean (Mr. Partridge), Marvin Lichterman (Vernon), Carolyn Pickman (Nancy), James Tolkan (The Man's contact man), Margaret Ladd (Andrea), Matthew Cowles (Pete), Helena Carroll (Sheila Coyle), Jack Kehoe (The Beard).

The title The Friends of Eddie Coyle is meant ironically. Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) has no friends and he knows it. He has business acquaintances, who depending on what they need can be nice to Eddie, or stab him in the back. Eddie knows and accepts this. After all, he would do the same to them.

I cannot think of a less glamorous view of criminal life than this film. The characters in this film get no sense of joy out of their life of crime – they are world weary and beaten down by life. No one more so than Eddie. He is facing a second prison term up in New Hampshire for driving some stolen booze, and he is trying everything to avoid it. He has a wife and three kids that he needs to support. But he dutifully goes about his job in Boston, buying guns from one guy to sell to another.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is not a violent movie – only twice are guns fired, and there is nothing that anyone would consider an action scene. There are two bank robberies in the film, and although one of them turns violent, they are not “exciting” in the normal sense of the word. The bank robbers are professionals – they don’t take unnecessary risks, are loud and boisterous, and don’t shoot without a reason. If you do what they say, nothing bad will happen to you. Unlike many criminals in the movies, these guys actually mean it.

The movie is essentially made up of one conversation after another, between sets of criminals and cops, all angling for something, all just trying to survive or move up the ladder. Eddie talks to his gun contact Jackie Brown (Steven Keats, and yes Tarantino is a fan of the movie), who is still young enough to be brash and bold. He drives a bright yellow sports car that sticks out like a sore thumb. But Eddie calmly and rationally breaks Jackie down, in a scene with some of the best dialogue ever written for the screen. Jackie starts out thinking he’s in control of the situation, but Eddie quickly, and effortlessly, turns the tables and lets him know what’s what. “The first thing I learned is to never ask a man why he’s in a hurry. The second thing I learned is that when you don’t deliver, one of the two of us is going to get hurt. And that someone is going to be you”. Like all the dialogue in the movie it strikes a cord of realism, and is delivered effortlessly.

The other key players in the movie are Dillion (Peter Boyle) who runs the bar, and is the guy that Eddie refused to name when caught driving the truck. Unbeknownst to anyone, Dillion is also working as a snitch for Dave Foley (Richard Jordan), a Treasury Agent who wants to break some big cases to move up the ladder. Eddie also reaches out to Foley, hoping that he’ll put in a good word with the US Attorney and get him out of the jail sentence he has coming up. First Eddie dangles Jackie in front of him, and then later he’ll try to sell out Scalise (Alex Rocco) and Artie Van (Joe Santos), the guys who we see robbing the banks with the guns that Eddie supplies them. But someone has already sold out the bank robbers, leaving Eddie high and dry, even though everyone thinks, because of Dillion, that Eddie really did rat on them.

The movie never fully spells out its plot. Instead, some of the key events happen off screen. But this isn’t a criticism of the movie, but rather one of its strengths. Do we really need to see who ratted on the bank robbers to know who did it? Isn’t it painfully clear? Director Peter Yates and screenwriter Paul Monash, working from the novel by George V. Higgins, trust the audience enough to put the pieces together.

All of the actors in the movie are brilliant, but none more so than Mitchum. It is a testament to his, and the entire casts’ skill, that he fits in effortlessly with a group of character actors. Mitchum had one of the most dominating screen presences in cinema history – often he could make other actors look foolish simply by standing there doing nothing (in fact, it was when Mitchum tried to do things – like accents, although he gets the Boston one here down cold, that he was he least effective). But Mitchum doesn’t do that in this film. His haircut reminded me of those kids whose mother’s would cut their hair for them in the kitchen; his face is sullen and hollow. You never catch Mitchum “acting” in this movie. He just is Eddie Coyle. It is one of his very best performances. The rest of the cast, particularly Boyle who is chillingly cold blooded – the kind of guy who smiles to your face as he plans to plant a dagger in your back – are all up to the task.

The movie ends with a pathetically sad sequence that is appropriate for the story. Eddie and Dillion go to a Bruins game, where Eddie slowly gets drunker and drunker. By the time he looks down at “Number 4, Bobby Orr” and says “What a kid. What is he, 24? What a future that kid has”, we realize why he’s saying that. It’s because Eddie has no future at all, and he knows it. He has essentially been dead from the moment he first walks on screen in the film. The film is a descent into the inevitable. There will no getting out of it for Eddie, and no glamorous end to it. You’ll be surprised by just how moved you are by Eddie.