I’m going to be really sketchy
with this review, in part because of logistics. I got this DVD—actually, a nice
new edition with two disks, including a few intriguing extras on the second
disk—from a New York State library system that, per its ways, had to get the
DVD from out of the local library I frequent (but within the relevant network).
When this happens, there can be a severe limit on time borrowing the DVD. In
this case, it was four days (it seemed not even); practical realities
(including how my computer couldn’t play these disks) meant I had very limited
time in which to view this in another location.
As it happens, the cable channel
Turner Classic Movies showed this film a week or so ago, and I viewed part of
it, and made a mental note to see it on DVD.
When TCM, with Robert Osborne
and “Essentials” cohost Sally Field, remarks that this film is notable (almost
exclusively) for its star, Steve McQueen, and its car chase (part of a
package of appreciating the film’s editing, which won an Academy Award), you
know you’re dealing with something that has its limits in terms of edifying
qualities. That is, McQueen is fine in this film, in his laconic, hungry-eyes
way as Lieutenant Frank Bullitt; the film is known as being where McQueen first
became a big star. Today, he seems the most modern-seeming person in the film;
with his somewhat rumpled look and intense eyes, he probably struck people as a
rather febrile existential hero in the 1960s, and today seems more like an amenable-enough
average Joe putting up with the usual shit.
The other feature of this film
is its car chase, with Bullitt racing in his sporty Ford Mustang after a couple
men who had been essentially tailing Bullitt, perchance to rub him out—they from
a shadowy group known as “the organization” which leaves us wondering, “Is this
group Mafia? Some East Bloc Soviet-aligned cabal? Some U.S. corporate
nastiness?” The car chase is well executed, even by today’s standards; much of
it is done in the hilly terrain of San Francisco, which is a star location in
the film (one or more buildings may be familiar to those who know the city
through Hitchcock’s Vertigo [1958]).
The film seems like a rehearsal for a later hit
The film, actually—however a big
a hit it was at the time—seems (in several respects) like a dry run for The French Connection (1971). As is
known in film lore surrounding the latter film, director William Friedkin was
given the task to make a car chase for FC
more exciting than in Bullitt. I
think both car chases are on a par; in Bullitt’s
case, some camera shots from within a speeding car going down an SF hill made
me a little car-sick/dizzy, and I haven’t routinely gotten car-sick in many
years.
The producer for both films is
the same: Philip D’Antoni. The director for Bullitt is Peter Yates, whose work I don’t think I know; he
does a competent, stylish job here, except it struck me that the actors by and
large (except, notably, for McQueen) seemed on the colorless side (even Robert Vaughn, who was a big enough star in those days, such as on the TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E., seems a bit “1960s-smooth,
not terribly striking today”). Jacqueline Bisset, enough of a star in her
day, seems almost boring in her limited role as the love interest of the work-married
Bullitt (she also, in her own right, works in an office that seems like an ad
agency, though her cutie outfits show she wasn’t meant to be a liberated woman
of the Ms. era).
The film score is provided by
Lalo Schifrin, who does light jazz here not terribly unlike Kenny G or
some dental-office waiting-room Muzak, but smarter than that (and hopefully
less evocative of the dentist’s invasive tools to come). The title sequence is
very stylish and clever, evocative of the “hip films” of its day.
(McQueen’s look when he wears a
turtleneck reminds us that only in the 1960s could an action hero dress like
that.)
I mean, the whole thing seems
like stylish action stuff of a period (late ’60s-1970s) that I can more-or-less
remember films (or promotional ads) from when I was a kid (I was too young to
see this in the theater, and am actually surprised I never saw this film before
this year). Kids today (Millennials, let’s say) may think this film seems
old-fashioned, or “their father’s cool time,” while to me the film seems
stylistically to bridge between (1) the sleek stuff of Hitchcock (think North by Northwest [1959]) and the
growing train of James Bond films, and (2) the more ragged, curse-laden action
fests that started in the 1970s.
My sketch of the plot, and a look at parading actors
The plot (based on a 1963 novel,
Mute Witness) concerns Lt. Bullitt
being required to guard a man, Johnnie Ross, who is a supposed star witness in
a case against “the organization,” while Robert Vaughn (as Walter Chalmers) seems
some government heavy who is the main one wanting the star witness’s role preserved
in a government case against the org. Bullitt is the local (San Fran) operative
who is street-smart and incidentally can, say, run great distances at an
airport without doing more than sweating afterward.
Tensions grow between Vaughn’s Chalmers
and Bullitt when it seems there is some double-cross going on: the (criminal) organization
tries to kill Ross; and when he suspects Chalmers is behind the machinations
whereby Ross is targeted, Bullitt engages in some streetwise protection of interests
(including hiding the body of Ross when he has been killed by an organization
assassin).
(If my summary seems deficient,
the Wikipedia article on the film provides what info I couldn’t catch.
E.g., if you search for the film on Google, in the search-results page’s little
“sidebar”/blurb-of-sorts, you can find the claim that Chalmers is a senator—I didn’t
catch that, thanks to my hasty, tired Sunday viewing.)
The plot seemed intriguingly
complex, if also a little opaque—you can compare (1) Bullitt as the streetwise
guy really on the trail of who is criminal, rather turned-on by the higher-ups
(Chalmers), with the result that a dangerous car chase to get an attempted
assassin livens up the experience and sets up the final victorious denouement
for Bullitt, with (2) Popeye Doyle of The
French Connection, who is intuitively on the trail of a major heroin ring,
and doesn’t have his back protected enough by the feds, with the result that he
restores life to the case when he chases after (and gets) a dope-ring assassin,
again with dangerous driving.
Another shared feature between Bullitt and The French Connection is the presence of Bill Hickman, who in
his career was mainly a stunt driver, and for FC did both stunt driving and played Popeye Doyle’s semi-nemesis,
the federal agent Mulderig. In Bullitt,
Hickman is functioning as the unnamed driver of the car Bullitt chases in the
street. Apparently, as did Hickman, McQueen did his own stunt driving (at least
part of the time).
Among the 1960s-era actors making
featured appearances in Bullitt is
Simon Oakland (you might know him as the psychiatrist who turns up with
explanations at the end of Psycho [1960])
as Bullitt’s fatherly boss (with short hair almost like a crew cut, again a
1960s idea of a “good guy” the audience would be expected to identify with),
and Norman Fell (!) as another police-department boss (I think) whose loyalties
in the case seem dubious. (Fell was the suspicious-of-Benjamin rooming-house
owner in The Graduate [1967] and
later made a hit as a regular character on TV’s Three Company.)
Interestingly, Robert Duvall is
in a bit role as a cab driver, who is a little more significant in the story than
that sounds.
##
This film really seems like the
movie industry (Warner Brothers-Seven Arts made this film before the studio
regained its creative footing in the 1970s) gearing up for the splashy, sloppy
trendsetters of the 1970s (not just The
French Connection but the likes of Dirty
Harry and other police-procedural stuff that ended up becoming more
prolific on TV in later decades). It’s a good period piece, and important for
Steven McQueen fans. If you’re a fan of The
French Connection, it’s a good warmup.
The car-chase sequence is
jolting enough, and the noisy mufflers of the cars remind me that I should do a
blog entry on that returned phenomenon of the 1970s, in what I’m sure are many
places in the U.S.: noisy, hotrod-evocative mufflers.
