Sunday, August 14, 2005
CHASE
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was the famed
Of course I have seen it before. Can it have been 34 years ago? Yikes.
Of course, numerous car chase films have dimmed the extravagantly scary race between a subway train and Gene Hackman (Popeye Doyle) in an auto. Actually, Hackman is the one who is racing.
The nastiness of the cops and the way that they worked has also been appropriated into so many cop shows that have followed.
But the classic chase and the gritty cops aside, the film still works as a piece of cinema verité.
The director Friedkin and his cinematographer Owen Roizman used handheld cameras throughout, often 'in public' meaning that the actors were working the street and the cameras were mostly hidden. Tough to do. For one thing, they were working without a permit.
There is hardly a plot at all. It is really one long police procedural. Waiting and pouncing on the wrong guys at the wrong time. More waiting. Punctuated by some more running and following.
Waiting is cold blue. The good life of the bad guys is all warm and orange. It is a treat to watch it work. And, it is difficult to keep any distance. The technique overwhelms the viewer so that it is forgotten and all the buttons and levers get pushed. Exciting and almost painfully tense.
There is surprisingly little dialog. It is almost all Hackman's story. We know a little more than he does but that only heightens the tension.
This is Hackman's breakout picture. His career as a 'character star' is unusual. Actors often get to be one or the other but not both.
It is a 4 out of Netflix5. I would give it a 5 but it is so depressing and negative; so relentlessly downbeat, that it is hard to get
