The Chase (1966)

The Chase is a 1966 American drama film, directed by Arthur Penn, written by Lillian Hellman, and starring Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda, and Robert Redford. It tells the story of a series of events that are set into motion by a prison break. The film also features E. G. Marshall, Angie Dickinson, Janice Rule, Miriam Hopkins, Martha Hyer, Robert Duvall, and James Fox.

Plot

In the mid-1960s, in a small town in Tarl County, Texas, where banker Val Rogers wields a great deal of influence, word comes that native son Bubber Reeves and another man have escaped from prison.

Sheriff Calder, who continues to believe in Bubber's innocence, expects him to return to his hometown, where Bubber's lonely wife Anna is involved in a romantic affair with Jake, Bubber's best friend and Val Rogers' son.

Bubber is left on his own after the second fugitive kills a stranger for his car and clothes. The townspeople, conflicted about his guilt or innocence, socialize and drink heavily while awaiting Bubber's return. They include the hostile Emily Stewart, who openly expresses her lust for Damon Fuller in front of her cuckold husband Edwin.

As the drinking and quarreling intensify, a group of vigilantes demand action from Calder. When he defies them, they beat Calder brutally before the sheriff's loyal wife Ruby is able to get to his side.

Bubber sneaks into town, hiding in an auto junkyard. Anna and Jake willingly set out to help him, and the townspeople follow, turning the event into a drunken revelry and setting the junkyard on fire, causing an explosion which mortally wounds Jake. A bloodied and beaten Calder manages to get to Bubber first, but while he is leading him up the steps into the jail, one of the vigilantes, Archie, shoots Bubber multiple times with a gun hidden in his coat pocket.

Sick of the town and its people, Calder and Ruby leave town the next morning.

Cast

Outline and production

The film deals with excessive immorality and vices such as themes of racism (including scenes in which black men are harassed by white men), sexual revolution (many of the characters are openly engaged in affairs), small-town corruption (the sheriff is falsely assumed to be in the pocket of the man who helped appoint him), and vigilantism (in the form of townspeople who openly defy the sheriff in their search for Bubber). The movie is perhaps best known for a scene in which the sheriff, played by Marlon Brando, is brutally beaten by Richard Bradford, one of the three vigilantes.

Singer-songwriter Paul Williams thought this movie would be his big break, but after working on the film for three months, he was shown on screen for a few moments – with "two lines" – in the finale of the film. Faye Dunaway auditioned for the film, but Jane Fonda was cast in the role of Anna Reeves. Following this, Arthur Penn tested Dunaway and cast her for Bonnie and Clyde.

Reception

On release, the film gained generally positive reviews from critics, but Richard Schickel was dismissive in Life magazine. Pointing out its origins in the Horton Foote play, he wrote: "The Chase is no longer a modest failure...it has been turned into a disaster of awesome proportions".

The New York Times wrote: Everything is intensely overheated in...'The Chase,' which blowtorched its way into the Sutton and the Victoria yesterday. The screenplay is overheated, the emotional content, the pictorial style, the directing, the acting, the fist-fighting, the burning of a junkyard at the end—everything. The only thing that is not overheated—at least I don't think it will be—is the audience's reaction. This is a picture to leave you cold. That's because it is so obvious and so outrageously clumsy an attempt to blend a weak but conceivably dramatic theme of civil rights with a whole mess of small-town misbehaviors of the sort that you get in 'Peyton Place.' It appears a deliberate endeavor to mix the message of 'High Noon' and sex.

The Chicago Tribune had more praise for the film's performances than for its plot: The first five minutes...snap with the crispness of a good, old fashioned adventure story, but before director Arthur Penn can get his second wind it settles down into a modern-day morality play, a kind of barbecued Peyton Place with lots of lip-smackin' scandal....The script by Lillian Hellman...who should know better, is just as stilted as the characterizations....the part of the shuffling sheriff who finally leaps into action is custom-made for [Brando], who takes most of the punchlines as well as the punches. Angie Dickinson is surprisingly effective as his simple, loyal wife; Miss Fonda and Fox are believeable as one of the cheating couples, and Bradford and Duvall make a convincing bully and boob. Broadway's Redford [is] excellent as the muddled, dispirited Bubba . . . The few good story sequences are lost in the self-conscious Hard-Hitting Commentary on Racial Bigotry, Mob Violence and Moral Authority, so that 'The Chase' clocks in as a tiresome, inflated run-around which would have been more appropriately entitled 'Love on the Lam'.

During an interview years after the film was released, Arthur Penn expressed his dissatisfaction with the film: "Everything in that film was a letdown, and I'm sure every director has gone through the same experience at least once. It's a shame because it could have been a great film."

See also

List of American films of 1966

References

Further reading

Parish, James Robert (2006). Fiasco - A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. pp. 359 pages. ISBN 978-0-471-69159-4.

External links

The Chase at IMDb

The Chase at Rotten Tomatoes

The Chase at the TCM Movie Database (archived)

The Chase at the AFI Catalog of Feature Films

DVD Savant comprehensive DVD review by Glenn Erickson

Movie Poop Shoot - DVD DiaTribe Archived 2004-06-29 at the Wayback Machine Read the second review on this page by D.K. Holm