Two for the Road: Different Cars Mark the Eras of a Marriage

Director Stanley Donen's "Two for the Road" was released in late April 1967, right before the Summer of Love, but it reflected the concerns of a generation a decade older than the Flower Power crowd. At the same time, it served as a template for later road movie comedies, adopting nonlinear storytelling and sharp, witty, sometimes profane dialogue.  The musical themes, their tone reflective of a look into the past, were penned by Henry Mancini. If there's a more qualified candidate for our "Cars in Movies" series, we haven't seen it. The film begins with Mark Wallace (Albert Finney), a successful architect, and his wife Joanna (Audrey Hepburn) as they fly to France for a Riviera tour in their Mercedes 230SL. They reminisce about their previous trips to this coast, and what those trips have meant to them...

The cars mark the different eras in their summers and lives as students and later as a married couple.  They meet during a 1954 trip, first when Joanna rescues architecture student Mark's passport on the ferry from England, and later when the VW microbus carrying Joanna's choir is run off the road on the way to a music fest.  Mark comes to the rescue, but the choir (except for Joanna) comes down with chicken pox, and Mark and Joanna decide to hitchhike...

The hitchhikers find things to argue about, and eventually an Alfa driver picks up Joanna, but leaves  Mark by the roadside.  This is one of the few anachronisms in the car chronology.  The Bertone-bodied Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint was new in spring of 1954, but not this Giulia 1600 version with the big tail lights, from 1963.  Not long after this scene, the couple are reunited at the roadside, and in a scene at the beach, Joanna tells Mark she hates him.  He suggests they get married, and she agrees.

As the story develops, director Donen reinforces the irony and maintains the comic tone by using quick jumps forward and back in time.  This allows him to underline how the protagonists have changed, and to heighten the contrasts between the characters and their approaches to life.  These conflicts reach a hilarious boiling point in the 1957 trip, when Mark and Joanna, now married two years, share a new Ford Country Squire with Mark's ex-girlfriend Cathy, her husband Howard and their spoiled brat of a daughter Ruthie...

The American Maxwell-Manchesters are prototype permissive parents, spouting Freudian psychobabble at each other and at Mark and Joanna.  The Wallaces abandon the Maxwell-Manchesters not long after this scene, which follows a sequence where Ruthie throws a tantrum and pitches the car keys into the grass, stranding the party in their Ford at the roadside into the night...

The English couple finally gets to take a trip in their own car in 1959, when they bring this perky but hard-to-start 1950 MG-TD.  This was before product placement played such a big part in the production design of films...

But if they'd read the script of "Two for the Road", the minions of Morris Garages, now part of BMC, might have paid a ransom to keep this product of theirs off camera.  The couple's MG beings to make a funny noise on the way south, and eventually bursts into flame.    

This disaster paves the way for a critical plot turn, when the Dalbrets, a wealthy French couple, rescue the Wallaces and take them in this Bentley S1 to their seaside retreat at the Cote d' Azur.  Monsieur Dalbret introduces Mark to his Greek business partner, and this leads to a series of architectural commissions.  

A couple of years later it also leads to a solo trip to France for architect and new dad Mark, who has a fling with a blonde named Simone driving a blue Renault Floride. Lke many developments in this prototype road movie, the affair is presaged by a scene on a winding two-lane, when the two literally make passes at each other.  The red '61 Triumph Herald is Mark's new ride.  In summer of '63, the Wallaces go again to the Riviera and bring their young daughter Caroline. Mark is absorbed with work, and Joanna has an affair with David, a brother-in-law of client Dalbret.  A moment of truth occurs when Joanna returns to Mark, and he asks her why she has given up on David.   She replies, "He's too serious."  And this points out a theme of the story; Mark and Joanna are never so serious that they cannot laugh at themselves, or each other.

At fleeting moments in the story, the young couple on the roadside gets passed by their older, possibly wiser and certainly more prosperous selves. Towards the end of their "current" (1967) trip to Europe, Mark and Joanna have an argument in the Mercedes which, like this movie's quick cuts and sudden flashbacks and flash forwards, echoes French New Wave films, as well as dialogues between existentialists in Beat Generation cafés.  "What would you do if I didn't exist?" asks Mark.  Joanna replies, "I'd probably marry David."  When he says she's made his point, she replies, "But you do exist." 

The running gag of Mark misplacing his passport is repeated at the film's conclusion, when the couple stop at the Italian border control to present their documents.  Mark, nervous about making a meeting in Rome with another high-profile client, begins to panic, but Joanna quietly places the passport on the SL's steering wheel.  "Bitch", he says.  "Bastard", she replies.  In a movie marked by a consistent comic tone from start to finish, the viewer can assume this couple will continue their own comic interplay in the many miles (well, kilometers) ahead of them.

Photo Credits:  

Top and 2nd from bottom:  20th Century Fox

Remainder:  IMCDB.org (Internet Movie Cars Database)

Jacques Tati's "Trafic" from 1971: Monsieur Hulot Infiltrates the Car Industry

Director and actor Jacques Tati made his last appearance as Monsieur Hulot in "Trafic", released in 1971, around 18 years after his first appearance in "Les Vacances de M. Hulot" ("Mr. Hulot's Holiday"). In between those cinematic bookends, his famous tan raincoat and well-worn brown hat got plenty of wear, along with his umbrella. In "Trafic", Tati, who had tackled the perplexities of modernism in "Mon Oncle" and "Playtime", sends Hulot into the heart of the auto industry.  Somehow it seems appropriate that a culture that gave us flying CItroens with hydropneumatic suspensions (see above) would also give us an offbeat perspective on the car industry itself... 

It may be significant that in French back then, trafic signified some kind of racket or illicit trade.  The English meaning of traffic was connoted in French by la circulation.  In the title shot above, graphic designer Michel Francois signals the director's focus on the automobile's often zany effects on modern life.  The scene behind the title shows men working in a stamping plant making car bodies.

In the plot, Hulot has somehow gotten a job as an industrial designer for a fictional car company named Altra, a company that has assigned an American publicity agent, Maria (Maria Kimberly) to shepherd Hulot's new model to a car show in Amsterdam.  In keeping with the nomadic spirit of the era, he sketches out a whimsical little van for le camping.  Though Tati's critique of materialism is less sharply-focused here than in "Mon Oncle", perhaps because Europe and American were still in the afterglow of Woodstock Generation hippiedom, he shows how the revolution symbolized by camper vans could be commercialized.  Features of his little car include faux wood paneling in American style...  

…and a skylight over the sleeping space in the rear.  Along the route to the auto show, the crew gets help loading and unloading their van into Altra's transport vehicle. Not surprisingly, they get detoured by misadventures, including a flat tire and running out of fuel.

After transport driver Marcel breezes through Belgian customs without stopping, the little van is impounded by police, who suspect that it has been stolen.  Among the features of his design that Hulot demonstrates to cops and to Marcel is this grille that folds down into an actual grill, perfect for barbecuing steaks or burgers whilst involved in le camping.  

The police are impressed with all the features tailored to a life of le camping, but don't release the van until the next day, when the proper paperwork arrives.

Maria, who has run ahead to catch a preview of the auto show, returns and picks up Monsieur Hulot and they continue to follow the transport in Maria's yellow runabout (a Siata Spring 850) accompanied by her little pooch. They get involved in a chain-reaction car wreck in a roundabout, Hulot helps out an accident victim, and then they need to get repairs made. While that's happening, someone steals Maria's dog as a gag, and by the time the pooch is returned, they are running seriously late...

By the time they arrive a the Amsterdam show, all the exhibits are being dismantled, and Maria realizes she'd gotten the closing date wrong. It seems that Maria's talent for disorganization matches Hulot's own, and that the two characters are, as the French would say, sympathique...

Hulot investigates one of the last standing exhibits of a DAF 55, a non-fictional car from a Dutch company that today makes trucks.  He gets into the show stand car...

Then discovers it's a cutaway display rotating on a spit like a roasted chicken. Meanwhile the Altra company director discovers that his belatedly arriving team has been billed 300,000 francs for their non-existent exhibit, and fires Hulot.  It appears that Maria is now out of a job as well...

The two escape into a pouring rainstorm under Hulot's umbrella.  Director Tati gives us shots of comic interactions in the passing cars, including a couple whose hand gestures match the rhythm of windshield wipers, and Hulot and Maria draw together as they scoot in front of a rare Lancia Fulvia Zagato.  Though Tati has always been skeptical of the effects of cars on society, he's always managed to find choice cars for filming.

By the film's final scenes, Hulot and Maria are escaping the rains together after running the wrong way down a subway exit, and it's clear they're happily on their way somewhere that is not inside the auto industry. Director Tati's concluding scene, though, is of cars jammed into what looks like permanent gridlock, going nowhere, the result of the industry's and the advertiser's dream of offering Everyman his own private locomotive.  It's a gently funny movie, in a different spirit than the subversively comic "Mon Oncle", and without the often riotous hilarity of "Playtime", At release time, the New York Magazine critic Judith Crist praised "Trafic" for being a "non-blockbuster", and Tati's little road trip of misadventures still feels that way.

Photo Credits:  

All scenes from the film, including the initial publicity shot of the flying Citroen DS, are from Films de Mon Oncle and Les Films Corona.

Film Review: Notes on Michael Mann's "Ferrari"

Director Michael Mann's Ferrari, released on Christmas 2023, catches Enzo Ferrari and his namesake firm in a period of challenge.  Ten years after founding a car-making operation (mostly to support a racing team) in 1947, Enzo and wife Laura face stiffer competition from Maserati, at a time when both firms plan series production, to make hundreds of cars a year instead of a few dozen, to increase their cash flow.  Maserati had previewed the game-changing (for them) 3500GT road car early in 1957, and are a strong favorite to win that year's Formula One championship with their 250F and driver Juan Manuel Fangio.  Much to Enzo's annoyance, Maserati had won the '54 World Championship with Fangio in the 250F, beating the Ferrari Squalo (shark) shown below.  Mercedes had taken the World Championship in '55, and Ferrari had only managed it in '56 with Fangio driving what was actually a Lancia D50 with Ferrari badges, donated by Gianni Lancia to Ferrari when racing had bankrupted Lancia.  In a theme echoed many times on this blog, making racing cars is shown to be a great way to get rid of all your money...

As we are introduced to Enzo (played by Adam Driver) and Laura (Penelope Cruz), we find that this has been the case for them as well.  On top of financial worries, they are shadowed by the death in 1956 of their son Dino after a long illness.  Besides that '56 GP Championship won with a Lancia, there had been a bit of good news when Eugenio Castellotti had won the rainy, accident-plagued Mille Miglia, a thousand-mile endurance race on public roads, in the Ferrari 290MM below, but in the film we see Castelotti die the next year testing a GP car.  And Ferraris were beaten by Jaguars at Le Mans, the most important endurance race, three years in a row, including '57. When Enzo's accountant notes that Mercedes and Jaguar sell thousands of cars a year, using racing only as a form of advertising, he also points out that Ferrari sold only 98 cars in 1956.  Ferrari replies that for him, selling cars is only a way of supporting racing. His drivers point out to him that the English have "invented brakes", meaning the disc brakes on all those Jaguars and on the new, mid-engined Coopers, but Enzo waves the reference to Cooper away by saying that the horse must come before the cart.  This shows that at heart Ferrari may have been more of a poet than an engineer, because, after all, only front-drive cars put the horse before the cart, and these Fifties Ferraris all have their engines in front, but their driving wheels at the rear...

The film doesn't reveal the ways in which cash flow has gone the wrong way for Ferrari's car business, but the 290MM shown here is a textbook example.  It's a 3.5 liter V12, and shares its tubular chassis and 4-speed, rear-mounted transmission with the 3.5 liter, four-cylinder 860 Monza. Wait, you say, Ferrari made 12 and 4-cylinder engines of the same displacement? Yes, they did, and their engineers also created a small number of inline 6-cylinder engines up to 4.4 liters, V12s from 1.5 to 4.9 liters, and more conventional chassis designs with the transmissions right behind the engine in the decade from '47 to '57.  Even in Italy, with lower labor costs compared to the US or Germany, tooling costs must've been through the roof. Jaguar used only one engine and 2 chassis designs in this period, and Porsche only 2 different engines and 2 chassis.  And that simple Cooper with its relatively cheap, store-bought Climax 4-cylinder engine behind the driver would win the Formula 2 Championship in 1957, the year that Ferrari released a new V6-powered Formula 2 car named for his son Dino.  Cooper would win Formula 1 World Championships in '59 and '60, sending a shock wave through the racing world...

The film shows Ferrari showing up before the fateful '57 Mille Miglia, which starts at night, to talk with drivers, though he was known to avoid going to races as he'd seen enough accidents during his own career as a race driver. The night racing scenes are gripping; the production team built 7 replica racers for the scenes involving close racing, including the scene where Stirling Moss slides down a grassy slope after the brake pedal breaks off on his Maserati (this actually happened).  Other cars fit the period, though Enzo probably didn't drive the Peugeot shown in an early scene where he leaves the abode of his mistress; Motor Trend indicated in a '57 visit to Modena that he drove a Fiat.  That early scene underlines the tension between Laura and Enzo, as he spends more time with his mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley) and their young son Piero, in the wake of Dino's death. This subplot is important to understanding how Laura devoted more time to tracking her investment at the factory itself as Enzo spent more time away or secluded in his office, a phenomenon that led to the famous Great Walkout of October 1961, when 8 engineers left Ferrari in protest of what they viewed as Laura's interference. The Great Walkout followed Ferrari's winning the '61 World Championship with a modern, mid-engined, disc-braked product designed by those engineers, and led to their designs for competing makes like ATS, Bizzarrini, Iso, and most famously, Lamborghini...

There is some foreshadowing as Ferrari tells a driver, "Watch out for children and stray dogs; they're the biggest danger", and you catch a sense of foreboding when we meet a family at dinner just before the cars plunge along a tree-lined country road past their house. An accident that killed Ferrari driver Alfonso de Portago, his co-pilot Edmund Nelson, and 9 others, including 5 children, is depicted with relentless realism (this is not a movie for children).  Italian law led to criminal prosecution of Ferrari and tire maker Englebert, and they were only exonerated 4 years later when it was found a glass reflector in the roadway had slashed a tire.  Racing on Italian public roads, however, was banned soon after the race, which was won (as if it mattered) by Piero Taruffi*. When an engineer tells him that everyone is aware of the presence of death in racing, Ferrari replies that families and children are not aware of this.  After this scene, he walks his son Piero toward the mausoleum where Dino is interred, telling Piero, "You would have loved your brother.  He would have taken you everywhere."  The film leaves us there, about a year and 5 months before Ferrari finally introduced its first real production car at the Paris Auto Salon, 4 years and 5 months before the Great Walkout, nearly 8 years before an engine deal with Fiat that led to the popular V6 Fiat and Ferrari Dinos, and a dozen years before Fiat's acquisition of a 50% stake in Ferrari. The production cars and the Fiat deals helped Ferrari weather fallout from the Great Walkout, the costly endurance racing battles with Ford that occupied 5 years starting in 1964, and the need to meet the demands of a changing car-buying public.  But those are stories for another day… 

*Footnote:   Piero Taruffi (Patrick Dempsey) makes it clear it no longer matters to him when Ferrari calls to congratulate him.  The real Taruffi may have felt this wey, as he wrote an essay for the Saturday Evening Post later in 1957 criticizing the lax safety at motor races, and suggesting improvements.  For more on Taruffi and his TARF speed record cars, see "The Etceterini Files Part 31", posted here on June 11, 2024. 

Photo Credits:  

Top:  Neon 

2nd & 3rd:  the author

4th:  Lorenzo Sisti, Washington Post 

5th:  Eros Hoagland, Washington Post

Film Review: Hamaguchi's "Drive My Car"----Secrets and Confessions in a Red Saab

A red 1987 Saab 900 Turbo serves as a refuge for Tokyo stage actor and director Yusuke in Ryusuke Hamaguchi's 2022 Oscar-winning "Drive My Car", based upon a short story by Haruki Murakami.  The vintage left-hand drive car (in a RHD country) from an extinct company doesn't seem like such an odd choice when we see Yusuke and his TV screenwriter wife Oto listening to vinyl records on an old turntable, and observe that while driving, Yusuke listens to cassette tapes of Oto reciting dialog to help him learn his lines. The car serves as a kind of confessional, too, as the couple discusses their decision not to have another child after losing a 4-year old daughter to pneumonia...

Director Hamaguchi throws us into the story without bothering with opening credits; these appear over 40 minutes into the film, after we are already drawn into his themes of secrets and loss. The story darkens after Yusuke has a road accident which his doctor diagnoses as a result of glaucoma, and darkens again when he discovers that Oto's connection to a young TV actor named Koshi is more intimate than she has hinted...

If "Drive My Car" is a road movie, it is partly one about regret for roads not taken.  We see Yusuke drive off into the night rather than engage when Oto asks when they can talk, because there is apparently something she needs to tell him.  After driving around listening to his wife's voice on tape, he returns to discover that she has collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage.  She does not recover. Two years later, an emotionally shut-down Yusuke agrees to direct a production of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" in Hiroshima.  An unusual aspect of the production is that dialogue will be delivered in any languages the individual cast members speak; the finalists speak Japanese, Korean, English, and sign, with subtitles for the audience.  Another quirk of the program is that the theater company assigns Yusuke a driver, owing to an accident caused by a cast member in a prior production.  The driver turns out to be Misaki, a woman of 24, whose mastery of impassive inscrutability equals that of Yusuke, who is 47.

The selection of Hiroshima and its environs as a location fits Hamaguchi's theme of loss, and recovery from grief, as well as providing some stunning landscapes for the red car to traverse.

One of the reasons the film draws us in easily is that the performances are so unforced and natural that at times we feel like we're watching a documentary.  So natural that it feels like we're intruding when Oto (Reika Kirishima), tells Yusuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) a story she's writing while they make love. The story is about a high school girl who sneaks into the home of her unsuspecting crush to leave personal items in his bedroom.  Later in the film, after he's been cast in "Uncle Vanya", TV actor Koshi (Masaki Okada) tells Yusuke that Oto had told him the same story, and that, unlike Yusuke, he knows the ending.  These secrets are revealed, of course, in the back seat of the confessional red Saab, while the imperturbable Misaki (Toko Miura) drives.

An emotional turning point in the film happens when the theater company manager played by Jin Dae-yeon invites the director and driver to dinner at his home. Yusuke doesn't want to intrude, but he realizes the manager has something important to tell him.  It turns out that he's been keeping a secret too...

It's that Lee Yoo-na (played by Park Yu-rim) who has a lead role in the production, delivered in the Korean version of sign, is actually his wife.  After being welcomed by Lee Yoo-na and the couple's cheerful pooch, Yusuke and Misaki sit down with them to converse and enjoy the food.

This conversation is one of the rare moments when Yusuke cracks a smile.  He reveals that Misaki drives so smoothly and skillfully that "when you drive with her, you forget you're in a car."

It's a moment of levity that prepares the characters for more surprises and revelations which should be shared only in general terms, because "Drive My Car" is a suspense movie as well as a road movie.  One development is that the actor playing Uncle Vanya is arrested by the local police, forcing the theater company managers to tell Yusuke he has only two choices: either to play Uncle Vanya himself as he is so familiar with the part, or to close the production down.  We'll leave  you to guess how that turns out...

...because there's more for the protagonists to process than the possible shutdown of the play. Misaki reveals to Yusuke that she has felt guilt and despair since she escaped from a collapsing house during a landslide, and her mother did not.  They travel to snowy Hokkaido in one of the film's last scenes, to the landslide site, in another moment of emotional reckoning.  This movie about a play threatened with a shutdown, a story within a story, was filmed during the pandemic shutdown, with the snow scenes completed in November 2020.

In the film's final scene, we see Misaki shopping in a Korean supermarket.  She places her groceries in the red Saab, and a canine pal emerges from the back seat for a snuggle.  Some have suggested that this indicates that the protagonists have moved on with their lives, and that Yusuke has given Misaki the car.  But director Hamaguchi has given us clues in previous scenes to decode this one.  The cheerful pooch seems to be the same one that attracted Misaki's attention at dinner with the manager and his wife. Our understanding of how this story ends may hinge on whether this is the same dog.

Having viewed these scenes multiple times, I've decided it is indeed the same pooch.  So my interpretation is that the theater troupe has gone to Korea to put on "Uncle Vanya" there.  The Korean-speaking manager and his wife, a member of the cast, would of course make the trip as well.  And Yusuke, with his deteriorating vision, would want to have his driver along, especially as she'd expressed interest in Korea.  This is a more believable explanation for the "same dog" plot turn, because nobody in their right mind would ever give away this dog... 

Photo Credits:  

All photos are from the film, produced by "Drive My Car" Production Committee, C & I Entertainment, Culture Entertainment, and The Match Factory; distributed by Bitters End.

Cars and Trains and Planes: Essential Movie Chase Scenes

When did a chase scene in a movie capture your imagination, and why?  Was it in a thriller, a road movie, or a comedy?  In what way was the chase essential?  Did it seem to grow out of the plot or the needs of the protagonists, or did it just seem to be an excuse to keep you interested by staging crashes and blowing stuff up?  Maybe your favorite chase scene was essential in another way, in that it pioneered a plot twist or an effect that hadn't been tried before. That, along with technical acuity, was one of the criteria that led to our 7 favorites.  And we've listed another 5 also-rans after our faves, so that you can watch a different chase on each of the 12 Days of Christmas...

Bullitt (1968, directed by Peter Yates, USA) integrates its chase scene into a plot in which a mob witness under protection by police lieutenant Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) has been gunned down by some hitmen.  When two guys with guns show up in a Dodge Charger 440 behind Bullitt's '68 Mustang 390 on the streets of San Francisco, the race is on to see whether the predators will become the prey. The chase was filmed on North Beach streets, with McQueen sharing driving duties with Bud Ekins, a Hollywood stunt driver.  Solar Productions obtained permission from the mayor's office before filming, and hired extras from under-served neighborhoods at union scale.  When Warner Brothers protested this approach and tried to save money by moving the filming to the studio lot, McQueen refused, and Warner cancelled a contract involving 5 more films.  The box-office success of Bullitt probably made them regret this move.  British director Peter Yates, of Robbery (about the Great Train Robbery) chase fame, mounted multiple compact cameras in the cars to provide enhanced immediacy. Unlike later filmed chases involving special effects or computer-generated images, it still feels fresh and real.

The Italian Job (1969, directed by Peter Collinson, UK): Who says a chase scene cannot be funny?  In this British heist comedy, Charlie Croker (Michael Caine) leads a gang of ex-cons aiming to seize $4 million in gold bars by subverting the computer controls on Rome's traffic lights.  They do this by switching out reels of magnetic tape (after all, it's 1969).  After making off with the gold, the thieves escape in a fleet of 3 cheeky little Mini Coopers. Stunt drivers put the cars through their paces, zooming through gallerias full of restaurants and shoppers, plunging down stairs, and scooting onto a concrete hyperbolic paraboloid roof in what may be a spoof of modern architecture.  After evading police cars and motorcycles, the Minis drive up ramps lowered by the master thieves from a moving bus on its way into the Alps, and unload the gold bars.  Spoiler alert:  Things may not turn out as planned for the robbers (or as we'd hoped for their plucky little cars), but the final scene is, like the film, a classic...

Duel (1971, directed by Steven Spielberg, USA) was originally made for TV, and as a result may be the director's tightest and most economical movie; he added 16 minutes before the film's theatrical release.  The Richard Matheson story places salesman David Mann (Dennis Weaver) on a lonely Western highway in his Plymouth Valiant.  After he passes a rusty oil tanker, it becomes frighteningly clear that the unseen driver owes him ill will.  The truck itself becomes a sort of character, a symbol of some kind of unreasoning evil, in a film that is, in essence, one long chase with few moments of refuge, and no moments of relief from the steadily building tension, in an unforgiving desert that requires our isolated protagonist to find resources in himself that will insure his survival. 

The French Connection (1971, directed by William Friedkin, USA):  Director Friedkin's fictionalized account of the NYPD's efforts to nab French heroin smuggler Alain Charnier starred Gene Hackman as detective Popeye Doyle, and an eye-popping chase scene involving Doyle commandeering a Pontiac to apprehend a hood who has escaped onto an elevated train.  Though the film won multiple awards (Oscars for Best Film, Director, Editing, Adapted Screenplay, and for Hackman as Best Actor), it would not have won any awards from the New York Police or city government when it was filmed, because Friedkin never cleared it with them, though he'd hired 2 police advisors who'd been involved with the original case.  Filming in Brooklyn under the B Train which is now the D Train, Friedkin sat in the back of the Pontiac to capture the chase, reasoning that his cameramen were all married with children, while he was single at the time. He also sped up the film to enhance that careening effect.

 For that reason, the collision between Popeye Doyle's '71 Pontiac Le Mans and a white Ford Fairlane looks cringingly real.  But then again, it is real, a complete accident, and Friedkin decided to keep it in the film to heighten the realism. The uninjured Ford driver was compensated for damage by the production company.  This approach to filming  might not work so well today…

Diva (1981, directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix, France) was an early example of the style that young French directors conceived as an alternative to the work by aging New Wave directors. Later called cinéma du look, the new style showed up fully-formed in Philippe Rousselot's  moody, punk-flavored cinematography in March 1981 and also in Beineix's romantic, nonconformist characters, 5 months before the first MTV music videos offered their own stylized view of punk. The plot centers on Jules (Frédéric Andréi) a young moped-riding postman obsessed with opera diva Cynthia Hawkins (Wilhelmina Wiggins Fernandez).  Jules opens the door to trouble by making a forbidden cassette recording of Cynthia with a hidden professional tape recorder, and doesn't realize he's in more trouble when a dying would-be police informant tucks another cassette into his mail pouch; it's a recording implicating a police commissioner in a drug and prostitution ring.  Soon, the clueless Jules is being chased by two honest police officers who want the tape, two thugs working for the commissioner who want to destroy the tape (and maybe Jules), and two Taiwanese music producers who want to make a bootleg record of the Hawkins tape.  When the police officers give chase in their Renault 16, Jules heads down into the Metro, onto stairways and escalators, making for an unforgettable chase sequence…

Throughout the film, things (even bad things) happen in fine style, including the sequence when our hero and his Vietnamese admirer Alba (Thuy An Luu) are hidden away in a lighthouse  by eccentric philosopher Gorodish (Richard Bohringer), who drives them in his '54 Citroen 11 Normale*.  The symmetry of the shot, the lighting and dense color, and even the style of the car are a reference to the Art Deco period.  

Thelma and Louise (1991, directed by Ridley Scott, USA):  Music video producer and screenwriter Callie Khouri scripted a work that would've been called a buddy picture if the two central characters had been men. Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon) are good friends who head for the mountains in a '66 Thunderbird to escape their home lives in Arkansas, which revolve around Thelma's domineering husband and Louise's waitress job and frequently absent boyfriend.  Plot developments in this pioneering women's liberation road movie involve Louise shooting a would-be rapist, the friends escaping into the wild lands of the west, Thelma locking a state trooper in his patrol car's trunk, the duo robbing a convenience store after being robbed themselves, and blowing up a gas tanker piloted by a rude trucker, on the way to the Grand Canyon.

 The chase scene involves over half a dozen  police cars streaking through the dust, with Louise outsmarting and out-driving them, as in the comic moment when she guns the T-Bird through an underpass, quickly calculating that the taller police cruiser won't make it.  Sarandon and Davis took driving and shooting lessons to prepare for their roles.  The chase scene, like the film itself, belongs to the two women, who bind to each other in a cross-country gesture of  defiance at powers that be, a gesture well-summarized in the aerial shot of their pursuit.

 

North by Northwest (1959, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, USA) showcases Cary  Grant's dramatic and comedic range in a suspenseful yarn that spoofs spy thrillers. Playing advertising man Roger O.Thornhill, he's mistaken for a spy named George Kaplan after witnesses see an apparent knifing at the UN Building.  Thornhill, chased by shadowy men who may be government agents, boards a cross-country train where he meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint) who hides him from police and eventually sets up a meeting with the real Kaplan at a bus stop in the middle of desolate Midwestern farmland.  The lone man Roger sees waiting at the stop turns out not to be Kaplan, but comments on the strangeness of the distant crop-dusting plane "dusting where there ain't no crops" and then boards a bus, leaving Thornhill alone and exposed.  We soon find out why the crop duster is there, and Thornhill is running to hide in a cornfield from a plane with a machine gun.  As with Spielberg's truck driver, we never see the plane's pilot.  Cinematography, editing and a natural soundtrack ratchet up the tension.  Music by Bernard Herrmann comments only after the sequence's climax.  While providing suspense, Hitchcock takes a sly look at the alienation of the corporate organization man; when Eve Kendall asks Thornhill what that "O" after Roger stands for, he admits it stands for nothing...

Ronin (1998, directed by John Frankenheimer, USA) enjoys a reputation for its chase scene that is not shared by its plot, something involving a mysterious briefcase, IRA weapons deals, the Russian Mafia, and an ex-CIA mercenary named Sam (Robert De Niro).  This writer begs to disagree with the exalted status of that chase. Filmed in Paris, it is a masterpiece of technique; it calls for De Niro's Peugeot to chase the bad guys in a BMW M5, with both going the wrong way on the multi-lane Autoroute.  No wonder it took a crew of 300 to film.  But it makes no logical sense; if you wanted to escape pursuit, you'd be making a bad bet hurling your car into the face of oncoming traffic moving at over 100 kmh.  Also, if you're trying to hide from a pursuer, it makes more sense to conceal your car by moving in the same direction as dozens of others; hide behind something that looks just like you.  Finally, the interior shots don't always clarify which car we're driving.

Speed (1994, directed by Jan De Bont, USA) became a popular and critical favorite despite the implausibility of its plot.  A mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) rigs a bus to explode if its speed falls below 50 mph. Needless to say, this threat causes real tension as the crowded bus encounters traffic on the LA freeways.  Key scenes involve LAPD officer Jack (Keanu Reeves) boarding the bus from a Jaguar XJS, and then figuring out how to fool the bomber's on-board surveillance system. The jump scene demanded a real jump by the bus (but not over a real chasm), required the stunt driver to sit in a special sling to avoid injury, and caused structural damage to the bus. Nothing like the damage to credibility prompted by that convoluted plot, though…

Taxi (1998, directed by Gérard Pires, France) takes a different approach to the "jump the gap" scenario, with cab driver Daniel (Samy Naceri) and police inspector Emilien (Frédéric Diefenthal) taunting a gang of Mercedes-driving robbers into a race which concludes on an unfinished highway. The plot twist here is that our heroes manage to stop their hot rod Peugeot cab in time to avoid doom...

...while the crooks jump the gap...

...only to discover they're marooned in space.  This film spawned a series of sequels and became a franchise in France.  The  2004 American re-make, with Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon, did not.

Vanishing Point (1971, directed by Richard Sarafian, USA) became a cult favorite in an America troubled by the Vietnam war and racial injustice. The plot glues these themes together when Vietnam vet and motorcycle racer Kowalski (Barry Newman) picks up a white Dodge Challenger in Denver late on Friday night and bets he can deliver it to the owner in San Francisco by 3 on Sunday afternoon, counting on some benzedrine pills to keep him awake.  Along the route west, another thing that keeps Kowalski awake is black radio disc jockey Super Soul (Cleavon Little) who cheers on our antihero as he evades police and gets into a race with a Jaguar driver who ends up in the river.  Despite becoming a favorite with directors like Spielberg and Tarantino, Vanishing Point is not available streaming or as a DVD. After watching the race scene, this viewer found it hard to forgive the director for wrecking a scruffy but roadworthy Jag...

Swordfish (2001, directed by Dominic Sena, USA) features (or strands, depending upon your point of view) John Travolta, Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry in a plot of bewildering complications involving a master hacker, government agents, mistaken or obscured identity, and a scheme to heist a lot of money.  Critics agreed that it lacked clarity and humor, and these aspects are missing as well from the chase scene, which substitutes things that go bang for things that make sense. The object of the chase, a British TVR Tuscan Speed Six, might have stressed out the stunt drivers more than the audience, with three times the power of a Miata in a package of similar size and weight, but lacking antilock braking, traction control or air bags. It prompted at least one viewer to ask about the car after giving up on the plot.  A Speed Six might look nice under your Christmas tree, especially in Reflex Green...

*Footnote:  We examined "Weekend", a 1967 film by Jean-Luc Godard featuring lots of highway mayhem, on November 19, 2021 in "Epic Traffic Jam or the End of Civilization."  We spent some time with Godard's first film, a groundbreaker that also featured a lot of cars (mostly stolen), on December 27, 2020, with "Stolen Cars and Stolen Kisses in Jean-Luc Godard's 'Breathless'."  And classic cars featured in classic thrillers, including the Citroen 11 Traction Avant, are pictured in "Speeding Into Darkness: The Cars of Film Noir", posted March 21, 2020.

Photo Credits:   

Bullitt:  Solar Productions   

The Italian Job:  Oakhurst Productions  

Duel:  Universal Pictures

The French Connection:  20th Century Fox

Diva:  Les Films Galaxie

Thelma and Louise:  Pathé Entertainment, Scott Free Productions

North by Northwest:  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Ronin:  United Artists, FGM Entertainment

Speed:  Mark Gordon Company

Taxi:  Le Studio Canal +

Vanishing Point:  Cupid Productions

Swordfish:  Village Roadshow Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer