| Collector's Corner April 2006
 BullittStarring: Steve McQueen, Robert
Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland, Norman Fell, Georg
Stanford Brown, Vic Tayback, Carl Reindel, Pat Renella, 1968 Mustang GT 390 Fastback, 1968
Dodge Charger 440 Magnum
Directed by: Peter Yates
Theatrical release: 1968
DVD release: 2005
Video: Widescreen
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Released by: Warner Home Video
Steve McQueen is 76 years old this year. Of course,
he’s been dead 26 of those years, but you’d never know it from the place his
ever-cool face holds in world culture. Tag Heuer has re-released his watch, the Monaco;
Ford has re-released his Mustang, or a reasonable facsimile; Absolut Vodka sells booze
with ads that call McQueen the "Absolut Man"; and Turner Classic Movies has put
out a documentary titled Steve McQueen: The Essence of Cool.
Most of this adulation is based on a single film: Bullitt.
That’s not to say that McQueen didn’t make other superb films, but Bullitt
is what the publishing world calls a category killer. In its category -- the cop thriller
with chase sequence -- it is so good, and so far beyond anything else, that nothing before
or after can escape comparison with it. The French Connection? Good film, but it
relied on music to give the chase drama. Bullitt does it without music. The
Bourne Identity, The Italian Job (version 2), Mission: Impossible? What
wimps -- they used CG. The guys in Bullitt were driving around San Francisco at
110mph. A lot of the time, McQueen himself was doing the driving.
But Bullitt isn’t just about car chases.
It’s a gritty, existentialist look at manhood, loyalty, responsibility, ethics, and
the lousy way politicians treat public servants. Lt. Frank Bullitt (McQueen) is protecting
a Mafia stoolie, Johnny Ross, until the ambitious politician Walter Chalmers (Robert
Vaughn) can pull together a highly publicized hearing. Somehow, the mob gets wind of the
location, breaks in, and kills Ross. As Bullitt hunts down the killers, Bullitt
gets more and more complex.
Steve McQueen hit all the right notes in his
characterization of Frank Bullitt, appealing to just about everyone in the moviegoing
audience. To the counterculture, his character was a thumb in the eye of authority; women
loved his sexy good looks; and to young adult males, he epitomized detached hipness.
But there was a lot more to McQueen himself, and knowing
about him enriches one’s experience of the film. He never knew his father, who
abandoned the family. McQueen spent time in a reform school, Boy’s Republic, in
Chino, California. He then joined the Marines, where he got in trouble -- and received a
commendation for saving his fellow grunts in a training accident.
When he got out of the Marines, McQueen went to college on
the GI Bill. At that time, every guy wanted to be like Marlon Brando and James Dean, who
had both attended Lee Strasberg’s Actors’ Studio, in New York City. Along with
2000 other people, McQueen applied for one of only two openings. He and Martin Landau got
them.
Lee Strasberg was notorious for putting his students
through exercises for "the Method," which required them to single out specific
experiences in their own lives that they could plug into a character and using their own
emotional memories to bring life to the character’s responses. The first examples of
the use of the Method in film tended to be showy and fraught with emotional baggage, such
as Brando’s Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, or James Dean’s
Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause.
McQueen changed all that. His expressive, ice-blue eyes
could tell stories; a shrug of his shoulders could express deeply held feelings. With
McQueen, it’s always worthwhile watching his hands. Watch him in the store, stacking
the frozen dinners; or while he’s waiting for the faxed photo of Johnny Ross; or as
he gets to work in the car chase. Notice how he picks things up and puts them back down.
These are not actorly touches, yet they bring dimensionality to Frank Bullitt. In The
Magnificent Seven, the star, Yul Brynner, got so upset at being upstaged by what
McQueen was doing with his hands that he hired someone just to watch McQueen’s
gestures.
Right through to the final existential look in the mirror,
McQueen invests Bullitt with dignity, courage, and cunning. Someone -- maybe McQueen --
also made some great visual choices. His apparel was hip, the dark mock turtleneck and
sport coat covering a quick-draw shoulder holster. (A bit of bar trivia: McQueen patterned
the shoulder holster after that of San Francisco homicide inspector Dave Toschi, who was
also an inspiration for Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry Callahan.) And the car was
perfect. Painted Highland Green, a little faded, and with a dented fender, Bullitt’s
Mustang was a car that a cop could afford. But a 1968 Mustang GT 390 Fastback was also a
hot rod capable of smoking a lot of rubber -- and most other cars on the road.
Between Bullitt’s Mustang and the bad guys’ 1968
Dodge Charger 440 Magnum, there was 700 horsepower of mean energy on the screen -- enough
power to put everyone in the theater on the edge of their seat for 9 minutes and 42
seconds. To this day, the car chase in Bullitt is still the best one ever filmed.
Thank director Peter Yates, whom McQueen picked after seeing the director’s work on a
great car chase in Robbery (1967). Yates worked closely with editor Frank Keller
and sound engineer John Kean to present a riveting, realistic race through San Francisco.
Note: While composer Lalo Schiffrin’s jazzy score puts emphasis only where it’s
needed, the chase itself needed no help. There is no music during the chase scene.
McQueen had the contractual authority to pick his costars,
and he picked some great ones. Robert Vaughn, who held out until McQueen demanded and got
more money for him, was appropriately crafty and devious. Jacqueline Bisset is gorgeous,
and does a powerful piece of acting that provides the proper climax for the film as she
stumbles on the true meaning of Bullitt’s work. The great character actor Simon
Oakland, as Bullitt’s boss, is a tough but fair lifer. Don Gordon and Carl Reindel
play detectives Delgetti and Stanton, Bullitt’s capable associates. Gordon, a friend
of McQueen’s, especially makes a strong showing as a tough, trustworthy cop.
 Bullitt was one of the most popular films of the 1960s. After
it, McQueen could name his price and pick his options. He made two films, Papillon
and The Towering Inferno, largely to remind people that he was that guy who’d
been good enough to beat 2000 other people to get into the Actors’ Studio. He put
himself on screen with Dustin Hoffman in Papillon and with Paul Newman in The
Towering Inferno so people could see his work right up there on the screen, right next
to the best Hollywood had to offer.
You can see his talent for yourself by buying Bullitt.
Any of the DVD versions will give you a good mastering and a clear picture. The oldest
version, from 1997, is simply the film and costs about $10; if your only interest is the
movie itself, consider it one of Hollywood’s great bargains. Bullitt: Limited
Edition Collector’s Set includes the disc, eight lobby cards, a poster, and --
most important for true fans -- a copy of the script. Now out of print, it originally cost
about $80. Expect to pay twice that if you can find one.
The most recent version, from 2005, is a two-disc Special
Edition ($26.99). It looks much sharper than the earlier versions, and is worth an
upgrade. It includes an audio commentary by director Peter Yates, and two documentaries:  the TCM-produced Steve McQueen: The
Essence of Cool and The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing, which will
teach you lots about editing a car chase. A vintage Bullitt: Steve McQueen’s
Commitment to Reality, proves what it says.
To get an idea of the range of McQueen’s work, pick up
The Essential Steve McQueen Collection ($69.99). It includes the two-disc Bullitt,
plus Papillon, The Cincinnati Kid, Never So Few, Tom Horn,
and The Getaway. By the way, on that last film, bad boy McQueen began a
romance with his leading lady, Ali MacGraw, who at the time was married to one of
Paramount Pictures’ top execs. She left her husband and moved in with McQueen. Take that,
Hollywood.
Steve McQueen made 26 films. He did so much more than one
car chase. When McQueen was on set, he would demand extra clothes and toiletries. Everyone
thought this was because he was a cheapskate, but actually he would bundle everything up
and send it anonymously to the Boy’s Republic. He was also a furious fighter for his
friends, helping the careers of numerous stars, some big and some small. And he really did
race cars, placing second to Mario Andretti at the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1970.
McQueen died when he was just 50 years old -- not from
smoking, as so many believe, but from mesothelioma, a form of lung cancer caused by
exposure to asbestos. He thought he might have gotten it from a job he’d been
assigned when in the Marines. He’d been thrown in the brig, and for six weeks, he and
his cellmates had to clean pipes in the ship’s hold, scraping off asbestos. The dust
was so thick, he told director John Sturges, that no one could breathe. His first wife,
Niele Adams, remembers another problem. When he drove race cars, he would soak a rag in
liquid asbestos and wear it over his face, probably to protect him from potential fires.
Instead, it killed him.
I don’t begrudge Madison Avenue their fashion icon,
their cool sales representative. In some ways, it’s nice that our view of Steve
McQueen is frozen when the actor was in his late 30s. I just hope that, one day, the
public will find out that he was not just some guy hawking products who once did a great
chase scene.
In the meantime, the rest of us can be in on the truth.
McQueen was much, much more.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
