The Chase (1966)

A year before his seminal critical triumph, Bonnie & Clyde, Arthur Penn gave us The Chase. A seedy, sleepy noirish tale of a local boy who breaks out of jail & how his former neighbors deal with it. During the 60's when themes of sexual frankness & violence were slowly creeping into cinema, some films adapted marvelously while others didn't. Scenes which should be insightful & startling come off as awkward & poorly staged but ultimately this film is a curio & a must watch at least for the cast (look for a young Paul Williams as a gawking teen bystander) & the further solidification of Penn as a director w/later films as Little Big Man & Night Moves.

This movie was a product of the times like "All in the Family". Yeah, it was a Texas small town full of greedy heartless racist amoral lustful horrible white people. Maybe the writer was projecting her Hollywood social milieu? But nothing about it was believable starting with the beautiful sweet escaped con Bubber (what a stupid name) played by Robert Redford. He only had a couple months to go on his sentence, for a crime that was never mentioned but he had to be a free man like Cool Hand Luke, a classic 60s rebel stereotype mode. But he had to get free. The first big drama was that the hardened con he broke prison with killed a man for his car and money, which of course implicated Blubber. Even though most people in Tarl, the town in question, who knew Bubber knew he was basically a nice guy, lots of people all got it into their heads Bubber was coming back to get them personally. The spiteful weak bank VP Edwin Stewart, played by Robert Duvall, was certain Bubber was going to get him because of what he did to him 20 years ago as teenagers. Meanwhile his cheating lustful wife Emily is flirting with other men at his work place. This is just one example of the cartoonish Peyton Place vibe of the film. The film is partially carried by Marlon Brando as the town sheriff, Calder. He is a good man along with his stolid wife Ruby, played by Angie Dickinson. They managed to work some small Southern town racism on the side to gin up our contempt for these "evil" Southern white people. This is what made the movie so appealing to leftist urbanites and foreigners whose inclination was to regard the whole South as evil racist troglodytes,The script had some intelligence in it, but that was subsumed by its cynical cleverness. But it all failed at the end with a ridiculous and fatal scene in a burning junkyard. Here the locals all gathered to get Bubber, torch the place and party at the same time. The final climactic scene made no sense with one of the locals imitating Jack Ruby and gunning down the hapless Bubber, as our noble sheriff brought him to jail. This of course made no sense since Bubber did not murder a president. At worst he was suspected of murdering a strange man from another part of Texas so the movie's "Jack Ruby" connection is tenuous at best.

"The Chase" is one of the better films during this rather lean period in the career of Marlon Brando. He is given dialogue which is above average, he has a character to play and he gives the best performance. Brando is well supported by Angie Dickinson, Miriam Hopkins, E.G Marshall and Richard Bradford (just a short time away from making his name in his show of "Man in a Suitcase). The narrative is all over the place though. There are far too many irrelevant characters who have little to do. James Fox, Jane Fonda and Robert Redford are rather wasted. Redford in particular as he is meant to be a main factor in the story. He plays a convict who has escaped from prison and is heading toward his home town. However, he is absent from the film for long periods of time. He doesn't reach his home town until near the end! Jane Fonda having an affair with James Fox is completely pointless and irksome. How she gets billed second is anyone's guess. At the said town, Brando as the local sheriff has a lot to deal with - racial prejudice and feelings of anger about Redford being amongst his problems. Brando hates where he is stationed and dislikes most of the locals with their bigoted ways. He is trying not to cave in under pressure from the local bigwigs in how to deal with the escaped convict but he receives little support. Only his wife (Dickinson) stands by him. Robert Duvall is cast against type here. Usually, he played unsympathetic people but in "The Chase," he is actually more intelligent and peaceful. His performance is good. Richard Bradford takes the honours as a racist thug who likes to take the law into his own hands. The film does work itself up to a good and gritty climax. Arthur Penn's direction is good but his best work was yet to come. The scene where Brando gets savagely beaten is graphic by 1966 standards and I can imagine that both the American and British Film Censors weren't too happy about the violence. Altogether, a rather depressing film that wallows in its own world of despair and hopelessness.

***may contain accidental spoilers*** There are movies and there are great movies. This is one of the latter--a magnificently mixed up story about good and bad people and not so good and not so bad people working their way through a crazy hot night in a small Texas town where slowly but surely all hell breaks loose. Even though it sounds like a lead-up to your average and common teen horror flick, The Chase is filled with the best actors in US movie history--even the first ever screen appearance of Robert Redford. It has Marlon Brando, still back in the days before he turned into Marlon the Hutt, with then absolutely gorgeous Angie Dickinson as his wife. Jane Fonda is there but only recognizable for her acting skill.Given such a talented cast, the director, Arthur Penn (Little Big Man and quite a few other little big movies), delivers a tight and perfectly controlled story that builds slowly from languid frustrations through tense dialog, slowly building to a literal explosion. Definitely worth watching.