Film Reviews 4U Bullitt Film 1968

 

Film Reviews 4U the Bullitt Film 1968

The Film, the Cars and the Enigma that is Steve McQueen -

a cocktail that was blended to great success

Have you ever watched the 1968 film Bullitt starring Steve McQueen and wondered what it is all about? You are not alone. 

The movie poster from the film

Once you get past the lead actors and that famous car chase you are left with the enigma of who is Johnny Ross and what is Walter Chalmers really about and why?

 Colourised Lobby Card from the film -

the scene shot on location in the Hospital

With a great score by Lalo Schiffrin (who wrote the Mission Impossible theme and other famous television theme music ) and based on a story named Mute Witness by Robert Lloyd Fish (who also wrote as Robert L Pike, the L stood for Lloyd). 

The Mute Witness story was adapted into the production screenplay we know today as Bullitt. Steve Mc Queen and his then wife the actress Neile Adams jointly worked on the movie script they were given, making adjustments as they envisaged it to transfer to live action film. It took some urging for McQueen to take the role and the rest is history.

Steve McQueen and then wife Neile Adams -

both worked on revising the screenplay

Steve McQueen avoided lengthy dialogue on his part in the film. He only needed visual hints and expression through his visual acting ability and the clever cinematography to say what he doesn't need to. A look, a gesture and that saves words and conveys more in the action. 

Facsimile credentials for Lt. Frank Bullitt  

Originally the film was also offered to Clint Eastwood who would later go onto the Dirty Harry film canon, with some of those films also made in San Francisco, McQueen did prevaricate on the offer of the role of Frank Bullitt until his wife persuaded him to take it. 

Steve McQueen exuded pure style in the film -

no doubt also making the already popular Mustang an even greater top seller

McQueen was perfect for the role of Frank Buliitt, although seeing the later Dirty Harry films, Clint Eastwood could have equally handled the role, as Eastwood was also of the minimal dialogue school. The location use of San Francisco was used primarily because the city wanted to attract tourism and the film was cheaper to shoot in San Francisco than Los Angeles.

The original car chase was agreed to not exceed 35mph on the suburban streets, however, speeds of 90mph were reportedly achieved! It took some length of filming to get the ten minute chase sequence in the can. There are continuity differences in the finished chase sequence as a result of editing of the amount of film shot.

Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) 

with Lt. Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen)

The story opens with Lt. Frank Bullitt (Steve McQueen) called in by Captain Bennett to babysit a States Witness Johnny Ross on behalf of State Senator Walter Chalmers (Robert Vaughn) and for the Police to deliver Ross to the Court Hearing on the Monday morning. (Both McQueen and Vaughn had previously starred together in the 1960 film the Magnificent Seven).

Unfortunately for Chalmers, the Chicago Mob has other ideas about Ross squawking and spilling the Beans about their business, they don't want Ross who knows the modus operandi of the outfit to appear or to talk at the hearing. 

The hitmen -

Paul Genge and Bill Hickman

A hitman (Paul Genge - who appeared in the Invaders TV series) is sent to take care of Ross, now ensconced in a seedy flophouse backstreet Hotel, the hitman shoots Ross and the undercover Detective guarding Ross. 

Ross or not Ross?

Renick stands in for Ross

Both casualties are rushed to Hospital, Ross is dead and then stored under a John Doe ID to avoid Chalmers or the Mob knowing Ross is dead, Bullitt then keeps the story Ross is alive going, hoping to draw out the hit men and other players in the game. 

Chalmers visits the Hospital and is told that Ross has been moved, Chalmers demands to know where, but Bullitt reasons that the Hotel location was supposed to be restricted knowledge, but the hitman found it and the less people that know now where Ross is, the better.

Chalmers later accuses Bullitt of using Ross for 'self aggrandisement' however it is a case of the pot calling the kettle black on the part of Chalmers! Chalmers is obviously looking to leverage Ross for his own ends in an act of the same nature.

The hipster Lawyer informer Eddy (Justin Tarr)

Eddy supplies info on Ross and has a friend in

St Quentin he asks Bullitt to put a word in for

This sets off a bitter play and counterplay between Chalmers and Bullitt over Ross. Bullitt is followed to the hospital by the hitman who attacked the Hotel room who is is being driven (by Bill Hickman) in a Dodge Charger, a gun battle ensues and the hitman escapes.

Later after collecting his car, Bullitt realises he is being followed to lead the hit men to where Ross is now safely located and starts a drive around San Francisco (the city where the later Dirty Harry film was set).

(The car chase sequence that followed was inspired by the sequence in the1967 film 'Robbery' starring Stanley Baker, which features a car chase choreographed by Director Peter Yates across the back streets of London. Stanley Baker is always a great performer and this film is worth a look too.)

The 1967 film Robbery's car chase -

got Peter Yates the Director's seat in Bullitt -

a long way from the sedate 'Summer Holiday' film Yates directed in 1963

The Peter Yates directed Summer Holiday musical - 

a 30mph London Bus trip across Europe! 

McQueen on seeing the film 'Robbery', wanted Yates to direct Bullitt, likely wanting to incorporate a car chase of similar high octane which McQueen would drive in, handling the duty with stunt driver Bud Ekins amongst others - Bill Hickman the driver of the Dodge Charger in the chase sequence already being a stunt driver, would later also appear as an actor in the French Connection and the Seven Ups films.

Steve McQueen later wanted to buy the Mustang car from 

the film years later, but the then owner wouldn't sell

The ten minute Bullitt car chase is now legendary and likely led to the many pursuit scenes that followed in American films since. McQueen drives a 1968 Ford Mustang GT390 (the production line Mustang used the smaller version 289 CUI V8 engine in their main production cars with the 390 being a special high performance engine option).

The cars used in the chase sequence were uprated for the film to provide better handling and performance.

The iconic GT 390 Mustang in the chase sequence -

prices for this fastback variant are significantly higher

than for the stock coupe version - thanks to the film

The distinctive Highland Green used on the Mustang was not a popular colour in the Mustang range until the film came out and a special batch of the cars was produced in that shade due to demand afterwards. The car lost the front grille badge on the film to purposely make it look more 'undercover'. Two Mustangs were used in the film and both survive. One sold for $3.7 Million USD!

(The other chase car was a 1976 Dodge Charger in Black, one of two used in the film.)

Out of town the chase continues

Back to the film and a shakedown of Ross's suitcase leads to the knowledge that the Ross in the morgue is actually one Albert Renick, a Chicago Car Salesman, who bears a good resemblance to Ross. Chalmers has not apparently rumbled that Ross is Renick or knows but that is part of a possible ruse.

Perhaps Chalmers is hoping that the real Ross will fly in and testify once the hitmen are diverted to finding the stand in and making the successful hit. Renick's wife is staying separately in a motel in San Matteo, California and is later killed in the film by other hit men.

It transpires that the real Johnny Ross is now in San Francisco and Ross has booked a direct flight to London. This knowledge of Ross's inclusion on the London flight from the passenger list at the airport leads to a chase around the San Francisco airport where Ross shoots a Deputy Sheriff and where Ross is then shot and killed by Bullitt.

The real Ross (Pat Renella) - at the airport

In a nutshell that is about the film on the face of it. But the interest of Walter Chalmers is the clincher, when did he know Ross was not Ross? Or did he not? Did he set up Renwick to get the Chicago outfit off of Ross's back or perhaps his own? Did Ross set up Renwick to impersonate him? Or did Chalmers believe that the Ross in the Hotel was indeed Ross? 

Did Chalmers have an interest in seeing Ross not testify or to be got at nearer the time of the hearing, perhaps on the steps of the building? Either way Chalmers could then come out of it  smelling of Roses and shifting the blame, to enhance his own political career.

Chalmers demands Ross is handed over

Perhaps seeing the original book may provide some answers, or not, seeing as the film's screenplay is modified from the original book.

This is why the film has at least two levels, the apparent and the deep. The obviously apparent hides the depth. 

Jacqueline Bisset as Bullitt's girlfriend Cathy -

she is portrayed as a modern career woman -

as an Architect - showing that anything is possible 

and breaking through the conventions of the time

Bullitt is one of my favourite films, I know how it ends but that doesn't stop me from watching it again and again. The San Francisco scenes are great, the street scenes capture the fashions of the time, before America became synthetic and flabby in the seventies. 

This production was said to be Steve McQueen's favourite film from a long career of television and big screen appearances. 

The film set a style that was to follow on in films like Dirty Harry and those that came along later.

One of the two original Ford Mustang GT390 cars from the film -

now worth millions of dollars! It remains unrestored.

When compared to the tamer 'Robbery' film set in Britain in 1967, the comparison to San Francisco in Bullitt is obvious. Bullitt shows a seedier side of America, where under the carpet a rougher and more sordid world exists than in a more genteel England.

The Bullitt film is a classic largely due to the car chase but the film is much deeper than that, the politics of the people like Chalmers with their own ego and career, the power of using people as Chalmers does, the abuse of authority and ruthlessness to succeed.

Summer Holiday film at 60 - when Cliff and Shadows were at the height of the their fame

 

Cliff Richard in the cab of a London Transport RT Bus 1962

Its 1962 and London faces a shortage of Bus drivers and Cliff Richard and The Shadows are the top selling group in the British music scene - this spectacular collision of circumstances perhaps provided the ideal recruiting vehicle for London Transport and another Cliff film that would only increase his fame. So, how has society changed 60 years on?

By the end of 1959, the early rockers that Cliff had idolised were now mostly gone or in decline. Elvis was in the Army, Buddy Holly died in a plane crash, Little Richard had found religion, Jerry Lee Lewis had married his 13 year old cousin causing opprobrium when he toured England and Chuck Berry had his own minor problems, so to speak.

Apart from Bill Haley, most of the artists were in decline and out of the charts, music was changing from the 'old' Rock n' Roll and the new, slick, 'Booby' style was here. Bobby Vee was the personification of that new era, a young college-educated man in a smart sport coat, neatly cut hair, with a smart car and an adoring girlfriend from a white picket fence house in middle class America.

America was on the ascendant, buoyed by years of solid, commercial growth, with WW2 and the Korean war having made seemingly little impact on it financially.

In Britain, the post-war economy was starting to grow, but the nation was still heavily laden with debt from the recent last war and adding further debt by the purchase of Atlas missiles it could really ill afford, from America as part of the Cold War nuclear deterrent.

From 1956 in Britain, the economy did start to lift and by 1960 it was certainly on the up.

In 1960, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent were on part of a package deal in Britain, it would end tragically, as did Buddy Holly's similar part of a package band travelling show would in 1959. Gene Vincent's US career was on the decline and Eddie agreed to go to buoy it up (and make it perhaps more marketable) by being an act and a draw as their music was still popular with British audiences. 

Supported by British musicians, due to a Musician's Union embargo, for Eddie this included a backing band with Joe Brown on guitar and a pre-Shadows Brian Bennett on drums. On the way back to London, the car they were travelling in with Gene and Sharon Sheelley (Eddie's girlfriend) as passengers, was involved in an accident at Chippenham and Eddie died shortly after in hospital. Perhaps that is when the original music died commercially.

This seemed like the coda for the original American rockers.

On their US tour in 1960, Cliff and the Shadows saw a lot on their tour that influenced their music, including the segregation in some of the US states which shocked them, something that they never saw in Britain which had a mixed race society. 

They did pickup the way the performers were dressing, watched their stagecraft, studied the whole presentation of the artist and the direction the music was going. It was a tremendous head start they could implement when they returned to Britain.

Although Cliff and the Shadows had remained popular since 1958, other artists of the time slowly lost ground and often through poorly chosen material by management and record companies, suffered poor chart placings and eventual obscurity that even a hardcore fan base could not provide sufficient record sales to help them with.

Thus many artists of the '2I's' era  of the late 1950's through no real fault of their own gradually faded from the charts over the next few years, artists and bands like Billy Fury, Marty Wilde, Terry Dene, Wee Willie Harris, The Vipers, to name but a few waned, whilst Cliff and his Shadows rocketed.

Theirs was a clever mix, a backing band who could perform in their own right and with Cliff, made them more marketable. With their No1 hit Apache, the Shadows set the tone for millions of guitarists to follow and as a result, many bands ditched their singers and went instrumental.

With chart hit after hit with Man of Mystery, The Frightened City, Kon Tiki for the Shadows, their success looked rosy. Cliff was reportedly paid £1000 a week, when the average wage in Britain was about £10. Heavily taxed on this by the British Government, Cliff was still doing very nicely. Plus the songwriting royalties were a bonus for the band too.

Through 1961 and 1962, Cliff and the Shadows both as individual units and collectively, had the British music scene just about sewn up. To the effect that the Beatles could not get a look in until at least 1963 and not gaining any real foothold until 1964, much to the chagrin of some of the Beatles members! 

John Lennon did say though that before them (Cliff and the Shadows) that 'there hadn't been much British music worth listening too'.  'Move it' really hit the spot musically and still sounds exciting and fresh today. With the gift of a Fender Stratocaster to Hank Marvin, the music just developed beyond expectation.

Cliff's 1961 film extravaganza 'The young ones' had been a great success, they continued as a unit recording and touring and in 1962, Summer Holiday was created as their next film project.

The opening sequence of a small brass ensemble playing on a bandstand in some godforsaken British coastal town (playing the Summer Holiday theme tune) before having to abandon the performance due to driving rain, summed up a lot of things in Britain.

The 'old guard' was on the wane. In Britain, national military service for 2 years had been abandoned in 1960 largely as a waste of time, although the reality was it was necessary to have troops in Germany in large numbers in case of the Cold War starting another military fracas and also to assist the West German nation to rebuild and restructure, the denazification of Germany as fares it went had to an extent been done.

By 1960, the teenager had been identified in Britain as a marketable commodity that could be marketed to and exploited financially. With disposable income, hire purchase finance and new found freedom, the teenager of 1960 had in some cases a life that their parents and grandparents, some from the Victorian and Edwardian eras certainly never had.

Modernity through design was now changing the face of Britain, modern looking cars, modern buildings, house furnishings, interior design, paint colours, all these were echoing post war America about 10 years earlier and casting aside the dusty and the old hat way of things.

Cliff and the Shadows did have one thing extra, they appealed to both the Bikers and the Mods. The guitar driven music appealed to the more working class Biker types, often to be found at the Ace Cafe in Willesden, North London and also to the suited and booted Mods, as the Shads and Cliff dressed in sharp, modern design stage clothing.

Summer Holiday also ushered in the era of the package holiday. Aviation had now made great steps in jet flight technology possible, with passenger jets able to reach many parts of the world in a few hours or less.

This opened up the 'package tour' era with flights and hotel accommodation combined in one deal price by Travel Agents. 

Summer Holiday's premise of 4 London Transport mechanics from the Aldenham bus overhaul works taking an older London bus across Europe to Greece on a self-contained package tour seemed the ideal vehicle as such for the basis of a film and perhaps to attract badly need drivers.

The late Lionel Blair put forward Una Stubbs for the role of Sandy, leading to a life long friendship and also to one that she had with Cliff until her death sadly this year. Although she was 5 years older than Cliff in real life in the film, she looked around the same age as he did then.

To serve the American market, American actress Laurie Peters was brought in so that the film might be saleable in that country, although she seems to have faded off the performing scene since and the film did not enjoy the success it did in Europe. A young Peter Yates is on the credit, famous later for his Directing role in the 1968 Steve McQueen film Bullitt, with its iconic car chase (in 1967, Yates directed a film with Stanely Baker called 'Robbery' where a precursor of the Bullitt car chase was filmed, leading to Yates's role in Bullitt).

Factor in the Shadows to provide musical support providing some great instrumentals and songs for the film and you have success all round. 

Summer Holiday featured the third Shadows lineup with Brian Bennett on Drums and Brian 'Licorice' Locking on Bass, a group of three Brians and a Bruce - as Hank B Marvin's name was originally Brian Robson Rankin!

The Shadows musical performance sequences could have been longer and the film's plot was very tame and perhaps syrupy by today's standards. The appeal of the film and the group was what sold it, the young women wanted Cliff to be their boyfriend or husband and the young  wanted to be the Shadows players.

It was only in 1963 it seemed that Britain discovered sex, in the Lady Chatterley's lover obscenity trial. Perhaps, it was the point when things started to go downhill with morals and standards diminishing by the day, some believed? With the events of the Profumo affair only adding more Petrol to the flames of discord.

Undoubtedly, the Cliff and the Shadows combination ensured that their joint and individual success due to their wide fan base would let them continue to be charting and successful years after more modern and different music formed most of the charts.

By the 1962 Summer Holiday era, Britain was really starting to prosper again for many. It was by no way out of the woods financially and the problems set in after the middle of the decade with trade unions demanding more pay and better conditions which helped to make Britain uneconomic as a manufacturing base, ultimately driving jobs abroad.

But from 1960 to 1968, Britain was the place to be, London was again on the map and even the Americans had to take notice. Thanks to Summer holiday, the package tour era had arrived!