Wed 8 Aug 2012
THE NICKEL RIDE. 20th Century Fox, 1974. Jason Miller, Linda Haynes, Victor French, John Hillerman, Bo Hopkins, Richard Evans, Bart Burns, Lou Frizzell. Screenplay: Eric Roth. Director: Robert Mulligan.
There is a lot of similarity between The Nickel Ride and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (reviewed here ), but one of the differences is that the former takes place in LA and the latter in Boston. That’s only in terms of the weather: almost always sunny and warm in LA vs. crisp and chilly in Boston in the fall.
But other than that, the lives of the lower and mid-level echelons of the underworld are very nearly the same. Not knowing when their lives are going to be cut out from under them at the whims of anyone at a higher level, for example, or pressured from all sides to close a deal and make the next one; pressures sometimes strong, others only subtle.
Another big difference is that Jason Miller as Cooper, the man with the keys in The Nickel Ride, while extremely effective, is no Robert Mitchum, the lugubrious star of Eddie Coyle. As a much younger man, Miller has to work harder at it. To Mitchum, by the time he made Coyle, it seemed to come naturally.
Miller’s career began with The Exorcist, the movie he made just before this one, in which he played Father Damian Karras. He won an Oscar nomination for that particular film, but his career faded badly, and I doubt that even the most ardent of movie fans know his name today.
I’ll end any other comparisons between the two films here. Cooper is trying to make a deal involving a block of warehouses where stolen goods can be stored, and as hard as he tries, he can’t seem to get the other side to agree to terms, which keep changing. Cooper’s superior, John Hillerman (pre-Magnum) brings in a garrulous rowdy in a buckskin shirt (Bo Hopkins) to keep an eye on him, while Cooper has to keep his cool with his wife and close buddies, including a small-time boxing promoter who can’t follow through and make his protege take a dive.
The plot seems to have confused a lot of people, basing that statement on the various online reviews and comments on IMDB that I’ve read. It’d true that it’s never quite clear what started Cooper’s downward spiral, you (the viewer) can sense it’s happening just as well as he can.
This is neo-noir at its finest. Beautifully photographed by Jordan Cronenweth, who later worked on Blade Runner, which is the finest accolade I can give him, and directed by Robert Mulligan, of To Kill a Mockingbird fame, there is a lot to watch and see, and I know I’ll see more the next time I watch this movie.
PostScript: Thanks to IMDB, I can tell you something interesting. I’ve been watching episodes of Mike Hammer, the 1950s series with Darren McGavin, and while I didn’t recognize him, Bart Burns, the guy who Cooper is trying to negotiate with, also played Captain Pat Chambers on the Hammer show.
PPS. For an excellent analysis of The Nickel Ride, including details you never see by watching a movie only once, you might want to read Mike Grost’s comments on the film, found online here.
August 9th, 2012 at 10:58 am
Steve,
Thank you very much for the shout-out!
The connection to Eddie Coyle is very interesting, and new to me – have never seen this film.
The Nickel Ride, like other films by Robert Mulligan, is bathed in extraordinary atmosphere. The feelings conveyed by the characters, the vivid settings, the strange use of color, the downright surreal turns of events, the many props and buildings, all produce mood and atmosphere to an extreme.
While Mulligan doesn’t write his films, their unique feelings and atmosphere are recognizable throughout his work.
The auteur theory was founded by French critic Francois Truffaut in 1954. (Truffaut would go on to direct films like Fahrenheit 541 and Day For Night.) Truffaut singled out Mulligan as a director to watch. Andrew Sarris followed suit in his history of Hollywood, The American Cinema (1968). Most of Mulligan’s reputation derives from Truffaut, Sarris and their auteurist disciples.
Mulligan began as a director of live TV in the 1950’s. He was associated with the crime TV show Suspense. You can see many marks of Mulligan’s style to come in these little crime dramas.
One of the best episodes is an adaptation of the pulp writer Norbert Davis. You can get information and see the show here:
https://www.thrillingdetective.com/more_eyes/ben_shaley.html
This is atmospheric and strange, like much of Mulligan.
August 9th, 2012 at 11:04 am
The F.O.B. VIENNA episode of Suspense begins here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_kmFc2ketU
It has much of the strange miasmic feel of The Nickel Ride to come, with characters plunged into bewildering, surreal events.
August 9th, 2012 at 2:20 pm
Thanks for the links, Mike. I’ll be busy most of the day, but I’ll be sure to check them out tonight.
You should indeed see THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, if you can. Criterion released it on DVD, so libraries should have it, or maybe it’s available on Netplex. (I’m not a member.)
The more I think about THE NICKEL RIDE, though, the more I’m impressed with it. Some movies fade out of your mind very quickly. Not this one. It really should be more widely known.
The next time I watch the film, I will be watching the actors, now that I know the story, especially Jason Miller, the star. I read somewhere (I can’t find it again) that George C. Scott had the role originally. He would have been maybe 10 years older at the time (I’ll have to check that), and I think it would have made quite a bit of difference in how viewers would have seen the story.
Miller thinks of himself as an up-and-coming guy, but with Scott in the role, it’s likely that the audience would have seen him as a guy on the way down anyway.
August 10th, 2012 at 7:20 am
Miller is known today not as an actor so much as the playwright of THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON, which came out the same year as the movie of THE EXORCIST, or perhaps as the father of actor Jason Patric.
Miller died in 2001.
August 10th, 2012 at 9:38 am
In spite of the successes Miller had early on in Hollywood, he left the movie-making business for his home town of Scranton PA and strangely never wrote another Broadway play, and made very few films, big screen or otherwise.
I’ve discovered that there’s a documentary on his life that was shown on PBS that fills in some of the details. For more information: http://millerstalemovie.com/aboutthefilm/
I hadn’t known he was Jason Patric’s father. According to IMDB, Patric’s mother, Linda Miller, was Jackie Gleason’s daughter.