Wed 11 Mar 2015
Review: Book and Two Films – Jim Thompson’s THE GETAWAY (1972/1994).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[14] Comments
THE GETAWAY. National General Pictures, 1972. Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Ben Johnson, Sally Struthers, Al Lettieri, Slim Pickens, Richard Bright, Jack Dodson, Dub Taylor, Bo Hopkins. Screenplay by Walter Hill, based on the novel by Jim Thompson. Director: Sam Peckinpah.
I’m going to disagree with Roger Ebert about the merits of this film. I think it’s terrific, a flawed masterpiece, if you will, and if you want to read all about the flaws, you can read Roger’s review, available online here. He seems to have picked up all of them.
To tell you the truth, though, the first time I saw this movie, I was rather underwhelmed myself, but for two reasons that Roger doesn’t mention. Well, maybe three. I’d have to agree that Ali McGraw as never much of an actress, that Steve McQueen was always Steve McQueen in whatever movie he was in, and (playing My Grumpy here) the long sidebar with Sally Struther’s character (the wife of the veterinarian that McQueen’s fellow bank robber kidnaps to medicate his broken collarbone) was totally unnecessary and quite frivolous besides.
The second time through, none of Roger’s quibbles mattered, nor any of mine as well. I enjoyed myself thoroughly all the way through. The photography is brilliant. The little bits of business tossed in here and there all came together, and the action is spectacular. It is not non-stop action, however, as the story takes the time to focus on the rocky romance that develops between the two leading characters for long stretches of time. And the ending was even more enjoyable the second time, maybe because of the anticipation. (If Slim Pickens ad-libbed his conversation between the runaway couple, as I’ve been told, my admiration for his ability as an actor is even higher.)
I think Ali McGraw does everything that was asked of her, including not giving her a lot of dialogue. But the uncertainty in her face I saw the first time fit right into place the second time, as she does not know how Doc McCoy (McQueen) will react when he learns what she did in order to get him sprung from jail when after the parole board turns down an early release. And react he does, probably in a way that wouldn’t be permitted in a movie today.
As for McQueen being McQueen, wasn’t Bogart always Bogart? Gable always Gable? Scott always Scott? McQueen’s presence on the screen is always a plus. What was I thinking? The business with Sally Struthers, well, I’m still not so sure about that, but in parallel and it contrast with the McCoys’ journey, I grew to accept it the second time around.
The story, which I think it’s about time I got around to telling you about, is about a bank heist gone bad, and the problems that result when both big things and little things go bad. Mostly big things, such as having a con man steal the key of the train locker containing the loot, and hiding in a grbage dumpster just before the truck comes along to pick it up.
This movie’s in my top twenty now, no doubt about it.
JIM THOMPSON – The Getaway. Signet #1584, paperback original, 1959. Reprints include: Bantam, paperback, movie tie-in edition, 1973. Black Lizard, softcover, 1984.
I don’t own a copy of the Signet book; in fact, I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a copy. (The least expensive one on abebooks.com is $60.) For some reason, and I’m not sure why I thought this, but I’ve had it in my head all these years that the Bantam edition which I’ve just read (after watching the film) was a paperback adaptation of the movie. Wrong. It was just the opposite. The movie was based on the Signet paperback published in 1959.
And surprisingly enough, within the restrictions of big studio movie-making, the adaptation is reasonably well done. Up to a point, that is, and I’ll get back to that shortly.
But the Doc McCoy in the book is a killer as well a bank robber, and a vicious one at that. There’s no way that Steve McQueen could play a villain as cold-blooded as his character is in the novel. In the movie, Doc McCoy is a killer when he needs to, and only then. His companion in crime, his wife Carol, who helped bring about his parole by sleeping with a member of the parole board, is also not as good-looking as Ali McGraw, nor do we have any feeling of sympathy or rapport with her. She (Carol in the book) has made her bed and all we’re waiting for is how far that will get her.
The story of the two increasingly desperate movie stars fugitives on the lam eventually diverges from the book around page 132 with just over 50 pages to go. Or to better phrase that, this is where the movie ends. The movie has a much happier end than the book does, and that it putting it mildly. What follows is either a totally allegorical fantasy, or a getaway that only ends when the pair of fugitives reaches safety in Mexico pure hell.
Let me tell you this. One “refuge” the couple on the run find themselves in is a pair of tiny cramped caves in a cliff along the California coast just above the water line. When Carol manages to maneuver herself around in the dark so she can sit up, then finds that she cannot move an inch to lie down again, it was two AM in the morning and I had to stop reading, right then and there.
I’ve not read enough Thompson to say, but other people tell me that this is one of his best. Now I know why.
THE GETAWAY. Universal Pictures, 1994. Alec Baldwin, Kim Basinger, Michael Madsen, James Woods, David Morse, Jennifer Tilly, James Stephens, Richard Farnsworth, Philip Hoffman, Burton Gilliam. Screenplay by Walter Hill & Amy Jones, based on the novel by Jim Thompson. Director: Roger Donaldson.
There were a few changes made from the earlier version of the film, but in a way, only a few of any consequence. Instead of robbing a bank, Doc McCoy and two others hold up a dog racing track instead, and some additional back story was added, but not particularly for the better. Personally I think that when back story is added, it takes away from the mystery behind the characters. Not always, but often enough.
Walter Hill was the screen writer of both films, with the addition of Amy Holden Jones on the second. Perhaps that helps explain why in the scene in which McCoy slaps his wife around when he learns what she had done to help free him from prison, Carol (Kim Basinger) slaps him right back.
There are some subtle changes that are more difficult to put words to. Alec Baldwin, whatever his accomplishments, does not have nearly the screen presence of Steve McQueen, and while Kim Basinger is a much better actress than Ali McGraw, I somehow found Ali McGraw a more fitting actress for the character, at least the cinematic one.
The sex scenes are far more explicit in the later movie, and the action seems more violent, but somehow I don’t believe either facts are to the second film’s advantage. The most striking difference between the two films [SPOILER ALERT] is that I found the happy ending rather appropriate [NOT IN THE BOOK], but in the second film, I wondered a whole lot more if I cared that these two rather unpleasant people were going to get away with it.
March 11th, 2015 at 9:10 pm
First, I’m not a big fan of Steve McQueen. He was great in some films, and too much Steve McQueen in others. He did some great films that I love though. I have low tolerance for Ali McGraw. I confess watching LOVE STORY what kept on going through my head was, die already. I cried, she took forever to die and I was with a date and had to sit there. Boo Hoo.
Love is never making me go to that movie.
I will avoid almost any film with Bo Hopkins, Jack Dodson, or Sally Struthers in it unless there is something so good about it I can just shut them out of my head.
So. I love this movie. Not perhaps soul mate, forever and ever love, but I love this movie. It looks good, McQueen manages to hold it all together, and some of it is brilliant. I love it despite the fact I had read the novel first and the film is clearly not the novel. I did not expect it to be. I did not expect Steve McQueen to play a cold blooded killer like Thompson’s Doc. I did not expect him to die at the end.
I didn’t love the remake. Largely for the same reasons above that Steve lists; chiefly that there was no way I was rooting for Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger here. Where McQueen and McGraw were amoral they were also curiously attractive. One thing retained from the book is that McQueen’s Doc, like Richard Stark’s Parker, is a professional. If he could hold up the bank without killing anyone and get away without killing anyone, he would.
Baldwin and Basinger seemed equally fond of the mayhem. I was rather hoping someone would open up on them with a shotgun and the film would end early. I found them to be unattractive. I didn’t buy for a minute that Richard Farnsworth would react to them as Slim Pickens did. I was a bit surprised they didn’t murder him anyway.
That said, I did not get the impression of a happy ending from either film. Despite the title I felt their end would be as bleak as the novel. Neither couple had anything that resembled a happy ending in them.
And let us be brutal. Roger Donaldson is a fine action director, but he is not Sam Peckinpah. Violence in a Donaldson film is not the curiously fetishized almost Kabuki thing it is in a Peckinpah film. Peckinpah is one of those directors whose work should not be remade.
Now as for Roger Ebert’s dislike of this film, first much as I appreciated Ebert I disagreed with him about 70% of the time. Second, Ebert missed the point: THE GETAWAY is Sam Peckinpah’s version of a love story. It’s not a paean to graphic violence, its not a graphic attack on our voyeuristic response to film violence.
It’s a love story. Actually appropriate Ali McGraw is in it.
Love is never having to say your gun is empty.
March 12th, 2015 at 3:36 am
I have a copy of the Signet Paperback which I bought in a scrofulous used book store (along with a Wodehouse Ace Double) for a quarter back in my youth.
The book is much nastier than the film, with a haunting,horrifying ending, and since he was never going to be allowed to film it that way, Peckinpah wisely turned it into the cinematic equivalent of a Stark/Parker thriller, with excellent results.
March 12th, 2015 at 6:45 am
I’m not a huge fan of the book, or of Thompson’s work in general. Too grim and cynical for my tastes although I admit that THE GETAWAY does have a certain odd power to it.
I do love Peckinpah’s 1972 movie – wonderfully stylish and with surprising depth and subtlety. McQueen was always McQueen but Peckinpah knew how to get the best out of him. It’s certainly McQueen’s career-best performance. And I agree with you on Ali McGraw – she’s perfectly cast, her performance works and she and McQueen work together superbly. A terrific movie. Peckinpah is criminally underrated these days.
March 12th, 2015 at 11:15 am
By whom is he underrated? I do not like his work or sensibility at all, but underrated…? Iconic among those who salute technical, if drugged out expertise, coupled with anti-social hostility bordering on the psychopathically self-destructive. Even Ride The High country is about weakness and failure. But, underrated, rather the opposite.
March 12th, 2015 at 3:28 pm
We can debate Peckinpah’s reputation if you want, but I think he was a filmmaker with a couple of good movies in him. Of course he wasn’t immune to Self-Indulgence, but I enjoyed RIDE.., JR BONNER, WILD BUNCH, and like I say, GETAWAY was a better “Parker” movie than any of the official adaptations with the possible exception of POINT BLANK.
March 12th, 2015 at 8:56 pm
Peckinpah could make some stinkers like PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (Barry, your “drugged out expertise” describes that film perfectly) or THE KILLER ELITE, but he also made some striking films including the flawed but interesting MAJOR DUNDEE, those Dan mentions, BRING ME THE HEAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA, and THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE.
His television career was notable as well. His THE WESTERNER is second only to HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL as the most interesting western on television. His work on THE RIFLEMAN and the half hour GUNSMOKE are among the best western episodes on television and I didn’t even like THE RIFLEMAN.
I do think he was too self indulgent at times, after WILD BUNCH I had the impression he read his reviews too often and forgot much of the best of his early films trying to recreate that massive success. In that sense he is not a great director because he could not do it again.
If three great films define a great director, Peckinpah only has two and a half.
At his best he was entertaining and challenging, and that’s enough for any director. I didn’t always agree with his vision but it was hard to flaw it.
Barry,
I’m not questioning how you feel, I would never do that to anyone’s opinion of a film, but how is the elegiac RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY about weakness and failure? My impression of the film was one of redemption. The protagonists who outlived their world and time and get the chance to go out in a blaze of glory are hardly failures. It’s not that far removed from Wayne in THE SHOOTIST or TRUE GRIT, Peck in THE GUNFIGHTER, or even Cooper’s Will Kane in HIGH NOON.
My understanding was that McCrea was originally cast in the Scott role and Scott asked to play the more roguish character in the film. Clearly he did not see the film or the character as anything but an extension of roles he played from THE SPOILERS and WESTERN UNION to DECISION AT SUNDOWN. Scott heroes were usually complex and only once in a while straight heroes — he plays an equal number of flawed heroes. It’s one of the reasons I credit him as a better actor than he was ever given credit for, that ability to play a flawed hero. His threadbare ex gunfighter who has seen better days and whose honesty is more situational than McCrea’s is one of his best career performances.
Frankly if he or McCrea had done those parts in anything but a western I think both would have been nominated for Oscars for the film. Even with this ones reputation it is underrated.
March 12th, 2015 at 9:26 pm
David,
Your points relative to Ride The High Country are my sentiments, but the film, while certainly in terms of the Scott character, are still and all addressing failure, as in decline and that Gil Westrum manages to pull his conscience back into the same line as his still somewhat robust constitution, he remains a man on his final mission, accomplishing whatever it was his decrepit friend Steven Judd was attempting. All summed up in two lines:
Judd: “All I want is to enter my house justified.”
Westrum: “I’ll see you later, partner.”
Great lines, and great performances, Oscar worthy as you have indicated, for sure, but not about success on a high level. Men who have wasted their opportunities. That is why it resonates.
March 12th, 2015 at 9:49 pm
True Grit, the John Wayne film, is indeed about triumph over adversity and evil. The Shootist, something similar, a final validation. The Gunfighter, failure and waste. High Noon, a kind of True Grit in slow motion, with Grace Kelly the prize. As for the Peckinpah titles, not one is about the triumph of virtue, although Ride The High Country might wiggle in there. The others, without exception, and certainly including the pleasant Cable Hoque and Junior Bonner, are only concerned with hopeless destruction.
The Getaway, one or two, is an interesting evening at the cinema. No small boy would wish to grow up like McQueen’s character. Or Baldwin’s. As opposed to The Tall Men in which Gable’s character is quite rightly deified. The kind of man small boys dream of being and old men wished that they had been.
March 12th, 2015 at 10:27 pm
Sam Peckinpah’s legacy is less about his films individually and more about his style and influence on the action directors who followed (such as Quentin Tarantino). Today his style has been satirized so often it is hard to watch his work without thinking of sketch comedies such as MONTY PYTHON.
He worked in an era when critical views were obsessed with the auteur theory. His style and vision was so different from the accepted norm of the time it drew notice.
Peckinpah is less important for his work than how he affected the art form of film itself.
March 13th, 2015 at 12:15 am
Barry, Michael,
I agree with you both for the most part. Perhaps our only minor disagreement is that I think the small personal victory in HIGH COUNTRY is as important as any major victory in dramatic terms. Salvation is everything to a man like McCrea’s character, and a surprise to one like Scott’s, who likely had no expectation of finding it before hand, or would admit it would mean anything to him.
HIGH CONUNTRY actually is fairly accurate about the fates of many of the Western lawmen who did survive. Earp was an unsuccessful orange grower who lived on his wife’s money and spent his last days hanging out as a technical expert for the movies. Masterson fared better as a sports editor, but had to go back East to do it. Ben Thompson was shot down in Denison, Texas in 1915. They were not great successes. They did not do much with any opportunities they had. They spent their money, slept with their whores or pimped them, and gambled and drank away their futures. McCrea and Scott are perilously close to reality.
They left legends, but little else.
There is a streak of anarchy and existentialism in Peckinpah’s character and films that certainly veers from the Western’s usual view of destiny. For all the authenticity in a Peckinpah film the people in his films at least are contemporary individuals set a west of his own imagining. McCrea and Scott are perhaps the only Peckinpah film characters who think and behave anything like the men they are portraying in the real west. Just as HIGH NOON is a contemporary political allegory more than authentic western so Peckinpah’s violent protagonists are individuals from our world transposed to the old west.
I do think all those things contribute to the success of THE GETAWAY as a film, but like Peckinpah’s other contemporary films it too is basically a western. You could change the prison to Yuma and Doc to a Western bank robber and not lose a beat in the plot.
March 13th, 2015 at 7:32 am
Nobody has mentioned Ben Johnson and his character Benyon in the first film . That alone gives the nod to the Peckinpah version. His body getting thrown into a dry well!!! By his own brother !!! Strong stuff,
March 13th, 2015 at 5:36 pm
And nobody has mentioned my fortuitous and dirt-cheap purchase (see comment #2)of this and QUICK SERVICE/CODE OF THE WOOSTERS back in my youth–are you all just too envious?
I tell you I wuz wise beyond my years back then…..
March 13th, 2015 at 6:18 pm
You’re right, Dan, that was a find worth a congratulation or two. Way to go! And if both are in VG condition or better, doubles on that. Do you still have both of them?
March 13th, 2015 at 6:31 pm
Let me respond to whether or not the first film had a happy ending or not. I think that anyone who’d read the book first — but few people actually had — would have a feeling that the road ahead for the two McCoy’s would not run as smoothly as they were thinking it would, as they drive off in the truck into Mexico. At the time, I believe the perception was that it was a happy ending, which was a rather revolutionary idea at the time, that the bad guys were getting away with their crime. McQueen’s power in Hollywood at the time was such that even if Peckinpah wanted a film that painted him less than heroic, for lack of a better term off the top of my head, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with the project.
But I didn’t certainly didn’t have the feeling that neither Basinger and Baldwin would last long enough in Mexico to spend much of the money, or even stay together as a couple. I’m not sure what produced this feeling in me the second time around, but it didn’t at the end of the first movie. I’m still trying to put my finger on this, but so far I haven’t