A “Perfect Storm movie” is a film that works almost despite itself. It’s a film where all the elements – star, writer, director, often the year it is made, all converge at just the right time, and the resulting alchemy is quite often a film that is far more than the sum of its parts.
In this occasional series I’ll look at some of the films that fall into this category. These wont be reviews on the films themselves – quite often they are very well known and much has already been written on them already – but rather I’ll be looking at how all the disparate elements came to together and quite by accident formed a classic.
Morton Freedgood was a successful New York native writer, who under his pen-name of John Godey wrote several crime novels, some of which were made in movies, including The Three Worlds of Johnny Handsome in 1972, and his most successful The Taking of Pelham One Two Three in 1973. Pelham, telling the story of the hijacking of a New York subway train became a worldwide bestseller.
United Artists, always astute, snapped up the rights and put the film quickly into production to capitalise on the success of the book. At one stage Steven Spielberg was considered to direct, based on his ability to crank up the suspense on Universal’s TV movie Duel (1971), but he proved unavailable as he was prepping The Sugarland Express (1974).
United Artists needed a reliable director who could handle a technically difficult location shoot and deliver the required film on time and on budget. Joseph Sargent was a proven craftsman who had enjoyed a solid, if not particularly remarkable career up until that time. Having won an Emmy for his TV movie The Marcus-Nelson Murders (which launched the Kojak series with Telly Savalas) had raised his profile, and he had made a truly unique sci-fi movie in 1969 – Colossus: The Forbin Project, but his career until Pelham had been mainly in TV with prestige shows such as Star Trek, The Man From UNCLE, The Invaders, and Longstreet.
UA could easily have entrusted Pelham to a “name” director (Sidney Lumet would have been an interesting choice), but Sargent had recently delivered to United Artists a solid box office hit with the Burt Reynold’s actioner White Lightning (1973). Reynold’s was at the peak of his popularity, and this film was delivered well under schedule and under budget. The brass at UA were impressed and entrusted Pelham to Sargent.
Part of the books’ success lay in its meticulous research of the New York Transit Authority and it’s inner workings. The protagonists were well laid out and Godey cranked up the suspense inherent in the basic premise, but the book lacked humour and humanity. Peter Stone was a proven master at adapting novels for the screen and adding suspense and humour into the mix. His original screenplays and adaptations in the 60s were textbook in that respect. Charade (1963), Mirage (1965) and Arabesque (1966) all benefitted from Stone’s unique writing gifts. His ability to bring the funny was also well noted. His work on the Cary Grant comedy Father Goose (1964) won him a Best Screenplay Oscar, and he brought a brilliant lightness of touch to the con-artist western Skin Game (1971). Stone brought to Pelham a rich vein of cynical humour. The 
script is littered with brilliant one-liners and witty exchanges, which are never at the expense of the seriousness of the piece, or detract from the suspense, which is faultlessly cranked up as the film progresses. Stone’s script breathe the life necessary to flesh out the characters and helped make Pelham a particularly New York movie experience. It was Stone incidentally who came up with the idea of colour coding the hijackers as Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, Mr. Grey and Mr. Brown, an idea that Quentin Tarantino recalled when penning Reservoir Dogs (1992). Stone’s script is, even by today’s standards, very profane, but this was pretty much in keeping with the language currency of the plethora of excellent crime thrillers that were being made at the time, and at no time appears to be exploitative. Rather, the language comes across as extremely natural, and, at times, hilarious.
Casting for Pelham was a mixture of inspiration, availability, salary caps and the time the movie was made. Walter Matthau, since the turn of he 70s, had been getting back to the dramatic roots that had begun his career in the 50s and early 60s. Roles in Don Siegel’s neglected classic Charley Varrick (1973) followed by the very grim police drama The Laughing Policeman (1974) had heralded a renewed dramatic direction for Matthau. He was, in this context, a natural choice for Lieutenant Garber the cynical, world-weary transit cop who gradually comes to realise he’s in the middle of an extraordinary day. Robert Shaw was having something of a career boost. He scored a terrific turn in The Sting (1973), and would soon beat Sterling Hayden for the role of Quint in Jaws (1975). He was an unusual choice for the central role of the chief hijacker Mr. Blue, being neither proven in this genre, nor American, but in the final analysis, the choice proved inspired. Playing Blue with an intense, cold pragmatism, he brought a palpable sense of danger to the film. Holding a gun to the train drivers’ head, the set-up was such that there was a believably huge degree of likelihood that he would actually pull the trigger. Playing Blue as an ex-mercenary allowed Shaw to play fast and loose with his accent but also gave the character a huge degree of professionalism in the realms of using people as bargaining chips, and keeping one’s eyes on the prize.
Martin Balsam was one of America’s greatest character actors. Through roles in such diverse films as On the Waterfront (1954), 12 Angry Men (1957), Psycho (1960), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Seven Days in May (1964), and Catch-22 (1970) he had built up the reputation of a truly great cinema performer. In 1971 he channeled his inner Liberace to play a flamboyant crooked hairdresser who takes part in a daring heist on a New York apartment block in Lumet’s The Anderson Tapes. It was perhaps this role that led directly to Balsam being cast in another daring New York heist movie. Interestingly, whilst not playing Mr. Green as camp as his character in The Anderson Tapes, he could legitimately be described as playing Green as slightly testosterone-challenged. Whether this was a conscious decision by the resolutely heterosexual actor is unknown, but it’s certainly worthy of note that two thematically similar films should be played in a similar fashion.
The entire supporting cast shone, and were expertly picked by Alixe Gordon, who had had a brilliant run of pictures at that time including casting Summer of ’42 (1971), Klute (1971), and The Parallax View (1974).
Tom Pedi as the profane and doomed Cal (“who wants to know!”) Dolowitz; Dick O’Neill as the exasperated and politically incorrect Frank Doyle (Garber: “Frank, will ya keep it down - I’m trying to save passengers lives here!” Frank: “Fuck the passengers, what do they expect for their lousy 35 cents – to live forever?”); Jerry Stiller (Ben’s Dad), as the bored, seen-it-all Rico Patrone (Deadpan, to a group of visiting Japanese dignitaries crowding round his desk): “Yesterday we had a bomb scare…but it turned out to be a cantaloupe”; the perfectly cast Kenneth McMillan as the quintessentially unflappable New York-Irish Borough Commander (Cop: “The Mayors on his way”, Commander (impassively): “Terrific, tell him I’ll hold the crowd til he gets here”); and the late great Julius Harris as Inspector Daniels. Tony Roberts also pitches in with a terrifically acerbic turn as Warren, the Mayors advisor. The Mayor by the way seems to have predicted the era of Ed Koch: Mayor: “What if the
hijackers start shooting at me?” Warren: “Will you stop? They have no reason to shoot at you” Mayor: “Why, d’you think they’re from outta town?” Even the Mayors wife gets some good lines. When the Mayor can’t decide if it’s a good idea to pay the $1m ransom and save the lives of the hijacked train passengers, she offers him some pithy advice: “Just think what you gonna get in return?” Mayor: “What??” “Eighteen sure votes”.
The rest of the hijackers are portrayed by Hector Elizondo, who manages to rub everyone up the wrong way in a wonderfully un-PC turn, and Earl Hindman who is possibly the least memorable cast member, but perhaps albeit one with the least fleshed out role of the quartet of hijackers.
David Shire’s music deserves special mention. Again, this was an unusual but inspired choice. Having worked mainly in TV, the New York born Shire had recently migrated to features. His brilliant, pared down score to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), was the only clue as to his ability to compose what is arguably the best soundtrack of the 1970s. His jazzed up, muscular and highly original take on the Schoenberg 12-tone method is a vital piece in the alchemy that makes this movie such a knockout. Its bruising no-nonsense streetwise vibe powers the film along.
DOP Owen Roizman, who pulled lens duty on The Exorcist (1973) and The French Connection (1971) for William Friedkin brings a typically tough sheen to the proceedings, and compliments the authentically run-down NYC vibe the film needed. He was the perfect choice as cinematographer on Pelham.
A good thriller needs a good editor and Pelham again scored by pulling in Gerald Greenberg who had also worked on the definitive New York thriller The French Connection. Also editing was Robert Lovett.
A true lightning in a bottle movie then, and whilst credit for corralling much of the talent involved must go to producers Gabriel Katzka, Edgar J Scherick, and Stephen F Kesten, I doubt they had any idea that the resulting film would grow to become a genuine classic of its genre that has lived beyond and eclipsed totally both the source novel that preceded it, and the wretched remakes that followed.
(Note: Portions of this article appeared previously in my essay on the remake of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three that appeared on Cinema Retro’s website.)
(Please click on all images to enlarge.)
