It can be rather easily argued that the chase epitomizes the cinema. It is action as story. The dramatic conflict is easily defined between the chaser and the one being chased as simple pursuit. One party is relentlessly driving towards another party in the hopes of dramatic resolution. Any good chase has a beginning, middle, and end, even if that end is simply the chase concluding with the prey getting away. Tonight on TCM, Bullitt is being shown and it has one of the most famous, and revered, car chases of all. From the earliest chases of The Great Train Robbery (1903) and the climactic pursuit in Stagecoach (1939) to The French Connection (1971) on through to the most elaborate chases of the new century, such as the spectacular foot chase in Casino Royale (2006), the chase has often provided the most exciting moment in a movie, spawning the phrase, “cut to the chase” to indicate a desire to move to the exciting, or concluding, part of the story. Most chases resolve action so well they usually do conclude the story but many times, as in several mentioned above, they come earlier (and in the case of Casino Royale, at the beginning). But I’m not here to talk about the history of the chase (just look up “Greatest Chases in Movie History” online if you’d like to read that article – there’s about a million of them), I’m here to talk about the chase as plot and how so much great cinema, one way or another, can be defined as a chase.
Many of the cinema’s greatest chases are wrapped inside films that are chases themselves. That great chase in The French Connection, for instance, is in the middle of a longer, and ultimately futile, chase in which Popeye Doyle and his partner Buddy Russo pursue, but never catch, international drug smuggler Alain Charnier. The movie itself is one long chase, just not of the action variety. The plot is a chase, yes, but a slow, deliberate chase that contains a fast, hectic chase under the subway within where Popeye successfully catches some prey while the bigger prey eludes him.
The French Connection is more obviously a chase movie than others, however, and some of the best chase movies ever made are rarely thought of in that context. Maybe it’s because the chase isn’t about one person in pursuit of another as it is one person, or group of people, in pursuit of an idea, a goal, or, in the case of Citizen Kane, a name.
Citizen Kane is about many things, Charles Foster Kane being first and foremost among them, but it’s also about a chase. A reporter, William Alland, is chasing a word, Rosebud, in the hopes that catching it will bring meaning to one man’s life, Charlie Kane. Like any good chase, the thing he pursues stays just out of his reach, close enough to sense completion, far enough away to signal defeat. He never finds it, doesn’t even know if it’s a person or an object, but walks away from the chase with a greater sense of the man he was hoping the name would illuminate. Since he never completes his chase (though the audience does via the camera’s all-knowing eye), the man will forever remain a mystery.
Of course, chases aren’t always weighted down with existential angst, and some of the best chase movies are some of the lightest. One such example, It Happened One Night, also happens to be one of the best movies, chase or not, period. When Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) flees from her father, the chase isn’t just him pursuing her, but everyone from her new husband to every newspaper man and woman in the business. When one of them, reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), finds her, the chase is on but Warne defines the boundaries, in more ways than one (ahem, the Walls of Jericho). The chase reaches its satisfying conclusion when all parties agree on who will cross the finish line and how and Ellie and Peter end up taking those walls down.
Noir has also provided some of the best chase movies. My favorite noir of all time, as well as my choice for the best noir of all time, Out of the Past, is also a great chase movie. First, Jeff (Robert Mitchum) is hired to chase Kathie (Jane Greer) by Whit (Kirk Douglas) until Jeff and Kathie are chased by Fisher (Steve Brodie) which ends when Kathie kills Fisher and leaves, only to end up back with Whit until Jeff, feeling chased by everything in his past, comes clean to Whit about Kathie who now feels chased by both until… well, you get the idea. It’s a relentless pursuit of one character after another, evading each other and their past.
And speaking of Robert Mitchum, the much-lauded one-time directorial effort by Charles Laughton, Night of the Hunter, remains one of the greatest cinematic chases ever filmed. In fact, it just may be the best. There are times when I watch Night of the Hunter, taking in its sharp observations of small town life, its brilliant creation of a horror-movie monster in the form of a crazed preacher, and its stunning visuals reminiscent of the great silents works from Germany in the teens and twenties, and I think surely this is the greatest achievement so far in film history. Other times I just think it’s a hell of a thriller. Always, I think it’s worth my time. And the chase at its center it one of greed pursuing that which can never satisfy its lust. Reverend Harry Powell (Mitchum) has only one object he is seeking, money. From learning about it in jail from Ben Harper (Peter Graves), to marrying Ben’s widow (Shelley Winters) to find it, he pursues it relentlessly but when the hidden cache is finally identified, the movie turns from a chase plot to an actual physical chase. That chase, of Powell pursuing the two children, is, for me, the greatest physical chase in movie history. It doesn’t move as fast as the one in Bullitt, nor does it have the manic energy of the one in The French Connection, but it does have a relentless doggedness to it, a determination made all the more horrifying by Laughton’s decision to keep most of it in the shadows.
Chase scenes in movies will never go away. While most chases mimic real time on the screen and assault the viewer with speed and violence, others have been more comfortable taking the chase along slower, longer arcs, like the great posse chase in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, played for comedy and suspense more than excitement. Still other movies make the chase the story itself. There are thousands and thousands of examples (I’ve named only a handful of favorites) but what the best of them all have in common is an understanding of the maxim, “Action is story.” The chase is instrumental to understanding cinema and the movies have used the chase as plot, even when they don’t know it, since the beginning. They will continue to do so as the next generation of filmmakers chases the previous generation in an attempt to catch them, or even surpass them. For most of them, the chase will be a simple action sequence. For some of them, it will be an elaborate and meaningful addition, or conclusion, to their story. And for the rare few, it will be cinema itself. The chase is on.