CHINATOWN 1974

"Mrs. Mulwray, I think you're hiding something."

Whether for the prestige, visual opulence, short-hand history, or easy-access sentimentality, period films and costume dramas have always been a Hollywood staple and a vital part of movie storytelling. But in the 1970s, the need for some kind of collective breather from the relentless tensions of the “Now” (i.e., Vietnam War, Watergate, impeachment, oil crisis, inflation) produced a market-surge interest in movies set in the “Then.” Particularly the then of the 1920s and 1930s.

Some of these films were escapist homages to retro genres (At Long Last Love -1975). Some were style-fetish showcases devoted to the detailed reconstruction of the fashions, furnishings, and décor of the era (The Great Gatsby -1974). And some were trenchant exercises in ‘70s disillusionment whose nihilist themes were tempered by the distancing device of taking place in America's recent past (The Day of the Locust -1975). Roman Polanski’s Chinatown managed to be all three.

Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes

Faye Dunaway as Evelyn Cross Mulwray

John Huston as Noah Cross

The collaborative effort of the members of the “New Hollywood” Boys Club: producer Robert Evans (The Godfather, Marathon Man), screenwriter Robert Towne (Shampoo, The Last Detail), and director Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, Macbeth), Chinatown had a bumpy, three-year journey to the screen (covered in deliciously intricate detail in Sam Wesson’s book The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last years of Hollywood). But when Chinatown premiered in theaters in the summer of 1974, the many arguments, rewrites, firings, walkouts, and endless weeks of tinkering proved not only to be more than worth the effort, but stood as evidence of the degree of care and artistry that went into fashioning a film that many today regard as a modern masterpiece of American cinema. 

Love the composition of this shot. Even the body language of the characters is perfect

Hardly considered the sure-fire success its current reputation would suggest, Chinatown struggled through disastrous previews and a difficulty generating pre-release interest in a 1974 movie marketplace dominated by the twin publicity blitzkriegs of Lucille Ball's ill-conceived Mame and Robert Redford's The Great Gatsby. Three-time Oscar nominee Jack Nicholson (his most recent being a Best Actor nod for 1973's The Last Detail) was hot at the time, but there existed considerable doubt among many as to how he would come across in this, his first stab at a leading man glamour role. 

Meanwhile, Faye Dunaway's post-Bonnie and Clyde screen output had proved erratic at best, with her The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) golden girl patina coming perilously close to tarnishing after a string of arty flops and effective but unfruitful supporting roles. Then there was Roman Polanski...with his days as New Hollywood's European wunderkind a matter of history and coming fresh off two back-to-back boxoffice bombs (Macbeth -1971 and What? -1972), his name carried about it an aura of fall-from-grace tragedy (the Manson murders) in a town ruled by superstition.

Darrell Zwerling as Hollis Mulwray

Further contributing to the uncertainty surrounding the film's reception was the fact that a quick recounting of Chinatown's plot-- "A private eye in 1937 Los Angeles investigates a mystery involving a real estate swindle and the city's water rights!" --didn't exactly set the pulse racing. 

But what Chinatown had going for it was that it was an original. Not an adaptation of a previously-produced novel, film, or theatrical production. As '70s movies became more formulaically bloated (The Way We Were -1973) and market-driven slick (The Sting - 1973), Chinatown's creative integrity vs its dubious box-office prospects felt like a throwback to Hollywood's very recent past. Back to the start of the decade when difficult-to-categorize films like Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) and Five Easy Pieces (1970) were being made because they were stories the filmmakers wanted to tell, not because they were sure-fire blockbuster material.

The first time I saw Chinatown, it had me in its hip pocket the minute those stylish opening titles appeared to the accompaniment of Jerry Goldsmith's mysteriously forlorn theme music. And though the film had an alluringly old-fashioned sound and succeeded in creating a vision of a past that felt lived-in, not decorative, Chinatown somehow managed to sidestep things that might have made it feel imitative or as paying affectionate homage to another movie…Chinatown looked and felt like the genuine article.

It didn't seem quite possible that Polanski and Co. had managed to make a film that worked magnificently as a mystery (the particulars of the twisty plot--murder, political swindling, family secrets ---are not exactly easy-to-follow on first viewing); achieved a kind of visual poetry (the movie looks swelteringly hot! How did they do that?), and was propelled by the emotional connection of compelling characters whose fates you came to care about (the performances are uniformly first-rate...right across the board). 

Chinatown, in both style and execution, is a jet-black neo-noir that realizes--with a persuasive canniness I still can't quite put my finger on--both Robert Towne's goal of writing a story in the tradition of Raymond Chandler Dashiell Hammett, and Roman Polanski's desire to create: “A film about the ‘30s seen through the camera eye of the ‘70s.” 

Chinatown gets everything right. In creating the slightly artificial authenticity of Los Angeles in the '30s, Polanski nailed it when he observed "People know this time because of the movies, not because of what was real."

Given a contemporary sheen thanks to its widescreen Panavision color photography that "feels" like B&W, Chinatown evokes the classic detective movies of the past via its keen eye for period detail and avoidance of so many of the nostalgia-craze movie gimmicks of the time: no diffused lighting, no voiceover narration, no self-conscious “period” jargon, and no knowing winks to the audience. And here's a bonus...the actors actually look comfortable and convincing in their period clothes! (For the alternative, aka, kids playing dress-up, see Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby - 2013 or  Mank - 2020). 

The result is a movie that's as satisfying as a genre entertainment as it is a dark and existentially layered contemplation on corruption, the destruction of innocence, and, as per Towne, "The futility of good intentions."

Chinatown provides many memorable "goosebump moments," this scene being one of my favorites. I absolutely love Dunaway's delivery and the struck look in Nicholson's eyes when Evelyn asks about the mystery woman in Jake's past. As we'll discover, Evelyn & Jake are two people united by the things they're trying to forget.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

One of the main reasons Chinatown made such an impression on me is that it was the very first noirish private eye movie I ever saw. 

In 1971 LIFE magazine devoted its February cover to America’s burgeoning nostalgia craze, and by 1974, everything from fashion to music reflected the nation’s fascination with life enjoyed in the rear-view. The summer of 1974 saw San Francisco movie theaters so overflowing with retro fare, it took considerable effort to find a film set in the present day: Chinatown, The Great Gatsby, The Lords of Flatbush, That’s Entertainment!, Mame, The Three Musketeers, Daisy Miller, Thomasine and Bushrod, Blazing Saddles, Jeremiah Johnson, Huckleberry Finn (of all things), and Our Time (a little-seen coming-of-age movie set in the ‘50s that opened at the Alhambra during the summer I worked there as an usher). 

The Two Mrs. Mulwrays
Diane Ladd as Ida Sessions. There is a subtle wit to Ladd's performance as the prostitute/movie bit player hired to impersonate Evelyn Mulwray. Miss Session's attempt to affect an air of moneyed aristocracy hints at her lack of success as an actress.

When Chinatown came out I was a 16-year-old movie buff with a passion for contemporary films almost to the exclusion of all else. Back then, my appreciation for classic movies was largely academic and aesthetic (i.e., I enjoyed reading about them and decorated the walls of my bedroom with posters of Marilyn Monroe, Glark Gable, and WC Fields), not practical. Which meant I hadn’t yet seen The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, or any of those classics on The Late Show about hard-boiled detectives and dangerous women. At sixteen I was much too in thrall of the then taboo-shattering adult themes and newfound unrestricted nudity, sex, & violence of ‘70s films to ever find the Production Code coyness of old movies to be of much interest. That is, except for musicals. Ken Russell’s The Boy Friend (1971) ignited my love for old MGM musicals and the films of Busby Berekely, but that’s pretty much where my interest in “Golden Age" Hollywood films began and ended. 

The latter point, my love of musicals, goes to plain why, when That’s Entertainment! and Chinatown both opened on the same day in San Francisco (Wednesday, June 26th), I opted for That’s Entertainment!. An option I exercised for two more weekends before getting around to seeing Chinatown.

Roman Polanski as Man with Knife

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Maybe it’s the Blu-ray talking, but I’m obsessed with what a fabulous-looking movie Chinatown is. The Oscar-nominated team of cinematographer John A. Alonzo, production designer Richard Sylbert, and art director W. Stewart Campbell give Chinatown an atmospheric sheen that is often breathtaking in its evocation of sun-baked Los Angles in the late ‘30s. 

But despite the obvious care and expense lavished on every frame, Chinatown's distinction is that it is a period film that has no interest in romanticizing the past. With traditionally swept-under-the-nostalgia-carpet realities like racism and classist privilege flowing like an undercurrent in a narrative propelled by graft, collusion, murder, and incest; Chinatown’s surface sheen creates a dichotomy that challenges the dreamy ideals one associates with old movies. Cynicism has always been a part of the detective movie genre, but no matter how nihilist the theme, by fade-out, the requisite virtues of honor, heroism, and the triumph of good had to be reinstalled. Chinatown, however, ends with a punch to the gut and the ground knocked out from under us.

Me in 1974:  "Wow, even in so-called simpler times, rich people were greedy and corrupt!"
Me in 2021: "Wow, this movie is almost 50 years old and the rich are still as corrupt and greedy as ever!"

PERFORMANCES

Robert Towne wrote the character of J. J. Gittes with pal Jack Nicholson in mind, so the star-making role of the principled private eye with a taste for Florsheim shoes and words like “métier” fits the actor as perfectly as one of Jake’s tailored suits. This is my favorite of all Nicholson’s performances and arguably his last real immersion in character before entering the “Wink-wink, it’s me! Jack Nicholson!” phase of his career. The entire film is from his perspective...Chinatown is Jake’s journey. But its mystery, tragedy, and heart (and my favorite character) is Evelyn Mulwray.

Jane Fonda in Julia (1977) - Even Robert Towne had Fonda in mind when he wrote Chinatown

Both Robert Evans and Roman Polanski have made it known that Jane Fonda was their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice for the role of Evelyn Mulwray. But when Fonda declined (something the actress denies), Chinatown gained Faye Dunaway…the jewel in Chinatown’s crown and the only ‘70s actress in my eyes to possess the combined intensity, inscrutability, aristocratic bearing, neurotic edge, old-fashioned movie star glamour, and grown-woman gravitas required to bring Evelyn Mulwray to life as something more than just another vaguely-drawn film noir femme fatale cliché. 

As Chinatown’s woman of mystery (she who must not be known until Act III), Evelyn Mulwrays’s impact has to be visual. A guarded woman who’s erected an immaculate façade to conceal just how badly she’s damaged, Evelyn intrigues because she is not at all what she seems. So defining a character trait is Evelyn’s appearance that when the film starts to peel away the layers of Evelyn’s very literal “mask” of makeup as her vulnerability is exposed, those moments achieve a poignancy that makes the film's tragic denouement all the more devastating. Faye Dunaway captures all this magnificently, but is seldom given credit.

Journalists applauded Polanski's time-consuming multiple takes and Towne's glacially slow writing pace as examples of their artistic perfectionism. Meanwhile, Dunaway's painstaking commitment to her character's obsession with appearance was dismissed as prima donna "difficulty" and made her behind-the-scenes clashes the only things people talk about when speaking of her contribution to Chinatown. Despite his early reservations, in the end, Robert Evans came to praise Dunaway's performance to the skies, albeit in his usual self-congratulatory way: "Dunaway's singular mystery on the screen was among the best casting choices of my career!"

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

There are a great many '70s films that I love in spite of (or because of) their flaws. But only a few I'd call perfect. Robert Altman's 3 Women (1977) gets my vote for being a wholly perfect film, so does Ken Russell's Women in Love (actually a 1969 film, but I'm cutting myself some slack because it wasn't released in SF until 1970), and most definitely Chinatown qualifies. 

And by perfect I don't mean an absence of technical goofs or anachronism errors... it's more the feeling of everything fitting so well together that you can't imagine anything being improved upon. The feeling that a story has been told in precisely the manner the filmmakers wanted to tell it. In the case of Chinatown, everything falls into place so ideally, from the cast to the music to the dialogue to the score...watching it becomes an immersive, deeply satisfying experience that engages on so many levels. I never tire of revisiting it, and the film seems boundless in offering new things to discover even after all this time. But best of all, it still manages to move me. 

I'm no longer as totally destroyed by it as I was when I was 16, but at age 63, this masterwork of cinema persists in giving me waterworks every single time.   

Thankfully, films are frozen in time. People, alas, are not. In 1974, audiences drew subconscious parallels between the dogged tragedies of Roman Polanski's personal life and the cursed fate of J.J. Gittes. Today, I'm afraid the parallels linking Polanski and Noah Cross fairly hit one over the head.

Clip from "Chinatown" (1974)

BONUS MATERIAL

Actor Paul Jenkins, who plays Policeman #1 in Chinatown (1974), made his film debut as a policeman in Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968).

Chinatown was planned as the first film in a trilogy. A plan which ground to a halt after the weak boxoffice performance of the second entry, The Two Jakes (1990). Set in 1948, the Jack Nicholson-directed sequel sorely misses Polanski's gift for cinematic storytelling and gets my vote for film most likely to convince you that Chinatown didn't need a sequel in the first place. Still, I did get a kick out of seeing these actors from the original return. 

Poster art by Jim Pearsall 

Chinatown was a summer release, opening on Wednesday, June 26, 1974, at San Francisco's Coronet Theater (which had just hosted The Great Gatsby for 11 weeks). I fell in love with the movie poster the instant I saw it, purchasing it a full month before seeing the film. The artwork captures just the right tone of nostalgia, the shadowy figure of the hatted and pinstriped Nicholson leaving no doubt as to the film's noirish roots, the dreamy image of Dunaway's face framed by the trails of cigarette smoke. the essence of romantic longing. 

The water motif is worked in with the wave crashing against Nicholson's sleeve, it being one of several elements of the poster that refuse to stay within the boundaries of the frame. From the lettering to the heat-glare effect of the coloring, everything about this poster is just perfect.  

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2021

THE TOWERING INFERNO 1974

"Did you leave a cigarette burning?"

Here in L.A., one of our tallest downtown skyscrapers has an attraction that allows visitors to ride a slide from its 70^th to 69^th floor: an enclosed, apparent glass slide attached to the outside of the building. In other words, one gets to pay for the privilege of crapping one's pants 1,000 feet in the air.

But back in the '70s, those of us in search of less first-hand high-rise thrills were happy to content ourselves with the vicarious exhilaration of The Towering Inferno: producer Irwin Allen's $14 million follow-up to his wildly successful The Poseidon Adventure (1972). It was 1974, and the disaster film craze was in full swing. October saw the release of Airport '75 ("The stewardess is flying the plane!"); November gave us Earthquake ("In Sensurround!"), and we saw the year out with the big  December Christmas release, The Towering Inferno.

Everything about The Towering Inferno was a one-upmanship of the standard disaster film. It was adapted from not one, but two novels (The Tower by Richard Martin Stern & The Glass Inferno by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson); it boasted two directors (John Guillermin for the acting, Irwin Allen for the action); and was such a massively expensive undertaking that it brought about the historic collaboration of Warner Bros. and 20^th Century-Fox (successfully circumventing a replay of the "Dueling Harlows" situation of 1965 when competing studios raced to release two films about actress Jean Harlow at the same time). The Towering Inferno was to be Hollywood's heavily-hyped holiday season release, promising to be the ultimate "Big, Bigger, Biggest!" cherry atop the disaster film catastrophe cake.

And, as it turns out, The Towering Inferno—which garnered eight Academy Award nominations and became one of the year's highest-grossing films—did indeed represent the disaster film at its epic peak. Its sheer scope, star wattage, and pull-out-the-stops excesses signifying perhaps the most to which the genre could ever reasonably aspire. It's ambitious scale and overall professional (albeit, old-fashioned) movie industry competency standing as something of a bellwether for the genre's eventual decline into oversaturation, mediocrity, and unintentional self-parody.

"It's out of control and it's coming your way!"

Truer words were never spoken. On the evening of the gala dedication ceremony for The Glass Tower—San Francisco's newest skyscraper and the tallest building in the world—an electrical fire breaks out in a utility room (boastful building developer: "You're not familiar with the many modern safety systems we have designed into this building"); faster than you can say "Titanic," all hell breaks loose…literally. To quote the film's ad copy, "One tiny spark becomes a night of blazing suspense" as 300 well-heeled revelers in highly flammable '70s synthetics become trapped on the building's top floor with nothing but Maureen McGovern for entertainment, and ever-diminishing options available for escape. 

What to do? What to do?

Panic at the Disco

Well, what The Towering Inferno does (and very well, thank you) is to let this open-flame potboiler play out in a manner not dissimilar to that of an old Busby Berkeley musical. The tried-and-true pattern for those films was to introduce the players, hastily establish their superficial-to-inconsequential interrelationships and conflicts, then spend the rest of the movie interspersing the formulaic narrative complications and resolutions between musical numbers of intensifying extravagance and excess. A little plot, a musical number...a little more plot, a slightly bigger musical number, etc.; …all leading to a big, splashy finale featuring multitudes of Goldwyn Girls until, finally, all ends well with a romantic clinch at fade-out.

The Towering Inferno follows this pattern pretty closely…only with explosions, falls from great heights, and gruesome, fiery deaths taking the place of musical production numbers. The result is a disaster film clocking in at over 2 ½ hours that, while occasionally getting bogged down in technical dialogue and repetition (eliminate all the footage of firefighters climbing stairs, and this movie would be about 90 minutes), moves at a surprisingly brisk and exciting pace.

Since the title already clues us in that the building is going to go up like a matchstick, the film doesn't waste any time trying to build false suspense by pretending to be about anything else. We're introduced to the setting, The Glass Tower: a near-literal imposing erection jutting phallically from the testicular San Francisco hills. A building whose façade is shimmering gold and whose interior is an eye-strain symphony of '70s game-show orange and gold. Residents occupy the floors above the 81^st, and lower floors are devoted to commercial tenants (including the building's developer, Duncan Enterprises—they of the Starship Enterprise interior design and bedroom-equipped executive offices). With the "where" established, The Towering Inferno moves on to introducing the "who" by means of cinema shorthand: aka clichés and archetypes.

Paul Newman as Doug Roberts - "The Architect"

First, we get the hero architect (Newman). We know he's the hero because while everyone else wears suits and ties, he's the lone maverick in suede. Cut from the same iconoclastic mold as those confrontational individualists in the Winston cigarette ads of the day ("I don't smoke to be like everybody else" was typical ad copy), Newman and his trademark squint plays a sun-bronzed Thoreau ready to say goodbye to his lucrative corporate career so he can live the simple life in Mendocino County where he can "Sleep like a winner."

Faye Dunaway as Susan Franklin - "The Girlfriend"

The curvaceous speedbump preventing Newman from beating as hasty a retreat to the good life is magazine editor Faye Dunaway. The movie poster identifies her as "the girlfriend," and that's precisely the breadth, scope, and function of her role in the film. Randy Paul Newman wants to runaway with Dunaway to a place where their hypothetical children "…can run around and grow and be free." But post-afternoon delight, the career-minded Dunaway informs him that she's just been offered a much longed-for promotion ("That's nice…," is his invalidating response). Newman wants her to be with him (and do what? we ask ourselves), but Dunaway, perhaps anticipating what lies in store for her in Network, is not keen to give her executive promotion the kiss-off so soon. Guess which one of these lovers isn't placed in the position of having to make a choice?

William Holden as James Duncan - "The Builder"

The tempter to Newman's antagonist is boss William Holden. He tries to persuade Newman to stay so that together they can build bigger and better firetraps—I mean, skyscrapers…all over the world. But Holden is a man of questionable integrity with dollar signs in his eyes. Something we can all easily observe for ourselves thanks to his ginormous eyeglasses.

Steve McQueen as Michael O'Halloran - "The Fire Chief"

Once things start to heat up, good guy fireman Steve McQueen arrives on the scene as the film's savior, moral compass, and finger-wagger. His duty is to deliver a lot of common-sense, life-saving fire safety advice to the audience, scold the corporate bottom-liners, and serve as the big prick to Newman's vulnerable, exposed, quivering conscience.

Richard Chamberlain as Roger Simmons - "The Son-In-Law"

The villain of the piece is electrical contractor Richard Chamberlain. The big bad guy tipoff being that within minutes of his introduction, he delivers a Neely O'Hara-ish speech about not needing God or anybody else's help, and how he didn't get through life on a pass because of his good cheekbones and damn classy looks. (Although, in truth, Chamberlain's snare-drum-tight face has been pulled so taut, his exceptional cheekbones genuinely look in danger of cutting straight through the flesh.) Chamberlain's snakish character is written as such an unrelentingly rotten ol' meanie; at any moment, one expects him to materialize in a cape and top hat, twirling a mustache.

Susan Blakely as Patty Simmons - "The Wife"

To make him seem even meaner, Chamberlain is given a Good Woman (Susan Blakely) -- a beautiful and unaccountably loyal spouse given to hurt looks, aqueous glances, and a knack for saying precisely the wrong thing at the wrong time. That she also happens to be the boss's daughter adds a backstory of guile and purpose-fucking to Chamberlain's already slimy resume.

Now, we come to the supporting characters. The ones who exist primarily to drum up additional human interest, boost the potential body count, and attract the ancillary demographics necessary to make a movie this costly into a hit. 

O.J. Simpson as Jernigan - "The Murderer"...oops! I mean "The Security Man"

To add a touch of diversity and to draw the athletic supporters, there's football player, would-be Hertz pitchman, and future felon O.J. Simpson as the tower's chief of security. On the plus side, at least he's not one of those noble, self-sacrificing, first-to-die Black characters Hollywood holds so dear. On the minus, the man gives a performance of kindling-level woodenness. 

Jennifer Jones as Lisolette Mueller - "The Widow"
Fred Astaire as Harlee Claiborne - "The Con Man"

For the classic Hollywood fans, we have Golden Years love interests, Fred Astaire and Jennifer Jones as an adorable, twinkly-wrinkly couple. He's a fraud bonds salesman, so Astaire gets to mine the charming chicanery of Airport's Ada Quonset (and, like Helen Hayes in that film, win himself an Oscar nomination in the process). Playing a good-hearted widow with lots of dough, Oscar-winner Jennifer Jones, last seen on movie screens embarrassing herself in the youth-flick exploitationer Angel, Angel, Down We Go (1969), gets to mine the selfless sympathy factor of The Poseidon Adventure's Belle Rosen (Shelley Winters). 

Robert Wagner as Dan Bigelow - "The Publicity Man"
Susan Flannery as Lorrie "The Secretary"

And what would a disaster film be without a dose of sex = death guilt retribution? Overemployed cipher Robert Wagner plays an executive who goes to great (read: fatal) pains to conceal the far from earth-shattering fact that he's boffing his secretary (Days of Our Lives star Susan Flannery). The high degree of secrecy these two engage in doesn't make much sense. While neither appears to be married, it's the sexual revolution '70s, and his company obliges by outfitting his office with a big ol' tackily-designed bedroom, the couple nevertheless turn off their phones, lie to co-workers, and do not tell anyone where they are. Why all the secrecy? They act like they're in the military and he's a senior officer or something. Given that this movie takes place in the liberal mecca of San Francisco, it would make more sense for them to dispense with all the needless subterfuge and simply put their sexual overtime on their time cards.

Rounding out The Towering Inferno's parade of potentially soon-to-be-incinerated stars is the equally-innocuous Robert Vaughn (far right) as a local senator. And, balancing a tower of her own, Irwin Allen's paramour of 14 years (and soon to be Mrs. Allen), actress Sheila Mathews, as the mayor's way-too-many-close-ups-for-the-size-of-her-role wife.

Did I mention there are also children and a cat? Yes, children and animals are as inevitable in disaster movies as Oscar-bait theme songs (this film's "We May Never Love Like This Again" actually hooked the prize). As the ubiquitous pet in need of rescue, we have Elke, the cat. And as what appear to be the only children in the entire building, there's Bobby Brady (Mike Lookinland) and a little girl who frequently has trouble not looking directly into the camera lens (Carlena Gower). 

(As a side note, I have to say I'm personally indebted to that little camera-staring girl. Had Jennifer Jones not been required to hoist that tyke around on her hip in take after take for weeks upon end, the late Miss Jones wouldn't have developed the chronic lower back problems that necessitated her seeking out my services as a personal trainer in the '90s. Jones' back ultimately improved, and I got the opportunity to briefly know one of my favorite movie stars. So…thanks, kid!)

Once the cast and conflicts are assembled—honorable mention going to the two buddy cops and Carlos, the bartender who never takes a break (Sanford & Sons' Gregory Sierra)—it's just a matter of rolling out the catastrophes and conflagrations. Something The Towering Inferno manages rather spectacularly and as regularly as clockwork.

The bulk of The Towering Inferno is comprised of variations on the following:

1. Hey! There's a fire!

2. Deny, deny, deny.

3. Get those people outta there!

4. No, not that way!
5. Boom!

6. Is it me, or is it really hot in here?

7. Climb, climb, climb!

8. Whoops! There goes the stairwell/elevator/helicopter/breeches buoy.
9. Faye Dunaway consoling terrified guests (i.e., extras) by ensuring their heads are turned well away and not sharing any of her close-ups. 

"There, there...I won't let that nasty old cameraman get at you." 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

"For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like." 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie 

Amended: If you like disaster movies, The Towering Inferno is one of the best examples of the genre you're likely to find. Thank you, Miss Brodie.

If asked to pick the disaster movie I get the biggest kick out of, The Poseidon Adventure gets my vote for pure entertainment and camp value—it's like the Valley of the Dolls of disaster films. But when it comes to genuine drama, breathtaking stunts, spectacular effects, and the kind of larger-than-life scale that makes you feel like a kid oohing and ahhing over the sheer magnitude of the undertaking; The Towering Inferno really delivers the goods. 

Seeing it now, it's a good deal talkier, tin-eared, and over-infatuated with the detailed minutiae of firefighting than I remembered, but its clear-cut objective is so simple there's almost a purity to it. It simply wants to be one of the biggest, most exciting, star-studded, thrill-a-minute adventure spectacles ever committed to film. And it succeeds!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

In the cynical, serious, nihilistic, and downright bizarre atmosphere of New Hollywood '70s cinema, you have no idea what a breath of fresh air these mindless disaster movies were. They were Hollywood at its most formulaic and old-fashioned, and that's precisely what I loved about them. 

Being a San Francisco kid (teen, actually), I was especially excited about the release of The Towering Inferno because news of its production came out about a year after the completion of the controversial Transamerica Pyramid, then, at 48 stories, the tallest building in the city. 

The San Francisco skyline was changing—The Embarcadero also had a 45-story high-rise and more were on the way—and there was great concern as to the soundness of so many tall buildings in a city as earthquake-prone as S.F. (I remember a local radio station promoted itself with the slogan "The city that waits to die listens to...." Yikes! That always bothered the hell out of me).

Like many films that achieve success by striking just the right chord of anxiety at just the right time, The Towering Inferno had the feel of immediacy about it. A feeling I latched onto and ran with.

I was so taken with this movie I made a point of making sure I'd read BOTH novels before the film came out; I tacked up homemade posters promoting the movie on the bulletin board in my high school's library; I bought every movie magazine that had even the most minor article or photo about it: and when I walked home from school, I always chose the route that took me by the movie theater with the advance posters and lobby cards on display.

McQueen and Newman on the phone with their agents,
making sure the other hasn't got more lines of dialogue or better billing 

The Towering Inferno had its West Coast premiere at San Francisco's Alexandria Theater on Thursday, December 19th, and a friend and I desperately wanted to go to gawk from the sidelines (Lights! Music! Stars! Celebrities! Television! Radio!), but that idea was nixed by our parents. We eventually saw The Towering Inferno during its opening weekend and were absolutely floored. Even then, there was no mistaking it for a great film or anything, but it was one of those eye-popping "event" movie experiences I'll never forget. I saw the film at least four times over that Christmas holiday, and for many years after, I kept the souvenir program I'd purchased at the first screening.

PERFORMANCES
When people get prickly over criticism of their favorite disaster movies, a typical defense is that no one goes to these movies to see great acting. Well, that's not altogether true. You may not go expecting Sarah Bernhardt-level emoting, but you do rely on a certain level of competent credibility in the performances to heighten the experience and draw you into the narrative. In the same way that believable stunts and convincing special effects enhance a film's thrill, actors capable of making sketchily drawn characters seem real enough to care about are invaluable assets. If you don't think so, take a look at Irwin Allen's The Swarm sometime.

For my money, Faye Dunaway stands out as the most overqualified for her role, Steve McQueen the most compelling, and Paul Newman is just a pleasure to look at...period. But by and large, I think everyone in the film acquits themselves nicely, with Academy Award-nominated Fred Astaire being a sentimental favorite.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
As big a fan of the genre as I was in the '70s, disaster movies hold a curious place for me now. When I'm not enjoying them purely for their camp and/or nostalgia value, I'm struck by how quickly they went from being entertaining action/adventure films to being these somewhat morbid "body count" spectacles. Latter films in the played-out genre seemed to exist solely to showcase the means, methods, and number of elaborately-staged deaths. 

On a purely personal, subjective note, one of my favorite things about The Towering Inferno is its setting. The tower itself is genuinely impressive, what with all those flames shooting out of it at dazzlingly photogenic angles. And the interior decor is so hideous, it's actually something of a pleasure to see it all go up in flames. The glam fan in me loves that this high-rise catastrophe takes place during a ritzy formal function. The result: the film is a virtual symphony of billowing chiffon, feather boas, clunky platform disco shoes, and towering hair sculptures.

Given a nothing role, Faye Dunaway and her legendary bone structure (and that
amazing dress) still effortlessly managed to upstage everything else

From a film buff's perspective, it's also a great deal of fun seeing if you catch and count which stars in the film have worked with each other in the past (hint: Love is a Many Splendored Thing) or would again in the future (hint: Airport '79).
The Towering Inferno endures for me as the last of the genre to be sincere enough to play it straight, take itself reasonably seriously, and attempt to balance human drama with spectacular action.

Clip from "The Towering Inferno"  1974

BONUS MATERIAL

The Towering Inferno - 1974

Angel, Angel, Down We Go -1969

A regular reader of this blog (Thanks, Wille!) brought to my attention that the gown Jennifer Jones wears in The Towering Inferno (top image) bears a resemblance to an outfit she wears in 1969's Angel, Angel, Down We Go (bottom image). Jones' Towering Inferno gown was designed by longtime Irwin Allen costume designer Paul Zastupnevich. The outfit she wears in the lower photo is actually an evening pantsuit with a tunic top designed by five-time Oscar-nominated costume designer Renie (pronounced Renay... wouldn't you know it?). You can see costume sketches for The Towering Inferno by clicking on the link to The Irwin Allen News Network below.

The internet offers a wealth of sources for those interested in reading about the production, the rivalries, and all manner of behind-the-scenes trivia regarding The Towering Inferno.

The Towering Inferno Archive
The Irwin Allen News Network

Gossip: Paul Newman Meets Steve McQueen

Poseidon's Underworld: The Towering Inferno

The film was so popular that a student drew from it
 for audition material in Alan Parker's Fame (1980)

Burn, Baby, Burn
Gotta love that this movie inspired the 1976 disco classic Disco Inferno by The Trammps

Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 20016