From Our Vaults:
Small-Town Melodrama as Political Allegory–Comparison with the 1952 Oscar Winner High Noon
Grim Finale
In the last sequence, a group of vigilantes demand action from sheriff Calder. When he defies them, they beat him brutally before his loyal wife Ruby (Angie Dickinson) gets to his side.
Bubber (Redford) sneaks into town, hiding in an auto junkyard. Anna and Jake willingly set out to help him. Soon, the whole townspeople follow, turning the event into a drunken revelry and setting the junkyard on fire, causing an explosion which mortally wounds Jake.
A bloodied beaten Calder gets to Bubber first, but while he is leading him up the steps into the jail, one of the vigilantes, Archie (Steve Ihnat), shoots Bubber with gun hidden in his coat pocket.
Similarly to Will Kane (Gary Cooper), the hero of Fred Zinnemann’s Oscar-winning High Noon, at the end of The Chase, Sheriff Calder (Marlon Brando) leaves town with disgust and contempt.
There’s a difference, however.
In High Noon, viewers were assured that Kane and his wife would settle down somewhere and live peacefully, whereas sheriff Calder and Ruby drive out of town lacking any idea of destination or future. Though he begins as a representative of the law, Calder becomes at the end an outsider, literally and figuratively.
Also like High Noon, which nominally is a Western but works much better as a political allegory about McCarthyism, the Texas town in The Chase represents a microcosm of American society circa 1966.
Every character represents a recognizable social stratum, and the tensions reflect conflicts among distinct social groups: Parents versus children, legitimate authority versus crime, blacks versus white, rich versus poor, men versus women, dominant culture versus subversive counterculture. Though using narrative conventions and screen types that are familiar from several small-town classics, The Chase is innovative in several respects. The film acknowledges the sexual revolution, a term that’s explicitly used in the text. “Do you believe in the sexual revolution” Emily asks Rogers.
As the critic Robin Wood pointed out, the film provides different models of sexual arrangements (monogamy, adultery, triangles). Through the character of Anna (Jane Fonda), the film sends signals about a new, liberated type of a woman in American society.
Made a year before The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde (both in 1967), The Chase acknowledges the prevalence of a generation gap (alongside with class divisions), while conveying the decreasing effectiveness of the legal authority in handling crime and violence.
Sick of the town and its people, Calder and Ruby leave town the next morning.
The film deals with excessive immorality and vice such as racism: There are scenes in which black men are harassed by white men.
The sexual revolution is acknowledged, too. Many of the characters are openly engaged in affairs.
There’s also small-town corruption–the sheriff is falsely assumed to be in the pocket of the man who helped appoint him).
Perhaps worst of all is the theme of vigilantism, taking the law into one’s hands. The townspeople who openly defy the sheriff in their search for Bubber. The movie is perhaps best known for a scene in which the sheriff, played by Marlon Brando, is brutally beaten by Richard Bradford, one of the three vigilantes.
Faye Dunaway auditioned for the film, but Jane Fonda was cast in the role of Anna Reeves. Following this, Arthur Penn tested Dunaway and cast her for his 1967 film, Bonnie and Clyde.
In an interview years later, Arthur Penn himself expressed his dissatisfaction: “Everything in that film was a letdown, and I’m sure every director has gone through the same experience at least once. It’s a shame because it could have been a great film.”
Cast
Marlon Brando as Sheriff Calder
Jane Fonda as Anna Reeves
Robert Redford as Charlie “Bubber” Reeves
E.G. Marshall as Val Rogers
Angie Dickinson as Ruby Calder
Janice Rule as Emily Stewart
Miriam Hopkins as Mrs. Reeves
Martha Hyer as Mary Fuller
Richard Bradford as Damon Fuller
Robert Duvall as Edwin Stewart
James Fox as Jason “Jake” Rogers
Diana Hyland as Elizabeth Rogers
Henry Hull as Briggs
Jocelyn Brando as Mrs. Briggs
Bruce Cabot as Sol
Katherine Walsh as Verna Dee
Lori Martin as Cutie
Marc Seaton as Paul (as Marc Skaton)
Paul Williams as Seymour
Clifton James as Lem
Malcolm Atterbury as Mr. Reeves
Steve Ihnat as Archie
Joel Fluellen as Lester Johnson
Ken Renard as Sam
Eduardo Ciannelli as inarticulate party guest (uncredited)
Credits:
Directed by Arthur Penn
Screenplay by Lillian Hellman, based on The Chase, 1952 play and 1956 novel by Horton Foote
Produced by Sam Spiegel
Cinematography Joseph LaShelle
Robert Surtees (uncredited)
Edited by Gene Milford
Music by John Barry
Color process Technicolor
Production company: Horizon Pictures
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date: February 18, 1966
Running time 134 minutes
Box office $2.3 million (est. U.S./Canada rentals)
