Ah, the good old Kuleshov effect. Fred Astaire in The Towering Inferno.
The new Fox Blu-ray of this quite 1974 magnificent kitsch fest is a very lovely thing indeed. For me, it's not so much about the action, but about the clothes, the interiors, and the what-the-hell-am-I-doing here performances of the entire all-star cast, save of course for O.J. Simpson, who really does try to sell it. To those who still despise this film, I remind them—without it, we wouldn't have Johnny Nucleo.
UPDATE: Boy, that O.J. SImpson used to be such a nice fella. Whaddya think happened?
Also: Kittie!
What does it mean, I wonder, that we both have Astaire at the top of our blogs?
What’s to despise? Robert Wagner wraps his head in a wet towel, says I’ll be right back, and promptly bursts into flames. Do the people who despise this movie also despise life itself?
@ The Siren: Some kind of harmonic convergence, no doubt!
@ bill: Agreed. Another fabulous thing about the film is that it goes on FOR EVER. It’s the “Jeanne Dielman” of disaster pictures!
Glenn: Kitch fest, indeed. But all worth it, for me, for the moment in the end when McQueen utters the only swear word in the film. A perfectly executed moment.
Also … Jaws didn’t make me afraid of the water, Birds didn’t make me afraid of feathers, but I’m still not crazy about glass elevators in tall buildings … especially ones with external views.
@Glenn, I was so mesmerized by Astaire that I forgot to agree with you. This movie is the summit of the 1970s disaster flick, a tower indeed I tell you. I have wondered, however, how it plays since about 9/12/01.
Where’re all the comments at?
This is nitpickery, but this shot is of a model, not a matte painting, right?
Bill: and after that, Wagner’s girlfriend stumbles out of the room after him, promptly trips and catches fire, and plummets out the window screaming “BYAHAHAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”
Actually, as all-star movies from 1974 go, I prefer “Murder on the Orient Express.” (Yeah, I know it’s hard to justify it taking the fifth Best Picture slot over “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” or “A Woman Under the Influence” or “Scenes from a Marriage,” which the Academy might have nominated had it not been deemed ineligible, but…)
Not only 2 hours of big screen entertainment, the film also provided me (and Gordon Willis) with the 1974 WTF moment of the year:
The 47th Academy Award nominees for Best Cinematography
Chinatown — John A. Alonzo
Earthquake — Philip Lathrop
Lenny — Bruce Surtees
Murder on the Orient Express — Geoffrey Unsworth
The Towering Inferno — Fred Koenekamp, Joseph Biroc
And the Oscar goes to:
The Towering Inferno — Fred Koenekamp, Joseph Biroc
@bill: Yes, weird that the comments blacked out for a bit. Seem to be normal now…
@ The Siren: I don’t think the picture really gains any resonance apropos the real-life future correspondences. After all, the circumstances are wildly different. And the thing about the film is that it’s really nothing more than an elaborate celebrity death pool, as Bill implied. Particularly amusing is the ruthless alacrity with which it does its filthy work. (Warning: Spoiler follows.) I particularly like the SNAP! of the elevator cable, and then it’s goodbye to poor Jennifer Jones with nary a fare-thee-well. Cruel and unfair.
@ Jeff McM: Interesting point. Obviously there’s a model in quite a few of the shots, but in this particular sequence I think it could go either way. I lean toward painting because of the very fixed “lighting.”
No to mention that Inferno also won the Editing Oscar, and the Sound Oscar went to Earthquake. Over Chinatown and The Conversation! It might be the most respectable lineup of nominations and winners in Oscar history providing you can somehow ignore those bursts of insanity.
And does anyone like Juggernaut? Or is a little too respectable to qualify as competition with its American counterparts in the disaster flick genre?
“Juggernaut” is frickin’ great. A real how-it-should-be-done suspense/disaster picture. It mops up the floor with pretty much everything else in the category, which, as you imply, is its whole problem.
Count me on board. I fell in love with Shirley Knight on this picture (as well as Richard Lester’s 1968 masterpiece “Petulia”).
“And the thing about the film is that it’s really nothing more than an elaborate celebrity death pool…”
These films are fascinating because you really have to wonder about the mentality of the filmmakers. Just think about it. We’re supposed to be entertained by people being burned, people falling to their deaths and people falling to their deaths while on fire. It’s so sick that the only reaction is to laugh at it.
You also have to marvel at the timing to rope in actors like Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, William Holden, Faye Dunaway and Fred Astaire apparently when all of them needed to buy new houses.
Didnt remmber that”inferno” won as Oscar. THere was such a glut of these disaster movies in that era. My personal favorite is Poseidon Adventure. Back in 1973, my father got HBO when it first came out and they showed 1 or 2 movies all week. Over and over and over. Poseidon Adventure was one of them. Love Gene Hackman as the tough guy priest.
SPOILER WARNING:
Glenn, Jennifer Jones’ fate seems particularly unfair considering she’s really put through the wringer in other scenes, narrowly escaping death a couple of times. That SNAP! you mention really threw me for a loop. At least she didn’t land on top of poor old Fred.
I am a softy, but the moment with Fred, OJ and the cat is rather touching.
SPOILER
What I always remember is Jennifer managing to shove the child she’s holding at someone else just before she falls.
SPOILER
I agree with Diane. I always found 1972’s “The Poseidon Adventure” the most fun of the disaster series. As far as 1974 (with regards to the disaster film craze), how did any of us keep up with these release dates?
Juggernaut released Sept.24th 1974
Airport 75 released Oct 18th 1974
Earthquake released Nov. 15th 1974
The Towering Inferno released Dec. 14th 1974
Only nominally a disaster flick (a blimp SPOILER with bombs on it almost crashes into the Super Bowl! END SPOILER), but “Black Sunday” sort of ran together with all the others for me at the time. Remember enjoying it quite a bit when I saw it maybe 10 years ago.
You know, there was an absolutely fabulous made-for-TV detective movie with OJ as the gumshoe and Elizabeth Montgomery as the damsel in distress…forget the name, but the long and short is, there’s like probably NO chance it will ever be released on DVD for obvious reasons.
Probably a good thing — I for one can’t watch the Naked Gun movies because of Juice — but its still a shame. A really well done, affecting romantic thriller if memory serves. And the stars had genuine chemistry…
My bad — OJ and Elizabeth Montgomery were BOTH cops and it was called A Killing Affair, from 1977. The interracial romance caused some controversy at the time, apparently.
There’s several chunks from it on YouTube as it turns out, YouTube being our contemporary equivalent of the Library at Alexandria.
What I wanna know is, where’s our DVD of THAT’S ARMAGEDDON!
I mean, I was scared shitless by that movie!
And the Architect said the building was unsafe! WHY DIDN’T THEY LISTEN TO THE ARCHITECT? And Donald Sutherland gave one of his finest performances.
Disaster movies like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure and Earthquake really bring back childhood memories!!! My friends and I thought the sensurround of Earthquake and Midway was so cool! As a kid The Poseidon Adventure was always one of our favorites. We used to hang upside down from the monkey bars or reenact the final Gene Hackman scene where he shut off the valve only to plunge to his death. Ah the good times of childhood…
@David..love your monkey bar Posidon Advenure game. That is the best scene in the movie. All we did as kids was pretend we were Maureen Mcgovern and sing The Morning After,,over and over again.
On a somewhat related note, I just saw “Guns at Batasi”, a film John Guillermin made ten years before “Towering Inferno”. Even if one quibbles with the politics, it’s one of Guillermin’s more interesting films visually with what appear to be a good number of traveling shots done with a crab dolly, camera tilted up at the characters. Maybe the credit should go to cinematographer Douglas Slocombe.
@Campaspe – That really made me laugh.
The Towering Inferno is a wonderful B-movie.From the moment John Williams’ score comes on against the shots of the helicopter flying towards San Francisco i’m hooked.
The fact that it won the Best Film Oscar is a wonderful lunacy. Though having said that it’s certainly a much better film than Chicago and Crash.
@ markj – Towering Inferno didn’t win Best Picture (it won Cinematography, Editing, Song). Godfather Part II won Best Picture in 1974.
@ Pete A.: Well, thank God SOME people were using their heads, no?
@Glenn – Hey, any movie where the poster has a bunch of heads along the bottom is all right in my book. 😉
http://www.impawards.com/1972/poseidon_adventure_ver2.html
http://www.impawards.com/1978/swarm_ver3.html
http://www.impawards.com/1979/meteor.html
http://www.impawards.com/1976/midway.html
http://www.impawards.com/1979/concorde_airport_seventy_nine.html
@Pete A: What a spectacular faux pas… I expect Glenn to rightfully ban me from his blog!