I’m not a big fan of the moment early in the film where Barry Newman’s Kowalski drives past himself in a different car and disappears into thin air (“Holy crap! He just vanished! THAT MUST BE THE VANISHING POINT!”) and in 2010 it’s hard to consider Cleavon Little’s telepathic disc jockey as anything other than a magical negro character. But otherwise, Vanishing Point is damn near perfect, an ideal blend of badass car chases and existential angst.
Driving from Denver to San Francisco to deliver a 1970 Dodge Challenger under a self-imposed and completely impossible deadline, a bleary-eyed, reckless man known only as Kowalski pesters police, meets a girl who rides a motorcycle totally naked (ouch), receives advice through his radio from DJ Super Soul (Little), and flashes back to painful memories from a lifetime of disappointment. Like the film, which begins mere moments before the chronological end of the story and spends the rest of its runtime in flashback, Kowalski lives in the past. Time has only enhanced the film’s elegiac tone. The film itself was already about mourning the end of the mythic American West and the death of idealism. Now it also seems to mark the passing of an era when car chase movies were allowed to be poetic as well as visceral and featured real cars doing real maneuvers instead of relying solely on computer-generated imagery. As exciting as Vanishing Point is, to watch the movie today is to become Kowalski, to look into the past, and grow sad about what you find there.
5 responses
For a short look back you really nailed the essence of this film. It’s abstract, ethereal, and all the more revealing of how far we’ve (not) come in American cinema because of its resolve not to spell out The Ending.
As to Cleavon Little’s part, I can see how it would be almost impossible not to read it as you describe, but from the point of view of the times it didn’t come across that way. In fact — and I suspect this might be hard to believe — the codification of race in film has only devolved since the late 60’s and early 70’s, to the point that everyone’s PC roles are now clearly defined.
Finally, on the subject of car chases, you’re so right. I’m reminded of the stunt work in The Three Musketeers (with Michael York), and how it stood convention on its ear by trying to portray something more real and organic than a pulled punch to the nose. If you came at me with a sword I’d hit you with a chicken, too.
What about the speed? Kowalski was a speed freak (to use the period parlance) and his constant ingestion was key to the tenor of the film.
I love that Three Musketeers. Completely entertaining and witty. Michael York is at the height of his beauty…so is Dunaway. I remember Leonard Maltin saying “Raquel Welch’s finest hour” or something to that effect. Hilarious.
Also love Oliver Reed, even more so in Four Musketeers. Richard Lester doesn’t shy away from the dark side. Some day I’ll think through all the gender politics. There’s something I can’t get my head around.
ps
beyond the obvious good girl/bad girl, I mean
re: andrew d.
I don’t think “speed freak” is accurate. he needs it to get through this job and win his bet but the script is at pains to let you know that it’s not really his thing. when the biker offers him a jumbo bottle he scoffs and says he can’t use that much. biker urges him to take what he needs and Kowalski takes like, two more.
I’m on board with everything Matt Singer says. But I don’t think that amphetamines set the tenor or tone. I like the way that the movie takes its time. Watched it for first and only time on TV via Netflix/Roku and after Singer’s column I really want to see it on a big screen, with loud audio. It would be a sad/hypnotic/awesome experience.
Acting aside, it’s also hard not to stress how beautiful Gilda Texter is as “Nude Rider,” the girl on the motorcycle who offers herself to Kowalski. At first you think she’s just that kind of 70’s biker mama, but in a ludicrous plot twist she happens to be coincidentally obsessed with him as some kind of folk legend from his old hero-cop exploits.
Somehow this is forgivable, just like the “vanishing” moment, or the way that the subject of racist violence is raised, then sloppily discarded.
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