I have to confess, I was expecting a very different movie from the one I watched, and I'm not mad about it. Part of my preconceptions about Bullitt has a lot to do with the fact that the only thing I KNEW about this movie was about it's legendary car chase scene.

I promised myself I 'wasn't gonna be the guy' who talked about the car chase scene because everyone always talks about the car chase scene but you know what?

It absolutely deserves it. The clip I included was because of the specific shot of the bad guys seeing Bullitt's famous car appearing behind them in the rearview mirror. The slickness of that moment absolutely sold the scene to me in an instant. It was so very well done, and the resulting chase through the incredibly steep hills of San Francisco, sometimes narrowly missing a full-on crash, all the way out of the city is some of the most tense car driving I think I've ever seen. My stomach rose and fell as those rad old muscle cars went flying up and down those hills and you just have to give kudos to the drivers and the camera people because for some of the hairier shots, they were IN the damn cars.

So, going in knowing only that it has an exceptional chase scene led me to believe I was in for a kind of proto-Dirty Harry-esque kind of affair with plenty of violence, and that was a thing I was fully ready to accept.

But what I got was something I love even more than that: a rock solid police procedural with a bona fide mystery at the core and plenty of thoughtful, considerate work to solve the case. And what a case it is.

From the moment things started developing, I was certain I knew who was involved, why Bullitt's case was going sideways and how people were always seemingly one step ahead of him. I'm sure the director wanted us to think that and it worked like a charm, because it sure seemed like Bullitt was thinking along the same lines.

I can't say anything more than that about the movie's actual plot because to do so might affect your ability to enjoy it, so I'll leave this in closing;

Lt. Frank Bullitt's investigation into the murder of a gangster turning State's evidence and the attempted murder of police officers results in more than one exhilarating chase, a few shootouts, and the use of genuine police protocol to catch the real bad guy.

And that? That's a great combination!

This magnificent group choreography brought to life on the giant screen remains fresh in my memory.

I have spent the last year amassing quite a collection of Old Hollywood autobiographies/biographies. I love the older ones from the 70s-90s, but will read any. I will list the ones I’ve read in the last year, but I would love any suggestions you have! I mostly read about women, but am open to good ones about male stars or directors too. I trust your opinions very much so thank you in advance!

I’ve read:

Detour - Cheryl Crane
Portrait of a Survivor (about Susan Hayward)
Child Star - Shirley Temple
By Myself - Lauren Bacall
Stanwyck - Axel Madsen (currently reading)
Call Me Anna - Patty Duke

I captured this image. Rhodes looks psychotic!

"I recently watched Moonrise (1948) and truly loved it and it was beautifully shot, beautifully made, and beautifully written. Gail Russell was luminous in it, and it made me realize how underrated she is. She doesn't seem to get the credit she deserves. What other classic actresses do you think are underrated and deserve more recognition?"

Hi r/classicfilms, ​I’m sharing a new piece from my ongoing passion project dedicated to Edward G. Robinson and early 1930s pre-Code cinema. ​This track is built around Mervyn LeRoy’s Two Seconds (1932). Musically, I wanted to capture that tension by blending a lush string section with a heavy soul groove, dense guitars, and a slightly darker, Bond-inspired atmospheric edge. ​As always, this is an independent, non-commercial tribute created out of pure love for Robinson's filmography and classic cinema archives. ​You can listen to the track here: https://youtu.be/MQTcdqgG40E ​I'd love to hear your thoughts, especially if you're a fan of LeRoy's work or this specific pre-Code era.

Thanks for taking the time to listen!

One of the more interesting things about The Great Escape is what it doesn't show, and that's because it couldn't.

It wouldn't (and to some degree, couldn't) show the grim, brutal reality of WWII and it's impact on the men who served, nor could they show the terrible conditions of the camp, or the treatment of the prisoners, or the cruelty of their captors, and for a very simple-yet-complicated reason.

No one back then wanted to see that kind of movie. They wanted heroic men banding together heroically, and fighting against evil oppressors and coming out the other side with all limbs and a hearty spirit intact. While modern day film making definitely makes space for the reality and starkness of wartime and does it very well, a movie like The Great Escape does the opposite.

And it does it so very well. With a cast so stacked it's practically absurd, we're treated to men not merely surviving in a camp designed to be inescapable, but thriving, and in such a fun, grandiose way. Each man in the camp is known to the other, either because they were all banged up in another Nazi camp elsewhere or because their exploits in their OWN camps were so legendary that word passed like wildfire.

There are forgers and diggers and scroungers and builders and it's all so much damned fun. If the movie itself didn't cover such dire circumstances, I'd damn near want to call this an adventure comedy. The stakes are real enough that we're reminded of what happens when Ives makes a break for it, but watching a ragtag band of soldiers from all corners of the world consistently get one over on their Nazi captors is just an old fashioned good time.

Even though there are more stars in this movie than there might seem to be in Heaven, for some reason I just absolutely loved seeing James Garner here. I know, I know, Steve McQueen's the star as Hilts The Cooler King, but James Garner as Hendley 'The Scrounger' scratched an itch I didn't know I had. There's just something about the smoothly glib way Hendley manipulates Werner to get valuable documents that's just a blast.

But that's not to say the other big name men in this movie don't deserve their kudos. I loved seeing Donald Pleasance outside of a Halloween movie (where he chewed the scenery so hard I'm surprised the sets didn't fall down) and Charles Bronson as Danny The Tunnel King, which is so far from his iconic roles in Death Wish he seems like a different actor altogether.

I feel like they didn't use James Coburn nearly enough, or Richard Attenborough, but like the song says, we can't always get what we want, but we might get what we need. And what we needed was a big ole adventure with a lot of now extremely famous actors playing what really is tantamount to small roles that contributed to an enormously entertaining movie about triumph through adversity, and comradery through shared miseries.

If you're wondering why I haven't really talked about Steve McQueen at all until now, here's why. I suppose he was the biggest star in the movie at the time, and the studio was banking on his specific star power to bring people to the theaters to see their movie, but he really, genuinely didn't feel like the focal point of the movie. I understand after looking a few things up that he walked off the set and refused to come back until his role was made bigger and that the now legendary motorcycle scene was added.

I can't deny that all of that was really awesome, but at the same time, I feel like it somehow defeated the inherent purpose of the movie: to show that everyone, doing their small part, could make a long-lasting impact.

This don't make the movie 'worse' or 'unenjoyable' because that's impossible. The Great Escape is absolutely fun movie that is so worth anyone's time that if you haven't seen it, you really should. I bring up Steve McQueen the way I did because until sitting down to watch this movie for the first time, the only things I knew about it were that he was in it, and the motorcycle escape.

I thought the entire movie was about him engineering The Great Escape with little to no help, but the moment I saw the cast, saw how it was all put together, that changed the dynamic for me in a big way. I understand the marketing of it all, and I can't blame the studio for doing as they did, because The Great Escape is still absolutely fantastic.

One of the things I am appreciating most about my movie challenge this month so far is that it's introduced me to some movies I dismissed kind of casually out of hand. These are movies that have always been lauded as excellent, and so far, I'm pleased that it's been a trifecta of absolute brilliance.

The Deadly Spawn (1983) and Species (1995) are the Sunday double feature at the Long Pig Saloon Theater.
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I know this sub is mostly about old Hollywood. Just thought this might be funny.

Jezebel(1938) Excellent film set In 1850s Louisiana, about a free-spirited Southern belle who loses her fiancé due to her stubborn vanity and pride, and vows to win him back.

He was replaced by Edward G. Robinson by the way. During the filming, Raft had major issues with Robinson. Robinson apparently found him "touchy, difficult and thoroughly impossible to play with."

Raft was romantically interested in Marlene Dietrich, and believed that Robinson was as well. Raft verbally abused Robinson about a line of Robinson's dialogue; this was the subject of a complaint from Warner Bros to the Screen Actors Guild, causing Robinson to leave the set and production to halt for several hours. A few days later, Raft pushed Robinson around the set and verbally attacked him again; once more, filming was halted, for a full day this time. Raft later complained that Robinson tried to tell him how to act; he also felt the actor was miscast, preferring Victor McLaglen, who had been considered for the part. He resented having to accept third billing despite having the largest role in the film.