Born in
Chester in the UK, Paul Rowlands is a much respected friend of the Archive.
Today, Paul lives in Japan. As a lifelong fan of movies, Paul also enjoys
writing about them. In 2011 he created his own site Money into Light, a
wonderful place where you will find interviews with actors and actresses,
directors, screenwriters, producers, and many people connected to film and have
fascinating stories to tell. Do try and take the time to explore Money into
Light HERE, I think you’ll find it’s well worth the visit.
Some time
ago, Paul wrote a rather nice piece on Michael Cimino’s much loved masterpiece
which he has kindly permitted us to share as a part of our January celebration
of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Our kindest thanks Paul. I should also point out
that Paul’s essay does contain some spoilers; in the event that anyone has
still yet to see this remarkable film. Did I really just say that?
THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT (1974) is one of the most
interesting films Clint Eastwood made in the 1970’s; during a period when he
was at the peak of his stardom (he was the decade's top box-office draw). It
wasn't one of his biggest hits, and although it is in many ways a typical Clint
vehicle, in other ways it really broke new ground for him and anticipated the
critical respect his career has enjoyed since his Oscar-winning UNFORGIVEN
(1992).
The film is a 'buddy' picture, a road movie and a heist
thriller, a welding of three genres particularly popular during that era.
Eastwood stars as 'The Thunderbolt', a bank robber whose specialty is blowing
open safes with a 20mm cannon. When we first meet him, it's clear that this
picture is going to at least be a little different: Clint is wearing the dog
collar of a clergyman and addressing his clergy! The first shots of the movie,
the beautiful scenery of Montana, inform us that this isn't going to be an
urban thriller like COOGAN'S BLUFF (1968) or DIRTY HARRY (1971). When two thugs
suddenly burst into the church, shooting up the place in an attempt to kill
Clint, it's clear within five minutes that Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is going
to be an Eastwood action thriller like we are accustomed to, but also a little
more offbeat, humorous and panoramic.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is the directorial debut of
Michael Cimino, who went on to win an Oscar for directing the controversial THE
DEER HUNTER (1978). He would later be blamed for bankrupting United Artists
with the flop HEAVEN'S GATE (1980).
The original idea for the picture came from Cimino's agent
Stan Kamen at the William Morris Agency. Kamen suggested he write a script on
spec with Eastwood in mind. Upon reading the script, Eastwood was sufficiently
impressed to consider directing it himself, having been happy with Cimino's
work on MAGNUM FORCE (1973) and very interested in making a road movie (EASY
RIDER had been a huge success in 1969). Eventually, Eastwood decided to give
Cimino the director's chairs. It is clear Eastwood believed in Cimino's talent,
but it's also highly probable that one factor was that he would be able to
control him. Cimino later became famous for the number of takes he filmed, but
according to Jeff Bridges, Cimino had to ask Eastwood for permission if he went
over a few takes (but would allow it if Bridges wanted to try something
different), and according to first assistant director Charles Okun, Eastwood
would refuse to go over four takes and wouldn't stand for long set-up times.
(The year before, Ted Post and Eastwood had clashed over Eastwood calling the
shots too much.) Warner Brothers considered the film too offbeat for Eastwood,
and declined to finance the film. Eastwood (whose Malpaso Company would produce
the film) took the film to United Artists instead.
In the film, Eastwood flees his pursuers by accepting a lift
from a happy go lucky, con-man drifter named Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges). The
story now becomes a 'buddy' movie, in which the pair strike up an unlikely
friendship. 'Thunderbolt' is an ex-Korean War veteran, about ten years older
(in actuality nearly twenty!), a professional and a loner. Lightfoot is
charmingly cocky, carefree and energetic. 'Thunderbolt' is touched and amused
by his insistence on them becoming friends, and eventually brings him along on
his next caper, alongside two ex-colleagues (an angry George Kennedy and an
hilarious Geoffrey Lewis) who mistakenly believe Eastwood betrayed him on a
previous 'job' and stole the loot. Meanwhile, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
secretly plan to locate and grab the missing loot for themselves.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is an interesting film because it
delivers the entertainment we expect from an Eastwood vehicle, but there's
something off-kilter going on both in and under the text. In his first film,
Cimino exhibits mastery of tone. The picture's humour alternates between light
and breezy (particularly hilarious are Kennedy and Lewis's adventures in
suburbia as they get 'real jobs') and oddball. The scene involving the leads
getting a lift from a deranged hillbilly (Bill McKinney in his first of seven
Eastwood appearances - he's the guy who raped Ned Beatty in 1972's DELIVERANCE)
comes out of nowhere and is both hilarious and a little disturbing. The
hillbilly has an impressive car that attracts the hitch-hiking leads, but it
becomes quickly clear that all is not right with their driver: he keeps a caged
raccoon on the passenger seat and is going mad from the leaking carbon monoxide
fumes coming off the broken exhaust pipe (which he has broken on purpose). Eastwood
and Bridges are trapped in the back seat. Once they manage to get out of the
car, the guy opens his trunk to reveal numerous white rabbits. As they proceed
to escape, he starts shooting at them, before being overpowered by the mighty
fists of Eastwood. The scene is an important scene in the film not only because
it's an entertaining highlight, but also because it's a brilliant example of
how the film works on two levels. It works as a funny detour that could simply
exhibit Cimino's odd sense of humour, but it also works subtextually. It's
ambiguous enough to have many possible readings (certainly the dangers of 'the
road' or America itself that lurk below the surface is a persuasive one), but
it arguably is meant to foreshadow, and subliminally prepare us for, the
devastating ending where Jeff Bridges is kicked to death by George Kennedy and
has a slow death that Eastwood fails to notice until he slumps on the car seat.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is predominantly a 'male' film.
Women don't get too much of a look in the film, and the characters don't seem
too interested in the personalities of the women they meet, only their bodies
(note the woman who flashes her naked body to Bridges from the living room
window).
This may just be a convention of the 'buddy' movie, which some
commentators have decided is an anti-feminist genre anyway, but Cimino uses the
genre to go a little deeper. Eastwood's sex scene in the film has him appear
disinterested and embarrassed. Peter Biskind (the author of 'Easy Riders, Raging
Bulls', 1998) wrote a very interesting review upon the film's release,
believing the film to have 'frank and undisguised contempt for heterosexuality'
and 'occupy(ing) and exploit(ing) an area where homosexual and working class
attitudes towards women overlap'.
He goes on to say that 'the action becomes a
thinly disguised metaphor for the sexual tensions between the two principle
characters.' (Certainly there are not many things more phallic than a 20mm
cannon or a cigar, objects prominent on the many different posters used to
promote the film worldwide.)
One reading of the film is that Bridges' character is the
catalyst for change in the film. His relationships with Eastwood and George
Kennedy are very different but they share one quality: they are both attracted
to him. Eastwood and Kennedy's characters are both war veterans who have been
damaged or disillusioned by their experiences. In one shot we see that Eastwood
has been physically damaged by war: he is wearing a leg brace. In another scene
Eastwood pops his shoulder out, making the film one of the first examples where
he is allowed to appear vulnerable. Interestingly, Eastwood also had a damaged
leg in THE BEGUILED (1971). By the end of the film, Eastwood's notions of the
limits of male friendship have been proved wrong.
He has achieved a close
relationship with Bridges. Kennedy is a repressed man who cannot abide his
sexual attraction to Bridges, and when Bridges jokingly kisses him on the mouth
(literally giving him what he wants), Bridges fate is sealed. He will die for
bringing out into the open what Kennedy (and society?) wants to be sealed
forever. One could also see Bridges' death as representing the death of '60's
idealism. The energy and positivity of Bridges has real worth, but at the end of
the day, 'traditional' and 'straight' values will always prevail. Eastwood
returns to the familiar world he lives in at the end of the film, but he has
been forever been changed and his victory (reclaiming the loot he had stashed
away from a previous robbery) now seems hollow. America was changed forever by
the idealism of the '60's, but it couldn't and wouldn't be allowed to exist
forever.
Up until the aftermath of the heist (in which Bridges is
required to dress in drag), the film has maintained a balance of humour and
action, crossed with 'buddy' movie elements and the mountainous landscape of
Montana being almost a character in the film, courtesy of Frank Stanley's fine
widescreen camerawork. With the 'aftermath', the film unexpectedly (although we
have had the subliminal foreshadowing) shifts gears to become a tragedy. George
Kennedy kicks Bridges to death, and as the pair approach their victory and find
the stashed loot in a one-room schoolhouse, we the audience (and not Eastwood)
see that something is very wrong with Bridges' condition. It's unexpectedly heart-breaking,
being twinned with the moment of victory. Bridges' performance here is almost
certainly what won him the Best Supporting Actor nomination (the second of six
nominations). It's brilliant. First you see him get bothered, next worried,
then unnerved, and finally overcome by the paralysis creeping through his face
and body. It's one of the most memorable and moving bits of acting in cinema.
The scene also marks Cimino as a major director. We now realise that he has
subverted our expectations of what an Eastwood picture, a buddy movie or a
heist thriller should be. It doesn't feel like a trick or a betrayal because
subliminally we have been prepared, and we now realise that Cimino was playing
for keeps all along. The ending doesn't make us feel angry because it feels
right: life is light and breezy, sometimes oddball, sometimes exciting, is
defined by how close we get to people...but the spectre of death, of a reversal
of fortune, of fate, of the consequences of our actions, of being 'free' in a
'straight' society is always present even if we are too preoccupied to pay
notice to it.
Eastwood was unhappy with the $9m domestic gross of the film
(although it eventually recouped the $4m budget over six times in the US alone)
and blamed UA for weak promotion. He vowed he would 'never work for UA' again,
and cancelled a two-film deal he had signed with the studio. Some have
proffered that his anger was really due to the fact that he felt upstaged by Bridges
and/ or he felt he should have been pushed for an Oscar nomination as well.
Regardless of whether or not he should have been nominated (he should have
been), his performance is both subtle (one can see a flicker of sorrow on his
face when he drives off at the end with a dead Bridges beside him) and generous
one (he allows Bridges to shine and never tries to upstage him, and with
Kennedy and Lewis allowed their own space in the film, it's almost an ensemble
piece anyway). He and Bridges have good chemistry), which makes the film work.
They're a great match, the still, taciturn Eastwood and the ball of energy
Bridges. One is really convinced that the actors really liked each other (which
reading between the lines in interviews they almost certainly did). In fact,
Eastwood has rarely been as relaxed, as self-deprecating and as human as in his
scenes opposite Bridges. It's a shame they never collaborated again, and a
double shame because the great majority of Eastwood's future co-stars never
rose up to the challenge or had the chops to share the screen with him.
Bridges is simply a great actor who until recently, I’ve
considered to be the most underrated actor alive. He's one of the most likeable
actors ever too, and despite having the showier role, he is quite a subtle
actor himself. Lightfoot is a character who could easily become tiresome (he's
always 'on'), but he makes the character so 'alive' and in tune with himself
that he becomes the pulse and heart of the picture, making his death all the
more powerful. For once, we actually wonder whether Eastwood will be able to
cope with the loss of a loved one and maintain his loner mind-set.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, despite its cult status, deserves
even more recognition. It's deceptively light and breezy tone and status as an
Eastwood vehicle disguise the fact that there are more interesting things going
on underneath if you're willing to look. It's also the most consistent,
balanced and well-paced film Cimino has ever directed, and deserves to be
mentioned in the same breath as THE DEER HUNTER and HEAVEN'S GATE. It's so much
more than just a minor work from a director who went on to bigger and better
things.
NB. It's
interesting that Cimino was the only director given a break by Eastwood who
ever had a successful film afterwards. Even Cimino's success is limited to THE
DEER HUNTER. That said, HEAVEN'S GATE and YEAR OF THE DRAGON (1985) now have
their admirers (including me). James Fargo, Buddy Van Horn and Richard Tuggle
have all failed to capitalise on their time with Eastwood.
SOURCES:
'Clint: The
Life and Legend' by Patrick McGilligan (Harper Collins, 1999)
'Clint
Eastwood in the 1970s': Wikipedia entry
'Sexual
Politics in 'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot' by Peter Biskind, Jump Up no.4, 1974
'Thunderbolt
and Lightfoot' : Wikipedia entry
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