Film: The Chase Is Over

When thinking about the great films of John Frankenheimer, who passed away on July 6, many people immediately recall The Manchurian Candidate. It’s not difficult to see why. Not only was it deliriously exciting, but it was one of the first films to directly challenge the McCarthy era. I suppose you could make a case for Johnny Guitar or even The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with its respective coerced confessions and themes of conformity, but these were merely allegorical.

The first movie in Frankenheimer’s “paranoiac” trilogy, The Manchurian Candidate scathingly criticized fear-peddling, a practice that continues in government to this day. But it also featured moments of unparalleled inventiveness. Early in the film, we witness the conspiracy unfold from the point of view of the brainwashed soldiers. There was nothing more surreal than watching a group of Midwestern grandmothers talk about inserting subliminal codes that would activate an agent to kill. One of the most stunning moments in movie history is surely the climax when Laurence Harvey trains his gun on his manipulative mother at the last minute, finishing her off before turning it on himself.

The Manchurian Candidate was followed by the less effective Seven Days in May, but the third film, Seconds, was nothing short of sublime.

The best thrillers are the ones that raise more questions than they answer, and the implications of Seconds were as mind-boggling as they were numerous. A bored, middle-aged man is given the opportunity by a sinister organization to assume a new identity and young body (perfectly portrayed by Rock Hudson). He’s transplanted into a sexually liberated artist’s colony — presumably the private fantasy of every conservative male — but discovers his new life is no more substantial than his old one.

When he acknowledges the failure to the company, they sigh in disappointment, strap him to a gurney and commence recycling his flesh for the next available candidate. The suggestions here are staggering. Happiness can be imagined but never experienced? And as in any capitalist culture, it’s only a matter of time before an entrepreneur figures this out and uses it to reap gargantuan profits from clueless jerks.

As far as most critics are concerned, the 1960s were Frankenheimer’s most productive years. I disagree, although many of his movies during the ’70s and ’80s seem like paler imitations of his earlier work. It’s as if he lost his cunning and was reduced to borrowing from himself. Movies like Black Sunday and 52 Pick-Up were diverting but forgettable. The Nazi conspiracy plot in The Holcroft Covenant served only to remind moviegoers of The Train, a flawlessly paced 1964 action thriller with a wonderfully ambiguous villain played by Paul Scofield, a Nazi monster with an obsessive, anachronistic appreciation of art and beauty.

My favorite John Frankenheimer film was released in 1975: The French Connection II. I understand why most people laud the original, with its landmark car chases and gritty urban settings. But that film feels dated today. The French Connection II might be short on action, but it’s wonderful on exposition. Frankenheimer’s shining achievement is his depiction of boisterous, All-American Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) trying to hack it on the streets of Marseilles. He floats around the sidewalk like a homeless person looking for someone who speaks English. Doyle is swindled by cabdrivers and ridiculed by bartenders. The bad guys capture him and turn him into a junkie. When his fellow cops finally catch up to him, Doyle is rambling about baseball players and other favorite things from his faraway home.

Like many old directors who aren’t Steven Spielberg, Frankenheimer spent much of the last decade of his life in television purgatory. His career state was all the more unsettling because that’s where he started and received most of his training in the 1950s. TV dramas like Andersonville and George Wallace were far better than recent films like The Fourth War, Year of the Gun, The Island of Dr. Moreau and Reindeer Games.

Ronin, paying homage to the old-fashioned chase pictures of his prime, emerged as Frankenheimer’s last great film. The premise alone is enough to fill volumes of romantic mythology. The exquisite metaphor of the “ronin” — masterless Samurai in feudal Japan forced to sell their services to the highest bidder — is applied to a group of ex-CIA and KGB guys in post-Cold War Europe. These ex-spies are hired by a dubious employer to hijack a suitcase. Of course, its contents are never disclosed. This was the savviest action thriller in years. Despite its intricate plotting, Ronin never needed to lead audiences by the hand. And yes, it does have a damn fine car chase or two.

This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2002.