"The bloodthirsty redneck Texans as demonic alien creatures. The story winds itself into a tense and violent thriller .
A story determined to sell the notion that America is Evil. From the bottom up and the top down, the citizens of this ugly (Texas) place are an encyclopedia of sin. The local businessmen prepare a wild night for the dentists' convention. The Rogers clan packs off their unhappy migrant workers with cheap used televisions instead of expected pay. Val Rogers' lavish barbecue soaks the ugly rich for millions for a new college carrying his name. Val is beside himself with anxiety because his unhappy son Jake's marriage is a sham put on for appearances' sake.
Uninvited, Rogers' bank employees hold their own drunken Saturday night bash. Bored businessmen Richard Bradford, Clifton James (David and Lisa, Live and Let Die) and Steve Ihnat pack guns and lust after the teenage girls at the party next door. Mascara runs down the face of drunken housewife Martha Hyer - her husband's carrying on with somebody else's wife right in front of her. Nobody even tries to conceal the rampant adultery.
Meanwhile, Jane Fonda waits for her rich boyfriend over in the bad part of town, while an obnoxious real estate salesman and his wife (Henry Hull and Jocelyn Brando) provide a nosy Greek chorus to all the commandment-breaking that's going on.
The main conflict for Marlon Brando's Sheriff Calder is trying to hold onto his dignity while serving as Val Rogers' appointed sheriff. The resentment grows when Calder and his wife Ruby (Angie Dickinson, in fine form) are invited to the swank party. Calder keeps telling himself that he's just a man with a job trying to earn back the farm he lost (shades of The Grapes of Wrath) and doesn't want any special favors. But like Marshall Kane in High Noon, he becomes one man alone against the entire community. Bubber Reeves, actually desperate and harmless, is taken as a threat by everyone. When push comes to shove, the upstanding citizens are the ones who attack the Sheriff and beat information out of a defenseless black man in his holding cell (Joel Fluellen). The rest of the townspeople gawk idly as Calder collapses on his own jailhouse steps while his wife begs for help. Penn isolates their wanton faces.
The symbolism comes on thick and fast in an automobile junkyard, the last outpost of the American Dream. The town's three parties converge there in a mix of posse, lynch mob and midnight picnic. The illusion of a dangerous Bubber Reeves incites a storm of emotions and sexual energy - a teenage girl dares her boyfriend to prove his love by retrieving his ring from a fire, and the local brat kid (Paul Williams - that Paul Williams, I think) composes a song for Bubber on the spot. The burning garbage and car wrecks scream an all-too obvious message: Society is boiling in its own consumer evils.
Not only does Robert Redford resemble a Kennedy, but there's an appalling ending scene (Spoiler! Next Paragraph! I warned you!) ...
... an appalling ending scene where a man is shot in a faithful recreation of the Lee Harvey Oswald mob hit. The handcuffed victim is helpless, and the result is as bloody as all get-out. In '65-'66 movie violence was accelerating to express the madness in the American culture (wars, riots, assassinations). The Chase is probably too quick in its judgment, indicting the nation and the South in particular as lawless scum not worthy of their own flag. Few Americans recognized Horton Foote and Lillian Hellman's small-town sewer as an accurate representation."
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1124chase.html1966 Film "The Chase". (On DVD)
Technicolor
Marlon Brando
Robert Redford
Angie Dickinson
Jane Fonda
Robert Duvall
Directed by
Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde, Alice's Restaurant, Little Big Man, etc.)
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