Vanishing Point (1971, DVD Review)
Director: Richard C. Sarafian
Cast: Barry Newman, Cleavon Little
Fox Home Entertainment / NTSC Region 1 / Rated R / 1.85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen / Audio Track 1: English, Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, Audio Track 2: English, Dolby Digital 1.0, Audio Track 3: Spanish, Dolby Digital 1.0, Audio Track 4: French, Dolby Digital 1.0 / Subtitles: English, Spanish / 99 minutes / BUY ON DVD or BLU-RAY FROM HKFLIX
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This is a well loved cult classic car chase movie idolized by Tarantino and mentioned at length during girl talk in his movie Death Proof. It deserves its cult status as it is undoubtedly cool and has a very laid back hero (with demons) pitching against police across state lines to reach his destination. Most of the critiques of this movie in mainstream don’t give it more than a two star rating, but it remains a classic loved by filmmakers and fans alike. Why the contradiction? Firstly, it lacks coherence: the reason the iconic hero Kowalski (played by Barry Newman) needs to make the journey from Denver to San Francisco in a white 1970 Dodge Challenger in fifteen hours is unclear. A motive and a prize at the end would make this a better movie.
We are given reasoning piecemeal throughout by putting together the range of flashbacks Kowalski has: boredom, contempt for authority, the need for freedom and just plain the need to get it over and done with asap. He takes pep pills at Denver to help him get through it. In this respect it functions just as much as a snapshot of hippie thoughts and culture as it does a car chase film. It is vacant and minimalist. This probably explains the title. The landscapes that provide the backdrop are mostly desert where cars vanish into long stretches of highway and become dots in the distance. Also, we never see Kowalski make it to his final destination. The ending sees the Dodge Challenger freeze, and effectively vanish, the Sunday after the beginning of his journey. Where we are timewise is presented across our screen intermittently.
No one Kowalski encounters has any depth or resonance to them. His company in the film and his journey are a rag bag of strange characters: a snake catcher, naked blondes on motorcycles, hippies that help Kowalski escape and foil the police in pursuit. At one point the naked girl on the cycle offers herself unconditionally to Kowalski, something that could only happen in a hippie context. He refuses though, he would rather have a smoke. She gets him a Marlboro soft pack and presents them to him at the same time as showing him a montage of pictures of his escapades. The press have been charting his progress in the papers and have been looking into his past.
Mostly the relationship between Kowalski and the blind Super Soul DJ (played by Cleavon Little), give this film some heart as this is what pre-empts the ongoing fan base that gathers from the intermittent reports of Kowalski’s progress Super Soul puts on the airwaves. This gives the film momentum also as the police themselves are listening to the same radio broadcasts. Super Soul refers to Kowalski as ‘the last American hero.’ Kowalski himself is a tortured hero but doesn’t show it externally.
He is an ex- racing driver, marine and an ex-cop. We know he is a good man as once (told to us in flashback) he rescued a hippy chick from being raped in the back of a car by a fellow police officer. His girlfriend (blonde surfer girl) disappeared in a tragic surf incident, the only remnants of her a board washed up on a beach. But his exterior hides all of this and remains the epitome of unflappable cool. This makes the character of Kowalski interesting and worthy of our attention. There is more to him than meets the eye.
The soundtrack helps this film enormously as the DJ puts on music to accompany Kowalski on his road trip. When the DJ himself isn’t responsible, music from the period that fits is in the background. It is one of the film’s better features. The DJ (as egger-on of the pursued) technique is also used to great effect in the cult classic street gang flick The Warriors. The Super Soul DJ is assaulted by a police officer and thugs giving out racial abuse at one point during the film which serves as a further piece of counter culture of the early seventies threaded through the film.
Vanishing Point has been labelled with some justification as an essay in Existentialism. There is no specific rhyme or reason to Kowalski, only a need to be free. The journey itself, and more specifically doing it his own way in his own self appointed time, is reason in itself and proof that man is – or should be — sufficiently without restraint to carry this out. However, the credence in this philosophy falls down when considering that Kowalski, by following this credo, may and possibly does lose his life by it. The film is unclear as to whether or not he accepts this and is happy to do so. He smiles at the point before vanishing, so maybe he is ready to die by how he has lived.
The UK version had Charlotte Rampling being picked up as a hitchhiker who offers him weed that he takes only to find her vanished the following morning. It would have been in keeping with the themes of the film but wouldn’t be in character for the main lead. It just isn’t cool. Not to Kowalski. He doesn’t need it. It is good that this was left out. Besides, it was supposed to symbolise Kowalski’s proximity to death and be an allegorical device. Barry Newman claimed that the Americans just would not have been able to get it.
