7/20/13 The Towering Inferno - Best Original Song, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing 1974
Oh, the humanity! Ok, I kind ripped that off from
The Hindenberg, but that's all I could think of as people were flying out of windows over 1,000 feet in the air.
The Towering Inferno is not a movie for the fainthearted, or if you have a fear of skyscrapers, but if you want to see a first-rate disaster movie (and one of the originals), this is it. Do a double feature with this and
The Poseidon Adventure to make it an Irwin Allen night. The plot isn't that hard to follow: man builds the tallest building in the world, someone decides to use less than premium building materials, bad things happen, good guys have to save the day. If I was ever in a disaster movie, I can't think of two other people I would rather have rescue me than
Paul Newman and
Steve McQueen, normally I would also include
William Holden, but in this movie, he's about as effective as Mr. Magoo without his glasses. These are just three of the stars in this movie, but it was full of them: Faye Dunaway (who previously played the love interest of both McQueen and Holden, but is Newman's fiancee here); Robert Wagner,
Fred Astaire (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Harlee Claiborne), Jennifer Jones (who won Best Actress for
Song of Bernadette in 1943), and Richard Chamberlain, just to name a few.
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| View from the Willis (Sears) Tower, Chicago glass-floor observation deck, 2009 |
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| View from the Willis (Sears) Tower, Chicago glass-floor observation deck, 2009 |
You only have to wait 41 minutes for your first "I told you so" moment when Newman's character, Doug Roberts, the architect of the building, tells James Duncan (Holden) the builder of the building and host of the big party, to evacuate because of a fire over 30 floors below (the building is over 130 floors high). Duncan refuses, thinking they'll be safe, and you guessed it, not so much. Of course, if he would have listened, the movie would have be 50 minutes long and nobody would have watched it. Chamberlain is the insecure, but egotistical son-in-law of Duncan and the electrical engineer for the building. I love listening to Chamberlain speak, but he was an ass in this movie, and I would have liked to push him out a window myself. In addition to several "I told you so" moments, the action and suspense is almost non-stop, and a few times, I actually looked away. Allen does not shy away from showing bodies engulfed in flames or plunging 100 stories to their death, and if that bothers you, you may want to skip this. McQueen is wonderfully understated but totally in control of this crazy situation; Newman, as the architect, does his part as well, a civilian and McQueen's eyes on the inside. They shared top billing, but actually had few scenes together. Fred Astaire is an aging con-man who falls for Jennifer Jones; he was wonderful, and I felt such empathy for him.
Inferno won Oscars for Best Editing and Best Cinematography, there was no category at this time for special effects or visual effects, but it probably would have won. It also won for the best original song, "We may never love like this again", sung by Maureen McGovern (who also sang the winning song from
The Poseidon Adventure, written by the same pair, Al Kasha and Joel Hirschorn). It was kind of milquetoast-y to me, but looking at the other songs, maybe it was the lesser of all evils. The movie highlights the work of firefighters and the dangers they face, willingly as part of the job, even dying in the process. Firefighters have been in the news a lot recently here in the States from the explosion on Texas a couple of months ago where volunteer firefighters were killed trying to contain a huge fire, to the Hotshots who died trying to fight a wildfire in Arizona, and fighting the wildfires in Colorado. They're crazy; crazy brave, and while
The Towering Inferno is fiction, the risks and dangers of firefighting are not.
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| Memorial to London Firefighters during the Blitz, London, 2006 |
