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The tin star dissolves to a sniper rifle's foreshortened barrel in the first scene, in the last one it is discarded to clinch the tale's Western side. Don Siegel moves with rapid brilliance, by the end of the opening credits he's established style (geometric planes in the penthouse murder, visceral red suddenly intruding upon aquatic blue) and theme (the lawman stands in the killer's spot for the Hitchcockian game of doubles). "The city of San Francisco does not pay criminals not to commit crimes. Instead, we pay a police department." Inspector Callahan, "every dirty job that comes along" is his, a regular morning means unloading his hand cannon into bank robbers in between mouthfuls of hot-dog. (Striding past the geyser of a smashed fire hydrant, Clint Eastwood cannily adjusts Gary Cooper to the corrosive Seventies.) A vile longhair with the warped peace sign on his belt buckle, his opponent (Andrew Robinson) turns to the camera clad in a ski mask and shrieks in an Edvard Munch image. "Hubba hubba hubba, pig bastard!" The caustic culmination of the Siegel policier, monstrous chaos and fascist order at play up on the rooftops and down in the trash cans. The cop is a taciturn widower who scowls at his young partner's sociology degree, the line of duty fills the wrathful void, his Peeping Tom side appears during a stakeout under a rotating "Jesus Saves" neon sign. His decathlon across the city leads to a view of the Mt. Davidson Cross encircled by inky darkness, savagery at the updated Circus Maximus of Kezar Stadium precipitates the camera's aerial recoil in a spectacular shot remembered in Frenzy. Gravel pit and muddy pond comprise the dirty showdown for a dirty civilization. "I'm all broken up about that man's rights." The true sequel is Taxi Driver. Cinematography by Bruce Surtees. With Harry Guardino, John Vernon, Reni Santoni, John Larch, John Mitchum, Lyn Edgington, Woodrow Parfrey, Josef Sommer, and Ruth Kobart.
--- Fernando F. Croce |