City on Fire (1979)

A drab disaster flick featuring phoned-in performances by faded Hollywood stars, the Canada/U.S. coproduction City on Fire never quite delivers on its title, offering instead a few explosions at a refinery and an extended sequence during which flames threaten the occupants of a crowded hospital. Vignettes depicting the impact of an allegedly citywide fire are anemic at best. Furthermore, the underlying premise is quite sketchy. After getting passed over for a promotion, disturbed refinery worker Herman (Jonathan Welsh) rushes around the facility, releasing fuel into the adjoining city’s water supply so that when sewer workers using a welding torch accidentally ignite the fuel, flames emerge throughout the city. Because, of course, disgruntled former employees are generally allowed free reign at high-security facilities. Oh, well. The nominal hero of the piece is he-man physician Dr. Frank Whitman (Barry Newman). Other characters include an alcoholic newscaster (Ava Gardner), a stoic fire chief (Henry Fonda), an opportunistic mayor (Leslie Nielsen), and a worldly nurse (Shelley Winters). As for the female lead, she’s heiress Diane (Susan Clark), who shares romantic history with Frank and happens to be at the hospital during the crisis. City on Fire is so predictable and sluggish that it’s quite boring to watch, though a few absurd moments amuse. In one scene, Diane scoops vomit from a patient’s mouth while trying to deliver mouth-t0-mouth resuscitation. In another, Frank walks down a row of burn victims, touching each one but never performing medical services or issuing commands to subordinates. City on Fire eventually features a decent fire walk by a brave stunt performer, but that’s hardly reason enough to tolerate 106 minutes of stupidity and tedium.

City on Fire: LAME

The Lawyer (1970)

          Combining lurid subject matter with an offbeat protagonist, The Lawyer tells the story of a sensationalistic murder trial in a brisk fashion, with plenty of humor and surprises to keep things lively. Since the film does not relate a real-life incident, one could argue that a few of the story’s myriad episodes could have been jettisoned in order to shorten the piece (The Lawyer runs a full 120 minutes), but nearly every scene has something amusing or colorful or trashy to offer. Barry Newman, an energetic leading man of the early ’70s whose career never caught fire, stars as Tony Petrocelli, a slick attorney from the East Coast who now works in the Southwest. (The picture’s a little fuzzy on how he ended up in this unlikely milieu, but his backstory is incidental to the main narrative.) A cocksure overachiever, Petrocelli comes on strong in every aspect of his life, driving his beat-up camper like a maniac, slithering his way past parking restrictions, and valiantly defying the local powers-that-be. Petrocelli’s latest client is Jack Harrison (Robert Colbert), a handsome lawyer accused of brutally murdering his wife. Harrison contends a stranger broke into his home while Harrison was incapacitated, and that the stranger committed the homicide. Because the killing occurred in a small town, the ensuing trial becomes a media circus, so Petrocelli must face not only his wily courtroom opponent—deceptively folksy prosecutor Eric Scott (Harold Gould)—but also a prejudicial jury pool.

          Director/co-writer Sidney J. Furie employs a quick-cut visual style that echoes Petrocelli’s rat-a-tat verbal approach, so the movie shifts locations frequently and utilizes a broad supporting cast. The best scenes involve detailed depictions of Petrocelli’s flashy legal technique, whether he’s guiding his aides through hours of arduous research or dueling in court with Scott, and Newman plays Petrocell with an appealing brand of seen-it-all snark. The picture also includes sexy flashbacks to the night of the murder, which are told, Rashomon-style, from several different perspectives; these vignettes have more blood and nudity than one might expect. The supporting performances are generally just okay, thanks to smooth professionals including Diana Muldaur (playing Petrocelli’s wife), though Gould steals the movie at regular intervals. While his aw-shucks country-lawyer shtick is unoriginal, Gould blends charm, sarcasm, skepticism, and wisdom into a tasty stew. Elements like Gould’s performance ensure that The Lawyer is consistently entertaining, despite the fact that the picture is never more than a solid programmer. FYI, Newman reprised his resourceful character several years later for the short-lived TV series Petrocelli (1974-1976), nabbing a Golden Globe nomination for his work on the show. The stand-alone TV movie Night Games (1974), with Newman as Petrocelli, was a de facto pilot that immediately preceded the weekly series.

The Lawyer: GROOVY

Vanishing Point (1971)

          Although I’ve never really grooved to this particular counterculture artifact, as many friends who dig the same cinematic era have, all it takes to explain the appeal of Vanishing Point is to describe the close parallel between the film’s minimalistic storyline and prevailing early-’70s social concerns. Barry Newman stars as Kowalski, a drifter who makes his living delivering cars across long distances. After accepting a job to ferry a hot rod from Denver to San Francisco, Kowalski jacks himself up on speed and blasts down open highways with legions of cops in pursuit. Meanwhile, an enigmatic, blind radio DJ going by the handle “Super Soul” (Cleavon Little) narrates Kowalski’s journey for his listeners, framing the driver’s ride as a principled fight against the Establishment. The sympathetic reading of this material, of course, is that Kowalski just wants to be free, man, so when society tries to trap him with laws and rules and speed limits, he strikes a rebellious blow on behalf of rugged independence. And if you can’t anticipate how a story comprising these elements will end, then you haven’t seen too many counterculture flicks—as the song goes, freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.

          Viewed as historically relevant symbolism, Vanishing Point is interesting, because it presents a lone-wolf protagonist whose existence comprises nothing but early-’70s signifiers: He’s an alienated Vietnam vet, he self-medicates with illegal drugs, and he’s determined to force a confrontation with what he perceives to be the oppressive forces of law and order. Heavy shit, no question. It seems safe to say that writers Guillermo Cain, Barry Hall, and Malcolm Hart—as well as director Richard C. Sarafian—deliberately infused their story with of-the-moment dimensions.

          But very much like another existentialist road movie of the same vintage, Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), Vanishing Point plays an iffy game by using ciphers instead of fully realized characters. For instance, certain conventional narrative elements, such as backstory and well-articulated motivation, are largely absent from Vanishing Point. So, even though Vanishing Point provides ample fodder for post-movie interpretation games, the actual onscreen events are repetitive and superficial. It doesn’t help that Newman, who enjoyed a very brief run as a leading man in movies and television, is a bland persona. (Conversely, Little exudes casual-cool charisma and delivers his on-air monologues with smooth style.) It also says a lot that many Vanishing Point fans dig the movie because they’re entranced by the Dodge Challenger muscle car that Newman drives in the movie. After all, the Challenger has the film’s most fully rendered characterization—especially compared to the cringe-worthy portrayals of two gay hitchhikers whom the hero encounters.

Vanishing Point: FUNKY

The Salzburg Connection (1972)

          In one of the most frequently repeated film-director tutorials of all time, Alfred Hitchcock explained his method of generating suspense. Picture a scene of two people talking in a room, and then suddenly a bomb explodes. That’s shock. Now picture the same scene, but insert a shot at the beginning revealing the presence of the bomb—information the audience possesses, but the characters do not. That’s suspense. Hitchcock’s theory helps explain at least one of the reasons why The Salzburg Connection is among the least suspenseful thrillers of the ’70s. During the first half of the movie, characters chase after something, but the audience has no idea what they’re pursuing. Therefore, it’s impossible for us to determine whether we should care about the outcome of the search.

          Exacerbating this problem is one of the blandest leading characters ever featured in a mystery movie, American lawyer Bill Mathison. As played by Barry Newman, best known for playing the cipher-like protagonist of Vanishing Point (1971) and the title character of the TV series Petrocelli (1974-1976), Mathison is an average dude with average intelligence and average manners—he seems more like a passerby who wandered into the movie than a leading man.

          Adapted from a popular novel by Helen MacInnes, The Salzburg Connection depicts the international search for World War II-era documents containing the names of Nazi spies, which is interesting-ish, but the filmmakers waste far too much screen time on lifeless dialogue scenes. Making matters worse is the competent but uninspired work of leading lady Anna Karina, the French beauty who was jean-Luc Godard’s on- and offscreen muse during the ’60s. (In her defense, the only requirements of her anemic role are looking appealing and frightened.)

          Not that it makes much difference, The Salzburg Connection was the English-language debut of Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, who enjoyed significant international success in the ’80s. He’s fine here, but the movie is such a dud it’s no surprise he failed to secure another major role in an English-language picture until playing the villain in the “unofficial” 007 flick Never Say Never Again (1983).

The Salzburg Connection: LAME