MovieChat Forums > The Sugarland Express (1974) Discussion > Spielberg's Perfect 1974 Movie -- That H...

Spielberg's Perfect 1974 Movie -- That He Ran Away From Fast!

posted 17 years ago by ecarle
13 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS

Need I put spoilers up for these movies of 1974 -- "Chinatown," "Godfather II," "The Parallax View," "The Conversation," "Lenny" -- to remind everybody that 1974 was the Big Downer Year at the movies. Unhappy endings were the norm. Even the big entertaining disaster movies were essentially unhappy: heroes and heroines died in "Earthquake" and "The Towering Inferno."

Ever wonder why Mel Brooks hit so big in '74? ("Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein")? Because everything else was a downer.

Including..."The Sugarland Express."

Indeed, here's a movie that rather STARTS as a downer. Goldie Hawn shows up at her convict husband's lock-up, when he has only FOUR MONTHS left on his sentence left! -- and bullies/seduces him into breaking out and joining her in a car chase after their beloved "Baby Langston." ("If you don't do this for me," she says before having some Prison Men's Room sex with him -- "this is the last time.")

The big car chase that follows lives up to Spielberg's "Duel" reputation as a master of cinematic images and high-speed road action (here, rather than one big truck, scores of police cars and other vehicles perform the ballet), but "The Sugarland Express" remains unrepentedly downbeat -- exactly the kind of movie that Young Hollywood (inspired by European film) felt was necessary in that climactic year of '74.

Spielberg wanted that first "feature motion picture," so he took "The Sugarland Express." But I don't think his heart was really in it. It bought him one more studio-supervised movie -- a little number called "Jaws" -- and Spielberg rather instantly ran off from the grimness of "Sugarland Express."
Some people get killed in "Jaws," but ultimately the ending is Happy: the bad shark is killed, the best of the three heroes survive.

Thereafter, Spielberg specialized in happy and/or heartwarming material: Close Encounters, 1941, Raiders, ET. Even "The Color Purple" and "Empire of the Sun" after some dark early sequences.

Spielberg would return to grim stories eventually -- "Schindler's List" and "Munich" come to mind -- but as a PRODUCER, he generally supervised "feelgood movies": "Back to the Future," "Gremlins," "Innerspace."

And he never really made something as downbeat as "The Sugarland Express" again.

For these reasons, I don't see "Sugarland Express" as a REAL Spielberg movie. The techical prowess and great imagery are there, but this was not the kind of movie Spielberg really wanted to make. And it strikes me as guilty of a certain misogynistic edge, too. Isn't this really a story about how Goldie Hawn march-steps her husband to his death in her crazed quest to get a baby that she likely would have gotten back ANYWAY?

One more thing: also in accord with many 1974 downers ("Chinatown," "Godfather II," "The Conversation"), "The Sugarland Express" ends with a key character (Goldie Hawn) in a dazed, catatonic state...

P.S. So down was 1974 (however great the movies) that Hollywood and audiences eventually struck back: "Jaws," "Rocky," and "Star Wars" quickly reinstated the happy endings that most movies have today.

[–] wgmovieguy 17 years ago

"Rocky" doesn't have a happy ending.

[–] DillengerD 17 years ago

""Rocky" doesn't have a happy ending? Watch it again. Rocky's goal wasn't about winning the title, it was about being a worthy contentder and going the distance with the Champ, someone He respected. Not to mention his love for Adrian is requited in the end after a movie full of times he went after her, she came for him in the end. Boom! That's a happy ending!

-oh yea, Sugarland Express, just caught it on OnDemand for the first time... enjoyed it, just wanted to see how other people felt online...

[–] Humbaba484 17 years ago

Ok so where to start. Spielberg did not take Sugarland Express so he could do Jaws afterwards. Spielberg saw a headline in the newspaper about a "Modern day Bonnie and Clyde" was enthralled by the story and ended up writing a screen play for it. He took it to Universal, for whom he was working for already making tv movies and they told him he could make it under the condition that he cast at least 1 well known star in it... thus Goldie Hawn.

As for Jaws afterwards, there was already a director attached to the project but he read the story fell in love with it and found a way to get the project.

How do i know this? I just heard it out of Spielberg's own mouth on a tv show called "The Directors" on the Reelz Channel.

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

Ummm...all possible, but we can't fully trust the things directors say later on, even when they are great ones.

If SPIELBERG fell in love with the story that became "The Sugarland Express", one can figure that he (rightly) figured it "fit" the downbeat early 70's and was a way to get noticed if he could get it made.

As for getting "Jaws," he'd done a lot of TV, he was a protege of Universal honcho Sid Sheinberg, and the TV movie "Duel" was a good calling card BUT...

...without a theatrical movie on his resume, and a good track record on budget and schedule making it, he would not have likely gotten to make "Jaws."

After "The Sugarland Express," it took a long time for Steve to make a movie with a truly downbeat ending. I'm not sure which one it was...

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

OK. Thank you.

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ed_metal_head 15 years ago

I never really realised that all Spielberg's films post Sugarland had relatively happy endings...thanks for that nice slice of history ecarle.

Btw, I previously read some of your posts for the various Hitchcock films and I must say that your analyses are among the more interesting ones on the imdb. Keep it up!

An innocent little girl, running to a priest...she is not for you! -- Faust 1926

[–] csu16387 10 years ago

Another great analysis, ecarle.

I prefer this Spielberg movie to some of his more popular ones of later years. Sugarland, in some ways, is in line with other couple-on-the-run pictures like Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands (the latter gets better every time I see it). Perhaps throw in Ace in the Hole for the public's odd fascination with the couple.

I don't know if I would completely say that Sugarland is a downbeat film as well. It ends in tragedy, but Sugarland has a lot of comedic elements here. One wishes Spielberg could have directed more material like this.

P.S. It's always great to see Ben Johnson in anything!

"I think we've out-sophisticated ourselves out of some of the pleasures of movies."

[–] matthewwave-1 10 years ago

TSE is the only film Spielberg made that feels like it's part of that "Second Golden Age of American Film" that I love so much -- from, like the mid/late sixties to the early/mid seventies, when filmmakers like Altman, Scorcese, Benton, Copola, etc., were turning out more thoughtful, personal and great films than Hollywood had really seen in a while, if ever before. Showing the influnces of things like the French New Wave and other foreign film movements, but also reflecting the new generation that came/was coming of age in the sixties.

Ironic, then, that Spielberg's next film, Jaws, would be the "one" in the one-two punch (along with Star Wars, and arguably warmed up by the box-office performance of The Exorcist) that killed and buried deep this era of American film.

It's not that TSE is entirely free of the elements of later Spielberg films: it's very much an entertainment picture, for one thing, and the car chases and crashes showcase some of the cine-spectacle for which many of his entertainments after TSE became known. But also, notice how certain story elements are introduced (the first vigilante opening his garage door and clearing the junk away from his car comes to mind), and the way he handles some of the "locals" (the hilarious non-actor-ish-ness of the elderly Nockers; the drunk in the back of Slide's patrol car, for example). These are touches very much in line with that "Second Golden Age" approach to filmmaking and rather unlike the slickness with which Spielberg would later present both plot and character.

Matthew

[–] vegfemnat 8 years ago

I would like to add to that list of 1974 downer movies the incredibly underrated Jack Nicholson movie "The Last Detail" which was also competing at Cannes that year along with "The Sugarland Express" and "The Conversation"

[–] PopperTheKungFu-Dragon 8 years ago

The saddest part about this movie was that Lou Jean's poor husband had to die just because she was an idiot. Well he was an idiot too for following her, but she definitely had some mental problems.

Poorly Lived and Poorly Died, Poorly Buried and No One Cried

[–] jmillerdp 8 years ago

Well, if you want all your endings "happy," Lucas and Spielberg took care of that. After the one-two punch of "Jaws" and "Star Wars," downbeat movies were pretty much a thing of the past. After that, it was all big-budget product.

Personally, I kiss the ground for the great movies of the late 1960's into the mid-1970's. They are, for the most part, the best that time in film had to offer.

I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! [slurp!] I DRINK IT UP! - Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood