The Driver (1978)
WB / Studio Canal DVD (region 2)
d. Walter Hill; pr. Lawrence Gordon, Frank Marshall; scr. Walter Hill; ph. Philip Lathrop; m. Michael Small; ed. Tina Hirsch, Robert K. Lambert; cast. Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern, Isabelle Adjani, Ronee Blakley (91 mins)
Director Walter Hill emerged in the late 1970s as a superior genre craftsman and one of the finest of American action directors to supplant Sam Peckinpah.
Indeed, Hill had earlier provided the script for Peckinpah’s The Getaway with Steve McQueen. At one point, Hill’s The Driver, his second foray into directing, was also intended for McQueen. The Driver was a box office flop within the USA and today remains a relative obscurity. However, it developed a commanding critical reputation primarily in Europe that has endured, making it one of the most acclaimed of Hill’s films even if he looks back on it as a minor piece. It is interesting to note thus what endeared The Driver to the critics. Austere and technically slick, the film was considered to be a virtual distillation of film noir, stripping it back to its character archetypes and action scenario in the manner of French director Jean-Pierre Melville. Indeed, The Driver was frequently cited as a homage to Melville, a re-incorporation of French interpolations of American genre cinema back into stylized American film noir. Perhaps more than any other of Hill’s early films, it contributed to his reputation as a knowing practitioner of filmmaking craft interested in the mythopoeic aspects of pulp genres – a trait that indeed no less than Pauline Kael had noted about Hill’s debut film Hard Times. Indeed, few films have been as knowing about their pulp sources and poetry as is The Driver.
Ryan O’Neal is the title character, an expert getaway driver. During a robbery, he is seen by a witness, a young woman (Isabelle Adjani), before speeding away to split the loot and dispose of the vehicle after a police chase. O’Neal deliberately leaves behind a calling card of sorts in the vehicle.
Sometime later, when the car is found, the harsh detective on the case (Bruce Dern) knows that O’Neal is responsible and puts him into a police line-up, with several witnesses, including Adjani, there to identify him. To Dern’s dismay, Adjani does not identify O’Neal and indeed says that it wasn’t him. Dern knows she is lying but can do nothing about it. Sometime later, O’Neal meets Adjani for the payoff and the two of them talk, aware that Dern is also on his way over for more intimidation, trying to blackmail her into talking. O’Neal knows that nothing is for certain in his world. Dern meanwhile has an elaborate plan to force several petty criminals to stage a robbery with the express purpose of enlisting O’Neal for the crime and then arrest him for it. O’Neal is duly propositioned by his contact as to a new job but O’Neal dislikes the people he would be working with and declines the offer. Distraught, the criminals report back to Dern, who soon thereafter visits O’Neal and offers him a personal invitation to “the game” between them. O’Neal accepts and agrees to the new job after all, but finds that things begin to go wrong.
The film has the austerity of film noir and of Melville: of characters defined entirely by their expertise and professionalism but who remain impassive and alone. Reportedly bleaker than even Melville, Hill here allows his characters no emotional fulfilment outside of what they do for a living.
Yet, though O’Neal and Dern define themselves through their professionalism, the thrill of self-definition they achieve is in their knowing adversarial relationship, the sense of a game being played between two skilled players. This kind of ethical distillation would also later find its way into the cinema of Michael Mann especially in such works as Thief and Heat and into such later Melville-inspired thrillers as Ronin. Ultimately, what defines these people is pride. Both Dern and O’Neal pride themselves on being the best at what they do and in their adversarialism thus see the opportunity to define themselves even further – to take risks they would perhaps not otherwise accept. Hence, at the end, Dern must walk away from the cops to follow O’Neal regardless – his stake in professional individual adversarialism is too great to resist. Their inner life, their very self-definition relies exclusively on the game they play between them – a kind of constantly testing battle of wits between cop and criminal as symbiotic partners in the game of adversity. People are what they do in this film as little in life offers fulfilment beyond such individual self-definition through action.
Adjani appears to be thus that element of the unpredictable that fate has thrown in. Hence she is significantly referred to in the credits as “the player” – another figure out for profit and who will play off adversaries for personal gain but who then risks becoming a pawn in the very personal rivalry between those adversaries.
The pathological and remote professionalism that underlies this movie thus speaks of the need for control – to be full, independent master of oneself requires cold indifference to everything else bar the means to prove that one is too good at what one does. Self-control through professional adversity is this film’s bleak take on the existentialism involved in such dedicated criminal enterprise and pursuit of it. Indeed, for Hill and for others – including William Friedkin – the game between cop and criminal is almost an allegorical distillation of both existential despair and mastery, essaying the kind of triumph and hollowness at the core of ruthless professionalism. In this adversarial mindset, cop and criminal are virtually indistinguishable, only the authority of the badge delineating the bounds of their rivalry. Yet whilst there is a perverse honour in the absolutism of Dern and O’Neal, honour amongst thieves is as a myth that covers up selfish ruin: everybody is one step away from betrayal and the only dependable certainty is in the adversarial relationship between cop and criminal as equals in a constant game play.
DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The widescreen transfer preserves the film’s studied nocturnal look and its sense of cog-like, constricted and at the start almost machine-imposed spaces. Architecture is used to aid composition and the look of vehicles in motion is spell-bindingly achieved here. The film is shadowy in the film noir manner, full of neon lights and cold, reflective surfaces for a sleek, polished look throughout. Speeding cars through almost deserted night streets in a cool and glistening world make for striking shots. The stylization of urbanity here would echo through Hill’s later work in The Warriors and Streets of Fire especially, which progressed from neo-noir into urban fantasy. The source print shows some signs of wear although this artefacting is never too much of a distraction – just keeping the print short of pristine clarity alas as black levels and greys look more murky than pronounced here. Violence is often stark as when a gun barrel is used to suggest oral rape in one scene. Colour is kept downcast in this transfer despite the often vivid neon textures flowing through many scenes, creating the look of bluesy nightlife in the city. Daylights look oily and are similarly downplayed. The Driver is very rigidly controlled in both look and character behaviour, as gestures, reactions and nuances between otherwise inexpressive people suggest the emotional repression within. Needless to add, the car chase scenes are expressive standouts.
Sound
The Dolby Digital mono sound is functional, preserving and never distracting from the fine source material although without really polishing or enhancing the sound that much for home theatre. Clarity levels are competent throughout. The mechanical, clockwork fantasy motif of the opening scenes suggests the notion of Fate unfolding whilst the noise of engines at full blast and of tyres screeching enhances the car chase sequences effectively. The score is very sparsely used and there are long stretches of diegetic sounds at play – mostly vehicular in nature but also to the immediate environs of a scene. The score, deployed judiciously, is terse and almost experimental jazz like at times and at others is full of the sense of after-hours blues, fully unnerving and in keeping with the film’s accrued tension. Nice use is made of a police radio in the background to some scenes. All of these diegetic effects are crisply translated in this transfer. The diegetic sounds during the expert train station sequence are a highlight in a sustained allusion to Peckinpah and The Getaway. Dialogue is terse and like-wise streamlined, the sense of stylization saturating this entire movie. It is a cool, laconic script full of desperate people out for themselves but putting up a front of cold indifference in dialogue delivery. This stylized impassivity works well and the mounting tension in Dern and O’Neal surfaces through the breaks in distance.
Special Features
There are no special features.
