Movie Cars – Movie Stars

By David Glenn Cox

The automobile and the motion pictures have much in common besides motion. The automobile is a great comic/dramatic platform and even before motion pictures had sound, they had automobiles.

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In 1926, Buster Keaton took a Broadway stage play and turned it into a hit two-reeler. Keaton felt pressured to make a film he thought was destined to be a flop, because the stage play was static. Keaton’s answer was to add cars, and so in the movie “Seven Chances” Buster plays Jimmy, a man who must get married before seven o’clock or lose his inheritance.

In every scene where Jimmy is going someplace, the camera shows Keaton getting into his car (Keaton’s actual car) the camera fades and then opens the next scene with his car at the new location. Jimmy is desperate to find a wife, so as he’s driving, he spies a pretty girl. He pulls along side her and while driving tries to woo her and not paying attention plows into a tree. Cars were funny; cars were great movie props for gags.

By the 1930’s America’s views about automobiles were changing and movie appearances were changing with them. In the film, “The Public Enemy” James Cagney’s gangster character drives up in a big Packard chastising the valet, “Careful, it’s got gears! That ain’t no Ford!” By 1931, half of the cars on the road were Ford Model T’s with a low and high speed bands rather than a gear box. It was a subtle nuance the audience would pick up, this was a fine car being driven by an wealthy but uncouth gangster

Less than twenty years later, in the film Sunset Boulevard, William Holden plays a Hollywood screen writer down on his luck and on the run from repo agents. With the repo men hot on his heels, he blows a tire and pulls into a rundown Hollywood mansion to escape them. The automobile is no longer funny, his automobile is a necessity and he is striving mightily to keep it.

The mansion is owned by Norma Desmond an aging movie star from silent film days. Desmond wants Holden to write her a new script to put her back on top, but the actress has lost touch with reality. The film is considered one of the 50 best films ever made and the story is centered around a man trying to keep his car and an over-the-hill actress riding in a 1931 "Isotta Fraschini" limousine. The cars describe their characters and the characters illustrate their cars, a movie of two cars on single famous street.

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During the 1950’s dozens of films were made for the Drive-in audiences. Hot Rod movies of teen’s gone wild for hot rods. Now automobiles were reflecting American culture as a whole

It’s 1958 and a war veteran has come home to take over the family business, sound familiar? Only this family business is Moonshine, and Robert Mitchum is caught between big city gangsters who want to kill him and the cops who want to jail him. There’s only one way to stay one step ahead of them both, and that’s with fast cars down “Thunder Road.”

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Driving fast cars had become cool; you couldn’t be a leading man without the ability to drive like hell, outwitting your opponents with rubber and horse power. James Bond never took the bus, the Bond movies always featured beautiful women and hot cars and not necessarily in that order.

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Cars, car scenes and car chases had become standard fare in movies. Stars become identified by their cars and car companies quickly cashed in. The modern list of car films is too long to even begin to compile, from Herbie, “The Love Bug” to “Fast and Furious” these cars represent our dreams, our nightmares and our fantasies.

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Still, in all of movie history there is one car chase which is considered the Holy Grail of car chases and of car films. Steve McQueen described it himself as a Western, only with cars instead of horses. The movie Bullitt was only so-so as a film, but the car chase scene has been described as the most exciting ten minutes on film.

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Hollywood had learned they didn’t need dialog or music. Watch how as the chase begins in earnest, the music fades away, filmed at full speed, the tires squeal as the rubber burns. The engines roar as the cars themselves had become the movie stars.