Directed by Steven Spielberg
Written by Steven Spielberg, Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins
Starring Goldie Hawn, William Atherton, Ben Johnson, Michael Sacks
110 Minutes, 1974
Somewhere between unleashing the homicidal tanker of Duel on television audiences and the man-eating shark of Jaws on moviegoers, a young Steven Spielberg found the time to spin a far more human yarn in his debut theatrical feature The Sugarland Express. Employing the same storytelling techniques here as in the more fantastic fables that would follow, he elevates the material above its fairly routine narrative.
Based on a true story, the film follows the efforts of two married convicts, Lou Jean and Clovis Michael Poplin (Goldie Hawn and William Atherton), to retrieve their son from the foster parents who took custody when the Poplins went into the clink. Having already served her time, Lou Jean springs her husband from jail and, a few tragic misjudgments later, soon she�s on the run with him and a kidnapped patrolman, Slide (Michael Sacks).
Pretty soon, the hunt is on with scores of patrol cars in a fairly low speed chase being held back by Captain Harlin Tanner (Ben Johnson), in an effort to protect Slide. What begins as a comic misadventure, with Tanner going so far as to push the Poplins� stolen patrol car when it runs out of gas, slowly turns menacing as the inevitable showdown approaches at the foster residence in Sugarland, Texas.
Spielberg handles both the upbeat and catastrophic elements of the story with equal doses of cinematic economy. His ability to tell a story visually is already on full display in this early effort, with support from legendary cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond. Spielberg captures a conversation between two patrolmen in moving cars, then pulls the camera back to watch them disappear into the horizon � all in one shot. As one scene ends, he lingers on the foster mother (Jessie Lee Fulton) long enough to watch her move a vase in preparation for the ensuing bedlam, wordlessly opening a window onto her character. Even the famous �Hitchcock shot,� which makes it seems as if the background is crashing in on the foreground, makes a chilling appearance as snipers close in on their prey.
But all of this showmanship would mean nothing without strong performances. For the most part, the film delivers them. Hawn is outstanding as Lou Jean, conveying a heartbreakingly sincere belief in her ability to get her son back in spite of the felonies that compound as she gets closer to Sugarland. Her denial is all the more poignant for her ability to make you identify with it. Atherton�s Clovis is similarly pitiable, putting up a good front while painfully aware of the couple�s dwindling chances, though his performance is hindered by an inability to affect a consistent southern drawl. The supporting cast is solid, with Johnson in particular standing out as his Tanner bends over backwards to accommodate the Poplins before grimly resigning himself to a more ruthless course of action.
John Williams, who would go on to be a longtime collaborator with Spielberg, doesn�t show nearly as much promise as his cohort on this outing. His score is distracting, with a harmonica melody that sounds like the opening lines from, of all things, �The Twelve Days of Christmas.� He would find his groove only a few years later with Jaws and Star Wars, but not with this.
The Sugarland Express stands as a fine example of the fugitives-on-the-run genre, holding its own alongside Thelma and Louise, Bandits, The Defiant Ones, and, to a lesser extent, Badlands and Bonnie and Clyde. It will probably be remembered, however, only in the context of the Spielberg oeuvre. Given the stamp he puts on the film, there are far worse ways for it to be remembered.
It's amazing to look back at Steven Spielberg's second feature film (his first full-length theatrical release, considering that Duel was made for television) and see, at age 26, just how completely in command of the medium he already was. There's no question that this is a director with a God-given talent.
That said, The Sugarland Express is really nothing more than a breezy entertainment, a chase film that has been repeated and duplicated many, many times since. Part of Spielberg's success lies in just how well it plays today, even in the face of such utter dilution.
Just a few years after her 1969 Oscar win for Cactus Flower, red-hot Goldie Hawn starred as a desperate mother whose baby has been taken away and given up for adoption while she and her husband (William Atherton) were incarcerated. Just before her husband's release from jail, she visits and breaks him out. Together, they steal a cop car, kidnap a cop (Michael Sacks) and begin a cross-country chase to snatch their son before the law catches up to them.
Spielberg brilliantly juxtaposes the comic absurdity of this situation (supposedly based on a true story) -- including over a hundred jumbled-up cop cars in constant pursuit -- with the actual heartbreak over a stolen child. He shows an uncanny sense of physical space, using the foreground for benign images and the background for important information, as well as sound. In one scene, two cops drive alongside one another. We can see both of them, but we only hear one of them over the radio.
Vilmos Zsigmond provides the film's glowing, shimmering cinematography, and John Williams provides the perfect, understated score, a long way from his overbearing anthems of later years.
Strangely enough, even with all these sweet ingredients, The Sugarland Express was not a hit and has never been considered one of Spielberg's major achievements. Certainly it's better than monster hits like Jurassic Park or self-important films like Amistad. Perhaps this new DVD will give it a fresh start.
Although 1971's made-for-TV Duel is widely assumed to be Steven Spielberg's cinematic debut, in fact it was this film, which was released in cinemas a year before Jaws to mild rather than wild acclaim.
A modest road-movie laced with wry comedy and unobtrusive satire, The Sugarland Express lacks the grandeur of Terrence Mallick's Badlands or the intimacy of George Lucas's American Graffitti - two films by Spielberg's peers that it most closely resembles. However Spielberg's economic handling of the action and his precocious visual flair, combined with an effervescent Goldie Hawn, make this a touching lovers-on-the-lam caper that's artful but never contrived, and which avoids the sentimental excess of Spielberg's later work.
Lou Jean (Hawn) is the desperate Texan wife who busts husband Clovis (Atherton) out of jail eight months into a year-long sentence. Her plan, insofar as she has one, is to reclaim possession of their baby son who's been placed with foster parents in nearby Sugarland. Lou Jean and Clovis aren't the sharpest tools in the box and in a moment of panic steal a car, then kidnap young highway patrolman Maxwell Slide (Sacks). Before long the entire Texan police force is after them, the media is tracking their every move and the couple are basking in the rosy glow of celebrity - circumstances that give way to tragedy and an unexpectedly melancholic finale.
Though the film is based on real events, the couple's bumbling, klutzy charm precludes any of the dramatic urgency or violent excess associated with the comparable Bonnie And Clyde. Instead Spielberg lets the story unfold at its own pace, invests the dialogue with pleasing zip, and demonstrates a level of visual ingenuity that becomes the film's great strength. As well as some deftly choreographed traffic management, at least two sequences point to future greatness; during a stately 10mph car chase, background and foreground collapse into one another as a phalanx of patrol cars rises towards the brow of a hill; and in a moment of understated but genuine poignancy, Clovis provides the sound effects for a 'Road Runner' cartoon reflected in the couple's motel window.
Hawn's performance announced a move away from comedy towards more complex drama. Over time the dizzy blonde shtick would become familiar but here it's remarkably fresh and she's pivotal in maintaining focus. It's this, combined with the clear delight Spielberg takes in his first big-budgeted stint behind the camera that makes The Sugarland Express such a rewarding and timeless debut.
Verdict: Low key but likable Texan caper given weight and depth by Goldie Hawn's sprightly performance and Spielberg's unique visual flair.
When the state places Lou Jean's (Goldie Hawn) son in foster care, she breaks her husband Clovis (William Atherton) out of prison, and the two start a cross-country trek to free their child and move to Mexico. Along the way, they take trooper Slide (Michael Sacks) hostage, and pick up an entourage of several hundred police cars, led by the jaded but human Captain Tanner (Ben Johnson). Their plight catches the fancy of hundreds of common folk, who form parades and shower them with gifts as they pass through on their way to Sugarland.
In Steven Spielberg's second film, and first big-screen effort, common people like Lou Jean and Clovis are pitted against a faceless State that seeks to break up their family and kill them. The faceless bureaucracy of the government is symbolized by the hundreds of identical police cars piloted by hundreds of identical troopers behind mirrored sunglasses. We are led to sympathize with the protagonists, who are just average people who get in a little over their heads. Even Slide, the trooper, roots for them in the end, offering advice on how to steal cars and avoid getting killed.
A cynical viewer could point out that the two are actually criminals, both having served time in prison, and Clovis being an escaped convict. They could point out that Lou Jean was unemployed, and may have dabbled in prostitution, and may not be the most fit mother around. They could mention the Stockholm Syndrome, where hostages start to sympathize with their captors, as Maxwell Slide does. However, the film does not invite cynicism. We can see a little of ourselves in Lou Jean and Clovis, and we wish them the best.
Critics who dismiss Spielberg as the manipulative and goody-goody director of sentimental Hollywood fluff would be hard-pressed to see that aspect of him in this film. However, it is obviously a Spielberg film, dealing with many of the same themes as his later, more popular films: absent parents, difficult journeys, faceless evil, etc.
Anarchy as lack of control is manifest in Spielberg's Sugarland Express, based on an actual l969 incident when the escaped convict Robert Samuel Dent and his wife Ila Faye drove across Texas to reclaim their child from his adoptive parents. The account of the 300-mile chase commanded the attention of the entire state, with television playing a major role in the formation of public opinion.
In the film, Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn), an impulsive and desperate woman (who had also served a sentence), visits her husband Clovis (William Atherton) at a Texas pre-release prison farm where he is waiting out the final months of a one-year term for petty larceny. Strong-willed, she threatens to leave him unless he escapes and helps her reclaim their infant son, about to be given out for adoption; the State Child Welfare Board had determined they are unfit as parents.
They get a ride with an elderly couple but the slow pace of the couple's old rickety Buick attracts the attention of a Highway Patrol officer. Soon official alarms are out and roadblocks set up. Most of the narrative, describing the plan to stop the fugitive couple, is set on the road, with impressive shots of traffic jams on highways and intersections. At one point, the pursuing caravan is swelled to 200 assorted cars, with thousands of people waiting on the streets to show their sympathy for the Lou Jean's rebellious defiance.
Sugarland Express stresses the crucial role of the news media in covering this event and in making instant celebrities out of hoodlums. The press is held responsible for making the Poplins story arouse curiosity and receive sympathy. The media create and exploit the public's fascination with criminals, an issue that had already explored in Bonnie and Clyde. But the police force is also guilty. In Louisiana, two opportunistic cops believe that this is their chance to break in the new patrol car, have some fun, and achieve celebrity status for themselves.
Captain Tanner (Ben Johnson, in a role similar to his Sam the Lion in The Last Picture Show) stands out as a conscientious police chief struggling to avoid bloodshed at all costs. With eighteen years of service, he boasts no killing to his name. He is a man of principle, with inner ethic code, as well as a man of action. The chase draws all kinds of weird glory-hunters, hoping to promote their own visibility. For example, a celebrity-hungry owner of a chicken stand offers the couple free food if they give themselves up at his place.
Other supporters carry stickers that say: "Register Communists, not guns." The couple is showered with good wishes and presents (baby clothes and toys) in every town they pass through. However, these thrill-seekers present an obstacle to the police's law enforcement. There is a horrifying shot of a terrified kid, knocked backwards by his rifle's power. The chase brings out unbridled exhilaration and the worst behavior of the mob, susceptible for violence and destruction. Another shot shows a teddy bear run over, as if signifying the end of innocence for children, comparing them with the hunters and their guns.
Technology figures prominently in the film, with every act becoming more depersonalized. Most communications take place within cars or via two-way radios. Captain Tanner uses Lou's father to persuade his daughter to give up her foolish scheme, but instead, he gets angry and scolds her. The films shows, as the critic Pauline Kael pointed out, the effects of the mass media on people, the way they look (pink curlers), their eccentric hobbies (the woman collects gold stamps at service stations), but without putting them down.
Nonetheless, neither film nor characters display any humanity. The protagonists are anti-heroic and small-minded, unable to see beyond their immediate interests. They set off events they don't know how to pursue and which later take control of them. Sugarland Express is imbued with a sense of fatalism--people acting according to biological instincts, lacking awareness and control over what they are doing.
Of the two protagonists, it's the woman who masterminds the scheme, though without much brains. In the end, she is also responsible for her husband's death by a sniper. The movie is ambiguous in portraying Lou Jean's maternal needs. At times, you get the impression that the couple is out to get their son out of revenge; at other times, the feeling is of a long-suffering mother. The couple is portrayed as desperate, but not really dangerous. Their defiance with prison records and their anti-establishment attitudes are in tune with the alienation of many Americans from their government in l973 and l974, during the Watergate crisis.
The movie is strong in suggesting the origins of mob behavior, a crowd going out of control. Starting as a small incident, the crisis grows out of any proportion. The police force, in charge of controlling the situation, is devoid of effective power. Everyone in the film is helpless and ineffectual; the crisis seems to follows its own logic. By implication, American society is viewed as a system without any regulative norms or coercive power; a society on the loose, with no moral center or binding collective conscience.
Unlike the protagonists of Bonnie and Clyde, who are the stuff of modern myths, Lou Jean and Clovis can ignite the masses' imagination only for seconds, until the next media celebrities assume their place. Bonnie and Clyde had at least some control over their lives; Lou Jean and Clovis have none. But like Bonnie and Clyde, Sugarland Express is a disguised Western: the fugitives stand in for the solitary Westerners (what has remained of them), and the procession of police cars is a modern, technological version of the posse in classic Westerns.