"The Chase" reviewed

The Chase begins with some beautiful shots of two escaping convicts. Confidence in this splendid opening is justified by the rest of the film. This big, sprawling movie represents Arthur Penn's best work to date, being clearly superior to The Miracle Worker and the Left-handed Gun, and more successful than the off-beat, consciously "experimental" Mickey One. Aided by some fine colour photography by Joseph La Shelle and a team of first-rate actors. Penn has succeeded in drawing a dramatic, often violent, picture of a Southern town and the remarkably rude people who live in it.

The Marlon Brando part (Sheriff Calder) looks like a hangover from the days of High Noon and Gunfight At The O.K. Corral, a time when the lawman was hero, fighting against great odds for the benefit of an apathetic townspeople. In The Chase the citizens are not apathetic, they are actively hostile to Calder's attempt to recapture an escaped prisoner with a minimum of violence. This situation gives Penn plenty of scope for some nasty comments about sadism in human nature, Southern hostility towards Negroes, and so on, together with a wry glimpse at small-town sexual morality. These observations of The Human Condition do not intrude but are well integrated in the mainstream of the film.

Transposed into a modern setting and played by Brando with a laconic and sometimes fiery assurance, the character of the sheriff acquires a genuine, although complex, heroic stature. Most of the supporting cast perform will, particularly E. G. Marshall and Robert Redford. James Fox does not make a very convincing American, but this is a minor flaw. It will be interesting to see it Penn approaches the calibre of his contemporaries. Kubrick and Frankenheimer, and The Chase provides evidence that he is well on the way. This excellent, dramatically satisfying film more than compensates for a disappointingOthello.