Arthur Penn
La caccia

Arthur Penn was one of the most important filmmakers in American cinema between the '60s and '70s. A director who hailed from theater, he knew how to rewrite and redefine the stylistic elements of various genres, mixing them together and, above all, subverting the normal narrative and thematic lines on which they were based. All this was inscribed in the "Hollywood crisis," which erupted with the proliferation of television sets.

With "The Miracle Worker," Penn immediately garnered critical acclaim, reclaiming the work he had already done years earlier on Broadway. "The Chase" (1966) is Penn's fourth feature film, born under the intrusive influence of producer Sam Spiegel: boasting his 3 Oscars in less than ten years, Spiegel saw fit to alter several sequences of Penn's film, particularly those that referred to the condition of slavery and exploitation experienced by African-American workers. Therefore, especially at the beginning, several sequences show Black people almost accidentally appearing on the film, the result of Spiegel's imposed "cutting" on Penn's work. For the same reason and especially in the first few minutes, Milford's sparse editing is clearly influenced by the "pruning" the film underwent.

We are in Texas, in a small town in the deep south of the States. Bubber (Robert Redford) has escaped from prison, and the news sends the small community into a panic. The plot ends here, as Penn shows us little to nothing of the escape and chase: his goal is to explore the microcosm of the town down to its smallest characteristics. "The Chase" is the drama of the American nation, the summary of all the ideological and moral falsehoods of the great stars and stripes democracy. Penn narrates the crude racism of whites against Blacks and his is the polemical gaze of someone who traces in every single behavior the ideological collapse of his nation. Sheriff Calder (the usual monumental Marlon Brando) is an empty shell with no power in the face of the dissatisfaction of those who reject the law as an established fact. Everyone in Texas has a gun... and everyone uses it for their own distorted idea of "justice." It's even better if the lead is tasted by a Black person or perhaps an escapee, with the community waiting for nothing more than to massacre him because, according to "hearsay," he is a murderer. Man manipulates and distorts the news and reality surrounding him because he is inherently petty, and every single event narrated in the film demonstrates this. The extraordinary sequence of Brando's beating, with the entire town watching and sneering, is representative of Penn's poetics: a country observing without reacting to the disintegration of any shreds of legality.

Penn is a political filmmaker. In post-McCarthyism America, in post-Rosa Parks America, Penn depicts a society still closed in on itself and deeply violent. The vast majority of the characters are ready to shoot and beat a Black person but have no problem spitting on marriage. There is no morality, no justice, no integration, no hope, but only the inevitability of a destiny decided, almost foreshadowed by violence itself. Penn had already addressed a similar discourse in his debut western "The Left-Handed Gun" (1958).

To convey this atmosphere of the American society's deconstruction, Penn relies on an essential direction bordering on "minimalism." The camera moves very little and only in the finale is it launched into "action" scenes that were absent until that moment. Arthur Penn draws from his theatrical past and builds a film of "staging" composed of close-ups and fixed shots, leaving the actors' performances to convey his thematic and cinematic message. Thus, Bubber's escape is rarely shown, with fleeting sequences: his is a metaphor for a country that, amidst its own mistakes (Vietnam was already an American affair), tried to flee from itself, only to eventually return home. And there could only be defeat.

"The Chase" is a film of denunciation and critique, the political and resigned gaze of a director who, through cinema and the redefinition of film genres, has carried out a narrative of perpetual social and political critique towards his country. Arthur Penn was one of the most important and influential authors in American cinema in the '60s and '70s. He recounted the history, dreams, and failures of a nation. "The Chase" is a deeply personal film with which Penn used the cinematic medium to tell the truth.

A jewel to rediscover.