Bullitt (film)

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Movie
German title Bullitt
Original title Bullitt
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1968
length 113 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Peter Yates
script Alan Trustman ,
Harry Kleiner
production Philip D'Antoni
music Lalo Schifrin
camera William A. Fraker
cut Frank P. Keller
occupation
synchronization

Bullitt is a thriller - drama from the year 1968 by director Peter Yates with Steve McQueen in the lead role. The screenplay is based on the crime novel Polizeirevier 52, New York (original title: Mute Witness ) by Robert L. Pike .

action

Lieutenant Frank Bullitt of the San Francisco Police Department receives an assignment from the ambitious public prosecutor Walter Chalmers to protect his key witness, a certain Johnny Ross. From his testimony in an upcoming hearing before the Senate committee, Chalmers hopes that, in addition to solving crimes, above all, he will also boost his career. All of the action takes place on the weekend before the hearing and runs from Friday to Sunday night.

Ross worked with his brother Pete for the syndicate in Chicago . There, Ross had stolen two million dollars from his bosses, after which two attempts had been made to kill him before he escaped to San Francisco. Bullitt and his Detective Sergeants Delgetti and Stanton are supposed to guard Ross around the clock in a cheap hotel. Ross had called several times before moving in and contacting the police. On Saturday evening, during Stanton's shift, the doorman uses the house phone to call prosecutor Chalmers and a friend who both supposedly want to join them in their room. Stanton then calls Bullitt at home, who tells Stanton not to let the two in because someone like Chalmers wouldn't just show up there at 1 a.m. While Stanton is on the phone, Ross secretly opens the door's security chain. Then a killer storms in with his "backup man". The killer shoots Ross with a Winchester Model 1897 after he and his accomplice knocked Stanton out of action with a leg shot and kick.

The critically injured Ross and Stanton are taken to a hospital. Bullitt wants to solve the case and find both the killer and the mafia boss who ordered the assassination. Chalmers is upset and accuses Bullitt of jeopardizing his career if Ross dies. Chalmers doesn't care much about the injured detective or the Chicago mob's kill squad. His only concern is that the hearing will promote his career. So he tries to stop Bullitt's investigation.

Stanton survives, and Ross comes out of the operating room with a "fifty-fifty" chance. Shortly thereafter, one of the two gangsters shows up at the hospital to kill Ross. The Hitman is discovered by a nurse in the stairwell as he is just preparing his murder tool - an ice ax - at hand. Bullitt tries to catch the killer as he escapes from the hospital. However, he can escape. When Ross dies shortly thereafter, Bullitt withholds news of his death and instructs the attending physician to remove the medical records and register Ross as an unknown murder victim.

Meanwhile, Chalmers increases the pressure on Bullitt by visiting his superior, Captain Bennett, and demanding his witness back. Bullitt reconstructs Ross's arrival in San Francisco and traces his phone calls with the help of the taxi driver who took Ross with him when he arrived in San Francisco. He comes across a hotel room in San Mateo that was booked by a certain Dorothy Simmons. Bullitt now suspects that Ross wasn't who he pretended to be. Returning to his own car, Bullitt notices the two mobsters' black car. They are obviously shadowing him, as he suddenly realizes.

This is followed by the legendary car chase between Bullitt and the killers set on him. You follow Bullitt and want to set a trap for him. Bullitt escapes, but then appears in his Ford Mustang behind the Dodge Charger. Whose driver waits for an opportunity and tries to hang out Bullitt at an intersection, whereupon a high-speed chase through the streets of San Francisco begins. Outside the city it continues. The killer in the passenger seat shoots Bullitt with his pump gun , but the latter can eventually push the enemy car off the road. The Dodge driver then loses control of his car and crashes into a gas station, which explodes in a spectacular way. Bullitt struggles to bring his Mustang to a standstill off the track, badly damaged, while the gangsters burn in their vehicle.

Back at the police station, Bullitt reports to Captain Bennett. Captain Baker witnesses the conversation and learns from Dorothy Simmons. Bullitt cannot get a car from the fleet for his trip to San Mateo at the police station and therefore lets his girlfriend Cathy drive him. In the hotel room he discovers the body of Mrs. Simmons, who has just been murdered. When several police officers appear, Bullitt's girlfriend is alarmed, runs after them and sees the dead woman lying on the floor. Disturbed and alienated, she has to recognize what Bullitt's actual work is and how hardy and routine he acts. She didn't know him from this side before. She asks him whether their relationship still has any meaning, since he lives in a different world from her.

Bullitt and Delgetti learn from the dead person's luggage their real name, which is Dorothy Renick, and also that she and her husband were booked on a flight to Rome. You can also find a large number of travelers checks .

Bullitt had Ross passport photos sent to him from Chicago via a Magnavox telecopier - one of the first fax machines to hit the market in 1966. Thereby he finds out that Chalmers was misled: The dead man was not John E. Ross, but the used car dealer Albert Edward Renick from Chicago, who had no ties to the Mafia. Bullitt concludes that Renick was hired by the real John E. Ross to impersonate him. Meanwhile, Ross planned to leave the country using Renick's Pass. Ross sacrificed Renick to get out of the affair and eliminated his wife himself.

Bullitt tries to stop Ross before he can escape to Rome with Renick's passport. He arrives at the airport, and although the plane is already on its way to the runway, Bullitt manages to have the plane ordered back to the terminal again. The pilot reports this to the passengers, so that Ross is alerted and warned. Bullitt enters the plane while the passengers disembark and sees Ross escape from the plane's back door. He follows him on foot across the airport apron between taxiing planes. During the pursuit in the terminal building, Ross shoots an airport police officer. Bullitt finally knocks Ross down with two shots.

When Bullitt returns to his apartment, he finds that his girlfriend is sleeping in his bed and has chosen him.

background

Replica of the Bullitt- Ford Mustang

The film gained particular fame due to one of the longest chases in film history between a 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback and a Dodge Charger R / T (1968 model) in and near San Francisco . The approximately three weeks of shooting resulted in a ten-minute sequence that does not contain any dialogues. Two chargers and two Mustangs were used for the recordings. The Mustangs used were made available to the film team by the manufacturer Ford, but they had to be heavily tuned in order to keep up with the more powerful Dodge Chargers as standard. There were some peculiarities when editing:

  • During the chase, the charger loses more hubcaps than there are wheels on the car: In the last stunt, all four fall off again. In addition, hubcaps on different bikes are always missing during different scenes.
  • The same green VW Beetle is overtaken a total of four times in the same place.
  • During the chase, Bullitt shifted the transmission up a gear a total of 16 times without even shifting down a gear. The manual transmission of the 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 Fastback has 4 gears.

For a long time it was believed that McQueen drove the Mustang himself during the filming. This is only partially true. Some driving demanding or dangerous scenes were doubled by the famous stuntman and motorcycle racer Bud Ekins . You can distinguish the respective scenes of the two mostly by the position of the rear-view mirror in the Mustang. If you can see the driver's eyes, McQueen drives himself, if not, then the stuntman.

The screams of the passengers after Bullitt killed Ross are striking. Here you have played an approx. 3 second sequence of screams over and over, so that it sounds like a broken record.

The entire film was shot on location.

The film's opening credits were designed by Pablo Ferro .

The film never mentions the Mafia, only "the Syndicate" (in the original: "the Organization"). All Mafiosi also have names without any typical Italian echoes. This is how the character Johnny Rossi became the model for the book in the film John E. Ross.

As a final gag, Chalmers gets into a car with the sticker “Support your local police” on it.

Scenes with McQueen in the Mustang were used in a commercial for the Ford Puma in the 1990s .

Reviews

For the Lexicon of International Films , Bullitt was “an action film trimmed for high tension; effectively staged and psychologically credible ”. Cinema described the film as a "police film classic with plenty of 'speed'". The Protestant film observer is also full of praise: “Well-groomed, perfect American detective with a pleasantly hypothermic Steve McQueen and interesting psychological, sociological and political highlights. Easy to see for adult friends of the genre. "

synchronization

The German synchronization was created in 1968 by Ultra-Film -Synchron GmbH, Berlin.

role actor German voice
killer John Aprea Ernst Wilhelm Borchert
Weissberg Robert Duvall Heinz Palm
Cpt. Baker Norman Fell Werner Peters
Det. Delgetti Don Gordon Rolf Schult
Lt. Frank Bullitt Steve McQueen Klaus Kindler
Cpt. Sam Bennet Simon Oakland Hans Dieter Zeidler
Albert Rennick Felice Orlandi Heinz Petruo
Dr. Westcott Ed Peck Christian Brückner
Det. Carl Stanton Carl Reindel Klaus Sunshine
Dr. Willard Georg Stanford Brown Michael Chevalier
Informant Eddy Justin Tarr Eric Vaessen
Pete Ross Vic Tayback Edgar Ott
Walter Chalmers Robert Vaughn Niels Clausnitzer
Cathy Jacqueline Bisset Renate Küster

Awards (selection)

  • Frank P. Keller received an Oscar in 1969 for best editing. There was also a nomination for the best sound.
  • Also in 1969, the film was awarded in the Best Motion Picture category at the Edgar Allan Poe Awards .
  • In 2007 the film was entered into the National Film Registry .

literature

  • Robert L. Pike : Police Station 52, New York. Detective novel (Original title: Mute Witness ). (The Black Detective Novels, No. 238). German by Heinz Bruck. Scherz, Bern, Munich and Vienna 1965, 183 pp.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bullitt. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. Cinema.de: film review
  3. Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 21/1969
  4. a b Bullitt in the German synchronous card index