The Chase

A film set in a small Texas town over a single night. Bubber escapes from prison. Word spreads that he is heading for the town and everyone starts making their own calculations. Sheriff Calder wants to settle it quietly. But the town's rich man, his circle and the whole town want something else. The real subject is not Bubber but the town. Within the same night there is a party, several affairs, a fight, and a rising wave of drink and anger. The violence does not come from outside; it was already there, and the escaped man is only a pretext. The narrative arrives at an attempted lynching, and the ending was considered extremely hard for American cinema of the period. Lillian Hellman wrote the screenplay, from Horton Foote's novel and play. Marlon Brando plays the sheriff, Robert Redford plays Bubber and Jane Fonda his wife. The cast is very large. The production history is disputed: the director Arthur Penn had no say over the edit and said openly that he was unhappy with the result. Hellman also complained about the interference with her screenplay. An interesting production for anyone who likes 1960s American cinema and social tension. For a viewer expecting an orderly narrative, the film is crowded and scattered; the marks of interference are visible.