Vanishing Point

An American road film. Kowalski delivers cars. That is the job: taking a car from one city to another. He picks up a Dodge Challenger in Denver. It is going to San Francisco. The delivery window is three days. He makes a bet. He says he will do it in fifteen hours. He sets off. From there the film takes place almost entirely on the road. Nevada, Utah, California. The police come after him. First one patrol, then a state force, then all of them. There is a voice on the radio. A blind disc jockey called Super Soul; he listens to the police band and directs Kowalski on the air. He becomes a hero. The listeners follow him. The narrative gives flashbacks. Kowalski was a policeman. Then a racer. Then he lost a woman. None of it is fully told. The narrative refuses to give information. There are people on the road. A snake hunter, a religious community, two motorcyclists, a couple living in the desert. What the narrative is interested in is not escape but the absence of a reason: its idea is that the man is not running anywhere; he has a car to deliver and he refuses to stop. He never says why he will not stop. The last scene is in a small town. Two bulldozers stand across the road and Kowalski does not slow. The narrative does not explain the ending. The version shown in Britain has an extra scene; an encounter with a hitchhiker. It is not in the American version. The images are wide, bare and dusty. The desert is nearly the only set. The music is the rock and gospel mixture of the period. The film did not work on first release; becoming a cult took years. Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, Dean Jagger and Victoria Medlin are in the cast. Richard C. Sarafian directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1970s American cinema and existential road films. Who it is not for: anyone expecting explanation; the character's motive is never stated and that is deliberate.