The Chase

Arthur Penn studied at the Actors Studio in the 1950s and after Elia Kazan and Sidney Lumet he was probably the most significant film director associated with it. The Left-Handed Gun, with Paul Newman, The Miracle Worker, with Anne Bancroft; Little Big Man, with Dustin Hoffman; and The Missouri Breaks, with Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson, were all directly linked to the school. As is The Chase, with Brando again, and fellow alumni Jane Fonda.

Scripted by Lillian Hellman from a play by Horton Foote, The Chase feels like a movie made while the world is on fire. Bubba Reeves (Robert Redford) escapes from prison and the south Texas town where his wife (Jane Fonda) is carrying on with his best friend (James Fox) is in uproar. Sheriff Marlon Brando tries to keep a lid on the unpleasantness but mob rule is the order of the day.

Penn didn’t have final cut and wasn’t satisfied with what came out, but The Chase is never less than interesting and there’s superb work from Brando and the stellar supporting cast.

It’s melodramatic, overblown, sometimes downright hysterical. And yet that hysteria, though mocked in many contemporary reviews, which gives The Chase its queasy power… The passage of time hasn’t dimmed the brilliant power of Brando’s performance, or the film’s seething atmosphere which still manages to burrow under your skin. The Chase survives today as a fascinating throwback, a time capsule of an industry teetering on the brink of something new.

Chloe Walker, Little White Lies