Day
107 The
Towering Inferno [1974]
Screenplay Stirling Silliphant
Based on ‘The Tower’ by Richard Martin Stern and ‘The
Glass Inferno’ by Thomas N. Scortia & Frank M. Robinson
Director John Guillermin
Cinematography Fred J. Koenekamp & Joseph
Biroc
Music John
Williams
Leads Paul
Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, O. J.
Simpson, Susan Flannery, William Holden, Fred Astaire, Richard Chamberlain,
Jennifer Jones, Susan Blakely
Production Irwin Allen Productions, United Films
IMDb 6.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes 71%
‘The
Towering Inferno is a clusterfuck of hammy dialogue, overly ambitious
cinematography, and explosions aplenty’… reads my favourite user review on Rotten
Tomatoes of this movie. I would agree with the hammy dialogue, but I thought it
was a masterclass in set-building and stunt coordination. This is your classic
big budget disaster movie, where they have spent a whole lot of money on the
cast and on gunpowder, but they forgot that the story is the most important
part. The title is a spoiler in itself. From the very beginning we know that
this glass tower will become a pillar of fire, and I actually think Guillermin
did well to manage this impending doom. He lays out a few storylines, which are
either based on love or escape or both, and then the action begins and doesn’t
stop until they roll the credits. Steve McQueen and Paul Newman are the two
calmest, strongest, most collected men throughout the entire film, fighting for
liens and screen time. I did a fair amount of research on McQueen for a
documentary once and I remember reading that Newman and McQueen did some
serious battle over who was the star of the movie. In the end everything was
shared – they have the same number of lines, diagonal billing (one stars name
is bottom left, so it appears first, and the other stars name is top right, so
it appears higher, therefore both names are ‘equal’ in a sense depending on
which way you read them) and were most likely paid the same amount. McQueen was
clever though in choosing the role of the fire chief as he doesn’t appear until
45 minutes in, by which time Newman has used most of his lines. The trivia from
this film is brilliant and I encourage you to read into it. In the end though,
all the movie amounts to is a bunch of high-paid actors running around while
everything explodes around them. I would have liked to see the storyline
focusing on why the fire started and whose fault it was that such a disaster
could happen. This would have added some much-needed depth to the script. The
Towering Inferno gets an ‘A’ for effort but is a ‘C+’ in reality.
Acting 3 / 4
Writing 2 / 4
Cinematography 3.5 / 4
Music 2 / 4
HWF rating 2 / 4
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