2018 Blind Spot Series: The Towering Inferno

The end of 2018 is quickly approaching, and here I am, still trying to get all of my Blind Spots taken care of. Before we get to this one, let me give a big shout out to our host for the Blind Spot Challenge, Sofia at Returning Videotapes. I'm looking forward to participating in 2019. Wait, what am I saying? Let's get back to 2018...

Why did I pick it? One of the quests that has popped up as a result of me becoming a (sorta) full-fledged cinephile is seeing the greatest movies from as many (sub-)genres as possible. The Towering Inferno has been long touted as one of the best disaster flicks out there. Full disclosure, I have an odd relationship with these types of films. In general, I like them when they are beyond awful. By that, I mean I enjoy them better when they're really stupid, they don't take themselves seriously, and they're either really short, really fast paced, or both. Perhaps that's why I hadn't seen this movie until now. It's nearly three hours long, won five Oscars, and earned three more nominations, including one for Best Picture. This is seemingly the direct opposite of how I like my disaster flicks. Let's see how it turns out.

Things start with Paul Newman, the architect of The Glass Tower, the tallest building in the world. He has returned to San Francisco for it's dedication, a big bash being held in the Promenade Room on the building's 135th floor. In the run-up to this party, we spend a little time with a number of the people who will be in attendance. They all have character names, but it's easier for me to refer to them by the names of the people who play them because, let's be honest, their actual personas is why they're here. Paired with Newman is Faye Dunaway as his fiancee. The rest of our revelers include Robert Wagner, William Holden, Richard Chamberlain, Susan Blakely, Robert Vaughn, Susan Flannery, Fred Astaire, and Jennifer Jones in what would be her final film role. The one and only O.J. Simpson is hanging around as the head of security (don't laugh). The problem is that, thanks to some shortcuts taken by Chamberlain, the electrical engineer, fires start popping up all over the 81st floor. Not realizing how serious the situation is, Holden, the builder, refuses to evacuate his guests. Of course, the fire soon rages out of control and everyone is trying to figure a way out. The fire department is called and Steve McQueen (the actor, obviously, not the director) and Dabney Coleman show up among the firefighters who attempt to put out the blaze.

The early parts of the film require the most patience from viewers because it's a slow burn. Yes, the pun is fully intended because some days I'm lame like that. It's also a true statement. We become aware of the fire almost immediately. Much of the first two acts plays out as follows: We meet some humans and learn a bit about their relationships, go back to the fire to find out it's grown a bit more, have Paul Newman try to get the builder to get those people out before it's too late, then we go on to another set of humans, and repeat the cycle. Unfortunately, the cast is so big it's difficult to get too worked up about any of them. Just when we find ourselves starting to get into the story of one set of characters or another, we don't see them again for a really long time. This forces the movie to rely heavily on the audience's familiarity with it's many famous cast members and whatever love for them we brought into the movie with us. This is fine for those of us old enough to know who all these people are. However, forty plus years after its release that could be a problem for many folks. The overall effect is it inflates the film's runtime while not doing enough to emotionally involve us. The exception to this is the pairing of Fred Astaire and Jennifer Jones. Astaire earned a Best Supporting Actor nod. Jones was not nominated, but was every bit as good. The chemistry between them jumps off the screen. With less screen time than most of the rest of this all-star cast, they manage to effortlessly do something these other great actors struggle to: earn our empathy. It helps that neither of their characters are tasked with anything concerning the construction of the building nor the rescue of others. They're free to focus on each other until the last possible moment. Others have their attentions divided between whatever relationships they're involved in and the disaster at hand, which often includes delivering exposition. It's a game cast and they're all giving it the ol' college try. Unfortunately, much of what they have to work with is merely perfunctory or simply not supported sufficiently by the rest of the film. Moments meant to be heartfelt don't always land because we may not have seen a particular person for twenty or thirty minutes and didn't spend enough time with them when we did.

By the time we reached the third act, the fire is raging out of control, rescue efforts are full steam ahead, and the movie shifts into high gear. This is where we get the most entertainment, as all the characters are in full-on panic mode, flames are everywhere. Adding to the excitement is something we found out earlier in the film: no one is safe. Any character might succumb to mortality regardless of the actor who plays them. This adds an element of unpredictability that helps keep us on the edge of our seats through to the film's climactic moments. The filmmakers, chiefly screenwriter Stirling Silliphant and director John Guillermin, take full advantage of this as the number of on-screen deaths pile up.

Those on-screen deaths lead me to the movie's special fx. They hold up surprisingly well. It's no wonder that this film virtually swept the technical Oscars that year. Most impressively, one character falls from the elevator attached to the outside of the tower and slams into another part of it, then falls dozens of stories to the concrete below. Without doing any actual research, logic tells me this was done with a dummy. However, it's so well done that even forty-plus years later, it's hard to find the seams in this bit of Hollywood magic. Today, this would almost certainly be done with the use CGI. If done properly, it would look great, but what would likely be lost is the sheer impact of what happens to this person. Sure, artificial impact might be put in, such as the camera rattling at the precise moment the body makes contact with the building. It would be an exciting moment, but not a true substitute for a weighted being dragged by gravity into an immovable object. This weight helps us really feel for the victim in a way pixels don't always allow.

Oddly, the moment I describe above is so impactful, literally and figuratively, because of who it is. The only other thing that affects us in a similar way is the follow-up to this event. Stronger writing would've given us plenty of this. Regrettably, we don't get that. We're just dragged through the film's setup stages. Wading through them affords us the reward of the inherent tension of a bunch of people trying to escape imminent death. We root for them out of simple humanity, not personal attachment. By the end of The Towering Inferno we're entertained, possibly amazed by still-good-looking visuals, and despite the brief instants that actually touched us, we've watched a good movie, but we've also been kept at arms length.

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