Bobby Deerfield
Al Pacino’s winning streak in the 1970s was the stuff of legend, one movie and performance after another that was met with critical acclaim AND box office accolades AND several Oscar nominations (although no wins), something that indicated to most people that he could do no wrong as an actor and that any acclaimed director was onto a surefire winner just by casting him in the lead role. After getting established with The Panic In Needle Park (a tragic drama about junkies in New York City), it was off to the races for Pacino starting with The Godfather, Serpico, Godfather 2 and Dog Day Afternoon, all of which scored Pacino Best Actor Oscar Nominations (except for Godfather where he was nominated for Supporting Actor in lieu of Brando being nominated for and winning Best Lead Actor for Don Vito Corleone even though most people agree that Pacino’s Michael Corleone was the actual lead character in it as he clearly was in the sequels). This 1977 release of course, ended that prolific streak, a film that was heavily advertised as being a sports movie when it really wasn’t and actually was more of a tragic love story (much like when Bull Durham was wrongly hyped as being a baseball movie when it was really just a silly romantic comedy). In fact, the literal similarities to Love Story only a few years before with Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw are stunningly accurate, only that one was an American set movie while this was set and filmed all over Europe, albeit with a top name American director (Sydney Pollack) at the helm who later even called it the “most European film I ever made”. The funny thing is that even while many of Pacino’s own fans have dismissed it as being “Pacino’s Racecar Movie”, a more accurate description may very well be calling it “Pacino’s European Vacation” because one thing that the movie does get right is in depicting the European lifestyle and culture (not to mention their way of thinking) compared to our own, a land with vast landscapes along with people who actually take the time to appreciate them and the quiet and peace that they bring. Bits such as Pacino and his girlfriend hanging out having a picnic under a tree and then being caught trespassing by the land owner only for the man to instead gentlemanly welcome them onto his property and inviting them to take their time in enjoying it is certainly something you wouldn’t see in the gun toting American Confederate South, but at times the so called European lifestyle and attitudes seem to be the biggest reason why this movie was even made possibly in order to hold a mirror up to our own way of thinking when compared to their more laid back demeanor. As for the “sports” aspect of the film (which again is how it was promoted to American audiences), it appears to be used more as a metaphor for the central themes of the film rather than being a film about the actual sport on display. That sport is Formula 1 car racing, a huge deal internationally (although in America its popularity is overshadowed by that of its counterpart here, NASCAR) and even though we only get about 5 minutes worth of scenes showing Pacino actually racing and roaming around the general area (just enough to establish for us that is what he does for a living), that is what introduces us to what is the key component that sets the whole story off when during a major race, a fellow racer (and good friend of his) crashes and burns on the track which results in his death. Pacino’s Deerfield begins to have a mini obsession as to what caused the fatal wreck, even implying his own fears that since his own car is from the same design, something could go just as equally wrong for him during the next big race. Even as he speculates about the possibility of a rabbit or some other animal having caused a distraction that killed his friend, the truth remains that in the world of high speed racing, the possibility of a fiery death is something that hangs over every driver’s head whenever they strap it on, an aura you don’t feel nearly as often in any other sport but with race car driving it always just seems to be there no matter what (including NASCAR and the death of one of its biggest stars in Earnhardt). Maybe it comes as no surprise that even one of the professional racers who worked as a stunt driver on this film (Tom Pryce) was killed several months before the film’s release in a fiery crash during a race in Midrand, South Africa. Anyhow, Pacino’s obsession that his next race might be his last belies the fact that he essentially finds himself in a shell that only resembles a human being, even managing to show little more than vapid indifference to his own brother when he comes out from New Jersey to visit him in Paris in order to give him some recent family news. Eventually, Pacino’s quest to find solace in his fear of death takes him to a rehabilitation hospital in The Swiss Alps where he visits yet another old friend from the race car circuit, only this one is now a quadriplegic paralyzed from the neck down due to his own horrific crash. As he has dinner with his friend (without really stating his true reasons for being there) and watches him get spoonfed by an orderly before watching a strange magic show that seems to pass as being entertainment at this facility, he gets happened upon by a pretty young woman (Marthe Keller) who has a knack for saying just the most random things over the course of a conversation and who piques Pacino’s interest without ever telling him that she too is actually a patient at the facility slowly dying of some unstated incurable disease (much like MacGraw in Love Story never quite had her own deadly disease spelled out either) who has grown tired of seeing her fellow patients die and going out in caskets so she decides to sneak out of the hospital and hitch a ride with Pacino back to her home in Italy, exhibiting a gypsy like free spirit in doing so that again starts to make Pacino rethink his own obsession with possibly dying on the racetrack. It seems as if director Pollack was striving to find some Great Truth here (with both characters), but the pacing is just so slow and sluggish and the journey of the Deerfield character himself is just so meandering (it doesn’t appear as if he takes up much of his free time preparing for his actual races, opting instead to just do whatever it is that he feels like doing until it’s time to report to the track itself) that much of the significance it all could have had gets lost (that is if any was even there to begin with). The exception is when the Keller character after a night of lovemaking with Pacino decides to just up and leave him there sleeping because there is a mass hot air balloon launch going on and she has spontaneously decided to go riding in one of them in what is truly a beautifully shot AND emotionally moving scene where the dying girl gets to experience just what it is like being on one of the many balloons launching into the sky while Pacino (who has just argued with her for leaving him without saying where she was going) is left alone shuffling his feet in the grass below. But aside from that one scene, what we are left with is a series of bits that seem so random at times that the whole thing almost borders on being an abstract work which is something that many of the greatest European directors could pull off on a regular basis (reportedly no less a name than Francois Truffaut was actually offered the chance to direct this but turned it down) but in the more workmanlike hands of Pollack (who was said to be more of an actor’s director than any kind of literal auteur), it all kind of gets muffled down in moments that don’t quite work such as when Pacino (who was reminded earlier by his brother of doing this as a kid) shows Keller his “brilliant” impression of one Mae West(!) and you can actually feel the AWKWARD just dripping off the screen while he does this. Other scenes like where Pacino is out jogging and stops to talk to a priest planting flowers are scenes that either go nowhere or seem to be setting up later things that never occur. It probably also wasn’t such a good idea to have a huge star like Pacino stuck out there almost alone with a mostly no name European cast (Keller herself is really the only one whom American audiences might have seen elsewhere) which results in having many scenes where he tries to either figure out if someone he meets can speak English or if someone can help translate what is being said to him, a distancing tactic that sadly alienates much of the audience from the movie itself…
5/10