Director Report Card: Steven Spielberg (1974)

5. The Sugarland Express

In May of 1969, ex-con Bobby Dent and his wife, Ila Mae, were pulled over by a highway patrolman in Port Arthur, Texas. Weary of going back to prison, the Dents fled the scene. Barely escaping arrest, the two touched upon a novel scheme. They decided to take State Trooper J. Kenneth Crone hostage. They held Crone at gun point and made him drive them around in his police cruiser, no clear destination in mind. What followed was a slow-motion pursuit through southwest Texas, a long line of police cars and news vans trailing the hijacked vehicle. In contact with authorities the entire time, Dent was eventually talked into stopping to visit his step-children – Ila's kids from a previous marriage – at their grandparents' house in Wheelock. The cops waited for Bobby there and shot him dead the minute he stepped through the door. The whole chase was over in the course of a day. Ila Mae would serve five months out of a five-year sentence, eventually dying in 1992 at the young age of 45.

It's a crazy true story and one that was ripe for cinematic adaptation. Steven Spielberg first became aware of the incident, supposedly, by reading a newspaper story with the headline "NEW BONNIE AND CYLDE." The young director was finally free of his TV contract with Universal and was eager to make his big-screen debut. He seemed primed to do just that with the Burt Reynolds car chase flick, "White Lightning." After two months of pre-production on that film, Spielberg realized he wanted his first made-for-theaters project to be something more personal. He begged producers David Brown and Richard Zanuck to let him make "The Sugarland Express," the fictionalized version of the Dent story, instead. Though uncertain at first if a seemingly green director could pull off an ambitious project such at this, Brown and Zanuck soon realized this Spielberg kid knew what he was doing. And so the young director would successfully make the leap from TV to cinemas.

“The Sugarland Express” follows the broad strokes of the true story while largely changing the how and why. Lou Jean Poplin sneaks her husband, Clovis, out of prison. Their son, baby Langston, is about to be placed in foster care and Lou Jean intends on kidnapping him before that happens. They hitch a ride with an elderly couple but, after a highway patrolman pulls them over, they steal the car. After a chase with the police, they take Patrolman Maxwell Slide hostage. Slide is forced to drive the couple to Sugar Land, Texas, where Langston lives with Lou Jean's parents. Soon, a line of police cars are following the trio as they move towards their destination, Lou Jean and Clovis talking with the sympathetic Captain Harlin Tanner along the way. The two become a media sensation and the target of vigilante justice, as they make their way towards Sugar Land.

“The Sugarland Express” is a pivotal film for Spielberg, not just because it was his first theatrically released project. It introduces a theme that has run throughout his entire career: The importance of family and the threat of its dissolution. We barely meet baby Langston but Lou Jean is absolutely obsessed with her son. Moreover, she's also deeply in love with Clovis, who also adores her. Their desire to be reunited with their child, to make this ragtag duo of misfits into a proper family again, is what drives the entire movie. An all-consuming love a parent has for their child is an easily understood instinct and help makes Lou Jean and Clovis into folk heroes. Yet this family is ultimately destined to be torn apart. One of the key images in “The Sugarland Express” is a teddy bear left strewn across a road, to be run over by a precession of cars. The family bonds will be shattered and a childhood will be ruined.

While this story inevitably ends in a melancholy place, “The Sugarland Express” is not an overall downbeat motion picture. You can see Spielberg's crowd-pleasing instinct already formulating here. On paper, a pair of ex-cons taking a cop hostage and making him their personal chauffeur probably sounds like the set-up for an intense thriller. Instead, “The Sugarland Express” plays more like a light-hearted comedy for most of its runtime. Clovis and Lou Jean are not criminal masterminds. They are kids way in over their heads. At times, Clovis cuts the figure of a country bumpkin, bossed around by his more energetic wife. The interactions they have with the police are, even when gun shots are traded, more playful than deadly serious. Inevitably, Patrolman Slide forms a friendship of sorts with the couple, the trio growing an odd respect for one another. This is the story of misfits fighting against an unfair system but they don't set out to hurt anyone, no matter how often they are armed.

While Spielberg would leave "White Lightning" behind to make "The Sugarland Express," it's evident that style of filmmaking was still on his mind. In fact, "Sugarland Express" fits fairly easily into the same genre: A car chase movie set in, and about, the American South. The film takes great advantage of its Texas setting. The elderly couple Lou Jean and Clovis (great redneck names, by the way) hitch a ride with in the beginning are exactly the kind of colorful characters you'd expect to see in such a story, with broad accents and comical turn-of-phases. The lawmen that pursue Lou Jean and Clovis frequently wear cowboy hats and think with their firearms. And the movie is, in a sense, one long chase. I'm reluctant to call "Sugarland Express" full-blown hicksploitation, as Spielberg utilizes these southern stereotypes more for their value as Americana than for tawdry thrills. Yet it plays off the same instincts. This is a movie that depicts southerners as outlaws, rebelling against authority figures and the system that contains them, while luxuriating in a lot of folksy, country charm.

Don't get the wrong impression. Spielberg didn't make something akin to "The Dukes of Hazzard" here. The film has a much more ambiguous relationship with law enforcement. The cops here are neither buffoonish villains nor heroic gatekeepers. Ben Johnson's Captain Tanner, easy to imagine as a Buford T. Justice type in a lesser film, is more sympathetic to the felons than anything else. He's reluctant to use deadly force. The patrolmen and regular cops encountered through the story seem more perpetually baffled by Lou Jean and Clovis' crime spree than anything else. Even when gunfire is exchanged, such as a scene where Clovis nails a trooper down in a Port-A-John, the effect is more comical than anything else. A notable sequence, set in a used car lot, has a trio of good-old-boy would-be militia types opening fire on the kids. It's a moment of sustained chaos, the vigilantes clearly being depicted as irresponsible reactionaries. (Their car is decorated with pro-gun, anti-communism bumper stickers.) This begins another theme in Spielberg's work, of an often uncertain relationship with authority.

Previously, Spielberg had managed to make great looking movies on a limited TV canvas. With the wider canvas of the theater screen, the director unsurprisingly creates some lovely images. The wide, flat Texas landscapes are utilized nicely, especially with the highways stretching around the characters. More than once, the movie utilizes the much beloved golden hour, with blazing yellow sunsets casting events in the foreground as silhouettes. Cinematographer Vilmis Zsigmond, whose previous collaborations run the gamut from Robert Altman and Al Adamson, makes sure the movie is consistently gorgeous. "The Sugarland Express" even features a notable dolly zoom, which Spielberg would make famous in "Jaws," in a scene where the police aim a rifle outside a home's window. 

While "The Sugarland Express" points towards Spielberg's future in many ways, it's also reminiscent of his then-recent past as well. One assumes that Spielberg got this job, and almost directed "White Lightning," because of the tense on-the-road sequences in "Duel." Much like that film, much of the story here takes place inside the cramped interiors of automobiles. Fast-paced editing is utilized to emphasize the tension the drivers feel in those moments, while opening a small space up for the big screen as well. The chase scenes and crashes are also tightly cut, collisions and bursts of action coming in such a way that the audience is thrilled but never disoriented. He was destined for greater things but this film and "Duel" makes it clear that Spielberg probably could've had a hell of a career directing carploitation flicks all throughout the seventies. 

While the film has its share of thrills and laughs, "The Sugarland Express'" goals are ultimately more sentimental than that. Like in the director's best movies, the characters experience a sense of wonder at the world around them. Yet it's not a dinosaur or an alien spaceship that produces that awe here. Instead, Lou Jean and Clovis stop at a gas station to spend the night, right next door to a drive-in movie theater. After the main feature of "Sssssss," another Brown/Zanuck production, wraps up... A Roadrunner and Coyote cartoon plays. The two watch through the window of their vehicle, Clovis providing the sound effects. The animation is reflected in the gleam of the glass. They are young and in-love and enraptured by the magic of the moving picture. Considering Spielberg's movie brat status, it's unsurprising that he'd pause this story to include such a sincere love letter to the joys of cinema. It's, honesty, an extraordinary little moment.

Ultimately, it's relationship between Lou Jean and Clovis that makes "Sugarland Express" so charming and so compelling. Goldie Hawn plays Lou Jean as a ball of endless energy. She's clever and determined to get what she wants, totally committed to her convictions. Hawn perfectly captures that enthusiasm; of a young woman whose loves and goals are simple but whose mind is more conniving than her innocent exterior suggests. Opposite her is Will Atherton as Clovis. While Atherton would come to fame for playing weaselly assholes, here he's a gawky, young dork. His scrawny awkwardness is surprising charming, striking the viewer as an ordinary guy wrapped up in an unexpected adventure. Most importantly, Hawn and Atherton have a lived-in, easy-going chemistry. They are simple people and their love is simple, based in the relaxed comfort they bring one another. 

That love, and the film's keen understanding of it, is what makes "The Sugarland Express" such a surprisingly great motion picture. These two are easy to root for, hoping only to be reunited with their child. The odds are stacked against them. The world understands this and it makes the duo unexpected celebrity. A notable scene has a crowd of admirers greeting the two as they pull into Sugar Land, even being given gifts by the crowd. (Including, amusing enough, a squealing piglet.) Yet this moment has a manic edge to it, predicting the downfall that is soon to come. "The Sugarland Express" ultimately ends in a melancholy place, Lou Jean and the audience's heart getting broken. The title is fitting, as the film has the rush of a sugary treat but also the crash afterwards. Spielberg's feature is adorable, exciting, and bittersweet in equal measures. 

Another element that makes sure the audience is fully invested in the film's love story is its score. This would also mark the beginning of an important relationship for the director. Before John Williams gave us the intimidating brass of "Jaws," the hummable "Indiana Jones" overture, and the unforgettable bombast of "Star Wars," he wrote the music for this humble motion picture. And it's about as different from those scores as this movie is from those special effects filled spectacles. Williams opts for a harmonica driven melody, to establish the hayseed setting, before building up those emotions and feelings – the relationships at the center of the story and the grandness of the open American road – with sweeping waves of typically Williams-esque strings. This later reveals some bluegrass style fiddles and guitars, adding more to the country-fried atmosphere of the tale. Yet, no matter how prosaic or blue-collar as the music may sound, Williams includes just enough distortion at the further edges of the music to hint at the chaos and danger of the scenarios to come. This is further emphasized by the military-style marching that overtakes the music in later scenes, making the police forces in the story seem like a fittingly insurmountable threat. In short, it's a fantastic, eccentric piece of music that brings the movie to life and ensures its creative success. Much like the sturdiness of its filmmaking, the strengths of the soundtrack prove that Williams' future success were no flukes. He knew what he was doing right from the beginning. 

Upon release in 1974, "The Sugarland Express" received mostly positive reviews. (Though both Siskel and Ebert were the most notable names among the detractors.) At the box office, the film would double its three million dollars budget, which kept it from being a full-blown flop, but it wasn't much of a hit either. The director blamed the mediocre grosses on Universal's half-assed marketing. Of course, after "Jaws" became the biggest movie of the next summer and an industry changing blockbuster, film fans and writers would look back on "The Sugarland Express" with more interest. It's easy to see the hallmarks and fascinations that would characterize the director's future films taking form here. While "The Sugarland Express" will inevitably always be studied as "Steven Spielberg's First Real Film," I believe no post-hoc rationales are necessary to call this movie great. The central love story is absolutely adorable. The performances are first-rate. The story is exciting and well-told. The filmmaking is strong and often striking. "The Sugarland Express" shows Spielberg as a fully-formed talent right from the beginning, already capable of balancing crowd-pleasing instincts with a desire to say something more about human lives. It's a fantastic movie now and it was a fantastic movie even before its director become world-famous and renowned. [Grade: A]