On a Friday night in Chicago, mobster Johnny Ross briefly meets his brother, Pete, after fleeing the Outfit. The next morning, San Francisco Police Department detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt and his team, Delgetti and Stanton, are tasked by Walter Chalmers with guarding Ross over the weekend, until he can be presented as a witness to a Senatesubcommittee hearing on organized crime Monday morning. The detectives are told he is in a cheap hotel on the Embarcadero. At 1 a.m. Sunday, while Stanton is phoning Bullitt to say Chalmers and a friend want to come up, Ross unchains the room door. Two hitmen burst in, shooting Stanton and Ross.
Chalmers holds Bullitt responsible. Ross dies from his wounds, but Bullitt conceals the death to keep the investigation open, sending the body to the morgue as a John Doe. An informant says that Ross was in town because he stole millions of dollars from the Chicago Outfit. Bullitt also finds out that he made a long-distance phone call to a hotel in San Mateo.
While driving his Ford Mustang, Bullitt is followed by a Dodge Charger driven by the two hitmen. An extended chase ensues through the streets of San Francisco to Brisbane. Eventually, the Charger crashes into a gas station, killing its occupants in a fiery explosion.
Bullitt and Delgetti are confronted by their superior, Captain Sam Bennett, as well as Chalmers (who is assisted by SFPD Captain Baker). After being served a writ of habeas corpus, Bullitt reveals that Ross has died. Bennett ignores the writ as it's Sunday and lets Bullitt investigate the lead of the long-distance phone call to San Mateo. With no car, Bullitt gets a ride from his girlfriend, Cathy. At the hotel, he finds the woman who was phoned garroted in her room. Cathy follows the police to the crime scene and is horrified.
While examining the victim's luggage, Bullitt and Delgetti discover a travel brochure for Rome, as well as traveler's cheques made out to an Albert and Dorothy Renick. Bullitt requests their passport applications from Chicago. It turns out Chalmers sent Bullitt to guard a doppelgänger, Albert Renick, a used car salesman from Chicago, while his wife Dorothy was staying in San Mateo. Bullitt realizes that Ross was playing the politically ambitious Chalmers by using Renick as a decoy so he could slip out of the country Sunday night.
Delgetti and Bullitt watch the Rome-bound passengers at San Francisco International Airport. However, the real Ross (on Renick's passport) has switched to an earlier London flight. Bullitt boards the plane after it is ordered to return to the terminal but the mobster escapes. In the passenger terminal, Ross kills a deputy sheriff before being shot dead by Bullitt. A silent Chalmers leaves after viewing the scene.
Monday morning, Bullitt arrives home to find Cathy asleep in his bed, having chosen to stay.
Bullitt was co-produced by McQueen's Solar Productions and Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. The film was pitched to Jack L. Warner as "doing authority differently".[18]
Development
Bullitt was director Yates' first American film. He was hired after McQueen saw his 1967 U.K. feature, Robbery, with its extended car chase.[19] Joe Levine, whose Embassy Pictures had distributed Robbery, did not like the film much, but Alan Trustman, who saw the picture the week he was writing the Bullitt chase scenes, insisted that McQueen, Relyea and D'Antoni (none of whom had ever heard of Yates) see Robbery and consider Yates as director for Bullitt.[citation needed]
Casting
McQueen based the character of Frank Bullitt on San Francisco Inspector Dave Toschi, with whom he worked prior to filming.[20][21] McQueen even copied Toschi's unique "fast-draw" shoulder holster. Toschi later became famous, along with Inspector Bill Armstrong, as the lead San Francisco investigators of the Zodiac Killer murders that began shortly after the release of Bullitt. Toschi is played by Mark Ruffalo in the film Zodiac, in which Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) mentions that "McQueen got the idea for the holster from Toschi".[21][22]Katharine Ross was offered the role of Cathy, but she turned it down, as she felt the part was just too small.[23]
Realism
Bullitt is notable for its extensive use of actual locations rather than studio sets, and its attention to procedural detail, from police evidence processing to emergency-room procedures. Director Yates' use of the new lightweight Arriflex cameras allowed for greater flexibility in location shooting.[24] The film was shot entirely on location in San Francisco. In the emergency-room operation scene, real doctors and nurses were used as the supporting cast.[25] According to McQueen, "The thing we tried to achieve was not to do a theatrical film, but a film about reality."[25]
At the time of the film's release, the exciting car chase scenes featuring McQueen at the wheel in all driver-visual scenes generated prodigious excitement.[12]Leonard Maltin has called it a "now-classic car chase, one of the screen's all-time best".[13]Emanuel Levy wrote in 2003, "Bullitt contains one of the most exciting car chases in film history, a sequence that revolutionized Hollywood's standards."[14] In his obituary for Peter Yates, Bruce Weber wrote, "Mr. Yates' reputation probably rests most securely on Bullitt (1968), his first American film – and indeed, on one particular scene, an extended car chase that instantly became a classic."[15]
Filming
The chase scene starts at 1:05:00 into the film. The total time of the scene is 10 minutes 53 seconds. It begins under Highway 101 in the city's Mission District as Bullitt spots the hitmen's car. It ends outside the city, at the Brisbane exit of the Guadalupe Canyon Parkway on San Bruno Mountain. Shooting occurred over a period of weeks. The chase sequence combined several locations, located miles apart and edited together. Mapping the movie route shows that it is not continuous and is impossible to follow in real time.[26][27][28][29]
Two 1968 390 cu. in. V8 Ford Mustang GTFastbacks (325 hp) with four-speed manual transmissions were purchased by Warner Bros. for the film.[30] The Mustangs' engines, brakes and suspensions were heavily modified for the chase by veteran car racer and technician Max Balchowsky. In 2020, one of the fastbacks was sold at Mecum Auctions for a record price of $3.7 million (~$4.29 million in 2023).[31]Ford Motor Company originally lent two Galaxie sedans for the chase scenes, but the producers found the cars too heavy for the jumps over the hills of San Francisco. They also felt a Ford-Ford battle would not be believable on screen. The cars were replaced with two 1968 375-horsepower 440 Magnum V8-powered Dodge Chargers. The engines in both Dodge Charger models were left largely unmodified, but the suspensions were mildly upgraded to cope with the demands of the stunt work.[31]
The director called for maximum speeds of about 75–80 miles per hour (121–129 km/h), but the cars (including the chase cars) at times reached speeds of over 110 miles per hour (180 km/h).[citation needed]
Drivers' point-of-view shots were used to give the audience a participants' feel of the chase. Filming took three weeks, resulting in 9 minutes 42 seconds of pursuit. Multiple takes were spliced into a single end product, resulting in discontinuity: Heavy damage on the passenger side of Bullitt's car can be seen much earlier than the incident producing it, and the Charger appears to lose five wheel covers, with different covers missing in different shots. Shooting simultaneously from multiple angles and creating a montage from the footage took place to give the illusion of different streets also resulted in the speeding cars passing the same vehicles at multiple times, including, as widely noted, that of a green Volkswagen Beetle.[32]
In one scene, the Charger crashes into the camera; the damaged front fender noticeable in later scenes. Local authorities did not allow the car chase to be filmed on the Golden Gate Bridge, but did permit it in Midtown locations, including Bernal Heights, the Mission District and on the outskirts of neighboring Brisbane.[33]
McQueen, a world-class racecar driver at the time, drove in the close-up scenes, while stunt coordinator Carey Loftin, stuntman and motorcycle racer Bud Ekins, and McQueen's usual stunt driver, Loren Janes, drove for the high-speed parts of the chase and performed other dangerous stunts.[34] Ekins, who doubled for McQueen in The Great Escape sequence in which McQueen's character jumps over a barbed-wire fence on a motorcycle, performs a lowsider crash stunt in front of a skidding truck during the Bullitt chase. The Mustang's interior rearview mirror goes up and down depending on who is driving: When the mirror is up, McQueen is visible behind the wheel; when it is down, a stunt man is driving.
The black Dodge Charger was driven by veteran stunt driver Bill Hickman, who played one of the hitmen and helped with the chase scene choreography. The other hitman was played by Paul Genge, who played a character who had driven a Dodge off the road to his death in an episode of Perry Mason ("The Case of the Sausalito Sunrise") two years earlier. In a magazine article many years later, one of the drivers involved in the chase sequence remarked that the Charger — with a larger engine (big-block 440 cu. in. versus the 390 cu. in.) and greater horsepower (375 versus 325) — was so much faster than the Mustang that the drivers had to keep backing off the accelerator to prevent the Charger from pulling away from the Mustang.[33]
Editing
The editing of the car chase likely won Frank P. Keller the editing Oscar for 1968,[35] and has been included in lists of the "Best Editing Sequences of All-Time".[36] Paul Monaco[who?] has written, "The most compelling street footage of 1968, however, appeared in an entirely contrived sequence, with nary a hint of documentary feel about it – the car chase through the streets of San Francisco in Bullitt, created from footage shot over nearly five weeks."
Billy Fraker, the cinematographer for the film, attributed the success of the chase sequence primarily to the work of the editor, Frank P. Keller. At the time, Keller was credited with cutting the piece in such a superb manner that he made the city of San Francisco a "character" in the film.[37]
The editing of the scene was not without difficulties. Ralph Rosenblum wrote in 1979, "Those who care about such things may know that during the filming of the climactic chase scene in Bullitt, an out-of-control car filled with dummies tripped a wire which prematurely sent a costly set up in flames, and that editor Frank Keller salvaged the near-catastrophe with a clever and unusual juxtaposition of images that made the explosion appear to go off on time."[38]
This chase scene has also been cited by critics as groundbreaking in its realism and originality.[39]
The original score was composed by Lalo Schifrin to track the various moods and the action of the film, with Schifrin's signature contemporary American jazz style. The tracks on the soundtrack album are alternate versions of those heard in the film, re-recorded by Schifrin with leading jazz musicians, including Bud Shank (flute), Carol Kaye (electric bass), Ray Brown (bass), Howard Roberts (guitar) and Larry Bunker (drums).[40]
In 2000, the original arrangements, as heard in the movie, were recreated by Schifrin in a recording session with the WDR Big Band in Cologne, Germany, and released on the Aleph label.[41] The release also includes re-recordings of the 1968 soundtrack album arrangements for some tracks.
In 2009, the never-before-released original recording of the score heard in the movie, recorded by Schifrin on the Warner Bros. scoring stage with engineer Dan Wallin, was made available by Film Score Monthly. Some score passages and cues are virtually identical to the official soundtrack album, although many softer, moodier cues from the film were not chosen or had been rewritten for the soundtrack release. Also included are additional cues not used in the film. In addition, the two-CD set features the official soundtrack album, newly mixed from the 1-inch master tape.[40]
In the restaurant scene with McQueen and Bissett, the live band playing in the background is Meridian West, a jazz quartet that McQueen had seen performing at The Trident, a famous restaurant in Sausalito.[42]
Reception
Bullitt garnered both critical acclaim and box-office success.
Box office
The film opened at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on Thursday, October 17, 1968,[1] together with a new stage show.[43] It grossed $210,000 in its first week, including a Hall-record Saturday of $49,073.[43] Produced on a $5.5 million budget, the film grossed $19 million in 1968,[44] making it the fourth-highest-grossing film that year, and over $42.3 million in the U.S. through 2021.[3]
Critical response
Bullitt was well received by critics, and is considered by some to be one of the best films of 1968.[45][46][47] At the time, Renata Adler made the film a The New York Times Critics' Pick, calling it a "terrific movie, just right for Steve McQueen: Fast, well acted, written the way people talk". According to Adler, "The ending should satisfy fans from Dragnet to Camus."[48]
In 2004, The New York Times placed the film on its list of the "Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made".[39] In 2011, Time listed it among the "15 Greatest Movie Car Chases of All Time", describing it as "the one, the first, the granddaddy, the chase on the top of almost every list", and saying, "Bullitt's car chase is a reminder that every great such scene is a triumph of editing as much as it is stunt work".
It won 1968's Academy Award for Best Editing.[49] Among 21st-century critics, it holds a 98% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, representing positive reviews from 45 of 46 critics, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Steve McQueen is cool as ice in this thrilling police procedural that also happens to contain the arguably greatest car chase ever."[50] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 81 out of 100 based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating "Universal acclaim".[51]
The famous car chase was later spoofed in, among others, Peter Bogdanovich's screwball comedy film, What's Up, Doc?, the Clint Eastwood film, The Dead Pool, in the Futurama episode, "Bendin' in the Wind", and in the Archer episode, "The Kanes". The car chase can be seen playing on the screen in the drive-in theater scene in the 2014 film, Need for Speed. The 13th episode of the TV series Alcatraz includes a recreation of the chase scene, with newer models of the Mustang and Charger.[55]Bullitt producer Philip D'Antoni went on to film two more car chases, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups, both set and shot in New York City. "The Bullitt Mustang" was a Season 6 episode of Blue Bloods, in which the car was central to a plot involving its theft.
The Ford Mustang name has been closely associated with the film. In 2001, the Ford Motor Company released the Bullitt edition Ford Mustang GT.[56] Another version of the Ford Mustang Bullitt, which is closer to resembling the original film Mustang, was released in 2008 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the film.[57][58] A third version was released in 2018 for the 2019 and 2020 model years.[59] In 2009, Bud Brutsman of Overhaulin' built an authentic-looking replica of the Bullitt Mustang, fully loaded with modern components, for the five-episode 2009 TV series, Celebrity Rides: Hollywood's Speeding Bullitt, hosted by Chad McQueen, son of Steve McQueen.[60][61]
The Mustang is featured in the 2003 video game Ford Racing 2, in a drafting challenge, on a course named Port Side. It appears in the Movie Stars category, along with other famous cars such as the Ford Torino from Starsky & Hutch and the Ford Mustang Mach 1 from Diamonds Are Forever.[62][63] In the 2011 video game, Driver: San Francisco, the "Bite the Bullet" mission is based on the famous chase scene, with licensed versions of the Mustang and Charger from the film.[64]
Steve McQueen's likeness as Frank Bullitt was used in two Ford commercials. The first was for the Europe-only 1997 Ford Puma, which featured a special-effects montage of McQueen (who died in 1980) driving a new Puma around San Francisco before parking it in a studio apartment garage beside the film Mustang and the motorcycle from The Great Escape.[65]
In a 2004 commercial for the 2005 Mustang, special effects were again used to create the illusion of McQueen driving the new Mustang, after a man receives a Field of Dreams-style epiphany and constructs a racetrack in the middle of a cornfield.[66]
Several items of clothing worn by McQueen's Bullitt received a boost in popularity thanks to the film: desert boots, a trench coat, a blue turtleneck sweater, and most famously, a brown tweed jacket with elbow patches.[67]
In February 2022, it was announced that Steven Spielberg will be directing and producing a new film centered on the Frank Bullitt character for Warner Bros. Pictures, with Josh Singer writing the screenplay. The film will be an original story, not a remake of the original film. Chad McQueen and niece Molly McQueen (son and granddaughter of Steve) will be executive producers.[68] In November 2022, Bradley Cooper was cast as Frank Bullitt.[69]
Mustangs
Bullitt Mustang '559 on display at the LeMay Car Museum in Tacoma, Washington, 2019
Warner Bros. ordered two identical 1968 Mustangs for filming. Both were painted Highland Green and had the GT package with 390 CID engines. These cars had the sequential vehicle identification numbers 8R02S125558 and 8R02S125559.[70] Prior to filming, the cars were modified by Max Balchowsky. Car '558 was modified and used for the stunt driving, while '559 was used for McQueen's close-up driving shots.[70]
After the filming was complete, '559 was sold to Robert Ross,[71] who in turn sold the car in 1970 to Frank Marranca. In 1974, Marranca sold the car to Robert Kiernan through an advertisement in Road & Track.[31][59][72] The Kiernans used it as a family vehicle before placing it in storage in 1980. In 1987, Chad McQueen attempted to buy it back, but was refused.[73] Kiernan's son, Sean, began to restore the car in 2014, and had it authenticated in 2016, with documentation that included McQueen's letter offering to purchase it. On January 10, 2020, the car was sold by Mecum Auctions for $3.7 million (~$4.29 million in 2023) to an unidentified buyer.[31]
Car '558 had been damaged severely during filming and was subsequently sent to a scrapyard. In the ensuing decades, the car was assumed to be lost. In 2016, though, Hugo Sanchez purchased a pair of Mustang coupes from the backyard of a house near Los Cabos, Mexico. He then sent the cars to Ralph Garcia to start work on turning one into a clone of the Eleanor Mustang from the movie, Gone in 60 Seconds. Realizing one of the two Mustangs was an S-code, Garcia had the car authenticated by Kevin Marti. The authentication revealed this to be the lost Bullitt car. In 2017, Sanchez and Garcia began to give the car a full restoration.[74][75]
^ abEbert, Roger (December 23, 1968). "Bullitt". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on October 11, 2012. Retrieved January 18, 2010. "Bullitt," as everybody has heard by now, also includes a brilliant chase scene. McQueen (doing his own driving) is chased by, and chases, a couple of gangsters up and down San Francisco's hills. They slam into intersections, bounce halfway down the next hill, scrape by half a dozen near-misses, sideswipe each other, and leave your stomach somewhere in the basement for about 11 minutes.
^ abMaltin, Leonard, ed. (2004). Leonard Maltin's 2004 Movie and Video Guide. Penguin Group. p. 195. ISBN978-0-4512-0940-5. Taut action-film makes great use of San Francisco locations, especially in now-classic car chase, one of the screen's all-time best; Oscar-winning editing by Frank Keller.
^ abLevy, Emanuel (2008). "Bullitt". EmanuelLevy. Archived from the original on October 24, 2018. Retrieved November 6, 2010.
^Hartl, John. "Top 10 car chase movies". MSNBC. Archived from the original on September 16, 2010. Retrieved November 7, 2010. Bullitt (1968). Philip D'Antoni, who went on to produce The French Connection, warmed up for it with this Steve McQueen crime drama, set in San Francisco, where the steep hills seem to yearn for cars to go sailing over them. The director, Peter Yates, makes the most of the locations, especially during a gravity-defying chase sequence that earned an Oscar for its editor, Frank P. Keller.
^"By 1968 the group was performing at The Trident, a prominent jazz club in Sausalito and the group became a regular performer at Glide Memorial on Sundays. By March of 1968, Meridian West had been noticed by Steve McQueen, the actor, who was captivated by a performance at The Trident. McQueen gave the group a visual cameo appearance in the movie, "Bullitt," which was being filmed in San Francisco in April." - Meridian Meridian West web site (archived at WebCite). A similar account is available at Meridian West Folk Jazz Ensemble with Allan Pimentel (archived at WebCite).
^ ab"'Bullitt,' Plus Hall's Stage and Hit Bit 210G". Variety. October 23, 1968. p. 9.
^Bonhams Lot 100 From The Chad McQueen Collection: The Bullitt Jacket. Retrieved March 22, 2014. In 1968's Bullitt, McQueen made the most unlikely items extremely fashionable – desert boots, a trench coat, a blue turtleneck sweater and a brown tweed jacket. Only McQueen could make those clothing items ... global trends... The jacket, much like the man, occupies a very special place in cinematic history, it is unquestionably one of the most important pieces of film –and McQueen memorabilia extant. (WebCite archive)
^Stone, Matt (2007). McQueen's Machines: The Cars and Bikes of a Hollywood Icon. Minneapolis: MBI Publishing. p. 90. ISBN978-0-7603-38957. One of the Mustangs was so badly damaged during filming it was judged unrepairable and scrapped. The second, chassis 8R02S125559, was sold to a Warner Bros. employee after filming was completed.
