Bullitt


Bullitt is a 1968 American action thriller film directed by Peter Yates from a screenplay by Alan R. Trustman and Harry Kleiner and based on the 1963 crime novel Mute Witness by Robert L. Fish. It stars Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland, and Norman Fell. In the film, detective Frank Bullitt investigates the murder of a witness he was assigned to protect.
A star vehicle for McQueen, Bullitt began development once Yates was hired upon the completion of the screenplay, which differs significantly from Fish's novel. Principal photography took place throughout 1967, with filming primarily taking place on location in San Francisco. The film was produced by McQueen's Solar Productions, with Robert Relyea as executive producer alongside Philip D'Antoni. Lalo Schifrin wrote the film's jazz-inspired score. Bullitt is notable for its extensive use of practical locations and stunt work.
Bullitt was released in the United States on October 17, 1968, by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. It was a critical success, with praise for its screenplay, editing, and action sequences; its car chase sequence is regarded as one of the most influential in film history, and retrospective reception has named Bullitt among the greatest action films ever made. The film received numerous awards and nominations, including being nominated for two Academy Awards, winning for Best Film Editing. It grossed $42.3 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 1968. In 2007, Bullitt was preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Plot

On a Friday night in Chicago, mobster Johnny Ross briefly meets his brother, Pete, after fleeing the Outfit. The next morning, Lieutenant Frank Bullitt of the San Francisco Police Department, along with his team, Delgetti and Stanton, are tasked by U.S. Senator Walter Chalmers with guarding Ross over the weekend, until he can be presented as a witness to a Senate subcommittee hearing on organized crime on Monday morning. The detectives are told he is in a cheap hotel on the Embarcadero. At 1:00 am 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 in the leg and Ross in the chest. Chalmers holds Bullitt responsible.
After Ross dies in the hospital, Bullitt sends the body to the morgue as a John Doe to keep the investigation open. An informant states that Ross was in San Francisco because he had stolen millions of dollars from the Outfit. Bullitt also discovers that Ross made a long-distance phone call to a hotel in San Mateo. While driving his Ford Mustang, Bullitt becomes aware he is being followed by a Dodge Charger. He eludes his pursuers, and then turns the tables as he follows the hitmen. An extended chase ensues through the city, ending in an explosion in Brisbane, when the Charger crashes into a gas station, killing the two hitmen.
Bullitt and Delgetti are confronted by their superior, Captain Sam Bennett. Chalmers serves them a writ of habeas corpus, forcing Bullitt to reveal that Ross has died. Bennett ignores the writ because it is Sunday; this allows Bullitt to investigate the lead of the long-distance phone call to San Mateo. With his car damaged from the chase, Bullitt gets a ride from his architect girlfriend, Cathy. The two then find a woman garroted in her hotel room. Cathy confronts Bullitt about his work, saying, "You're living in a sewer, Frank." She wonders, "What will happen to us in time?"
Bullitt and Delgetti examine the victim's luggage and discover a travel brochure for Rome, as well as traveler's checks made out to an Albert and Dorothy Renick. Bullitt requests their passport applications from Chicago. Bullitt, Bennett, Chalmers, and Baker gather around the telecopier as the applications arrive. Chalmers turns out to have 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 gate at San Francisco International Airport, but Bullitt realizes the real Ross probably switched to an earlier London flight, which is ordered to return to the terminal. Bullitt chases a fleeing Ross back to the crowded passenger terminal, where Ross guns down a deputy sheriff before being shot dead by Bullitt. Chalmers arrives to survey the scene, but leaves, saying nothing. Early Monday morning, Bullitt arrives home to find Cathy asleep in his bed, having chosen to stay.

Cast

Credits from the American Film Institute.
  • Steve McQueen as SFPD Lieutenant Frank Bullitt: McQueen based his performance on San Francisco Inspector Dave Toschi, with whom he worked prior to filming. McQueen even copied Toschi's unique "fast-draw" shoulder holster.
  • Robert Vaughn as Walter Chalmers: Vaughn initially refused the role, feeling the plot was too "thin". Decades later, when Vaughn considered entering politics, he discovered that people could not take him seriously, or found him untrustworthy, as they remembered his performance in this film.
  • Jacqueline Bisset as Cathy, Bullitt's girlfriend: Katharine Ross was offered the role, but she refused it, as she felt the part was too small.
  • Don Gordon as Inspector "Del" Delgetti, Bullitt's partner: This film was the first of three times McQueen worked on-screen with his real-life friend Gordon, the other two were in Papillon and The Towering Inferno.
  • Robert Duvall as Weissberg, a cab driver
  • Simon Oakland as Captain Sam Bennett
  • Norman Fell as Captain Baker
  • Carl Reindel as Sergeant Carl Stanton
  • Felice Orlandi as Albert Renick, the fake "Johnny Ross"
  • Pat Renella as the real Johnny Ross
  • Georg Stanford Brown as Dr. Willard
  • Justin Tarr as Eddy, an informant
  • Vic Tayback as Pete Ross
  • John Aprea as Dr. Kinner
  • Ed Peck as Wescott, a reporter
  • Robert Lipton as Chalmers' aide
  • Paul Genge and Bill Hickman as hitmen
  • Al Checco as a desk clerk

    Production

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".

Development

Bullitt was director Peter Yates' first American film. He was hired after McQueen saw his 1967 U.K. feature, Robbery, with its extended car chase. Joseph E. 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 see Robbery and consider Yates as director for Bullitt.
In the original novel Mute Witness, the lead character is an older, overweight police lieutenant named Clancy. D'Antoni and his original co-producer Ernest Pintoff considered the film a vehicle for Spencer Tracy, but his death in 1967 ended that. McQueen was a great admirer of Tracy and took on the project, in part, as a tribute to him. The original novel was also set in Chicago, not San Francisco.

Filming

Bullitt is notable for its extensive use of external 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. The film was shot almost entirely on location in San Francisco. In the emergency-room operation scene, real doctors and nurses were used as the supporting cast. According to McQueen, "The thing we tried to achieve was not to do a theatrical film, but a film about reality."
Bullitt was one of the first feature films to be shot almost entirely on location in San Francisco. With the exception of the opening set piece in Chicago, the entire film was shot there. In a 1968 interview, D'Anatoni reasoned the production would cost no more to shoot in San Francisco than in Los Angeles, despite transportation and housing expenses, because so much money was saved on construction by using real locations.
Filming locations included:
At the time of the film's release, the car chase scenes featuring McQueen at the wheel in all driver-visual scenes generated prodigious excitement. Leonard Maltin has called it a "now-classic car chase, one of the screen's all-time best." Emanuel Levy wrote in 2003, "Bullitt contains one of the most exciting car chases in film history, a sequence that revolutionized Hollywood's standards." In his obituary for Peter Yates, Bruce Weber wrote, "Mr. Yates' reputation probably rests most securely on Bullitt, his first American film – and indeed, on one particular scene, an extended car chase that instantly became a classic."

Vehicles

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. 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.
After the filming was complete, '559 was repaired and repainted with a single coat of Highland Green, and sold to Warner Bros. employee Robert Ross. Ross drove it until 1970, then sold it to Frank Marranca, who had it shipped from California to New Jersey. In 1974, Marranca sold the car to Robert Kiernan through an advertisement in Road & Track. In 1977, Steve McQueen attempted to buy it back, but was refused. The Kiernans drove it for 46,000 miles as their family car, then put it in storage in 1980. Kiernan's son, Sean, began to restore the vehicle 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 to an unidentified buyer.
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 film 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.
Stunt driver Bill Hickman provided two 1968 Dodge Chargers, which were painted black for use in the film. One was reserved for close-ups, and the other performed the stunts. Vehicle supervisor Max Balchowsky strengthened the suspension of the stunt car, but left the engines mostly unmodified.