They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: SORCERER (1977)

Today marks the 83rd birthday of one of the true titans of filmmaking, William Freidkin.  I am not a fan of all his output--there’s some truly wretched stuff buried in there, including his most recent ‘documentary,’ but that’s a story for another day--but when he was in his groove, there was no one better working the silver screen.  He made a police procedural that redefined that genre in The French Connection, a horror film that still creeps me out in The Exorcist...and an adventure film that’s fairly unique in Sorcerer.

The trailer below starts with an attempt to make Freidkin into a brand.  This was done a lot in the 70‘s, as the Last Great Decade of American Film breathed its last.  A half minute is spent building him up, citing his previous two films over a plain background while informing us of all the work he put in to make this latest film.  We get a title card...

And then faces.  Lots of faces.  There isn’t really anything that counts as action for forty-five seconds.  Whoever was editing this trailer (it wouldn’t surprise me if it was the director himself) seemed to want to emphasize that this is, at its core, a movie about characters before assuring us there’s plenty of action, too.  Three of the four main characters were played by international actors who didn’t have a reputation in America, so this was the first time many people were seeing these faces..in fact, the first time we see the recognizable face of Roy Schieder almost a minute and a half has passed.  There’s a bit of narration over a couple of shots that kind of tell us what the plot is in the most general of senses before return to the quick cuts (for the time) of violence and action before we’re back to that plain background and some credits.  It’s a classic case of a trailer showing us a lot without letting us know anything about the film--but it also serves the purpose of introducing and familiarizing us with three actors who were new to us, which is pretty good.

Universal was high on this film, and with good reason--it was directed by one of the hottest auteurs at the time and featured one of the stars of last year’s blockbuster, Jaws...but a few weeks before it was released, a movie that no one really thought of as hit material called Star Wars came out .  The little science fiction adventure by George Lucas was dominating the box office by the time Sorcerer came out, and it bombed theatrically.  I can’t help thinking that this was emblematic of the handover of film culture from one that was director and story-driven to the one that was event-driven...which brought us to where we are now.

And as a bonus, here’s a film clip from an interview of Freidkin conducted by noted self-important asshat Nicholas Winding Refn, where Friedkin gives him what for and discusses the making of the movie.

Trailer courtesy of Jonno 77.