Peter Yates’ “Bullitt” is one of the most stylish cop flicks ever made. Those multi-screen opening credits designed by the great Pablo Ferro, that jazzily urbane Lalo Schifren score, those wildly cool outfits donned by Steve McQueen at the height of his laconic sexiness (some inspired by the suits sported by real life detective Dave Toschi) –- it’s a stone groove punctuated by spasms of violence and, of course, a raucous car chase through the hilly streets of San Francisco. It’s so ineffably pleasurable, you don’t mind that the narrative is a sketchily plotted afterthought. Who needs an intricately structured story when you’re watching, as Quentin Tarantino wrote in his book “Cinema Speculation,” “one of the best directed movies ever made?”
You throw on “Bullitt” for the 1968-ness of it all (it’s the apolitical flip-side of the coin to Haskell Wexler’s roiling docudrama “Medium Cool”), as well as the opportunity to hang out with a stacked cast of New Hollywood stars and soon-to-be-television-titans like Norman Fell (landlord Mr. Roper on “Three’s Company”) and Vic Tayback (diner operator Mel Sharples on “Alice”). When you see those actors’ names scroll up, down, and sideways in the frame over that intro, you can only smile, lean back, pour yourself two fingers of bourbon, and dig what Yates and McQueen are laying down.
“Bullitt” turned 56 this year, which means we’ve sadly lost most of the film’s phenomenal main cast. Fell and Tayback are gone, as are Robert Vaughn (who played the combative Chalmers), Simon Oakland (as Captain Bennett) and McQueen’s real-life buddy Don Gordon (as Frank Bullitt’s partner Delgetti). We also lost McQueen way too soon to cancer at the age of 50 in 1980.
But there are three significant members of the cast still with us, so let’s celebrate their splendid work in “Bullitt” and elsewhere throughout their impressive careers.
