GROSS/65 1974 - The Towering Inferno - judgement on the 135th floor
A winnowing of the San Francisco elite
GROSS is every year’s top-grossing movie, since 1913, reviewed.
THE TOWERING INFERNO; STEVE McQUEEN, PAUL NEWMAN, WILLIAM HOLDEN, FAYE DUNAWAY, FRED ASTAIRE, SUSAN BLAKELY, RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN, JENNIFER JONES, O. J. SIMPSON, ROBERT VAUGHN, ROBERT WAGNER, directed by JOHN GUILLERMIN/IRWIN ALLEN; written by STERLING SILLIPHANT; studio 20th CENTURY-FOX/WARNER BROS.; 165 minutes. Wikipedia, IMDB, Letterboxd.
“...the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
But the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire…”
— 2 Peter 3:6–7
The Towering Inferno is a bore, a witless mechanical megaproject. There are videos of producer and ‘Master of Disaster’ Irwin Allen at work on the movie. He’s driving onto the 20th-Century-Fox lot in his Rolls, issuing orders for his secretary into the carphone (it’s comic because he’s presumably going to see her in about five minutes).
Allen was producer but obviously also a classic studio control freak so he directed all of the film’s spectacular action scenes, leaving only the grimly soap-operatic dialogue to nominal director John Guillermin.
Allen’s no Scorsese but we learn that he was a competent manager. In one of the clips Robert Wagner, who plays the building’s corrupt PR man, dispatched early in the conflagration, says “I’ve never worked with anyone who was more prepared.” High praise.
And the movie does feel more like an organisational challenge than an adventure. In one clip from the making-of doc Allen is seen working at a huge, multi-panel whiteboard. He was obviously a scientific management guy. His business book would have been called ‘Keeping it tight: directing movies the Irwin Allen way’.
The Towering Inferno grinds through its oddly-paced sequence of sexy encounters and awful deaths. At one point Susan (Faye Dunaway) shows Doug (Paul Newman) the divan bed she’s had installed in his office while he was out of town. He smirks (Wagner’s PR guy also seems to have a bed in his office). But then we arrive at the movie’s final scene, which takes an unexpected Biblical turn.
The firey deaths continue (Pauline Kael said “each scene of a person horribly in flames is presented as a feat for our delectation”) but the tower’s de-luxe 135th floor Promenade Room becomes a kind of sealed-off, allegorical tableau. What we assume is essentially the whole social elite of San Francisco, present for the building’s dedication ceremony - plus catering staff and the band - is trapped there. To sharpen the symbolism, it’s just the men - all the women have already been evacuated (or thrown to their deaths in the chaos).
