This extract from the Steven Spielberg Film Society newsletter, February 1983, was part of a longer article that I wrote for Judy and Don, and their readers, reviewing my experiences

catching a slew of Spielberg’s early film and television productions, many of which I was seeing for the first time, at the BFI’s Spielberg retrospective.

Finally, Sugarland

by Joe Fordham (Dec. 1982)

I first saw Spielberg’s debut theatrical feature The Sugarland Express at the British Film Institute’s National Film Theatre, in the grimy concrete buildings of London’s Southbank on the River Thames. The film was screening as part of the BFI’s Spielberg Film Festival, a retrospective of the then-36-year-old filmmaker’s career, timed to coincide with the U.K. theatrical release of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which had just opened in Leicester Square and around the U.K. in December 1982.

I went to every screening of the BFI’s Spielberg fest, five days in a row, sandwiching Spielberg’s career highlights in between repeat trips to E.T. in Leicester Square and my

local theatre out in the suburbs of Essex. It was pretty deep immersion. Sugarland was on a double-bill with Jaws. It looked wonderful and epic up on the big screen.

I remember reading how, when the film was released in 1973, most critics complained how the film was full of unlikeable, dumb characters. But there is a moment that won me over completely and made me care for its protagonists – the small-time, delinquent Bonny and Clyde: deer-in-headlights Clovis Poplin (William Atherton) and his playfully seductive young wife, Lou-Jean (Goldie Hawn). It’s when Tanner (Ben Johnson), the stone-faced police captain, is tailing the hijacked police patrolman, Maxwell Slide (Michael Sacks), and Lou-Jean writes with her

finger on the dirty window of the patrol car ‘Thank You’ as she’s making eye contact with Tanner through the glass. That brought home her sweet nature and her character, driven by one pursuit: a young mother’s desire to be reunited with her baby.

The reality is, it’s a hopeless and ridiculous situation for Lou and Clovis. Although the media frenzy surrounding their pursuit is played for laughs as Lou springs her hapless young husband from minimum security incarceration, and the parade of cop cars tailing them grows to the horizon. They are naive, but Tanner’s insistence not to let the rapidly escalating situation end in bloodshed is what grounds the story as an adult drama.

Atherton’s performance is especially affecting when they finally arrive in the strangely deserted Sugarland, seeking their child, and suddenly he realizes that he has bought into Lou-Jean’s fantasy. It all crumbles away, he tries to hustle them away. The old guy sniper, with the bullets plugging his ears, mutters to his buddy, “I got him,” cold-blooded, and he shoots Clovis like he’s dropping a deer on a hunting expedition. The impact is just chilling.

There are many golden moments. The Poplins’ pitstop in a Big Jim’s motorhome lot, watching Road Runner cartoons on the neighboring drive-in movie screen, where Clovis

says to Jean, ‘I’ll be your sound,’ and then you see the horror on his face as Wile E. Coyote takes a fall. And the cop car hiding in the gas station at night, backlit by Vilmos Zsigmond and venting fumes like a wild beast waiting to pounce. And I’ll never forget the end credits, with that golden sunlight reflecting off the river behind Tanner and Slide, as the music plays. It’s one of those golden Spielberg sunsets that holds you Zen-like in its thrall, and it is deeply moving.

It’s a very under-rated film.

Imagery © Universal Pictures / British Film Institute

article reprinted with permission, SSFS © February 1983

ISSN 0883-6094