John Frankenheimer tried to steer his career towards novel directions in the first half of the seventies: it gave inti mist works like "the Gypsy Moths" (1969) and "I Walk the Line" (1970) while "the Impossible Object" (1973) flirted with European intellectualism. But these assumed perspectives didn't convince the mainstream public and as they weren't all guarantees of artistic achievement were deadlocks in his filmography. So, the filmmaker returned to a genre in which he excelled: the action film with "French Connection 2" (1975) a less enticing work than its elder brother. If it could be pigeonholed in the same category, "Black Sunday" (1977) based on the first novel by Thomas Harris who will later gain worldwide celebrity as Hannibal Lecter's father could also belong to the disaster movie which was thriving in the mid-seventies. More important, this was one of the first films to deal with the grave issue of terrorism that started to be really prevailing in the seventies. A quarter of a century later, this is a work that stays in tune with the current period.
Action-packed stories were Frankenheimer's specialty and "Black Sunday" confirms it. It is filmed with energy, nervousness and almost never gives respite to the audience. The filmmaker is known not to say celebrated among insiders and moviegoers for his innovating choice of camera angles. In the antsy moments, he has recourse to a fresh, novel device at the time: the camera hold at the shoulder which helps to make palpable on the screen a sense of urgency. Later, he will profess that the sequence in which Kabakov hunts Fasil down in Miami was one of the best he ever filmed. The terror on the walk-ons was natural. And certain shots are mind-boggling. I particularly relish the one which goes from Dahlia's car to showcase a part of the full stadium and ends on Kabakov. To give the very long sequence of the super bowl final a larger than life authenticity, most of it was shot on the day it really took place and so, it was real footage that Frankenheimer used with the main actors playing their own roles. The tail and quite fuzzy end of the scene which sees the spectators panicked with the zeppelin just over their heads was shot the eve of the final.
During the film, Frankenheimer even finds time to construe the personality of the threesome of characters. Kabakov hunts down the formidable duo of terrorists with a disillusioned air in his eyes as if he felt that terrorism was here to stay and as one of the characters says to him at one point about Dahlia: "she's your creation". Lander and Dahlia form a terrifying, intelligent pair of terrorists and Frankenheimer tries to understand what prompts them to commit acts of deadly violence. Lander is the most interesting to describe. He is convinced of his own perspective because he was a prisoner of war and never recovered from the humiliations the USA made him endure. "Black Sunday" has even a connection with "the Mandchurian Candidate" (1962), Frankenheimer's magnum opus. Bruce Dern and Laurence Harvey were both brainwashed under different circumstances and act against their native countries. In the same way of understanding, Robert Shaw's behavior could make think of Frank Sinatra's: they try to stop an impending threat. And the two films capture a paranoid aura.
Beyond the simple level of an entertaining action-packed story, Frankenheimer's film makes a bitter assessment of terrorism and arouses major issues still relevant today: how can certain people contemplate such acts of madness? How is it possible to put a break on terrorism or to stop it? How can one struggle against this dangerous will of destruction? This is a film to meditate.
Action-packed stories were Frankenheimer's specialty and "Black Sunday" confirms it. It is filmed with energy, nervousness and almost never gives respite to the audience. The filmmaker is known not to say celebrated among insiders and moviegoers for his innovating choice of camera angles. In the antsy moments, he has recourse to a fresh, novel device at the time: the camera hold at the shoulder which helps to make palpable on the screen a sense of urgency. Later, he will profess that the sequence in which Kabakov hunts Fasil down in Miami was one of the best he ever filmed. The terror on the walk-ons was natural. And certain shots are mind-boggling. I particularly relish the one which goes from Dahlia's car to showcase a part of the full stadium and ends on Kabakov. To give the very long sequence of the super bowl final a larger than life authenticity, most of it was shot on the day it really took place and so, it was real footage that Frankenheimer used with the main actors playing their own roles. The tail and quite fuzzy end of the scene which sees the spectators panicked with the zeppelin just over their heads was shot the eve of the final.
During the film, Frankenheimer even finds time to construe the personality of the threesome of characters. Kabakov hunts down the formidable duo of terrorists with a disillusioned air in his eyes as if he felt that terrorism was here to stay and as one of the characters says to him at one point about Dahlia: "she's your creation". Lander and Dahlia form a terrifying, intelligent pair of terrorists and Frankenheimer tries to understand what prompts them to commit acts of deadly violence. Lander is the most interesting to describe. He is convinced of his own perspective because he was a prisoner of war and never recovered from the humiliations the USA made him endure. "Black Sunday" has even a connection with "the Mandchurian Candidate" (1962), Frankenheimer's magnum opus. Bruce Dern and Laurence Harvey were both brainwashed under different circumstances and act against their native countries. In the same way of understanding, Robert Shaw's behavior could make think of Frank Sinatra's: they try to stop an impending threat. And the two films capture a paranoid aura.
Beyond the simple level of an entertaining action-packed story, Frankenheimer's film makes a bitter assessment of terrorism and arouses major issues still relevant today: how can certain people contemplate such acts of madness? How is it possible to put a break on terrorism or to stop it? How can one struggle against this dangerous will of destruction? This is a film to meditate.