Film Review
With
Airport
(1970) proving such a phenomenal success Universal Studios were not so
slow to follow this up with another film in the disaster line, although
production was held up by recurring difficulties with the script.
The screenplay for
Earthquake
went through no fewer than eleven drafts, with input notably from Mario
Puzo, who had recently collaborated on the film adaptation of his novel
The
Godfather. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that
the resultant narrative is something of a mess, looking as if a dozen
or so random story ideas had been thrown together with nothing but the
centrepiece disaster to knit them together. Whilst the film was a
box office hit, almost as popular with audiences as
The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
and
The Towering Inferno (1974), it
was not well received by the critics and currently ranks as one of the
weakest in the genre.
The central flaw with
Earthquake
is that it fails to make us interested in any of its
protagonists. Played by a mix of established film icons (Charlton
Heston, Ava Gardner), rising stars (Lorne Greene, Geneviève
Bujold) and newcomers (Victoria Principal), with Walter Matthau making
an amusing cameo appearance, the characters are just the usual two
dimensional disaster fodder, and quite frankly we hardly care what
happens to any of them. The film sticks blithely to the rules of
the genre, so that a character's chance of survival is determined not
by chance but by (a) the pay grade of the actor playing him and (b) his
morality, so a racist, self-loving neo-fascist played by a C-list actor
is unlikely to make it past the fourth reel.
Even though
Earthquake is
formulaic as Hell, and unbearably cheesy and predictable in parts, the
quality of the effects work is nothing less than stunning. No
expense appears to have been spared to convey, as realistically as
possible, the awesome terror-inducing might of an urban quake. It
is astonishing what the effects team was able to come up with in this
pre-CGI era, and in this area alone
Earthquake
stands out as one of the more impressive of the 1970s disaster
movies. The impact of the film's dramatic quake sequences was
heightened by the introduction of a new sound format, Sensurround,
which gave cinema audiences a terrifyingly realistic impression of the
soundscape of a quake zone. However, lacking a strong central
narrative and anything resembling a likeable character,
Earthquake has been somewhat left
behind, a tedious drawn-out ordeal whose only redeeming feature is the
quality of its effects work.
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Mark Robson film:
Bedlam (1946)
Film Synopsis
A junior employee at the California Seismological Institute has
evidence that a major earthquake will hit Los Angeles within a day or
two but his superiors are reluctant to make known his findings, through
fear that this might cause widespread panic. When the disaster
does strike the city is virtually decimated and the survivors face a
terrifying ordeal as they attempt to reach safety before the quake's
aftershock does its worst...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.