Vanishing Point is an almost classic, a run that stopped at third base. The 1971 film by Richard Sarafian features an existential figure, known only as Kowalski, speeding west across the American badlands for San Francisco. He’s a deliveryman in a supercharged white Dodge Challenger, racing to deliver… what? All along the way highway patrolmen on motorcycles and in squad cars with wailing sirens and spinning red lights pursue him. A helicopter occasionally joins the chase, worrying overhead like a giant mosquito.
The police seem uncertain over why they are after a deliveryman whose cargo might be drugs, an empty trunk or a daft concept. Is Kowalski an avatar of the Old West come to life in the automotive age? Sarafian seemed to think so. And in that case, the conclusion to Kowalski’s mad dash across several state lines only goes to show, as in Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider, that outlaws never win.
The rhythm and texture is fascinating. There is a bracing tension between Vanishing Point's glacial European art house pace, endowing every image in each frame with significance, and the velocity of Kowalski’s Challenger, reducing the world to a blur. Quick flashbacks reveal some of Kowalski’s back story: he was a professional race car driver and a mutinous cop, sickened by the brutality and corruption around him. Played with steely determination (and human sympathy) by Barry Newman, Kowalski is like one of those Paul Newman or Steve McQueen characters from the ‘60s—not hippies but alienated enough to dig the scene.
One of the story’s innovative twists is the oracular figure of Super Soul, a blind black DJ/seer who tries to guide Kowalski’s journey over the airwaves, and whose broadcasts turn the outlaw driver into a mini celebrity, a figure of freedom to the longhairs and of curiosity to everyone else. The chase eventually draws spectators and a CBS news crew.
Vanishing Point loses points during silly digressions into Woodstock fantasies already fast fading by the time of its release, especially the helpful hippies and their women, existing only to offer themselves to men. Those scenes seem tacked on, jammed into the story by middle age studio executives dreaming of free love and growing out their sideburns.
