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Silver Streak is a 1976 comedy, action and mystery film about murder on a Los Angeles-to-Chicago train journey. It stars Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor, Patrick McGoohan and Ned Beatty and is directed by Arthur Hiller. The film score is by Henry Mancini. This film marked the first pairing of Wilder and Pryor, who would become a well-known comedy duo. The climax of the film includes footage of an out-of-control train crashing through the wall of Union Station in Chicago.
Synopsis
Saying that he "just wanted to be bored," book editor George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) eschews the airlines and travels from Los Angeles to Chicago aboard a train called the Silver Streak.
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Quotations
Rita Babtree: They talk of the joy of sex, but it don't last like the fun of flyin'.
laughing Man I thought you were an amateur, but you a real pro.
repeated line, each time he jumps, falls, is thrown or is pushed off the train Son of a bitch!
to Sheriff Chauncey You stupid, ignorant son of a bitch, dumb bastard. Jesus Christ. I've met some dumb bastards in my time but you outdo them all.
to George Take it easy, killer. Stay loose.
Mr. Edgar Whiney: Hey. He's not dead.
Encyclopedia
Silver Streak is a 1976 comedy, action and mystery film about murder on a Los Angeles-to-Chicago train journey. It stars Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor, Patrick McGoohan and Ned Beatty and is directed by Arthur Hiller. The film score is by Henry Mancini. This film marked the first pairing of Wilder and Pryor, who would become a well-known comedy duo. The climax of the film includes footage of an out-of-control train crashing through the wall of Union Station in Chicago.
Synopsis
Saying that he "just wanted to be bored," book editor George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) eschews the airlines and travels from Los Angeles to Chicago aboard a train called the Silver Streak. George meets and becomes romantically involved with Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh). After he witnesses the murder of Hilly's boss, Professor Schreiner, a well-known art historian, George is thrown off the train and is himself accused of the murder of undercover FBI agent Bob Sweet (Ned Beatty). Sweet had been tracking shady art dealer Roger Devereaux (Patrick McGoohan), who had killed Schreiner in order to take control of the "Rembrandt letters," which proved certain art sold by Devereaux had been forgeries. Devereaux further planned to replace Schreiner with a double, and thereby to discredit a book written by the professor that would have destroyed Devereaux's reputation. This plan requires killing Caldwell and Burns, the only witnesses to the crime.
To survive and save Burns, Caldwell enlists the help of small-time criminal Grover T. Muldoon (Richard Pryor).
Featured cast
Two actors from the James Bond franchise appear in this film. Clifton James appears as Sheriff Oliver Chauncey; he previously played a similar character, Sheriff J.W. Pepper, in Live and Let Die and a year later in The Man With the Golden Gun. Seven-foot-two actor Richard Kiel appears as a murderous henchman with strange-looking teeth; he would play a very similar character, Jaws, a year later in the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me and two years after that in Moonraker.
Reception
- The film grossed over $51,000,000 at the box office during its run and was well received by critics. Roger Ebert had also given the film a positive review. The film was the first collaboration between Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. However, Pryor was a writer on, and the original choice for "Black Bart" in, the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles, which also starred Wilder. The two would go on to make more films together: Stir Crazy, See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Another You.
Awards and honors
American Film Institute recognition
Production
Ostensibly set in the United States and on the fictional railroad "AMRoad" (loosely based on Amtrak trains), Silver Streak is actually shot primarily in Canada. All exterior train shots were filmed on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in Alberta and Toronto after Amtrak reportedly backed out of the project due to disapproval of the scenes in which Caldwell accidentally bursts into Burns' bedroom while she is dressing, and the film's ending with the out-of-control train crashing through the terminal wall in Chicago.
Scenes of Midwestern U.S. landscapes appear behind train layouts and many action shots (as the protagonist and allies battle the villains on and off the train, and get thrown off or jump on and off the moving trains) to add narrative integrity to the fictional location. Most of the interior station scenes are of Toronto's Union Station, except for a brief sequence immediately prior to the crash where the train is rapidly approaching a bumper at the end of the line. The brief sequence was filmed from a Hi-Rail truck, entering the Chicago and North Western Railway's downtown terminal.
The train set was so lightly disguised as the fictional "AMRoad" that the locomotives and cars still carried their original names and numbers, along with the easily-identifiable CPR red-striped paint scheme. At the start of the climactic shoot-out, an obtrusive CPR GM switcher is seen calmly moving cars in the background. Most of the cars are still in revenue service on VIA Rail Canada. CP 4070, the lead locomotive, is in Québec, but the second unit, CP 4067, has been scrapped.
Score and soundtrack
Although the film dates to 1976, Henry Mancini's soundtrack was never officially released before his death in 1994. When Intrada Records released it in 2002, some 26 years after the film's release, it became one of the Top Special Releases of 2002.
External links
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