Steve McQueen: Too Cool | The House Next Door

By Matt Zoller Seitz on May 21, 2009 in Film Jump to Comments (0)

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is currently showing a series of films starring Steve McQueen. This essay for The L compares McQueen's screen persona to that of other movie tough guys, past and present. You can watch the video below, or at the magazine's web site. For a text version, click here.

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guess ur name is mat.
There is no actor that can act well in every situation.
I love bikes and even if i wanted a bike that can do everything ( off road, supersport, motard, crusser, scotter) i cant find it!
guess my point is that there are all round better actors but no one as cool!
and im 23 years old
watched most of his movies and can tell you that his love was motorbike and not the movies he was acting in!
Posted by elias Eliopoulos on 2009-06-08 18:45:04 Yes, I've undergone my own revisionism regarding McQueen, similar, I suppose, to my feelings about Kirk Douglas who I revered as a kid. There is some truth in Tristan's comments though. You can't blame McQueen for changing notions of what a man is, or should be. Yes, he was a limited actor but he knew what he could do and did it well. It might have been interesting to see how old age might have turned some of that coolness inside out. I want to talk about two McQueen scenes that describe the apogee and perigee of his talent though. The nadir, for me, was the moment in the Thomas Crown Affair where Crown celebrates the triumph of his caper. Required to express a kind of maniacal joy, McQueen's laughter is so false, so forced that it makes you realize how seldom he stepped out of his comfort zone. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the scene in The Sand Pebbles where he walks into the engine room and takes charge. It's the simple joy of man who knows his job, not great with women but he knows his way around a sputtering steam engine.
Posted by David Stafford on 2009-05-29 04:28:06 Great analysis, Matt. Very enjoyable and thought provoking.

Personally, I've never really wanted to be McQueen. To me he's similar to Frank Sinatra - a talented and physically undersized performer who tries maybe a little bit too hard to maintain a "man's man" stance.

I'd also like to mention another modern tough guy with range - Bruce Willis. He's eqaully adept at comedy and action material, he's good with women, and he's also great acting with kids.
Posted by GLI on 2009-05-23 09:32:29 Nice job, Matt, you prancing fairy.

I like to compare The Getaway, one of my favorite Peckinpah films, to Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, my absolute favorite Peckinpah film.

They're both very poetic existential couple-on-the-run-from/toward-killers road movies-- one starring Mr. Cool, the other showcasing the uncoolest hothead in Peckinpah's stable of actors, Warren Oates.

(I agree that Peckinpah created McQueen's churning despair in the editing. Much bluesy, groovy montage in The Getaway.)

I love imagining them swapping movies-- or McQueen at least playing El Jefe's lead assassin in Alfredo Garcia-- the unflappable, soulless winner to Oates' mercurial, blubbering, beautiful loser.
Posted by Steven Boone on 2009-05-23 01:24:11 Gotta chime in on this one. I don't buy any of this. First of all, Matt, by commenting on McQueen's limited range as an actor, you seem out of touch with what people have been saying about McQueen for years. Most of his most ardent admirers never claimed that he was even a good actor, in conventional terms. Rather, he had a great gift for recognizing how to utilise a limited range, and developed a minimalist, phsyical style of performance which was uniquely suited to screen acting. To suggest he was a poor leading man is a nonsense. Robert Wise credited him with an uncanny instinct for what worked on-camera; Sam Peckingpath once said "If you want to understand movie acting, watch McQueen's eyes in close-up." Actors such as Russel Crowe, who possess a much a wider conventional range, continue to hold him in awe.

Your other major point about McQueen not showing enough vulnerability strikes me as vacuous politically correct revisionism. In actually, most of McQueen's movies do express a kind of inarticulate vulnerability - the Cincinnatti Kid comes to mind particularly - he just didn't make such a song and dance about it. I don't understand why you don't, say, write an article about how Clint Eastwood was happy to epouse the worst kinds of right-wing/homophobic nonsense for a paycheck for much of the seventies, rather than lambasting McQueen for not being demonstrative enough in his feelings towards women!
Posted by Tristan Eldritch on 2009-05-22 17:59:30 Great essay, especially on singling out The Getaway as McQueen's best work. Overall, I agree that McQueen lacked range, but I don't think he was a bad actor. After all, his innate charisma did not come from his looks, and magnetic aloofness is a lot harder to pull off than showy charm.

McQueen may never have turned in an amazing performance, but her certainly elevated a lot of mediocre movies. Take a film like The Cincinnati Kid. McQueen plays the Kid with the quiet desperation of a real gambler, turning what was otherwise a fairly routine poker movie into an interesting character study. Paul Newman may have been better in The Sting, but McQueen's performance felt more true to life.
Posted by Pandyora on 2009-05-22 15:37:37 hokahey: Good call on Robert Wise's superb direction. Funny thing, though: Pretty much every movie Wise made could be called "well-directed," in terms of composition, cutting, pacing, the dramatic emphases falling where they theoretically should. Yet a lot of them are still bloated and/or inert. Re-watching "The Sand Pebbles" for this piece, I found myself getting intoxicated by the sheer efficient beauty of Wise's shots, then realizing that I didn't much care about half of what was happening onscreen.

"The Sound of Music" is like that for me, too. About half the shots in that one are either magnificent or borderline-magnificent and the rest would shame most Hollywood movies from that period. But the movie (for me at least) never rises above the merely pleasant.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2009-05-22 13:49:26 Nice piece. Congrats for having the intestinal fortitude to go against the grain.

One can be a huge fan of McQueen's screen character and still recognize the shortcomings in the "Tao of Steve."

The train scene from The Getaway where he quietly pummels would be grifter, Richard Bright, is classic McQueen and, for me, defines that side of his persona. One need only view the more Hollywoodish version in the Alec Baldwin remake to see how hard it is to get that stuff right.

Regarding his screen relationships with women, one of McQueen's most heartfelt scenes in this regard is also from The Getaway. When Doc finds out that Ali McGraw screwed Ben Johnson to speed up his parole he is clearly crushed and expresses it by smacking McGraw several times. It's a choice that worked for the film, IMHO, but also telling.

Robert Mitchum is a good example of a true tough guy who had enough street cred to show a more vulnerable side.
Posted by Matt Maul on 2009-05-22 12:10:59 SRP -
Yes, McQueen and the musical score are top assets going for The Sand Pebbles. Then there are some very dramatic scenes. I've already mentioned the "Shoot somethin'" scene - but I also love the "battle at the boom" scene - one of the most dramatically paced and filmed battle scenes ever filmed: you get the extreme long shots of the gunboat approaching the bend in the river - then the boom is revealed, blocking their way; then there is the preparation for the fight whose suspense mounts in stages: preparation, artillery duel, gunfire, boarding party attack.
Posted by hokahey on 2009-05-22 11:32:53 Apparently, McQueen drank an inordinate amount of beer during their meeting with Spielberg.

Talking about Close Encounters with Spielberg over a beer. If you can work Rachel McAdams in there somewhere, then you have my idea of heaven.
Posted by Ali Arikan on 2009-05-22 10:26:56 What Ali said. More specifically, Laurent Bouzereau's documentary on the 2 DVD Collector's edition.

Although the crux of the tale is about McQueen unable to cry on screen, the thought of that being the role in which McQueen facade could break is very compelling. It could have added a whole new layer of dispair to the Neary character...though I still can't imagine him in the orgasmic fantasia of the finale.
Posted by SRP on 2009-05-22 09:41:01 "McQueen eventually turned it down because he couldn't cry on camera."

Well, there you go.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2009-05-22 09:29:10 Matt - Steve McQueen was Spielberg's first choice for Roy Neary. Apparently, the two met to discuss the film, but McQueen eventually turned it down because he couldn't cry on camera. Spielberg talks about it in a Close Encounters documentary.
Posted by Ali Arikan on 2009-05-22 07:38:08 "I can't believe Spielberg almost cast him in Close Encounters... it's a frightening yet fascinating thought."

I can't believe that, as a totally over-the-top Spielberg geek, I somehow never heard about this until now.

Almost cast him as who? The Dreyfuss character? Or the Truffaut character?

What a different film that would have been.

McQueen might have been quite compelling, though. Spielberg has a knack for pulling great, subtle work out of macho actors (Roy Scheider in "Jaws," Harrison Ford in the Indy films, Liam Neeson in "Schindler's List").
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2009-05-22 01:54:05 Upon seeing Bullit for the first time in years, I was quite shaken to find out that I didn't find McQueen all that cool. I've always bought into to him being the ultimate cool guy, but seeing The Getawat, Thomas Crowne and Bullit in close proximity made me confront the fact that I'm really not that impressed with the guy, nor do I find him cool.
He just struck me as monotone in all of them. Even the violence he has in The Getaway felt like someone playing at Packinpah-isms. Him and Ali McGraw together are like a void on the screen- the slapping scene felt like two light-weights trying to act method-y. I don't know what to do about it...I'm the only person who no longer finds McQueen cool. I found Brosnan's Crowne cooler (in a better movie, I think). His looseness is something that McQueen could only rarely pull off convincingly.

I still like him in The Great Escape and Sand Pebbles (I agree there's a good movie in there....but as it is, McQueen and the great Goldsmith score are the only things I really like about it).

I can't believe Spielberg almost cast him in Close Encounters... it's a frightening yet fascinating thought.
Posted by SRP on 2009-05-22 00:11:40 He was very sweet in "The Sand Pebbles" -- a sweetness that deserved a shorter, better, more focused movie, in my opinion.

As for "Thomas Crown" (which I didn't include -- I probably should have) he's sexy in that, maybe the sexiest he'd ever been onscreen, but I wouldn't call him vulnerable, in the way that Harrison Ford is in "Witness," "Raiders," "Random Hearts," "Blade Runner" and a lot of other films where his character is in a physical relationship with a woman.

Granted, that coolness/superficiality is what makes "Crown" (and its underrated remake) fun. But it doesn't exactly disprove my point.
Posted by Matt Zoller Seitz on 2009-05-21 23:02:19 I enjoyed your video essay; nicely done.

I would have to second hokahey's comment re. the kiss in Thomas Crown.

Having re-watched that movie just last week, the famous kiss in the movie was about a minute long and the scene starts with an extreme closeup of both their lips and the the camera spins around them for an eternity-- I suppose technically it was a pretty complicated dolly shot which these days would be done with a steadicam.
Posted by luis fernandes on 2009-05-21 22:37:56 "Well, shoot somethin!"

Yeah, I guess you're right. McQueen's acting talent was limited. But he had his moments. The above quote is from the very gripping scene in The Sand Pebbles in which Jake Holman's Chinese engine hand is being flayed alive by Communists and Holman (McQueen) can no longer restrain himself, and he cries out for a mercy killing. This is an intense scene - and McQueen as Holman is intense - straining against years of military discipline to show his compassion for someone considered inferior by other crew members.

In the same way McQueen's characters were often literally locked up, McQueen played characters who were emotionally locked up - Nevada Smith, Jake Holman, Reese (Hell is for Heroes). So he was not known for histrionics, but through his abundance of cool he evoked a touching sincerity - especially in The Sand Pebbles.

As for McQueen's inert kiss in Bullitt, that certainly isn't the case in The Thomas Crown Affair.

Your video essay is superbly made (love the collage of images showing McQueen repeatedly locked up), and you pose a good argument here that is shared by many critics, but along his cool factor, McQueen had a taciturn sincerity that I've always found very touching.
Posted by hokahey on 2009-05-21 20:40:48 Matt (aka McQueen-hating pansy):

My love for McQueen is undeniable, and yet Iâ€™ve never been blind to his significant limitations. Here, you examine those beautifully, particularly in reference to Nevada Smith and in comparisons to Paul Newman and Harrison Ford, both of whom repeatedly demonstrate(d) more depth and range.

I might quibble with the comparison to Humphrey Bogart, who Iâ€™ve always felt was limited as an actor when he didnâ€™t have dialogue he could make sing. (That he was such a great talker masked some of his deficiencies in the same way that McQueenâ€™s cool factor masked his shortcomings.) Also, I might be more appreciative that McQueen was able to do immediately and innately what so many action heroes spend half a film and untold lines of dialogue trying to establish. (This goes along with your great point that, if nothing else, McQueen was a refreshing break from the actors who act â€œmost.â€)

Beyond that, Iâ€™m compelled to point out that in fact his character in The Magnificent Seven is hardly â€œgiven everythingâ€; in fact McQueen has less of a story or gimmick built around his character than Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn or even Horst fucking Buchholz. Thus, McQueen stands out in that film for what he brings to the character, not what the character brings to him. Also, in an otherwise forgettable movie, McQueen does get the best of Newman in The Towering Inferno with his pitch-perfect one-word reaction to figuring out what needs to happen to put out the fire.

Still, your overall argument holds. McQueen wasnâ€™t a great actor. But he was and is great to watch. The camera loved him, and most of the time thatâ€™s the bottom line. In the end, there have been countless great actors, but thereâ€™s only one King of Cool. As consolation prizes go, itâ€™s a pretty darn good one.
Posted by Jason Bellamy on 2009-05-21 18:44:08 Great stuff, Matt. I've always thought that McQueen's leading women were audience surrogates in the way they experienced his surface cool, but never quite penetrated his soul. Playing hard-to-get is great and all, but after a while it can have the adverse effect. Not that I can personally relate, or anything...
Posted by Ali Arikan on 2009-05-21 15:13:34

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