Sorcerer (film)

Sorcerer
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	William Friedkin
Written by	Georges Arnaud (novel Le Salaire de la Peur) Walon Green
Produced by	William Friedkin David Salven
Starring	Roy Scheider Bruno Cremer Francisco Rabal
Cinematography	John M. Stephens Dick Bush
Edited by	Bud Smith Robert K. Lambert
Music by	Tangerine Dream Keith Jarrett Charlie Parker
Distributed by	Universal Pictures (USA) Paramount Pictures (non-USA)
Release date	June 21 1977 U.S. release
Running time	121 min
Country	United States
Languages	English French Spanish German
Budget	$22,000,000 (estimated)

Sorcerer is a 1977 film, produced and directed by William Friedkin, starring Roy Scheider, Bruno Cremer, Francisco Rabal and Amidou. It is a remake of the 1953 French film Le Salaire de la Peur (Wages of Fear).

Sorcerer followed Friedkin's highly successful The French Connection and The Exorcist, but was a major commercial failure. The budget was estimated at over $22 million, a substantial sum at the time. With a gross of only $12 million, the film did not recoup its costs. The film was co-produced by Universal Pictures and Paramount Pictures, with Universal handling U.S. distribution and Paramount handling the international release.

Sorcerer is also notable for its electronic score by Tangerine Dream, which was their first Hollywood film soundtrack, and led to them becoming popular soundtrack composers in the 80s.

Plot

The film tells the tale of four international criminals on the run from the law. In desperation, they flee to a remote village in an unnamed country in Latin America (probably Nicaragua, given the mention of Managua in the film) whose economy is heavily dependent on the local oil company. An oil well over 200 miles away has caught fire, and can only be extinguished with explosives. The criminals are given a chance to earn money, and win local citizenship, by driving trucks carrying unstable dynamite (because it was improperly stored, it is now "sweating" nitroglycerin, and may detonate if subjected to shock or vibration) to the oil well. On the way, they meet with various hazards that block their journey, including a decrepit rope-suspension bridge swinging violently in a huge storm over a flood-swollen river, a massive tree lying across the road, and desperate rebels.

Trivia

• Steve McQueen was the director's first choice for the role eventually taken by Roy Scheider. McQueen loved the script and wanted very much to do it, but he didn't want to leave the country due to marital problems he was having with wife Ali MacGraw at the time. Charles Bluhdorn, whose Gulf+Western owned Paramount, was very passionate about turning the Dominican Republic into a movie making mecca. Friedkin insisted that the film had to be shot in the Dominican Republic, so McQueen asked if MacGraw could be a producer on the film (giving her a reason to be on location with him). Friedkin refused, and McQueen turned down the role, which went instead to Roy Scheider. The director regretted his decision years later, realizing that McQueen's star power might have made it a box office success. Nevertheless, the production notes on the Universal DVD release (1998) states a different story noting that the casting of Scheider as Scanlon/Dominguez was a "foregone conclusion" and "the ideal (perhaps the only) choice for the role" due to Friedkin having directed him previously in The French Connection.

• William Friedkin had serious issues on this film beyond the clashes between him and the cast and crew. He reportedly did not enjoy his time during the section of the film that was shot on location in Israel. He also antagonized Paramount at every turn, even using a Gulf & Western corporate photo for a scene that featured the evil board of directors of the fictional company that hired the men.

• Many people point to the film's box office failure as a result of the movie being released concurrently with George Lucas' runaway box-office smash of 1977, Star Wars. Freidkin agrees with this assessment during an interview on the Bug DVD. Peter Biskind's book "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" which documents the film's development from start to finish, a passage refers to a theatre in San Francisco was doing historic business with Star Wars, and when Sorcerer replaced it for one week it played to unattended silence until it was yanked and Star Wars returned to showings.

• Roy Scheider was angry that, in the final cut, Friedkin had removed a subplot that had his character showing a more sympathetic side, befriending a small boy from the village. For that reason, Scheider consistently refused to comment on the film.

• Despite its being one of the most infamous financial flops of the 70s, it gained a cult following from pay television showings in the 80s, to the extent that it was finally released to VHS and DVD in the 90s.

• The film today is more positively received by film critics; Rotten Tomatoes gives the film 77% fresh on its Tomatometer.

• Film critic Roger Ebert lists the film at #9 on his ten-best films list of 1977.

• The film's title refers to one of the trucks in the film, which has the name "Sorcerer" painted across the bonnet (the other is named "Lazaro") and not to any supernatural or magical character or event. This caused confusion (and walk-outs) among audiences at the time of the film's release as Sorcerer was marketed as a follow-up to Friedkin's successful occult-themed film The Exorcist. According to Friedkin, the title fits the film's general theme: "The Sorcerer is an evil wizard and in this case the evil Wizard is fate, it’s more a film about fate and about the mystery of fate. The fact that somebody can walk out of their front door and a hurricane can take them away, an earthquake or something falling through the roof or something. And the idea that we don’t really have control over our own fates, neither our births nor our deaths, it’s something that has haunted me since I was intelligent enough to contemplate something like it."

• In an interview with Robert J. Emery (as part of the "The Directors" series), Friedkin says that he had wanted to cast Spanish actor Francisco Rabal for the role of the Frenchman in French Connection. They cast Fernando Rey for that role by mistake, although Friedkin ultimately praised Rey's performance in that movie. Friedkin loved the performance of Rabal in Luis Buñuel´s "Belle de Jour" and that is why he had wanted to cast this actor in French Connection. He finally had the opportunity to work with Rabal in Sorcerer.

Spoofs

An episode of The Simpsons titled "Mr. Plow" featured a parody of this movie as Homer crosses a rickety bridge. The short scene is scored with very Tangerine Dream-like music.

DVD release

The DVD has been released in the U.S. and Canada in a non-widescreen version, which is not its original theatrical aspect ratio: it was shown in cinemas at a ratio of 1.85:1. During the 1980s and 1990s, like Stanley Kubrick Friedkin consistently claimed that he preferred the home video releases of his films to be presented in the fullframe format. However, since widescreen televisions have become popular, Friedkin has allowed many of his other films to be released on DVD in their original widescreen formats (The French Connection (film), Cruising (film), To Live and Die in L.A.), and therefore it is possible that Friedkin's position on this issue may have changed.

Currently, there are no plans for a newly remastered release; however, Friedkin's controversial 1980 film Cruising was issued as a deluxe DVD in 2007, with Friedkin indicating that Sorcerer might get the same treatment at some point.

External links

• Sorcerer at IMDb
• Wages of Fear at IMDb
• The "Lost" Theme information about a rare NON Tangerine Dream selection from the soundtrack
• Interview: William Friedkin
• On Wages of Fear and Sorcerer