Silver Streak (film)

Silver Streak
Film poster
Directed by	Arthur Hiller
Written by	Colin Higgins
Produced by	Thomas Miller Edward K. Milkis
Starring	Gene Wilder Jill Clayburgh Richard Pryor Patrick McGoohan
Cinematography	David M. Walsh
Edited by	David Bretherton
Music by	Henry Mancini
Distributed by	20th Century Fox
Release date	December 8, 1976 (1976-12-08)
Running time	114 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$6.5 million
Box office	$51,079,064

Silver Streak is a 1976 comedy-thriller film about murder on a Los Angeles-to-Chicago train journey. It was directed by Arthur Hiller, and stars Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, and Richard Pryor, with Patrick McGoohan and Ned Beatty in supporting roles. The film score is by Henry Mancini. This film marked the first pairing of Wilder and Pryor, who would be paired in three more films.

Plot

Book editor George Caldwell (Wilder) travels from Los Angeles to Chicago for his sister's wedding aboard a train called the Silver Streak. On board, George meets a vitamin salesman named Bob Sweet (Beatty) and a woman named Hilly Burns (Clayburgh). Hilly works for Professor Schreiner, a well-known art historian who is on a publicity tour for his new book on Rembrandt.

George sees a dead body dangling outside the window and then falling away. But he is drunk and Hilly insists he must have imagined it. In the morning, he sees Schreiner's book, with the author's photo: he was the dead man. Inside the book is an envelope.

Schreiner's killers are Johnson (Gierasch), Whiney (Walston), and Reace (Kiel). George goes to Schreiner's room, and Reace throws him off the train. George meets a farmer (Benson) and they overtake the train in her biplane.

George sees Hilly with Johnson (who is impersonating Schreiner), Whiney, and art dealer Devereau (McGoohan) who is holding Hilly as a secret hostage . Devereau apologizes to George for the "misunderstanding" involving Reace. After mentioning "the Rembrandt letters", Johnson says he will return to his room for a glass of scotch.

George goes to the club car and begins drinking heavily, confiding in Sweet about his misadventure. Sweet reveals himself as an undercover FBI agent named Stevens. He confirms George's suspicions: the real Schreiner did not drink alcohol. Devereau is a criminal who passes himself off as an art expert, and Whiney, Reace, and Johnson work for him. His plan is to have Johnson, disguised as Scheiner, discredit the book that exposes Devereau for authenticating two forgeries as original Rembrandts. They find the envelope George saw. It contains letters written by Rembrandt, proving Devereau's guilt. But then Reace kills Stevens and goes after George. Their fight ends on the roof, where George kills Reace but is knocked to the ground by an overhanging signal.

On foot again, George finds the local sheriff (James), but is accused of murdering Stevens. He escapes, stealing a patrol car which was transporting thief Grover T. Muldoon (Pryor). George and Grover work together to reach the train at Kansas City. Grover disguises George as a black man and he gets by police and reboards the train.

George is captured, but he and Hilly are rescued from Devereau's room by Grover, disguised as a steward. After a shootout, George and Grover jump off the train and are arrested and taken to a train station, where federal agent Donaldson (Birman) explains that he planted the Stevens murder story to protect George. Donaldson tells George that Devereaux is already under suspicion in another case. George tells Donaldson about Devereau's plan, and Donaldson arranges for the train to be stopped by his men. Meanwhile, Devereau burns the Rembrandt letters.

Once the train has stopped and the passengers are off, another shootout ensues. George boards the train a fourth time, with Grover, as Devereau climbs onto the locomotive and orders the engineer to start moving. An agent shoots Whiney, George shoots Johnson, and Devereau shoots the engineer and places a toolbox on the dead man's control pedal. Devereau is then shot by Donaldson, falls, and is hit by an oncoming train.

Devereau and his men are gone, but with no one alive on the locomotive and the pedal depressed, the train is running away. Devereau's men had also disabled the emergency brakes. With the help of a steward (Crothers), George uncouples the passenger cars from the engine. The engine roars into the station, smashes through the end-of-track barrier, and into the terminal, destroying everything in its path. Grover steals a sports car and drives away, and George and Hilly leave together.

Cast

• Gene Wilder as George Caldwell
• Jill Clayburgh as Hildegarde "Hilly" Burns
• Richard Pryor as Grover T. Muldoon
• Patrick McGoohan as Roger Devereau
• Ned Beatty as Bob Sweet
• Clifton James as Sheriff Oliver Chauncey
• Ray Walston as Edgar Whiney
• Scatman Crothers as Porter Ralston
• Len Birman as Chief Donaldson
• Lucille Benson as Rita Babtree
• Stefan Gierasch as Professor Schreiner and Johnson
• Valerie Curtin as Plain Jane
• Richard Kiel as Reace
• Fred Willard as Jerry Jarvis
• Henry Beckman as Conventioneer

Reception

The film grossed over $51,000,000 at the box office during its run and was well received by critics. Roger Ebert gave it a positive review, and it holds an 83 percent approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

Awards and honors

American Film Institute recognition

• 2000: AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs #95

• Academy Award nomination: Best Sound (Donald O. Mitchell, Douglas O. Williams, Richard Tyler, Harold M. Etherington)
• Golden Globe nomination: best actor (musical/comedy) – Gene Wilder
• The film was chosen for the Royal Film Performance in 1977.

Production

Colin Higgins later said the lead role was written for George Segal. He also claimed the producers did not want Richard Pryor cast because Pryor had recently walked off The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings; he says the producer at one stage considered casting another black actor as a back up. In the event Pryor was very professional during the shoot.

The film was the first collaboration between Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Pryor was a writer, and the original choice for "Black Bart" in the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles, which also starred Wilder. The two would later go on to make more films together: Stir Crazy, See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Another You.

Although set in the United States on the fictional railroad "AMRoad" (loosely based on Amtrak), Silver Streak was filmed primarily in Canada (with the exception of Union Station in Los Angeles). All exterior train shots were filmed on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in Alberta and Toronto; 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.

The scene with a de Havilland Tiger Moth biplane being flown to catch up with the train was shot in southern Alberta Canada. The scene shows an old woman flying, it was actually a man and the actual owner of the plane at the time. The plane was painted with a water soluble "silver" paint to cover its original colors, white overall with an orange strip down the sides and orange leading edges. The plane, a de Havilland Tiger Moth model DH 82-C, was built in 1950, serial number 1481.

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 set both in Kansas City and Chicago actually show different parts 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. That sequence was filmed from a Hi-Rail truck, entering the Chicago and North Western Railway's downtown Chicago 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 shootout, a CPR GM switcher is seen calmly moving cars in the background. Most of the cars are still in revenue service on Via Rail. CP 4070, the lead locomotive, is in Quebec, though long out of service, but the second unit, CP 4067, has been scrapped.

Score and soundtrack

Though the film dates to 1976, Henry Mancini's score was never officially released as a soundtrack. When Intrada Records released a compilation in 2002, it became one of the Top Special Releases of 2002.

• "Main Title"
• "Hilly's theme" (Jazz version)
• "Runaway train"
• "This Is Terrific"
• "Something for Jill"
• "Bye Bye Professor Lie Down George"
• "On to Kansas (Hilly's Theme)" (instrumental version)
• "Scenic Route" Source music (untitled)
• "The Fun of Flying" (variation of Main theme)
• "Club Car Rock"
• "Sneaky George"
• "I'll Try"
• "Gold Teeth"
• "Son of This Is Terrific"
• "Pure Pussy"
• "Scenic Route"
• "Shoe Shine"
• "Men's Room Rock"
• "The Swirl Effect"
• "End Title"

External links

• Silver Streak at IMDb
• Silver Streak at AllMovie
• Silver Streak (1976) at Rotten Tomatoes
• Silver Streak on Soundtrack.net