ABSTRACT
LI K E T H E S O N G A N D D A N C E N U M B E R S of musicals or the gun-fights in westerns, car chase sequences are one of the most readily recognizable elements of action films. Even though car chases, or pursuit sequences more generally, are not universal features of contemporary action films, their status as ‘action’ spectacles can be traced back to the origins of the American cinema. The capacity of pursuit sequences to engage audiences was used as early as The Great Train Robbery (1903) with its crosscutting from pursued bandits to pursuing posse contributing to the film’s dynamism. Later, the ‘chase’ film became one of the earliest templates for narrative construction with films such as Personal (1904), The Lost Child (1904), Jack the Kisser (1907), and D. W. Griffith’s The Curtain Pole (1909) exploiting the pursuit structure’s additional comedic potential.3 In the 1910s, the distinct thrills deriving from the car chase would become one of the trademark elements of Mack Sennett’s Keystone films. As Douglas Riblet has observed, one of the chief sources of appeal of Keystone productions was their unique combination of the conventions of slapstick comedy with elements derived from ‘action melodrama’ in an attempt to provide ‘purely visceral pleasures’.4 Many Keystone films often highlighted these automotive moments in their very titles with Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life (1913), Mabel at the Wheel (1914), and Love, Speed and Thrills (1915) indicative of such promotional techniques. During the classical period, genres that were widely identified by audiences on the basis of their action sequences – namely westerns and crime films – often counted upon pursuit sequences to deliver the action goods. Countless westerns have at least one pursuit sequence built into their narratives. Crime films, such as High Sierra (1941), The Big Steal (1949), Side Street (1950), and The Racket (1951), true to their modern milieu, would replace the horseback sequences of the western with car chases as the preferred means of depicting high speed pursuits.
