Bullitt is a 1968 American crime action thriller film directed by Peter Yates, from a screenplay by Alan R. Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L. Fish. It stars Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland, and Norman Fell. In the film, San Francisco police detective Frank Bullitt (McQueen) investigates the murder of a witness he was assigned to protect.
A star vehicle for McQueen, Bullitt began development once Yates was hired upon the completion of the screenplay, which differs significantly from Fish's novel. Principal photography took place throughout 1967, with filming primarily taking place on location in San Francisco. The film was produced by McQueen's Solar Productions, with Robert Relyea as executive producer alongside Philip D'Antoni. Lalo Schifrin wrote the film's jazz-inspired score. Bullitt is notable for its extensive use of practical locations and stunt work.
Bullitt was released in the United States on October 17, 1968, by Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. It was a critical success, with praise for its screenplay, editing, music and action sequences; its car chase sequence is regarded as one of the most influential in film history, and retrospective reception has named Bullitt among the greatest action films ever made. The film received numerous awards and nominations, including being nominated for two Academy Awards, winning for Best Film Editing. It grossed $42.3 million worldwide, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 1968. In 2007, Bullitt was selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Plot
On a Friday night in Chicago mobster Johnny Ross flees the Outfit. The next morning SFPD detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt and his team, Delgetti and Stanton are tasked by politically-ambitious Walter Chalmers with guarding Ross over the weekend, until he can be presented as a witness to a Senate subcommittee hearing on organized crime on Monday morning. The detectives are told he is in a cheap hotel on Embarcadero. Delgetti will take the first shift, then Stanton and then Bullitt. At 1am Sunday, while Stanton is phoning Bullitt to say Chalmers and a friend want to come up, Ross unchains the room door. Two hitmen burst in shooting Stanton in the leg and Ross in the neck.
Chalmers holds Bullitt responsible for the injuries to Ross. After Bullitt thwarts a second assassination attempt at the hospital, Ross dies from his wounds. Bullitt sends the body to the morgue as a John Doe to keep the investigation open. An informant says that Ross was in town because he stole millions of dollars from the mob. Bullitt also finds out he made a long distance phone call to a hotel in San Mateo.
While driving his Ford Mustang, Bullitt becomes aware he is being followed by a Dodge Charger driven by the two hitmen. An extended chase ensues through the streets of San Francisco to Brisbane where the Dodge crashes off the road, killing its occupants in a fiery explosion.
Bullitt and Delgetti are confronted by their boss, Captain Sam Bennett, and Chalmers (who is being assisted by SFPD Captain Baker). After being served a writ of habeus corpus, Bullitt reveals that Ross has died. Bennett ignores the writ because it's the weekend and lets Bullitt investigate the long distance phone call to San Mateo. With no car, Bullitt gets a ride from his girlfriend Cathy. At the hotel, Bullitt finds the woman who was phoned garrotted in her room. But Cathy follows him and is left horrified by the scene. On the way back to San Francisco she confronts Bullitt about his work saying "Frank, you live in a sewer" and wonders "What will happen to us?"
While examining the victim's luggage, Bullitt and Delgetti discover a travel brochure for Rome and traveler's checks made out to an Albert and Dorothy Renick. Bullitt requests their passport applications from Chicago. Bullitt, Captain Bennett, Chalmers and Captain Baker gather around the telecopier as the applications arrive. It turns out Chalmers sent Bullitt to guard an Albert Renick, a used car salesman from Chicago, while his wife Dorothy was staying in San Mateo. Bullitt realizes that Ross was playing Chalmers by using Renick as a body double to escape the country Sunday night.
At San Francisco International Airport, Delgetti and Bullitt watch the Rome gate. However, Ross (now using Renick's passport) has switched to an earlier London flight. Bullitt boards the plane after it is ordered to return to the terminal but the mobster escapes through the rear cabin door. In the crowded passenger terminal, Ross kills a deputy sheriff before being shot dead by Bullitt. Chalmers arrives but leaves after saying nothing.
Early Monday morning, Bullitt comes home to find Cathy asleep in his bed having chosen to stay.
Cast Credits from the American Film Institute.
Production Bullitt was co-produced by McQueen's Solar Productions and Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. The film was pitched to Jack L. Warner as "doing authority differently".
Development Bullitt was director Peter Yates' first American film. He was hired after McQueen saw his 1967 U.K. feature, Robbery, with its extended car chase. Joseph E. Levine, whose Embassy Pictures had distributed Robbery, did not like the film much, but Alan Trustman, who saw the picture the week he was writing the Bullitt chase scenes, insisted that McQueen, Relyea, and D'Antoni (none of whom had ever heard of Yates) see Robbery and consider Yates as director for Bullitt.
Casting In the original novel Mute Witness, the lead character is an older, overweight police lieutenant named Clancy. D'Antoni and his original co-producer Ernest Pintoff considered the film a vehicle for Spencer Tracy, but his death in 1967 ended that. McQueen was a great admirer of Tracy and took on the project, in part, as a tribute to him. The original novel was also set in New York City, not San Francisco.
McQueen based his performance on San Francisco Inspector Dave Toschi, later known as an inspector of the Zodiac Killer case, with whom he worked prior to filming.McQueen, Steve. "The Making Of Bullitt". . 1968 Warner Bros. promotional short film.Graysmith, Robert. (1986). "Zodiac". p. 96. St. Martin's Press. McQueen even copied Toschi's unique "fast-draw" shoulder holster.
Robert Vaughn initially refused the role of Chalmers, feeling the plot was too "thin". Decades later, when Vaughn considered entering politics, he discovered that people could not take him seriously, or found him untrustworthy, as they remembered his performance in this film.
Katharine Ross was offered the role of Cathy, but she refused it, as she felt the part was too small.
This film was the first of three times McQueen worked on-screen with his real-life friend Don Gordon, the other two were in Papillon (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974).
Filming Bullitt is notable for its extensive use of external locations rather than studio sets, and its attention to procedural detail, from police evidence processing to emergency-room procedures. Director Yates' use of the new lightweight Arriflex cameras allowed for greater flexibility in location shooting. The film was shot almost entirely on location in San Francisco. In the emergency-room operation scene, real doctors and nurses were used as the supporting cast. According to McQueen, "The thing we tried to achieve was not to do a theatrical film, but a film about reality."
Bullitt was one of the first feature films to be shot almost entirely on location in San Francisco. With the exception of the opening set piece in Chicago, the entire film was shot there. In a 1968 interview, D'Anatoni reasoned the production would cost no more to shoot in San Francisco than in Los Angeles, despite transportation and housing expenses, because so much money was saved on construction by using real locations.
Filming locations included: sources: Mark Hopkins Hotel Kennedy Hotel (226 Embarcadero near Howard Street, close to the Embarcadero Freeway) Nob Hill Cow Hollow Chalmers' Residence, 2700 Vallejo Street, Pacific Heights Grace Cathedral Enrico's (Broadway at Kearny Street) San Francisco International Airport
Car chase
At the time of the film's release, the car chase scenes featuring McQueen at the wheel in all driver-visual scenes generated prodigious excitement. Leonard Maltin has called it a "now-classic car chase, one of the screen's all-time best." Emanuel Levy wrote in 2003, "Bullitt contains one of the most exciting car chases in film history, a sequence that revolutionized Hollywood's standards." In his obituary for Peter Yates, Bruce Weber wrote, "Mr. Yates' reputation probably rests most securely on Bullitt (1968), his first American film – and indeed, on one particular scene, an extended car chase that instantly became a classic."
Vehicles
Warner Bros. ordered two identical 1968 Ford Mustangs for filming. Both were painted Highland Green and had the GT package with 390 FE V8 engines. These cars had the sequential vehicle identification numbers 8R02S125558 and 8R02S125559. Prior to filming, the cars were modified by vehicle supervisor Max Balchowsky. Car '558 was modified and used for the stunt driving, while '559 was used for McQueen's close-up driving shots.
After the filming was complete, '559 was repaired and repainted with a single coat of Highland Green, and sold to Warner Bros. employee Robert Ross. Ross drove it until 1970, then sold it to Frank Marranca, who had it shipped from California to New Jersey. In 1974, Marranca sold the car to Robert Kiernan through an advertisement in Road & Track. In 1977, Steve McQueen attempted to buy it back, but was refused. The Kiernans drove it for 46,000 miles as their family car, then put it in storage in 1980. Kiernan's son, Sean, began to restore the vehicle in 2014, and had it authenticated in 2016, with documentation that included McQueen's letter offering to purchase it. On January 10, 2020, the car was sold by Mecum Auctions for $3.7 million (about $ in ) to an unidentified buyer.
Car '558 had been damaged severely during filming and was subsequently sent to a scrapyard. In the ensuing decades, the car was assumed to be lost. In 2016, though, Hugo Sanchez purchased a pair of Mustang coupes from the backyard of a house near Los Cabos, Mexico. He then sent the cars to Ralph Garcia to start work on turning one into a clone of the "Eleanor" Mustang from the film Gone in 60 Seconds. Realizing one of the two Mustangs was an S-code, Garcia had the car authenticated by Kevin Marti. The authentication revealed this to be the lost Bullitt car. In 2017, Sanchez and Garcia began to give the car a full restoration.
Stunt driver Bill Hickman provided two 1968 440 Magnum V8 Dodge Chargers, which were painted black for use in the film. One was reserved for close-ups, and the other performed the stunts. Max Balchowsky strengthened the suspension of the stunt car, but left the engines mostly unmodified.
Filming The chase scene starts at the 1:05:00 mark, and lasts approximately 10 minutes. It begins under Highway 101 in the city's Mission District as Bullitt spots the hitmen's car. It ends outside the city, at the Brisbane exit of the Guadalupe Canyon Parkway on San Bruno Mountain. Shooting occurred over a period of weeks. The chase sequence combined several locations, located miles apart and edited together. Mapping the movie route shows that it is not continuous and is impossible to follow in real time.