How William Friedkin’s mob connections helped create one of cinema’s most illegal stunts
William Friedkin was one of Hollywood’s most extreme filmmakers, achieving pulse-pounding sequences by putting the safety of himself and his crew on the line. His harsh and borderline abusive directorial techniques on the set of The Exorcist are well documented, as are the illegal lengths he went to shoot the iconic car chase scene in The French Connection. The film where he went to the furthest reaches of cinematic mania, however, was Sorcerer, the 1977 flop that would retrospectively become one of his most respected ventures.
Set in South America, it follows a group of men from all parts of the world who are on the run from various sins. In exchange for a new lease on life, they agree to transport two trucks of highly volatile explosives through the jungle. The most famous scene in the movie happens when they are forced to cross a rickety bridge over a river in a torrential downpour. It’s edge-of-your-seat action at its finest and one of the best examples of why the industry cracked down on dangerous set conditions soon after.
However, there is another scene in the film that required Friedkin to go to extreme and illegal lengths to achieve his vision. During their jungle traverse, the group comes across a felled tree that is so huge they can’t get around or over it. They don’t even have tools to attempt to saw it in half. They decide to take some of the dynamite they’re transporting and blow it up. In the days before CGI, everything had to be done in-camera. The first time Friedkin and his crew tried the explosion, it was so underwhelming that the director decided to call in a favour.
Speaking to the MUBI Podcast earlier this year, author and film critic Tim Robey recounted the director’s plan. He called up an old friend in New York who was nicknamed “Marvin the Torch.” As his name suggests, Marvin was very good at blowing things up and had found a professional niche of setting buildings on fire for the insurance money. He flew down to the Dominican Republic with two suitcases of explosives labelled “Beauty supplies,” and got to work saving the scene.
When they got back to the tree and set everything up, Marvin lived up to his reputation. The explosion is one of the great spectacles in a film full of harrowing set-pieces. At one point, the entire screen is full of billowing orange smoke with splinters of woods shooting in all directions. It’s an excellent example of how practical effects are truly more spectacular than computer-generated effects. It’s also easy to see why the studio would probably have pulled the plug on the entire film if they’d caught wind of the scale on which Friedkin was operating.
The rest of the Sorcerer production was downright nightmarish. The director fired five production managers, and his cinematographer quit partway through shooting. Dysentery, gangrene, and malaria put approximately half of the crew in hospital or on flights back home. But Friedkin pressed on, convinced that he was making his magnum opus. He would later say that Sorcerer was the only perfect film he ever made. Nearly five decades later, more and more people are starting to agree with him.
