TWO-LANE BLACKTOP
BY CHRIS DASHIELL

Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) is like a drive-in movie, except that it's artful and amusing and intelligent and doesn't rely on plot. Yeah, it's an art film playing at the drive-in. I had never seen quite this combination before, this B-movie world of drag racing and inarticulate young characters played by pop music stars, revealed through A-movie photography and mood and pace and (although it seems sacrilege to say it) mise-en-scene.

It's about two guys driving a souped-up '55 Chevy who go from town to town, surviving on the winnings from races they provoke from other hot car owners. There is the Driver (folk singer James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson). That's one of the B-movie elements - no one in the movie has an actual name. (But this also works, in a strange land of the lost generation sort of way.)

Along the way, a girl - the Girl (Laurie Bird)- gets into their car and they drive off with her, no questions asked. Then there's an older guy driving a bright yellow '70 GTO - the credits call him GTO (Warren Oates) - and this guy makes up a different story about himself for everyone he meets. He wears cashmere sweaters and keeps a pint of liquor in his boot. He takes an immediate disliking to the Driver and the Mechanic, and they end up in a cross-country race with each other for "pink slips," ownership of each other's cars. That's the story in a nutshell, and the story has practically nothing to do with why this movie is so great. Hellmann just uses it as a way to riff on the life of the road, and the oddballs and loners that inhabit that life.

This is the best movie on what it feels like to be in a car for long stretches - to live in a car, with all the stops at the small-town gas stations and diners, and the worn-out feeling of having nothing more to say, or being stuck in the middle of god-knows-where and it's raining like hell. Hellman and his brilliant cameraman, Gregory Sandor, put you inside the car in a way that makes you feel the confinement as well as the speed. The editing is laconic, just like the characters. I watched these people arguing or fooling around or just doing nothing like I was right there - the relaxed immediacy is close to perfect. One of the brilliant touches is that there is no music except for stuff the characters hear on the radio or sing to themselves. The sound of engines is the music, during the credits and all during the movie.

Taylor does not resemble the sweet baby james persona from his records. Here he is sullen, introverted to the point of inscrutability, and somehow very arrogant and tough despite the soft inflections of his voice. Wilson seems completely at home in the film, a self-confident hunk boy who doesn't seem to really connect to anything except the car. I wonder why they never pursued movie careers any further. Their work here is fine, although part of that impression is gained because Hellman is careful not to ask them to do too much acting. Laurie Bird's character is certainly no feminist icon - in some ways she is that staple of the drive-in movie, the girl who is just there to be an object for the boys. Except that in the usual B movie the girl might be a compliant bimbo. Bird's girl is moody and dissatisfied; her desires are contrary and resistant, mostly, to those of the men.

All this might make for just an OK film. But then there's Warren Oates. What a marvelous performance. This is a lesson in how to create a character out of scratch and turn him into an individual - not a type, but one of those unique characters you only meet once. The way he smiles, the way he shifts betwen pathetic bravado and a sort of rueful tenderness, his hilarious pretensions that end up winning you over. I'm grinning right now just remembering it.

The script was patched together by somebody named Rudy Wurlitzer, god bless him. We never find out who wins the race. It doesn't matter, because that's not what it's about. Two-Lane Blacktop works because the words don't matter too much. There's attitude and feeling and a way of understating things that is more effective than a long wordy script could ever be. I tried to find a weakness in this film but right now I'm enthralled by it. It created a feeling for a certain kind of life that stays with me and keeps humming inside my head. Universal apparently didn't like that feeling, because they failed to advertise it at all. It died at the box office. I don't know if it ever played at a drive-in. I like to think it did.