The car chase in "The Seven-Ups" is one of the most celebrated in movie history. But there are errors that are jarring to anyone familiar with New York City geography. How many times can a car race through the SAME intersection? A LOT!
Here is my shot-by-shot analysis of the chase - and how it's all over the map.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzJMhmZRSC0
Cheers,
David Morgan
wideanglecloseup.com
A "must see" for fans of the "Seven Ups". Very well done.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for sharing, David; a very interesting analysis and an impressively diligent piece.
I have to say, though, both as a New Yorker and a cineaste, that the discontinuities in this chase are not really bothersome to me. I know there are certain viewers who insist on pure verisimilitude in film but I'm worried that one can miss the forest for the trees, miss the art for the accuracy, by doing so.
Anyway, a nice contribution from you, -and man, what a car chase!
That is spectacular, David. Very well done. I know this film well (saw it when it opened at Eastside Cinema Dec. 1973), so I know from this chase scene. A couple of things I know about it is: Jerry Summers was Roy Scheider's stunt driver. He's quite apparent in the scene where the Ventura's knocked onto the grass on the Saw Mill Parkway. The shot from inside the car is obviously not Scheider.
In April '73, Newsweek did a wonderful two-page spread story about the shots made on 49th St. and Ninth Avenue (somewhere I've still got that issue). Editing or not, there's way too much W96th St. in this film. Some of it is very effective, but we must see that bank on the N/E corner of Amsterdam Ave 5 times (that bank is now a CVS pharmacy, by the way).
For some reason the same stunt cars appear a number of times in the 9th Ave/10th Avenue shots (the Chrysler taxi, for example), but don't appear later in the chase. Thanks for also clearing up where the car wash is. I knew it wasn't the Bronx, but thought it might've been on 11th Ave. in Manhattan. Your pointing out that it's Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn makes perfect sense (not movie sense, but the real life kind).
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