The Incident [DVD] (1967)

This film was the motion picture debuts of Martin Sheen (who had only acted in soaps previously), Tony Musante (later of TV's Toma, and Dario Argento films) and Donna Mills (later of Knots Landing). It's one of the classic American films of the late `60s (although not generally recognized at such by `mainstream' critics). It goes for a level of realism that was completely non-existent, or at most melodramatic and laughable in most Hollywood films of the period. And best of all, it's one of those films that provokes endless discussions.
No---there are no Bruce Lees, Charlie's Angels, Steven Seagals, Schwarzeneggers, or Clint Eastwoods with .357 magnums on this ride. Nor is there Bernard Goetz, the subway vigilante. There are two soldiers though, just to prove to the audience how easily two `fighting men' can also be manipulated by the divisive forces paralyzing the other passengers. What would YOU do, as a respectable citizen, if you were locked in a subway train with two drunken hoods determined to find a way to insult and humiliate you, and who could possibly stab you if you tried anything? Would you consider it a duty to put yourself on the line for the others or would you wait until the threat came directly knocking? Most people find it easy to pay lip service to heroism when they see this film: how they wouldn't stand for any of the BS dished out by the two punks before reacting, blah, blah, blah... Still, the overwhelming likelihood is that, unprepared, most `regular people' would think twice before going head to head with a couple of drunken psychos and would probably react much the same as the people in this film. In other words, unless they were backed up by at least one other person, they would refuse to stand up to the two thugs and risk getting a shank in the gut. And that's what this film exposes in the end: the alienation of people that serves to defeat them.
Musante delivers one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema. In his thick New York accent, thicker sideburns and crazy face with two moles, he crafts an urban psychopath who is truly menacing because of his `common' qualities; people like him are definitely NOT a rarity and especially not so in New York City! Sheen is also quite electrifying, although a little too boyish looking to be truly menacing. You can understand Ed McMahon and the homosexual young man being afraid of these guys; but why would two soldiers, a big and very angry black man, a greaser-gang-member type and a semi-tough former-boozer? Because united these two thugs represent power while divided and apathetic the passengers all represent individuals and thus, relative weakness. Even the two soldiers, Beau Bridges and his friend are divided, Beau wanting to do something but his friend (with the `big lawyer ambitions') determined to stay out of trouble (and in the end being the only one on the train who isn't directly humiliated).
Incredible as it may seem, given the level of realism achieved in "The Incident," because of the negative-publicity the film's subject was likely to generate, the filmmakers were not allowed to shoot on New York subways and had to build an exact replica of a subway car on a New York soundstage. The car was mounted on ball bearings to allow tilting and shaking, and rear projection was used for the window back grounds. Sections of the car were made removable to allow mounting of the camera outside the car, but this option was never used, Peerce and his DP Hirschfeld deciding to maintain a claustrophobic feel by always shooting inside the subway from the point of view of one of the passengers. Not allowed permission even to shoot backgrounds, the cinematographer, Gerald Hirschfeld, smuggled out the shots he needed, using only available light, with a hand-held Arriflex camera hidden in a cardboard carton pointed out of the windows as he traveled on subways for 4 days. To mask the grainy quality of the backgrounds the windows of the car were made as dirty as possible in the film, which, this being a New York subway, further added to the film's realism!
The film had to stop production after 4 days when the original financial backers pulled out. But the cast and crew were so dedicated to this project that they stuck around without pay for two and a half weeks, while Peerce armed with only 4 days of dailies made the studio rounds. Luckily Richard and Daryl Zanuck were very impressed at the possibilities of promotion the film offered and agreed to provide the funding necessary to complete the project.
."The Incident" is a great film because, even if somewhat campy in parts, it lays bare the everpresent hypocrisy, alienation, and supressed rage characteristic of American life (viewers instantly recognize this to their profound discomfort and usually seek to repress and deny it) by the device of having a whole cross-section of people ruthlessly interrogated and humiliated by two drunken punks out for `kicks.' The result becomes much more than just horrifying--provided you can overlook certain minor faults (like you would those of Sam Fuller's best films), it reaches the level of a true urban tragedy a la Taxi Driver.

The most amazing thing about this film is how unknown it is. Rarely on television (and now that AMC has basically gone "belly-up", possibly never on TV again), and certainly not available on DVD. That is a pity.

Tony Musante and Martin Sheen star in debut roles as two street punks terrorizing passengers "for kicks" on a late night train ride through New York City. This film takes the idea of urban isolation (and the cowardice and indifference it can breed) and moves it to another level. The results are disturbing and mesmerizing.

The cast of fairly well-known characters (besides Sheen and Musante, we have Ed McMahon, Brock Peters, and Beau Bridges) are introduced in bits and pieces until finally they all come together in the claustrophobic jail-cell of a train car. These preliminary "introductions" are part of what make the movie work so well - it is not just that the victims are different, it is that we begin to relate to each of their personalities on some level, so when they finally are all "assembled" and Sheen and Musante start their terrifying antics, we feel as though we are in the train as well, and just about as helpless.

Excellent acting, cinematography, score, and of course the moral and social paradoxes the film presents make for a superb movie. No matter how much you have (or haven't!) read or heard about the film, experiencing it is an entirely different matter. Not for the squeamish.

There have been several movies about violence on a New York City subway. DEATH WISH and THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE come to mind, but the first exaggerates violence into a dance of death while the second mixes humor with greed to show humanity at its best and worst. In THE INCIDENT, the security of a 'normal' life is blown away, perhaps forever, for the luckless riders of a New York City subway train that is taken over by two hoodlums, played by a very young Martin Sheen, who uses his boyish good looks first to disarm, then to threaten, and Tony Musante, whose ethnic face and greaser looks would qualify him as an extra in a Bronson movie. Director Larry Peerce shot the film in a grainy black and white series of hues that catches perfectly the bouncing, jangling horrors of nerves coming unglued. A subway car is full of passengers whose thoughts are focused on the normalcy of their lives, but violence off the screen is often only a hairsbreath away. In walk Sheen and Musante, who casually glance at this car and size up its passengers as passive targets for a hatred of the status quo that they themselves can only tear down, but never build up. Two passengers are soldiers on leave. The rest are old, weak, or distinctly unthreatening. The hoods' motivation is not money or even killing. Rather, they seek only to dominate, to rip aside the facade of what they deem as smug middle-class ignorance and to expose the fear which they are sure is simply there, waiting for gangbangers like them to expose. In the beginning of this nightmare ride, they are right, of course. Musante and Sheen bully, browbeat, and humiliate first one, then another, than all collectively. The victims seem unable to do more than protest feebly. Beau Bridges, who plays Felix, one of the soldiers, tries to rally the others to his side, while Musante and Sheen snicker at such useless activity and can so dominate with their viciousness that no weapon other than one knife is needed. Felix, like Marshall Will Kane in HIGH NOON, learns that the quality of human courage that he assumes exists in most people, in fact does not, and it is only rarely to be found even in those whose job it is to evidence it. Felix is no Will Kane, however, and he must learn the brutal but necessary fact that that the coin of most bullies is psychological. Some victims are like most of this subway's passengers who refuse to fight back. Others like Felix do fight back right then and there. Still others, like Bernie Goetz, are those who fight back too, but in a time and place of their own choosing, and their response, like Goetz's, is often to show a side of the victim that is just as bleak and horrific as anything that Musante and Sheen show while browbeating others. THE INCIDENT is a journey, like Marlow's in THE HEART OF DARKNESS, that takes its passengers either to a stop of horror or of peace. Each passenger must pre-punch his own ticket.

The taxi-cab drivers of NYC (and other big cities) may well have picked up more fares after this movie was released. You may already know that this is a harrowing story of two thugs, played by a young Tony Musante (a future cop on a TV program) and Martin Sheen (a future President of The United States on another TV program - how ironic?) out to terrorize regular folks "just for kicks" on a NYC subway train.

They do that, and expose the weakness and general indifference of passengers to the plight of their fellow humans being pushed around, as long as they themselves are left alone.

The role played by Brock Peters exemplifies this point perfectly as he tells the thugs, "It's fine with me if you want to bust these people up. Go Right Ahead." Suddenly, he and his wife, (played by Ruby Dee) become the very target of vicious verbal torment that Peters would gladly allow the others to endure. Good lessons to be learned from such attitudes.

Every passenger on the train ride from Hell is introduced to us before they board that train, each with unique perplex baggage (pun intended) which we can empathize with on some level.

We identify with the passengers and sit, glued in fear to the screen, as if waiting to be the next terror victim! How will we deal with the bad men when they come around to us, cowering at the end of the train? Harrowing film, indeed!

Not unlike a "monster" movie, we are scared. What makes it even scarier is that the monsters aren't only the two thugs, but the lack of response from a very overpowering (in numbers) group of people vs. only two, armed with just a knife and plenty of testiclular fortitude.

When a middle-aged lady jumps up and screams, "Why doesn't somebody DO something?", and nobody does - at least not yet - we're left to wonder if we're mice or men.

When somebody finally does stand up to the thugs, we learn what we know about most bullies. They are the biggest cowards of all.

Watch this film. It gets aired occasionally on FOX Movie Channel, uncut and without commercial interruption. It probably will never be released on DVD because it is just not well known. Especially in a post-9/11 world, a film like this is more topical than it even was in 1968.

The cast of then up-and-coming actors, among a few veterans, played their parts well. Most of those actors have become very well established. This film was a great platform (again, pun intended) for them.

The Incident (1967)

This has to be one of the more fascinating studies of human complacency that I have seen filmed. The setting is simple: Two very drunk street toughs trap people on a New York subway. At first, the people in the car are entertained by the two men's antics, which leads to the most disturbing concept in the film. For some reason, it's funny or none of one's business when someone else is being messed with.

The passengers on the train are perhaps divided too symmetrically and stereotypically. There's a homosexual, a black couple, military men, a family with a daughter, a young white couple, a bum, an older couple, but I think this contrivance is necessary to the success of the film. Our differences divide us so that we do not band together to come readily to one another's aid, yet we are ironically united in the same weakness - complacency. The passengers on the train sit like idle voyeurs as the drunken men tap into each passenger's unique shortcoming. In the end, complacency seems linked to both sadism and masochism.

The movie has the feeling of a play rather than a film. The low budget contributes to this effect. It's clear that each actor is working hard to portray a character rather than steal the movie. The great character acting and the claustrophobic setting quickly build and sustain suspense. The plot is perhaps obvious, but it still demands something from the audience: We must sit idly on our couches just like the passengers on the train do on their benches. Further, we must ask ourselves what we would or could do in similar circumstances.

The Incident is one of those movies (barely) available on VHS, and you have to wonder what politics are holding back its DVD release. The movie was on AMC this morning. I can only imagine what other great films are sitting unwatched.