William Friedkin, 1977, USA
Very few moments in cinema can
perhaps capture the lunacy and gung-ho spirit of film-making than the rope
bridge scene in William Friedkin’s ‘Sorcerer’. Hey, let’s put a truck on a rickety rope bridge in the middle of torrential weather and drive it across. Yes, let’s do that. This is filtered through
blue and a soundtrack of relentless storm: the scene let’s one truck cross, and
then another that has more trouble as the river floods violently below and
foliage is uprooted and goes flying. The weight of the truck is all one side at
one point and it looks for sure that it will fall in. It looks perilous just to
watch and it last around ten minutes.
Of course, the mystery and mechanics of it
is laid out by Wikipedia, but the filming still reportedly was as crazy and as hard as it looks. Roy Scheider commented that shooting 'Sorcerer' "made Jaws look like a picnic." It’s one of those
mysteries whose debunking only increases the admiration of behind-the-scenes development.
It’s something that CGI can’t hope to replicate.
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