Themes: Train Rides, Witnessing a Crime, Race Relations
Main Cast: Gene Wilder, Jill Clayburgh, Richard Pryor, Patrick McGoohan, Ned Beatty
Release Year: 1976
Country: US
Run Time: 113 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG
Plot
While taking a train trip from L.A. to Chicago, mild-mannered George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) makes the acquaintance of Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh). As they indulge in a brief bit of spooning, Hilly tells George that her boss is on the verge of exposing a group of vicious art forgers. Later that evening, George sees the body of Hilly's boss being thrown off of the train. Detective Sweet (Ned Beatty) agrees to investigate, but he too is bumped off. The instigator of these outrages is master forger Roger Devereau (Patrick McGoohan), who, with his crony Mr. Whiney (Ray Walston) is planning a particularly diabolical crime. Worse still, they take Hilly prisoner so she can't tip off the cops. When George is also targeted for elimination, he manages in slapstick fashion to elude the killers. Falling off the train, he ends up being arrested on some trumped-up charge or other by a local sheriff. He makes his escape in the company of petty thief Grover Muldoon (Richard Pryor) -- and that's only the beginning. A box-office smash, Silver Streak paved the way for the equally successful 1980 Wilder-Pryor vehicle Stir Crazy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Arthur Hiller's comedy-mystery-romance starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor puts enough of a twist on Alfred Hitchcock's classic North by Northwest to provide a pleasurable two hours. The melodramatic farce sends businessman Wilder on a cross-country train trip, during which a tryst with Jill Clayburgh draws him into the proverbial web of murder and intrigue surrounding villain Patrick MacGoohan. Before long, Richard Pryor is added to the mix as a thief, and the film really takes off. The various genres are well meshed in this broadly conceived comedy, the best of the Pryor/Wilder collaborations. Two of the most brilliant comic figures in film history, both were at their peak during this period. Probably their most famous scene together, too politically incorrect for the present, is that in which Pryor tries to teach Wilder, the whitest of white men, how to act black. The cast, which also includes such talented veterans as Ned Beatty, Ray Walston, and Clifton James, is almost uniformly excellent, and the sometimes mediocre Hiller gives the film the brisk pace of a classic farce. Silver Streak's enormous success resulted in a re-teaming for Stir Crazy (1980). ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Lynn Stalmaster - Casting, Phyllis Garr - Costume Designer, Michael J. Harte - Costume Designer, Jack Roe - First Assistant Director, Arthur Hiller - Director, David Bretherton - Editor, Henry Mancini - Composer (Music Score), Henry Mancini - Musical Direction/Supervision, William J. Tuttle - Makeup, Alfred Sweeney - Production Designer, David M. Walsh - Cinematographer, Ralph A. Woolsey - Cinematographer, Peter V. Herald - Production Manager, Jack B. Bernstein - Production Manager, Edward K. Milkis - Producer, Martin Ransohoff - Producer, Frank Yablans - Producer, Thomas L. Miller - Producer, Marvin March - Set Designer, Fred Cramer - Special Effects, Hal Etherington - Sound/Sound Designer, Don Mitchell - Sound/Sound Designer, Mickey Gilbert - Stunts Coordinator, Colin Higgins - Screenwriter
Saying that he "just wanted to be bored," book editor George Caldwell (Gene Wilder) eschews the airlines and travels from Los Angeles to Chicago aboard a train called the Silver Streak. George meets and becomes romantically involved with Hilly Burns (Jill Clayburgh). After he witnesses the murder of Hilly's boss, Professor Schreiner, a well-known art historian, George is thrown off the train and is himself accused of the murder of undercover FBI agent Bob Sweet (Ned Beatty). Sweet had been tracking shady art dealer Roger Devereau (Patrick McGoohan), who had killed Schreiner in order to take control of the "Rembrandt letters," which proved certain art sold by Devereau had been forgeries. Devereau further planned to replace Schreiner with a double, and thereby to discredit a book written by the professor that would have destroyed Devereau's reputation. This plan requires killing Caldwell and Burns, the only witnesses to the crime.
To survive and save Burns, Caldwell enlists the help of small-time criminal Grover T. Muldoon (Richard Pryor).
The film grossed over $51,000,000 at the box office during its run and was well received by critics. Roger Ebert had also given the film a positive review. The film was the first collaboration between Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. Pryor was a writer on, and the original choice for "Black Bart," in the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles, which also starred Wilder. The two would later go on to make more films together: Stir Crazy, See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Another You.
Although set in the United States and on the fictional railroad "AMRoad" (loosely based on Amtrak trains), Silver Streak was shot primarily in Canada (with the exception of Union Station in Los Angeles). All exterior train shots were filmed on the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in Alberta and Toronto; Amtrak reportedly backed out of the project due to disapproval of the scenes in which Caldwell accidentally bursts into Burns' bedroom while she is dressing, and the film's ending with the out-of-control train crashing through the terminal wall in Chicago.
Scenes of Midwestern U.S. landscapes appear behind train layouts and many action shots (as the protagonist and allies battle the villains on and off the train, and get thrown off or jump on and off the moving trains) to add narrative integrity to the fictional location. Most of the interior station scenes set both in Kansas City and Chicago actually show Toronto'sUnion Station, except for a brief sequence immediately prior to the crash where the train is rapidly approaching a bumper at the end of the line. That sequence was filmed from a Hi-Rail truck, entering the Chicago and North Western Railway's downtown Chicago terminal.
The train set was so lightly disguised as the fictional "AMRoad" that the locomotives and cars still carried their original names and numbers, along with the easily-identifiable CPR red-striped paint scheme. At the start of the climactic shootout, a CPR GM switcher is seen calmly moving cars in the background. Most of the cars are still in revenue service on VIA Rail Canada. CP 4070, the lead locomotive, is in Québec, but the second unit, CP 4067, has been scrapped.
Score and soundtrack
Even though the film dates to 1976, Henry Mancini's score was never officially released as a soundtrack before his death in 1994. When Intrada Records released a compilation in 2002, 26 years after the film's release, it became one of the Top Special Releases of 2002.
