Little does he know, he can’t be an impartial observer forever. Oddly enough, this is the black man’s paradise watching white people degrade and torment each other for his personal pleasure. Each one has a weakness and some pressure point to be prodded. Old men, old women, children, pretty girls, soldiers. He literally walks through the camera, lumbering around and ruling the car like a vindictive prison warden where the prisoners are now running things.Īlthough all these moments of duress feel compartmentalized no one is let out of their incisive games, and each group is hustled and harried with all sorts of mind games laced with the threat of menace. Sheen now is the big name of the two thugs, but Musante is arguably the most chilling, giving a performance that makes the insides crawl with its cruel manipulation.
#The incident 1967 movie
What’s made plain throughout the movie is the horrifying indifference as the thugs have free rein to perpetrate infractions and humiliations on the people around them. When he encroaches on their anarchic freedoms, they look to intimidate him. Only one bystander (Gary Merrill) tries to casually get them to stop their antagonism, and it’s the first time where the invisible bubble is broached. The crux of our story is triggered when the two malcontents accost a homeless man snoozing on the train, prepared to light his boot on fire. This movie tests these principles whether it’s Good Samaritan syndrome or the diffusion of responsibility. For anyone who’s ridden the subway, you can witness some weird things to be sure, but there’s an immediate knee-jerk reaction to mind your own business. Sure enough, Joe (Musante) and Artie (Sheen) come on the scene cackling and drinking like they have all night - going crazy and swinging their way through the train car like a pair of monkeys. What coalesces almost feels like a psychological experiment put to film.
Even here we see the tension stretched out taut between them. Brock Peters and Ruby Dee play opposite one another, not as a groveling black couple but as a husband seething with militant desires and his high-minded social working wife who evidently listened more to Dr. Each group has its bit of business to take up as they file aboard all but oblivious of everyone else.Īlthough the black and white does wonders in making the film feel older than even its release year of 1967, there’s probably one thread that signifies the cultural moment better than most. All these stories are slowly interwoven together, crosscutting between each individual pair as they make their way to their respective train stops.
We can see what the screenwriters are working towards already. One of the more light-hearted pairings includes two soldiers (Beau Bridges and Robert Bannard) who are currently on leave visiting some of their parents. These are the seeds of conflict, ready to combust under the right circumstances, and they do. They all have their petty problems and individual relational dynamics. Everyone has a talking partner, someone to nag and gripe with over the course of the movie. If it’s not evident already, almost all of the characters come in couplets because there is something poetic and practical about it. His tentative girlfriend (Donna Mills) feels pressured but also anxious to win his aggressive affections. Then, there the young lovers - the guy’s quite the Romeo (Victor Arnold), and he’s only interested in a girl if she puts out. There’s the husband and wife (Ed MacMahon and Diana Van der Vlis) who stayed out late with their daughter and quibble about hailing a taxi or not.Īnother elderly couple (Jack Gilford and Thelma Ritter) bickers about their grown son who seems to have a perfectly situated life with a wife and kids and still seems ungrateful. We meet other supporting players from other cross-sections of society. The rest of the movie is an act of building out from here. It’s inevitable that they will return to wreak some kind of havoc. But in the back of our minds, we know they will not be gone forever. Because they all but evaporate from the movie for a time. The opening display shows us who we are dealing with and what we are getting ourselves into. Even momentarily they get us inside their heads, and we realize just how debased they are. What’s most telling are the perspective shots that can best be described as sociopathic POVs. It’s all a game to them, an adrenaline rush to get their Sunday night fix before the week sets in. Between catcalling after women and ambushing pedestrians for 8 lousy bucks, they’re still starved for more action. Before there ever is an incident to speak of in Larry Peerce’s film, we open on the lowest scum of the streets, played by Martin Sheen and Tony Musante, shooting pool and kicking up any trouble they can manage.
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