BY JOHN M. WHALEN
One
of the hallmarks of Don Siegel’s “Dirty Harry†(1971) was the way the director shot
the film on location in San Francisco. From the rooftops of Nob Hill to the
streets and alleys of the Tenderloin, Siegel made the location as much a part
of the story as Harry and the maniacal killer he pursues. But this skillful use
of location was nothing new for Siegel. He had long since mastered that
technique back in the late fifties in films like “The Lineup,†filmed in San
Francisco in 1958, and “Edge of Eternity,†shot in Arizona near the Grand
Canyon a year later.
In
“The Lineup†Siegel and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant concocted a brilliant
tale with off-beat characters and off-the-wall dialog, and gave movie goers a
breathtaking tour of San Francisco, most of which, sadly, is no longer there.
In “Edge of Eternity,†he had a less compelling script to work with, but the
Technicolor and Cinemascope photography of the Grand Canyon and Lake Mead by
Burnett Guffey more than compensates.
The
opening shots of “Edge of Eternity†show a car stopping near the edge of the
canyon. A man in a suit gets out of the car. Another man dressed in work
clothes appears and tries to throw him over the edge. A fight ensues, the car
falls into the canyon and in the movie’s first surprise, it’s the second man,
the would-be murderer, who goes over after it.
Cut
to Deputy Sheriff Les Martin (Cornell Wilde). Driving around the canyon on
patrol, he comes across the caretaker of an abandoned gold mine who tells him about
the man we saw escape death at the canyon, who’s all beat up and asking for
help from the police. At that moment, Janice
Kendon (Victoria Shaw), daughter of a wealthy mine owner, races past them
recklessly in her gorgeous canary yellow 1958 Thunderbird. Martin ignores the
old timer (it seems he’s kind of a coot, who cries wolf a lot) and pursues
Janice.
Turns
out while he’s busy writing a ticket and flirting with her, the man who got
beat up at the canyon is being murdered back at the old timer’s place. So who
killed him and does it have anything to do with the $20 million we’re told lies
in the mine the government shut down during the war?
Those
are the main plot questions, but who cares? The contrived story isn’t what really
matters in Edge of Eternity. It’s the real-time, real-place feeling that Siegel
manages to put on film that makes this little-known movie worth watching. Seeing
Wilde and Victoria Shaw playing their parts with the Grand Canyon in the
background, you hardly pay attention to the dialog anyway. All you know is
there’s a murder to be solved, some back story guilt to be healed by Wilde, and
a love story to be brought to a happy conclusion. Naturally, Siegel pulls it
off with his usual workman-like skill.
The
really fascinating thing about this movie, though, is the setting used for the
movie’s climax. When the film was made there was a company known as the U.S. Guano
Corp. The company had found a cave on the far side of the Canyon that was
believed to contain 100,000 tons of bat guano that was rich in nitrogen and
could be sold as fertilizer. The company built an expensive cable car system that
ran a span of 7,500 feet to the cave.
Of
course Deputy Martin and the bad guy (you’ll never guess who it is, wink,
wink) have a big fist fight on the “dancing bucket†as it was affectionately
known, 2,500 feet above the canyon bottom, with Janice holding on for dear
life. Some of the close ups are obviously done with rear projection, but there
are a couple of long shots that make you hold your breath at least for the
stunt men. Overall, it’s an entertaining film with good performances, but I
kept wondering what Stirling Silliphant would have done with a set up like that.
Although
the copy of the film I watched was on DVD and not BluRay, Columbia Classic’s
video release is extremely good. The vistas are pretty sharp and the color
bright. The music by Daniele Amfitheatrof is suitably majestic and well
recorded. Edge of Eternity is definitely worth watching.
As
for the bat guano operation, in real life the thing turned out to be a bust
when they found there was only 1,000 tons of bat doo-doo, not 100,000 tons and
the site was closed down. Nonetheless it was in operation at the time of
filming, and the producers, Siegel being one of them, ran a credit thanking U.S.
Guano for its assistance in making the movie. That may be the first and only
time Hollywood acknowledged the debt it owes to those who also wield shovels. Credit
where credit is due.
(John M. Whalen is the author of "Hunting Monsters is My Business: The Mordecai Slate Stories" . Click here to order the book from Amazon