My point of view about Mad Max

[seriz]

Here's the translation of a text i wrote about MM1. I hope it will be understandable, it's home made translation !

MAD MAX

Mad max is a movie which nearly 30 years after its release continues to exhale a particular aura, one quasi mythical. At the same time nihilist opera in three acts which offers the renewed spectacle of death and revenge, and fable of a dehumanization production in the stylized and functional decoration of a near future of our society.
1978, it is with a little less than 400,000 dollars that George Miller succeeds in carrying out Mad max, its first movie. It is an unexpected but planetary success which will bring back practically 100 million dollars and will be in Guinness book records like the most profitable movie of the history of the cinema up to the release of the Blair Witch Project in 1999. Released in France in April 80, it was X-rated for violence (among of them The Warriors, Dawn of the dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and some others) and will be visible in France in integral version only in April 1983, released by the new left-wing government…


... LAY DOWN A RUBBER ROAD RIGHT TO FREEDOM !
It was often spoken about this movie like first “western movie on wheels”. Many elements link Mad Max, movie of science fiction (futuristic) , with this genre of the past. The first image of the movie is this image of the police station, a building nearly deserted whose dangling letters “Halls of justice” make it resemble a kind of destroyed Western movie saloon. There are the road signs saying that the road is mortal and who keeps the accounts of the number of dead persons, this one with the death's head “prohibited area”. There is of course the city where the bikers go and fetch the coffin which has come on the steam train, with its large central alley and its houses which offer the vision of a far west resurrected. It can also be added the behaviors of the motorcyclists privileging the skins of animals, the duels (face to face on the road between Max and the Nightriders, then with the bikers at the time of his revenge) or the attack of the tanker anticipating the “truck diligence” of next movie. All these elements laid out along the movie install a scenery of a world returned to an environment without faith nor law Except the police officers and the bikers who face, the space which surrounds them is limited to this functional image. At the time of the first pursuit the film wastes a few moments on passers-by, offering only purely illustrative dialogues to them, continuation of the movie will do them disappear purely and simply. The scenery of Mad Max being only the visual expression of a world falling into ruins. And if this scenery is so reduced, it is also because the first and third act of film are entirely dedicated to the road. It is on this asphalt ribbon which seems to be held without end in the plains of the Australian bush that the tragedy takes place.


CRAZY ABOUT YOU !
People often think that the movie tells how Max, family man and good police officer, will decide to take one's revenged on the bastards who massacred his fellow-member and his family. To stop with this commonplace we have to finally forget that this revenge which shapes the last act of the movie is finally only the conclusion of a story whose matter is elsewhere. People often reads that Max topples over when it loses these famous dear beings, that he was “an adorable husband and father” (1) which means that he will be contaminated by the inhumanity of a world left to drift which will force him to join the renegades. But if we look at the movie of Miller with a careful eye we understood that the movie is not so manichean and that the various characters have sometimes an unexpected psychological thickness which, finally, offers a more elaborate reading of the movie. Max may perhaps not be the hero whom the film seems to propose. Playing with the expectations of the spectators to continuously pass round these, Miller carried out with Mad Max a movie much more complex than the rumour wants deeply to let believe, often reducing the movie to a long motorized pursuit brilliantly carried out.

The movie begins with two groups facing themselves: the police officers (the main force patrol) and a gang of bikers (the nightriders). Until the conclusion of the first act which will come to its end with the death of Jim “Goose”, the sequences will be alternated between the background and the bikers, leaving only one single sequence on Max and its family.


SO LONG AS THE PAPERWORK IS CLEAN, YOU BOYS CAN DO WHAT YOU LIKE OUT THERE...
The first picture, as we already said it, presents right away the police like an institution in ruins, as a force (“joke” as written on the road panel in the first scene) which is going to a complete decomposition.
And if things are getting to much for police officers this also comes due to the fact these are shown us as puerile as much as childish by a hierarchical order which begins to become lapsed.
The first pursuit of the Nightriders (whose name is Montazano) right away will show these “bronze” appear to be a gang of undisciplined kids making jokes of schoolkids (a cop being laughing watches a couple which fornicates in a field using the telescopic sight of a rifle) or fighting to take the steering wheel. We also see that they do not think much of their hierarchy: the police officers of the beginning change the code of Montazano during this pursuit from 44 (simple pursuit) to 3 (priority) because he killed cops and that the two pursuers want absolutely to get him, reacting more by revenge that by deontology… There is also Jim who gives his card that it presents as a pass to go out of jail to a couple the sidecar of whom he appreciates…
During the various scenes at the station or in the cars, the hierarchy is heard through a very dry feminine voice, very scholastic, which in background only repetitively admonish which appear quite to us futile (a memo to notify that such word considered to be discourteous should not be used, another memo to recall that it is forbidden to adulterate gasoline or to make illicit car tows…)
Infantilism always when we understand that Max wants to resign when the Goose shows him a vehicle, “the last-born of V8”, as a bribe, in order to dissuade it to resign. This crude trick was worked out by Fifi Macaffee, the chief who physically resembles to a true patriarch and who incarnates a true father for the small band of police officers. It literally has faith in a justice that he could transcend to give again the public a hero. “Don't tire yourself today nobody anymore believes in heros” he said to his superior Labatouche who retorts him “I know Macaffee, you want to give them again something called hero”. And this hero announced by Macaffee is therefore quite naturally the one the spectator thinks he is seeing him arriving…
The other important character is of course the one we guess being for Max the old friend, Jim the Gorilla. During the first scene he is presented us like a joker motivated by his job. But when he gets back the young girl who was victim of the gang, he then is discovered as sensitive and attentive. And whereas one of those in charge, Johnny the Beautiful, is released for lack of evidence, he does not give a damn of the law, looking around to make justice by himself. Obviously he deeply takes the things to heart and is the first character that seems to have a significant, human approach of the situation. He also seems carried away by a kind of faith, he does not await a hero, making this because he is looking for an ideal of justice he wants it coming to life, pushing the incident up to a personal place. Practically at the middle of the story, the movie comes back on him and develops his character into an unexpected way for the context of the story. He is seen in a disco music club where he is fired with enthusiasm by the charm a singer woman turns on to him whose words “motorbikes and leathermen take me to the end of has dream” are obviously intended personally to him. When the next morning we see him in his small furnished flat and we discover a plastic baby fastened on his gate, we understand that he is frustrated not to have a family life. Sensitive, affectionate, attentive, but lonesome… His role, as we will see, is finally defined only as a counterpoint of the hero. It 's his death, more than the deaths of Jessie and the baby that will break this one we will later call the Road Warrior.


REMEBER HIM... WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE NIGHT SKY
After we had seen the presentation of the police, and the presentation of Max with one's family especially his wife Jessie, it is quite naturally that the gang of bikers is introduced by the mean of a dialogue between Fifi and Max. According to the chief, the “friends of code 3” are after him. Thus we see entering in scene the merry bushy-haired gang supposed to incarnate the Evil in a quasi-deserted small town.
The chief of the gang, the Toecutter can be the bridge between the bikers and the police officers. We notice for him a colourfulness and a dictatorial way of speaking which belongs also to Fifi Macaffee. Paternalistic with Johnny the Boy (this one he will take in its arms) it brings back to Fifi who take Max's cheeks into his hands.
But, as much we saw the police like a group infantilised and undisciplined, as much the gang of the eagles of the road is based on the dramatizing of a wild revolt and an exuberant sexuality. These same reasons can be seen in each sequence where they are seen together.
Their entrance is thrilling: they arrive as a band, they line up and play to the gallery while making whirring their machines that the chief stops with an authoritative gesture, then they invade the street as if they were executing a choreography, some moving with steps of dance. This inroad seems overplayed as if the main street of this small town was a scene of cabaret ready to play a Western. Later, when they are on the beach, Mudguts and Condalini are joking with a mannequin in front of their friends as if they were on a scene. Also outraged are the attitudes of the Toecutter who cannot prevent cabotiner, mystic and grandiloquent, vis-a-vis the station master, rolling of large eyes when it licks the ice of Jessie, howling and pretending with impishness terror in front of the rifle of Mae, blowing like a coyote in front of max trying to cut down it…
Acting as if they were in always trying to impress, these bikers covered with animal skins, always screaming like animals, howling when they leave the city at the beginning of the movie, mewing when they approach Jessie or still howling when they are after her in the forest. This primitive savagery refers to the state of mind of the period, marked between the big spaces freedom very seventies suitable to Easy Rider and the natural savagery of Deliverance. Montazano howls that he “traces a road towards freedom for anybody”, “do it for freedom” orders the Toecutter to Johnny the Boy to push it to throw the match which will set ablaze the Goose. No doubt the police represents the last trace of a society they reject for the benefit of a new era and Max, such Neville de Matheson, is thus nothing more that the representative of an old world dedicated to disappear.


JUST ANOTHER GLORY RIDER I GUESS
Whereas sexuality seems gummed in the cops kingdom in spite of a frank friendship of guys strapped in tightly fitted leathers, and, contrasting with voyeurism (the scene of the rifle with telescopic sight), the abstinence (Jim Goose) or, like we will see it later, with the ambiguous impotence of max, the bikers frankly display an unreserved sexuality. First scene presents us two bikers very effeminate (“if I want you I fuck you”), the next scene shows them exciting themselves on a female plastic mannequin : “People wondered on several occasions, explains Miller, what could be sexuality in this kind of medieval world”. That surely would not fulfill the functions we know in our contemporary society. People would not have time for entertaining sex. A woman would not have time to have a baby, to raise it. An expectant mother would have difficulties to survive. That can be one of the points which lead to this homosexuality in the two stories (Mad max 1 and 2). Another thing is that the sex of the characters has changed without changing their roles… The men and women and their sexual roles are not defined in this primitive society as they are in our society. Men and women are quite simply interchangeable.” If the sexuality of the bikers is continuously visible, it is especially on the road that it opens out.
Immediately on the first pursuit race, when Montazano faces Max and that Max swerves before him during this confrontation, the sexual pleasure which obviously seems to overwhelm him disappears as quickly as its dominant virility crumbles. It knows that he had lost, he starts to cry and ends up crashing all alone.
But the most thrilling scene remains the attack of the couple which runs away the small town in their car. The bikers quickly overtake the glowing red impala and crash it violently off the road and literally smash the car during a long moment in what appears to be a true rape. The bars penetrate the sheet metal, that shakes, that squeaks, that grinds up to a kind of orgasmic paroxysm underlined by a music in crescendo. Sexual violence is here, complete, contained in this scene, and the sequence ends at the time the two victims are extirpated of the vehicle, the cutting out of the scene eluding the rape that they will undergo.
Impotent and backward-looking police officers, wild and sexual rebels thirsty of chaos and freedom… In this maelstrom of rot the common run of people was broken, crushed…
But before being a man played out, consumed, devastated, before becoming the mythical icon we all do know, then who was Max? We often read that he was a pleasant father, an effective police officer and that in the howling of an engine he had lost a lot, and becoming mad of revenge he had become someone else. If we looked attentively at the movie we however understand that the dramas he will know along the movie well will not as destroy him as it will reveal him fully… Finally Max does not change, he becomes the one he always was.


THEY SAY PEOPLE DON’T BELIEVE IN HEROES ANYMORE
During the pursuit race that opens the movie, Max is slowly introduced within the framework by a succession of increasingly tightened planes which initially reveal the spectator his boots, then his hands, then the bottom of his face and finally his eyes hidden behind sunglasses that can be seen in the rear view mirror of his vehicle. The personality of Max is already outlined in these few planes. Serious, meticulous person, seeming hand in glove with his vehicle, max was revealed us only by bits that there is soon a mythical aura around him, of those coming with characters like Leone’s Man with no name or Carpenter’s Snake Plissken. Heroes in spite of them, cynics, with multiple talents always being useful to the only and same activity: kill. It is after the fatal outcome of this hunting that we see him leaving his car, removing his glasses and contemplating carnage, far from the excitation of the first characters, cops or eagle of the road.
The heroic figure will take shape during all this first part and that's after this introduction that we will discover the accessory of our hero that will have to help him to bring his search to a successful conclusion. Luke has its light saber, Indy its hat and its leather whip, Max will have to take the steering wheel of its V8, the mechanical 'war horse' with which he will re-enter in symbiosis until very later he ends up losing it and then because of that he will recover a sort of humanity, but this is another history… Miller as an authority on the work of Joseph Campbell (2) establishes the traditional structure of the myth.
But let us see how initially Max is moving between its two families. After the first scene of pursuit race, establishing a powerful contrast, we discover Max at home with his partner Jessie and their baby Sprog. At the first sight the family seems harmonious but we understand quickly that Max is police officer in spite of Jessie's opinion and that she can nothing make nor say to prevent him from making a rush to Jim Goose when this one calls him. Miller uses the metaphor of deafness and incomprehension by showing Jessie giving signals to Max for finally saying him in front of his flabbergasted appearance: “that wants to say that I love you idiot”.
When they are both together at the seaside, he acknowledges to her “I ever had the occasion to say you what I thought of you” and rather than to declare his flame of love to her, he speaks in praise of his father while explaining how much he was impressed when he was young by the force which emerged from him… Jessy is obliged to kiss him to close his apology of paternal virility. Finally his couple does not seem to go that's good, and Max remains deaf with the expectations of his wife he seems he forsakes. It is enough to see the polished attitude he takes when he looks at Jessie playing sax, compared with the enthusiasm burning of desire of Jim in front of the singer in the Disco club. Max is for sure a police officer, in the camp of impotent, or rather in its case, the camp of castrated…
On the other hand when we see the trick Fifi plays to Max being taken in with one glowing new car, it is obvious that between on one side where in his family he has difficulties to find his own place and one the other side where he can stay under the comfortable paternalistic authority of the Macaffee chief, his choice is made. When he finally will resign, Fifi will say to him “another time ? ”, showing thus that it had never succeeded in crossing the step. And if he decides to cross it there, it is quite because this time balance is broken. Max “[has] difficulties to set in order what is in [his] head” he said to his wife, “it remains nothing any more”… And he will explain to Fifi that he is afraid to become as those he hunts, that there is not finally more difference out of the bronze badge. Fifi, which works for the public, in particular the one of the film which always hopes to see the hero launching out into his quest of ridding of the riffraff riding its “last-born of V8” prophesies the advent of the myth: “People say public any more believes in heroes at our time. I don't give a damn, with you Max we will show them what heroes are”… But Miller who definitely had carefully read Campbell decides that Max rejects the proposal: “You really hoped to keep me while uttering me such stupidities”! However Fifi makes the spectator easy : “You are trapped Max, and you know it as much as me”… Indeed if max is trapped it is that finally he is already part of the motorized riffraff, except that he acts on behalf of representatives of a Law which crumbles, but what will remain if even the bronze badge loses its signification?
And what up now made the difference, what for Max was used as parapet, it was its counterpoint, the one who acted for the justice, the one who represented the will of a family ideal, the one who was sensitive and who knew that what he did was good: Jim. Without him, indeed, there remain nothing more, just the fear of becoming crazy because, as he acknowledges it to Fifi: he starts to take pleasure in there.


YOU’RE HOOKED MAX, AND YOU KNOW IT
Max thus gives up with the road and decides to castrate its enjoying valves to be devoted to his wife and their kid… They leave towards North with their van whose windows represent paintings of a future of radiant science fiction which will never exist. If during these holidays the scene of the lake shows us Max speaking rather about his father than of his love, before Jessie finishes collapsed by the bike of the Surgeon he will have the first and only attention for her when redoing the signs to him which say “I love you” in the language of the deaf persons, this small sentimental break (beyond of an obvious emotional autism) arriving right before the drama is finally only here to amplify the horror which will follow. And when his wife and his son disappear (3) Max does not have anymore barrier to help him assume himself and avoid sinking in what he really is, what he always was, it is there the hero appears to himself what he really is. He leaves to get back his car, turning round with his back on the screen and in the same plane the car arrives towards the spectator in a smoothly fading where for a moment Max seems hand in glove with his V8, he finds back the gravity and the severity we guessed were part of him at the time of the first scene. He is now Mad Max.


DON’T BRING THIS ON ME, PLEASE !
The second act is closed, after the loss of his ideal of justice and after the disappearance of his hope to build a better future, the third act, more compressed, will lead to the explosion. We are now back on the road and this time to achieve a methodical revenge. Max finds again a part of the gang that he smashes taking again his good old and very Western posture of the face to face duel. Kind of dehumanized puppet with an inflexible murderous will, he will go beyond its wounds to kill Bubba and pursue the Toecutter who following the example of his brother will go himself to his own death in an accident. Whereas traditional dramatic construction keeps for the end the confrontation between the hero and his evil alter ego, Miller extends the movie with a scene by offering the spectator the absurd matador like killing of completely disconnected Johnny who does not understand what is coming and which does not even seem to recognize Max.

The quest of Max was to sink and get rid of the social rags that still he stuck with, not to be only a shadow in an endless hunting. The Interceptor slides without noise, only accompanied by the dramatic scoring of Brian May. Max drives straight ahead, towards a light at the bottom he will never reach, the destination does not matter any more, his only horizon it is the road. The idea of future disappears to leave room to one perpetual present, Max is now the road warrior that Fifi was hoping for.


WE HAVE A PROBLEM HERE, SHE’S NOT WHAT SHE SEEMS
F.A. Levy in an article in Starfix quotes a critic who wondered, talking of Bullitt, if a movie could be summarized with a pursuit race. In the same way of thinking Mad Max is often described like a ordinary story of revenge and we read sometimes analogies with vigilante movies… Mad Max would only be the terrible revenge of a man who see his family dying! This kind of movies on self-defence which however go from the Death Wish to the french movie “Irréversible” questions about things that are quite distant from those of film of Miller. The world is into ruin, it practically does not remain anymore law, thus it is not the moral question to take the law into one's own hands which is in the center of Miller's movie but really the odyssey of a man who tries to escape his destiny, who tries to avoid being the one he really is, and that will have to lose everything for becoming this one. « You are hooked Max »
Much more than its more fancy spawned sequels, Mad max is a complex movie whose matter is sublimated by a blazing production. Inventing almost a new grammar with his camera close to the ground (figure we find several times and not only for the scenes on the road) and his acute sense of the edition (4) creating scenes of ultra violence by mixing amazing stunt and suggestion, all of that taken along by the full of genius score of Brian May who wraps a rather scanty movie and gives him the appearance of a tragedy (5).
Mad max is 30 years old, any movie could be considered as equal to it. The pursuits in cars filmed since it, although doped with numerical effects, never succeeded to put it in the shade. Only may be Death Proof of Tarantino succeeded in paying touching homage to it with a filming without special effects, close to vehicles which engines whirred like violoncellos. I discovered the trilogy at the end of the Eighties in a small cinema of suburbs during one night devoted to them. At this time we did not find easily VHS then the mysterious, puzzling and sulfurous aura of these movies was impressive and it is thus that struck with amazement I discovered in a cinema, the sound of V8 stock still in my seat, the opera made of leather and sheet metal of George Miller. It is often said that a movie you did not see in a cinema, you did not really see it. Mad Max is one of the most beautiful evidence. 20 years after having seen it, the film always lives… in my memory!



NOTES:
1 - Read in the article of Cedric Délelée in Mad Movies #198
2 - Joseph Campbell is the author of the book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” which defines a common structure to all existing myths. It is one of the major influences of Lucas for Star Wars.
3 - There is a controversy on the fact that they died or not, according to the VF they are badly injured, according to the VO it is less clear, the term “salvable” applying as well to people than organs.
4 - For example the scene of the accident of Jim Goose which comprises 18 plans was analyzed with a communicative zeal by Adrian Martin in his book “The Mad Max movies”.
5 - Miller refused to use rock 'n roll for the movie and succeeded in convincing his producers to engage Brian May (famous at this time for his partition of Patrick) to write a film score under the influence of Bernard Herrmann the composer of Hitchcock.

[DetritusMaximus]

A decent examination of Max. I may have a different take on some aspects, but it puts some things about the movie in a new light.
I like the idea that the horrors Max faces drive him to be who he really is and begins to reject the facade he is trying to project. Much like Batman, the 'normal' persona is the mask.

I could work my way thru the translation, but the quotes from the movie suffer from the hazards of english-to-French (I'm assuming)-back to english.

[seriz]

Sorry i forgot to answer ! Yes, i ask my dad to translate my text, and the quotes were the french dialogues. Translated again in english, it has nothing to see with the original dialogues of course ! I'm still working on Mad Max, but now for a much bigger project !

[bike]

Interesting and well thought-out point of view! Thanks for posting this.

Tiny correction: Jim the gorilla is really Jim the goose

[seriz]

Thanx for your reply ! I'm interesting to have feedback about it. I'm working on Mad Max since some months, and now it's my main activity ! I hope I will finish the book i started next spring. I'm reading quite everything about the movies and find very intersting point of views here and there. This text upon is a very small one, fast written. It will be rewritte totally. But the global idea will be quite the same, but i want to develop quite every point much more.

You're totaly right about Jim Goose of course. I wrote my text in french, with the french names, and it was translated to english like this. So some stuff are wrong (and maybe look silly to you)
Since some weeks, i haunt this forum (eh eh), searching infos and trivias, and when my text will be almost done, i'd like to come back to some of you with some questions. I'd really like making some little interviews, even if I'm already in contact with some people !

Anyway, i begin to have huge archives, later, all this will be upload somewhere (several .zip or .rar) for you !

[skinhead]

Don't have time to read thru your OP at the moment, but noting your research into the sources, this snippet from a Miller autobiographical doco is revelatory.

White Fellas Dreaming - Introduction

[Bubba Fat]

Well, I really enjoyed your huge review of the first Mad Max movie. It's indeed the best of all three (or should I say two?) Yep, some quotes are wrong due to translation. The Toecutter gang has no real name in the original film. The term/name "The Eagles of the Road" is directly translated from the French version into English. Though I love "Les aigles de la route" much more. It's way more intimidating then just simply call the whole bunch "Toecutter Gang". I hoped to get more stuff about Bubba Zanetti in your review though... A character that should have merit to get more analyzed.

Salut à toi !

[seriz]

Don't have time to read thru your OP at the moment, but noting your research into the sources, this snippet from a Miller autobiographical doco is revelatory.

White Fellas Dreaming - Introduction

Thanx for the link

>Bubba
Thanx, I'm agree about Bubba Zanetti, the coolest name of all movie caracters of cinema history ! But anyway, I realy don't have a lot to say about him, beyond the jealousy he feels against Johnny for the attention of the Toecutter !

Here's the text in french for french people :
http://melvinpekatre.free.fr/textemadmax.doc

[Daywalker]

Nice job!

It seems as if us, french people, are also MM fanatics, like the english speaking people ...

I have a question...how old are you? Because you said, your father had made the translation...

Why such a question...well, if you are an younger guy, you cannot imagine, in the early 80's, what happened around this movies at this time.

[seriz]

I'm 36 ! I remember very well Mad Max 3 out on screens. I was really pissed to have only 10 years old and not be allowed to go to the theater and watch it. I heard a lot at that time about Mad Max 1 and 2, it was like a huge myth. In 1988 or 89, i had the opportunity to go to a theater where a "mad max night" was organized. I discovered the 3 movies on screen, that night. At 6 o'clock, after the third one, I was really impressed and since that moment, thoses movies are really something for me !