Word: infernos
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Towering Inferno is, simply, one of the few places where popular art intersects good art. There are lots of examples in other fields. I suppose, like Tchaikovsky and the Mona Lisa and A Christmas Carol, but most of the examples that come to mind are movies. Film is the one art that has stayed resolutely popular, and it has done so only in the United States. When American directors get artsy, like Robert Altman or Francis Ford Coppola, they tend to produce meaty, serious movies that, finally, don't grab hold of your imagination. At least, not the way Casablanca...
...suppose anyone would dispute the claim that The Towering Inferno is popular art, so I'll defend my assertion that it's good art as well. One red herring--the director. Irwin Allen--needs to be disposed of right away. Auteurist orthodoxy is so much a part of the serious movie-goer's mental baggage that the idea of a good film being produced by an awful director seems a contradiction in terms. And Allen has compounded the problem by acting like some Cahiers du Cinema reader's idea of a Big Bad Hollywood Producer. Allen told the august Arts...
...Allen and his mediocrity were necessary for the success of The Towering Inferno. When good directors try to make uncomplicated popular movies, they are incapable of keeping a poker face about it. To paraphrase E.M. Forster, few directors can prostitute all their powers. Even when working on the lowest level, they are always implying they are capable of something higher...
...Towering Inferno is a return to the sources of film's power. Avant garde directors have tried to make movies compete with other art forms and so lost touch with the elemental appeal of film. Cops and robbers and westerns have been transplanted to television...
...Towering Inferno is one hell of a spectacle. The dialogue ranges from the banal to the trite, but only the most primitive phrases are appropriate to the very simple dynamics of the plot. A builder constructs a 135-story office-building-cum-apartment house, but in cutting costs, his son-in-law installs a faulty wiring system that starts a small fire as soon as the first switch is thrown. The fire detection and sprinkler system malfunction, of course, and, as a gala party of 300 bejewelled and tuxedoed guests gathers in the penthouse...