New Play in Manhattan

The Chase (by Horton Foote) was Producer-Director-Actor Jose Ferrer's bid for five Broadway hits in a row.* But The Chase proves too much for him--or rather, too little. Laid in Texas, it tells of a violent killer who breaks out of the pen, and of a small-town sheriff's fierce efforts to recapture him without having to kill him or let the townspeople string him up. Since the desperado is almost more anxious to bump off the sheriff than to make a getaway, the situation is fairly knotty.

The situation, also fairly routine, has been treated times without number on film. But it is not really the story that dooms The Chase. It is rather the slow, loquacious, unclimactic storytelling: there is the flash of gunfire now & then, but most of the lead is in the script.

A further trouble is that The Chase keeps preaching, with too-pious insistence, against unnecessary violence. But as a thriller, The Chase can only practice what it preaches at the cost of sufficient thrills. Cramped by such material, Director Ferrer does little more than work up a few lively scenes and--as he has so often done in previous productions--cast some good people in minor roles. As the harassed sheriff, with a pregnant wife into the bargain (Kim Hunter), Cinemactor John Hodiak struggles manfully, but about all he demonstrates is that a policeman's lot is not a happy one.

* The other four: Twentieth Century, Stalag 17, The Fourposter, The Shrike.

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