Almanac Poetry: The Car Chase in Films from Six Different Countries
The Car Chase in Films from Six Different Countries
In America, it’s Steve McQueen
Ford Mustang crash bang Bullitt
streets of San Francisco stuff;
Germany, there’s a focus
upon needles on dashboard gauges
rising dangerously into the red;
France, it’s a character study:
the wily, corrupt old cop
emotionally torturing
his wet behind the ears sidekick
while letting the villains get away.
In Italy, everything’s frantic
– arguing, gesticulating,
crooks and carabinieri
equally incompetent.
In India? A series of cuts from the chase
to floridly attired
singing and dancing girls,
jangling bracelets of bells,
while, in Iceland, the car is driven
by an unaccountably nude
unselfconscious blonde au pair,
with her precocious seven-year-old male charge
both passenger and navigator.
Then, in Australia, there is a ute
pursued along a dusty
outback road to vanishing point,
rifle fire, tinnies,
swearing and scattering kangaroos.
(Acknowledgements: first published in Other Poetry (UK) in 2003; then in my first poetry collection, Vigorous Vernacular, Picaro Press, 2008, reissued by Ginninderra Press, 2018.)
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About
Kevin Densley is a graduate of both Deakin University and The University of Melbourne. He has taught writing and literature in numerous Victorian universities and TAFES. He is a poet and writer-in-general. His fifth book-length poetry collection, Please Feed the Macaws ... I'm Feeling Too Indolent, was published in late 2023 by Ginninderra Press. He is also the co-author of ten play collections for young people, as well as a multi Green Room Award nominated play, Last Chance Gas, which was published by Currency Press. Other writing includes screenplays for educational films.
Further note: Bullitt was the film that made the Ford Mustang an international icon.