The Towering Inferno
One tiny spark becomes a night of blazing suspense.
Country
Production
Budget
$14 000 000
Revenue
$116 000 000
Director
Actors
Scenario
Producer
Operator
Composer
Artist
William J. Creber, Steven P. Sardanis
Audition
Editing
Short description
The Towering Inferno centres on a newly built skyscraper in San Francisco, billed as the tallest in the world, whose opening is marked by a lavish party for hundreds of guests on the upper floors. Faulty electrical work starts a fire far below the celebration, and the flames and smoke soon cut off the escape routes, trapping the revellers near the top of the building. Doug Roberts, the architect who designed the tower, and Chief O'Hallorhan of the fire department lead the effort to reach the people inside. The cast includes Steve McQueen as O'Hallorhan, Paul Newman as Roberts, William Holden as the builder Jim Duncan, Faye Dunaway as Susan and Fred Astaire as Harlee Claiborne, across a credited cast of 43 and a crew of 147.
John Guillermin directed, with Stirling Silliphant writing the screenplay and Irwin Allen producing. It followed Guillermin's Shaft in Africa from the previous year and came before King Kong in 1976, part of a run of large-scale productions he made during the 1970s. Made for about 14 million dollars, it returned roughly 116 million worldwide.
Audiences have received it positively: on IMDb it holds 7 out of 10 from around 52,000 votes, and on TMDB 7 out of 10 from about 1,080 votes. A critics' rating of 6.7 out of 10 from 39 reviews places professional assessments close to those of the general public, though slightly lower. Running 165 minutes, the film mixes action, drama and thriller elements.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film is based on the non-fiction novels *The Tower* by Richard Martin Stern, and *The Glass Inferno* (*The Glass Tower*) by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson.
- The role of the elderly aristocrat was the last in Jennifer Jones's career.
- The film was the first example of a joint project between Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, which shared the production costs and box office profits.
- Thanks to the special effects, which received much critical acclaim, the film was able to create a realistic depiction of a skyscraper fire and the mass loss of life. The visual effects were created using 1970s technologies: rotoscoping, rear projection, traveling matte, and filming of large-scale models.
- Artists drew over two thousand preliminary sketches, based on which the 5 floors of the 138-story skyscraper were created. In eight pavilions, 57 sets were built and placed for various scenes of the film (only 8 of them survived until the end of filming). A month before the start of filming, a large number of shots of San Francisco at dusk were taken from carefully calculated angles, to be used later during filming.
- Paul Newman and Steve McQueen not only received the same fee, but McQueen also specifically made sure that they had exactly the same amount of dialogue. Steve even asked the screenwriter to add twelve lines to his role, although taciturn characters were more suited to his acting style. The credits also became a subject of rivalry. In them, the names of the two stars in one frame are arranged diagonally, so as not to cause disagreement about who has higher status in the film.
- The high technical complexity and danger of some scenes forced a careful approach to safety issues during the filming of the future action film – the actors were insured for a total of $50 million. Near each actor, in scenes involving fire, a separate firefighter was on duty, responsible for ensuring that the fire did not spread to the body, hair, or clothing. A total of about twenty fire extinguishing specialists from San Francisco were involved in the filming in episodes and as backup. The film's consultant was Commander Jack Cavello from one of the San Francisco fire stations. Steve McQueen underwent short training under the guidance of another film consultant, Peter Lucarelli, went out with the team, and even participated in extinguishing one of the fires. The safety precautions were fully justified – no personnel or actors were injured during filming.
- The specifics of working on the film were such that some scenes had to be shot in one take, as the sets were completely destroyed by fire and water. In most cases, however, the team of artists and technicians restored the sets between takes. While the team rebuilt one set, the camera crew was burning another one under the lenses. Before each shooting day, the groups meticulously planned the sequence of transitions from set to set to avoid downtime.
- A total of up to 300 stunt performers were involved in the film.
- The film featured several episodes in which the heroes performed dangerous stunts. Newman and McQueen preferred to perform them themselves whenever possible, without using stunt doubles. This rivalry greatly worried the producer, but he could do nothing about it. In the scene of jumping from a helicopter, McQueen, wearing a fireproof suit, jumped from a height of four meters into the fire.
- William Holden, who landed the role of head of "Duncan Enterprises", was initially dissatisfied, as his character spent too much time on the phone without much action on screen. He called the film's script "miserable", but agreed to star in it. Holden’s fee was $750,000, the highest of his career.
- After reading the script, Steve McQueen wanted to switch his role to the fire chief, and to have someone "at least as big as me" take the place of the architect, as he put it. The producer trusted the instinct of the experienced performer. McQueen himself suggested his friend and rival Paul Newman, who agreed to participate in the project. Newman and McQueen agreed on an equal fee ($1 million) and 7.5% of the total box office revenue each.
- The most technically complex and dangerous scenes were those in the ballroom on the 135th floor. Filming this hall, the fire, and the firefighting took about three weeks. Capturing the fire required five to seven cameras, and up to eight cameras for filming the water stream. The combination of water and fire in some shots only added to the problems, especially for the lighting technicians. Even a small amount of liquid getting on a hot spotlight could disable it. As a result, scenes had to be composed as much as possible so that the fire itself was the “lighting fixture”. The pyrotechnicians had to carefully select components so that the fire, if possible, was smokeless, creating the necessary brightness of illumination.
- Irvin Allen, recalling the filming of the final scene, said: “In all my years in the film industry, this was the scariest moment.” The episode was captured in one take with eight cameras – after filming, the set was completely destroyed. For the actors, the scene wasn’t much different from what the characters on screen had to endure. 50 cubic meters of water from six tanks, raised above the set, crashed down on the performers, and water cannons were also used. Fred Astaire was very apprehensive about the episode, and McQueen even jokingly said goodbye to his wife before the start of filming, “bequeathing” her his car in case something went wrong.
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Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
