Deer Hunter Cadillac - 1959 Cadillac Series 62



I saw "The Deer Hunter" so many times when I was a kid growing up on Long Island I experienced a cinematic "Stockholm Syndrome" of sorts. At that time, HBO had only a cadre of films they repeated over and over "The Deer Hunter" was one of them. Whether it was the thrill of watching an "R-rated" movie at home alone or that Robert DeNiro and the entire cast was so magnetic, most likely a combination of both, I grew so fond of "The Deer Hunter" it became a personal guide of all things machismo. I saw it again recently through what I construe are adult eyes and laughed to myself at what an absurd and pretentious mess the whole thing was.  

  

"The Deer Hunter" tells the "story" of three steel mill workers and how their service in the United States Army during the Vietnam War affects each of them and their group dynamic. Along the way we're treated to the broiling working conditions of a steel mill, after work male bonding, a wedding, eventually a funeral, deer getting shot to death (with one shot), incinerated Viet Cong and the guys, amazingly altogether, incarcerated as POW's and forced to play Russian Roulette. All this in a meandering, incoherent, seemingly ad-libbed, near four-hour melee. While it has many of the necessary elements to be a good film, it's assembled such that there's no way it can be truly compelling. Spoiler alert - there really is no plot to "The Deer Hunter" and any point it may attempt to make one lost because it, try as some may say it does, ultimately lacks a cohesive narrative. It's as if the director and producers of the film, not to mention it's very talented cast, made parts of it up as they went along. For the record, there were no accounts of the Viet Cong forcing POW's to "play" Russian Roulette. 

What the The "Deer Hunter" dealt with, successfully or not is debatable, was a very, very uncomfortable subject matter at the time -  that eight-letter word that to this day still makes many of us. In the late 1970's, "We The People" did our darndest to stuff it in our collective emotional closets and get on with our lives; we did our best to pretend it never happened. As painful as it was, thanks to Hollywood, films like "The Deer Hunter", which was the first "Vietnam movie", forced us to stare down our demons in a mass group therapy session. And a seemingly never ending one that had us shaking our heads mumbling, "what the hell was that?" 

 

If "The Deer Hunter" had anything going for it, in addition to Vilmos Zsigmond's wonderful  cinematography, it had a cast of up and coming film legends and a 1959 Cadillac Series 62 that Robert DeNiro's character, Michael, drives. I'm fairly ambivalent towards '59 Cadillac's but cast as one was in "The Deer Hunter", no other car could have fit the role more perfectly. Assuming the film's director, Michael Cimino, was attempting to symbolize with it what I think he was. Again, with "The Deer Hunter", Cimino may have needed a car for the guys to go hunting in and the '59 Cadillac was available on the studio lot. "The Deer Hunter" is supposed to be an "art-house" movie so everything in it must mean something, right? 

Symbolism in film is used to subtly and sometimes not so subtly reinforce a film's underlying theme and in "The Deer Hunter", while what there is of "story" centers around steel mill workers, the film's theme, we have to assume, is about the state of the United States after the end of the Vietnam War; although the film appears to be set in the late 1960's and the war didn't end until January 1973. "Michael's car" a none too subtle symbol of America's very recent but long lost confident, boisterous past. Ah, such the dystopian America I spent my "Wonder Year's" growing up in. 

Judging by the overall condition of the car, we see that America has seen better days. Indeed, the post Vietnam War, Gas Crisis I, Watergate and Nixon resigning, double-dip recession bogged America, just like Mike's big old Cadillac, it  appears to be pretty banged up. As for the ramshackle way "Michael" lives his life, your guess as good as mine as to why a man of such intelligence and emotional depth would live in squalor. Had Robert DeNiro portrayed Michael as the second coming of Travis Bickle his lifestyle may have been somewhat understandable. Then again, he couldn't have been the cornerstone of the film the way that "Michael" was. Again, "The Deer Hunter" is a mess.



Furthermore, while it's certainly not out of the question for someone of the means of a steel mill worker to drive such an elaborate and expensive car, if it not for symbolism and cinematographic effect, would  a serious hunter, like Michael, drive such an impractical automobile? No. Of course not. Still, as a symbol or metaphor, it's actually quite effective.

Derided like few other Cadillac's had up until that time, it's ironic that an automobile so polarizing of design like the 1959 Cadillac would come to symbolize so much about America. Good, bad and indifferent. Cadillac's were all new for model year 1957 and their styling was a continuation of the aeronautic design themes that were all new for 1948. However, when Chrysler debuted their 1957 models resplendent in sky scraping tail fins, General Motors scraped their planned 1959 models and instead hurriedly designed a series of automobiles that are without question the most outlandish American cars ever made. The 1959 Cadillac's, subjectively, being the most outrageous of them all although the Buicks and Oldsmobile's are not far behind. 

In many ways, the 1959 Cadillac was exactly like "The Deer Hunter" - visually compelling without anything really tangible to make it worthy of the praise heaped upon it; not unlike attractive people who are actually vapid. Contemporary road tests of the 1959 Cadillac found it under powered, the handling ponderous, the styling cartoonish. While Roger Ebert may have loved "The Deer Hunter" there were many critics who found the film wantonly heavy handed, predictable and shallow. Praise be damned.

The Deer Hunter won five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director for Michael Cimino, and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken. The Deer Hunter was named by the American Film Institute as the 53rd greatest American film of all time. On many lists of the greatest automobiles of all time you'll also find 1959 Cadillacs.