Review of The Towering Inferno (1974) by Laura L — 28 Jan 2005

So I watched [b]The Towering Inferno[/b] last night on AMC. Besides the fact that they have commercials every 10 minutes and that everything looked so cheezily 70s-ish, what stood out the most to me was the age of the actors.

If that movie was made now, everyone would be in their 20s and 30s. Maybe a few token "older" actors, but the hero parts would be someone young. Paul Newman was near 50. (he was born in 1925) Steve McQueen 44, William Holden 56, Fred Astaire 75, Jennifer Jones 57, Robert Vaugn 42, Robert Wagner 44 the youngest people were Fay Dunaway 33, and Susan Blakley 24.

Why was it more common for actors above 30 to be featured in movies back then? And when someone older is in a movie they are the teacher, teaching some young hot actor/actress or it is mentioned in the media a million times how they "look good for their age".

That really annoys me. Anyway, the movie is good, and exciting, but paced very slow complared to modern movies. The fire isn't even a big deal until almost an hour into the movie. Or maybe it's sooner, it was hard to gauge with the 500 commercials.

Paul Newman is pretty intense as the architect whose building burns. Steve McQueen was of course super cool, and confident as the fire cheif who only got to sit down once for 3 minutes during this whole horrific ordeal.

The speech he gives at the end, sent shivers up my back, where he talks about how they were lucky only 200 people died, and that someday thousands will die in a skyscraper fire. Plus earlier in the movie he says how architects only build those tall buildings out of pure ego, and they don't care that firemen can't really fight a fire above the 7th floor.

That freaked me out as well. Anyway, it's still a classic.