Crude Behavior

Though most Americans give it scant consideration beyond the matter of a fill-up, oil is nearly as integral to modern living as water. The most heavily traded commodity in the world, it’s the lubricant that keeps entire economies churning. Petroleum in its myriad forms plays a role in everything from ink pens to tires to dry-cleaning, and without it, life as we know it would grind to a halt like a Gremlin with a busted axle.

Given the crucial role of oil in modern living and commerce, it should be little wonder that interesting films dealing with black gold abound. If you like tales culled from the headlines, you’ll want to augment the list below with the 1992 made-for-cable docudrama Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster; it’s a fairly steady account of the mother of all drunk-driving accidents. If you like your oil tales mixed with a little sci-fi, check out The Abyss (1989), a plodding tale of subaquatic romance punctuated by some killer special effects.

High, Wide and Handsome (dir: Rouben Mamoulian, 1937) Were it not for the fact that Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern cooked up the tunes for this zippy musical, this film would have about as much as appeal as the Captain sans Tennille. It’s pretty much textbook stuff, with a woebegone do-gooder taking on the powerful and the corrupt, this time in the hills of Pennsylvania during the oil strike of the 1860s. Alan Hale, better known to most living Americans as The Skipper, plays the bad guy. As you would expect, the song-and-dance numbers are nothing to sneeze at.

Louisiana Story (dir: Robert Flaherty, 1948) The swan song of the grand master of documentary filmmaking, this an entirely unusual work for its cinematic beauty alone; even more curious is the fact that it was funded by the Standard Oil Company, which wanted to produce a film depicting the difficulties of obtaining oil. What the company got was almost certainly not what it had envisioned: the drooping grandeur of the bayou country viewed through the eyes of a young boy drifting along in his pirogue, watching the oil drillers tending to a chugging derrick. Nearly devoid of dialogue, Louisiana Story is an elegiac depiction of nature and the people who live in harmony with it rather than trying to tame it.

Giant (dir: George Stevens, 1956) Giant is perhaps the ultimate embodiment of Texas bigness and a fine reminder that seven husbands and countless diets ago, Elizabeth Taylor was a pretty riveting actress. This decades-long saga begins when her character comes to live with Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson), a hunky rancher with a spread big enough to make even Ted Turner’s eyes bulge. Inflaming passions and otherwise clouding the picture is James Dean as the brooding ranch hand Jett Rink—lots of cool names in this one—who eventually strikes oil beneath a patch of scrub land. The film also presents a prime opportunity to see Dennis Hopper in the days before he made a career out of looking drug-addled. This was Hudson’s year for oil movies: In 1956, he also starred in Written on the Wind with Lauren Bacall.

Five Easy Pieces (dir: Bob Rafelson, 1970) After languishing in subpar films for a decade, Jack Nicholson finally got his break in 1969’s Easy Rider. Five Easy Pieces was his first starring role, and he tackled it brilliantly—the chicken sandwich scene alone is the stuff of greatness. Playing the crafty misfit, Nicholson struts it here as an oil field worker who also happens to be a classical pianist gone AWOL from his family and his music; he chooses instead to live the grimy life of a roughneck, spending his nights with a dingy, love-starved girlfriend (Karen Black). On a visit home to see his ailing father, he meets moody pianist Susan Anspach and sparks fly, as do epithets and some fragile glassware—it’s Nicholson, remember. Others lending solid support are Billy Green Bush (he of the trademark cackle) and Helena Kallianiotes as a nihilistic cleanliness freak. As for the music, you’ve got to love any film soundtrack that gives equal time to Chopin and Tammy Wynette.

Oklahoma Crude (dir: Stanley Kramer, 1973) Another tale of the little guy trying to rebuff the corporate Goliath (Jack Palance)—only this time it’s a little gal (Faye Dunaway). She’s wound especially tight, we come to realize, because it’s the only way she knows how to survive in a tough landscape. Something of a muddled feminist theme emerges, though by the end Dunaway is clad in a dress and smitten with George C. Scott, who gives the film’s best performance as the layabout who helps her stick it to the big boys. The requisite gusher scene is a doozy, lasting a good 10 minutes.

Local Hero (dir. Bill Forsyth, 1983) This is the best of Forsyth’s quirky early-’80s comedies, though neither Gregory’s Girl nor Comfort and Joy lags far behind. Peter Reigert plays an oil company exec sent by head honcho Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster) to buy a remote Scottish fishing village so that the company can replace it with a refinery. Though subtle, the dialogue is routinely hilarious; the creators of TV’s Northern Exposure must have watched this film repeatedly, which is to say that much of the movie’s humor and emotional resonance derive from things rarely being what they seem.