How Movie Car Chases Have Changed Over The Years

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One of the most exciting things on the silver screen has evolved big time…

Even if you’re not a complete gearhead, you know car chases are some of the best, most iconic things in many movies. Right off the top of your head you can probably list several which have left a big impression on your mind. There’s something viscerally enthralling about one person chasing another in a car or on a motorcycle which stirs an excitement nobody normal can deny.

However, how car chase scenes have been filmed over the years has certainly changed as cars themselves have evolved from horseless carriages pushing just a few horsepower to high-tech, high-powered machines able to push well above 100 mph in a short time.

As pointed out in the accompanying video, car chase scenes were difficult to pull off in the early part of the 20th Century. However, the concept of Buster Keaton piloting a car across some railroad tracks just before a train comes along in the film Sherlock Jr. surprisingly echoes the nail-biting final sequence in the first The Fast and the Furious movie. That clearly shows what fundamentally kept audiences glued to their seats back in 1924 was what still kept people engaged in 2001 and today.

Technology and methods for shooting car chases certainly has evolved quite a bit, making the film sequences more realistic in many ways. What most people consider to be one of the greatest chase scenes appears in Bullitt, where Steve McQueen sends it in his Mustang on the hilly streets of San Francisco.

What you might not realize about that movie was that it departed from the previous practice of shooting chase scenes using a studio set, sometimes using a green screen to make it look like everything was filmed at the location. Director Peter Yates was able to leverage newer, more compact cameras to conduct the pursuit between Mustang and Dodge Charger in San Francisco, making it feel more realistic and thus more exciting because the sense of risk to the drivers and everyone else was elevated. Plus, those smaller cameras meant interior shots in both vehicles, immersing viewers even further.

Of course, it helped that Steve McQueen wasn’t just a compelling actor, the man had real-life racing experience. His proficiency with the Ford Mustang paid off in spades. For example, that reverse burnout everyone loves wasn’t actually scripted. McQueen actually missed a turn and quickly threw the pony car into reverse to get back on track as the film kept rolling. It added such a flair to the chase scene it was retained.