THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS

"The Sugarland Express". Although "Duel"did eventually get a cinema release it was made for television so this very different kind of road-movie was really Spielberg's official big-screen debut and it's brilliant. (It's also very underrated, both in the Spielberg canon and in that series of road movies that came out of America in the seventies). It's a fact-based tragi-comedy about a young woman, (Goldie Hawn, remarkably good), who breaks her husband (William Atherton) out of prison so they can go get their child out of foster care. On route to Sugarland (great name), where the child is being kept, they hi-jack a police-car complete with patrolman, (Michael Sacks), and in the process become celebrities of a sort. This period marked something of a golden age for American movies and this is both a key film in that Renaissance, (it's surely one of the best American films of that decade), as well as being a very entertaining one. It confirmed Spielberg as a major new director, Hawn's status as an actress of real potential and newcomers Atherton and Sacks as actors of considerable promise. The marvellous script was by Hal Barwood and Matthew Robbins and it's a great satire.