On October 6th, 1970, 20-year-old American tourist Billy Hayes (Brad Davis) had spent some time in Turkey, and was preparing to leave through customs, but he had a secret, kept even from his girlfriend Susan (Irene Miracle). This was he had a couple of kilos of hashish strapped to his body as part of a deal he had made with drugs smugglers, having been assured he wouldn't be searched as he left the country. It was all going well, in spite of his obvious edginess, until he was due to board the aeroplane; there had been a series of hijacks in the region, and Billy was patted down by soldiers who immediately found the contraband...
At the start of Midnight Express there was a caption which informed us this was a true story, and that was something believed across the world such was the success of the film. The whole Turkish prison punchline became a popular one, for that was where Billy ended up having broken the law in that country, and the reputation of the Turks dipped dramatically what with every one of their citizens depicted here as utter sleazebags who would sell their own grandmothers or whatever. Understandably, this was banned from cinemas there and the authorities complained very loudly about their misrepresentation, but the damage had been done, and though the movie had been made by Brits, it was considered wholly jingoistic American drum-beating.
Oliver Stone was the man doing that fabrication - he apologised to Turkey some time afterwards, too little too late you might have thought - but he won an Oscar for his script and went on to forge a career as one of the most recognisable directors of the following decade and beyond. Alan Parker meanwhile was wanting to exhibit his range after the children's movie Bugsy Malone, and you couldn't get much further away from that than Midnight Express, but what it looked like now was one of those European women in prison movies only with men as the characters. It had that atmosphere redolent of seediness and exploitation, inviting the audience to revel in the degradation taking place.
So if you are suspicious of the material, and indeed motives of the filmmakers, where did that leave Midnight Express? Did the lack of verisimilitude harm the movie in any way or were you able to watch and appreciate it as a piece of entertainment? It was undeniably well made in that it plunged you into two hours of utter misery as was the intention, and the tragically shortlived Davis was downtrodden enough to invite sympathy even if Billy was stupid enough to try and get away with his crime. He was surrounded by some decent performances including John Hurt and Randy Quaid as the two inmates planning the prison break, Paul L. Smith was appropriately horrible as the formidable chief guard and Norbert Weisser was a shoulder to cry on as the prisoner Billy almost has an affair with (something which happens in the book but was denied by the actual person the character was based on). The sense of suffering as something not only worthwhile but stimulating was distinctly uncomfortable. Music by Giorgio Moroder.
Funny how Alan Parker is embarrassed by Bugsy Malone but sees no problem with this. I can never decide exactly how I feel about Midnight Express. On the one hand, I can see all the points you raised but the film never struck me as racist or an indictment of the Turkish penal system per se. The intent seems to be to tell a harrowing, but ultimately moving story about the human spirit enduring the worst life can throw at them.
Were Peter Graves to inquire, I have never seen the inside of a Turkish prison but have witnessed instances of police brutality in the Middle East. What happens here isn't entirely far-fetched.
Posted by:
Graeme Clark
Date:
6 May 2013
The famous speech Billy gives in the courtroom about the Turks being pigs is pretty racist, but then again you could watch an actual Turkish movie about a Turkish prison in the eighties World Cinema hit Yol and see the insider's point of view wasn't too sunny either. Though oddly prisoners there got to go home at weekends.
What Billy needed was a token nice Turk pal in prison instead of a nasty one he tears out the tongue of with his teeth. Of course, Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy just about ruined Midnight Express's big scene of degradation anyway.
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