Steve McQueen fans will no doubt be surprised by this movie on several levels. Probably their initial surprise will be when they discover that this movie exists - despite the presence of their favorite movie star, this movie has not attracted a lot of attention over the years. Their next surprise will probably come from when they see how Steve McQueen looks like here. In An Enemy Of The People, McQueen is pretty much unrecognizable - even I had a lot of trouble picturing him under his long wavy hair, his granny glasses, his puffy and curly beard, and his extra weight. And the final surprise is the subject matter of this movie; in previous movies (and afterwards, with Tom Horn and The Hunter) McQueen is known for playing cool, heroic loners in actioners. An Enemy Of The People is nowhere near an actioner - it's an adaptation of a dramatic play by Henrik Ibsen! And McQueen's character here is a small town doctor in 19th century Scandinavia who tries to solve a crisis with logic and scientific fact - no cars, motorbikes, or guns here.

How did McQueen get involved in such an unlikely project? As it turns out, even he knew that the commercial prospects for An Enemy Of The People were not great, to say the least. After 1974's The Towering Inferno, he took some time off, partly due to some big problems in his personal life. (Though he secretly did some of the motorcycle stunt work in the 1976 exploitation movie Dixie Dynamite.) Though he wanted to rest, there was one monkey on his back - he was under contract by the production company First Artists (a company he now despised) to do another movie for them. However, his contract stated that he was allowed to pick the project. So to get revenge, and possibly get First Artists to go under (they eventually did, though I'm not sure if this movie was the cause), he decided to pick something extremely uncommercial - hence An Enemy Of The People.

The movie was shot and completed in 1977, with a closed set and McQueen refusing to give interviews. A funny thing happened to McQueen during the shoot. As time progressed, his fondness and enthusiasm for the project kept growing. By the end, he was convinced that the movie was going to be a big hit, and started claiming to his friends that he had chosen the movie because looking back at his previous work he felt "artistically, I've failed," and that, for the first time, he felt like he was actually acting. However, when distributor Warner Brothers saw the movie, they got nervous, and shelved it for some time, unsure on how to market it. After two years had past, they tested the movie at several college campuses, where several movie critics caught it and heavily panned it. As a result, the movie never got a further release to theaters, and to this date it hasn't been released on video. I finally caught this movie on one of its rare broadcasts on TV.

It's a pretty good movie. It isn't a masterpiece or a great movie, but it's a competent, interesting little movie, covering issues Ibsen wrote about that are still around today. McQueen's doctor character Tom at the beginning of the movie makes a horrifying discovery - the town's spring, which is destined to become a future health resort by several of the town's leading citizens (including Tom), is contaminated. Feeling that the resort plan should stop, Tom tells his brother Peter (Durning), who is also the town's mayor. To Tom's shock, Peter refuses to stop the project, claiming the costs and time for cleanup would be enormous, and potential tourists would be scared off. ("You want to ruin this town?")

Tom then heads to the owners of the local newspaper, who are initially eager to print Tom's report, partly due to the fact they despise the town council and have political aspirations of their own. However, Peter later visits the newspaper to tell them that printing the article would result in a large taxation for the cleanup - and the citizens wouldn't be fond of any government under that tax. The newspaper then declines to run the story. Tom, still determined the truth should be told, tries taking his case to the citizens, but finds it much harder than he thinks, due both to unforeseen circumstances and the citizens not taking to the tongue of this stubborn, scientific man. Soon, Tom finds himself an outcast, finding himself in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemma and wondering what to do next.

Government corruption, a public unable to comprehend scientific fact, greed - these are all things we can relate to even in the 20th century - Ibsen clearly had a good idea of the basic, unchanged nature of man. In addition, there's discussion on the individual's role in society (to blend in or not?), if the majority is "always right", and also interesting looks when people agree on a problem, but can't decide on the proper solution. Moderation? Full out? There are no easy answers both for Tom and the other citizens. Even the neutral side is explored in this movie, represented by Captain Forster (Richard Bradford, in a small but standout performance), who claims to be politically neutral (he doesn't vote), but his later actions show that even he has a hard time staying neutral in the conflict.

Besides Bradford, there's also an excellent performance by Durning as Tom's brother. The way the role is written, it's very easy for a performer to portray Peter as a selfish, evil man. But with During in the role, you see that Peter isn't altogether bad - he is sneaky and manipulative, and will do anything to survive the crisis, but at the same time he seems to genuinely believe what he's doing is for the overall good of the community. A special acting note also goes to Eric Christmas as Tom's father-in-law, whose memorable character initially seems to be in the play for light comic relief, but later provides a sinister piece of the puzzle.

As for McQueen - well, I was relieved to see that he actually seems to fit in the movie, a large part of that being that he is pretty much unrecognizable. So he doesn't seem that out of place, though at the same time he isn't stupendous. McQueen gives a low key performance here, talking very softly when he is not brooding in silence. His performance is so low key at times, other performers sometimes have trouble with him - witness the scene when Durning and McQueen are first alone. You'd think this would be a great scene, with two acclaimed actors by themselves. But McQueen is so subdued, that Durning seems unsure of how to act with him, even  descending down to McQueen's low key nature in this scene. In fairness to McQueen, there is one kind of acting that he does very well here - his "eye" acting. When he has a close-up, and you see his eyes clearly, you can tell exactly what his character is thinking.

There are some other notable flaws in An Enemy To The People that make it a perfectly acceptable movie instead of the powerhouse it could have been. The musical score by Leonard Rosenman is nice, but it seems this low budget movie could only afford one instrumental song, since variations of various pieces of this song are played throughout the movie. The movie is directed in a fashion that seems more suited to the stage instead of a sound stage; at key moments we sense a curtain should be falling to end the act, and many of the sets look only a little better to what one may find at a good community theater. Some scenes are directed with the central conversation in one room, while the camera looks on at someone (working in silence) in another room. And the few outdoor scenes were obviously filmed indoors. It's almost as if the production didn't have time to rewrite the play as a movie, and director Schaefer was struggling to make the play script look as much like a movie as possible. And the ending of the movie is extremely rushed - I haven't seen or read the original play, but I sincerely doubt the final action, whatever it is, is played at that speed. Despite this kind of treatment, the story and themes of An Enemy To The People are still strong enough to be of interest to viewers who are interested in them, and made the movie worthwhile to me. Still, the movie clearly could have been much better, and I'm not sure that McQueen fans, enthusiastic as they are about their idol, will be as interested in this movie as they are of his better-known efforts.
 

UPDATE: One of the sources I used during my research on this movie was a Steve McQueen biography (published just a few years ago) that stated the movie was only screened at college campuses. However, reader William Norton reveals that the release was actually wider:

"You...mentioned An Enemy Of The People never played on regular runs, but it did in 1981 (or was it 1982?) in Seattle.  Siskel and Ebert mentioned the film on their show also, so it must have played in Chicago."

If any other readers remember seeing any kind of release in their area for An Enemy Of The People, please write in, so the size of its release can be confirmed once and for all.