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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Driver

1978 film by Walter Hill

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 9, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

The Driver is a 1978 American neo-noir crime thriller film written and directed by Walter Hill, and starring Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabelle Adjani. The film features only unnamed characters, and follows a getaway driver for robberies (O'Neal) whose exceptional talent has prevented him being caught. A detective determined to apprehend him (Dern) promises pardons to a gang if they help catch him in a set-up robbery.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Driver” is 1978 film by Walter Hill. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Driver, film and Walter, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1978—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Driver, film and Walter is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1978 film by Walter Hill” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1978.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Driver”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Driver primary sources, The Driver archive and Driver research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Driver”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Driver” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.