1980 Week: The Changeling

          This restrained ghost story blends psychological terror with sharp visual jolts, resulting in an enjoyably old-fashioned picture. George C. Scott stars as John Russell, a noted classical composer who lives on the East Coast with his wife and young daughter. One terrible day, he witnesses their deaths when a truck spins out of control on an icy road and hits the family car. John relocates to Seattle for a teaching job, and he rents a vacant mansion from Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere), a representative of the local historical society. While struggling through his grief and trying to generate new music, John starts hearing and seeing apparitions throughout the rented house. (A bouncing rubber ball has never been more menacing.) Afraid he’s going insane, John enlists Claire’s help to investigate the history of the mansion, eventually discovering a decades-old mystery with tragic connections to Joseph Carmichael (Melvyn Douglas), a powerful U.S senator.

          Giving away more of the plot (or even the meaning of the title) would spoil the fun, but suffice to say that the storyline—credited to Russell Hunter—is about the notion that souls unable to reach their final resting places can communicate with the living. Director Peter Medak and cinematographer John Coquillon make strong visual choices throughout The Changeling, employing muscular compositions and wide lenses to emphasize the power that places have over people. Even with his bearish physique, Scott seems dwarfed by the dark hallways and endless stairwells of the mansion, and when the tortured spirits get active—causing objects to stir and noises to emanate from mysterious places—it’s easy to understand why Scott’s character feels so unnerved.

          To its detriment, The Changeling suffers from a common malady, the old conundrum of “Why not just leave?” The more he becomes convinced his temporary house is haunted, the more obsessed John becomes with resolving a ghost’s unfinished business—but the filmmakers never persuasively explain why the task is so important to Russell. Similarly, the quasi-love story that develops between John and Claire feels perfunctory. Nonetheless, the best stuff in The Changeling is terrific. Rick Wilkins’ score is elegantly moody, Douglas gives an effectively twitchy supporting performance, and Medak does a great job of gradually increasing the size of the movie’s scares all the way from the slow-burn beginning to the cataclysmic finale.

The Changeling: FUNKY

The Tenant (1976)

          Roman Polanski’s most perverse movie—and that’s saying a lot—is almost certainly his 1976 psychological thriller The Tenant, which features such provocative signifiers as cross-dressing, duplicity, psychological torture, and suicide. Taken solely at face value, the picture is bewildering and nasty. Embraced as satire, however, The Tenant represents a wicked commentary on the madness of contemporary life and the toxic influence that inhumane social structures can have on individuals. Yet while many other Polanski movies lend themselves to straight analysis, with narrative symbols clearly representing specific psychological and/or sociopolitical concepts, The Tenant is deliberately ambiguous. Whether the movie feels playful or pretentious depends on the individual viewer’s perspective, of course, but as with all of Polanski’s work, elegant visuals and peerless technical aspects demand attention. In other words, The Tenant can’t be dismissed as a lark, even though it’s entirely possible that’s how Polanski approached the project.

          The auteur himself stars as Trelkovsky, an everyman who rents an apartment in an old Paris building. The unit became vacant when the previous tenant, Simone, jumped from one of the room’s windows and nearly died. Trelkovsky’s motivations are murky from start to finish. He visits Simone in the hospital, where she’s bandaged from head to toe, then meets Simone’s beautiful friend, Stella (Isabelle Adjani). The duo bond—if that’s the right word, given the morbid circumstances—by witnessing Simone’s death after a sudden emotional outburst. Later, as Trelkovsky explores his peculiar relationship with Stella—for instance, he never dispels her incorrect assumption that Trekovsky and Simone were friends—the protagonist experiences an even weirder dynamic with his new neighbors. Eventually, our “hero” comes to believe that building residents including Monsieur Zy (Melvyn Douglas) and the never-named concierge (Shelley Winters) are scheming to transform Trelkovsky into a replica of Simone. Hence the aforementioned cross-dressing and, inevitably, Trelkovsky’s own suicide attempt—or, if the climax is interpreted differently, his victimization by would-be murderers.

          The Tenant has a muted, dreamy look courtesy of genius European cinematographer Sven Nykvist, and composer Philippe Sarde lends an appropriate degree of menace to the soundtrack. Plus, as always, Polanski’s sly camerawork, distinguished by cleverly hidden cuts and moves, brings viewers into the action with seductive ease. The singular mood of The Tenant has undeniable power, an effect accentuated by the opacity of the performances. Polanski’s acting is strangely charming, although he’s got an impenetrable quality, while supporting players including Adjani, Douglas, and Winters merely represent colors in the movie’s surreal tapestry. As written by Polanski and frequent collaborator Gerard Brach (working from a novel by Roland Topor), The Tenant is unrelentingly odd in every aspect except its storytelling. And that, perhaps, is the most devious aspect of the picture; instead of delivering a cryptogram of a narrative via wild style, Polanski serves this peculiar dish on a bed of classicism. This has the effect of suggesting that, on some level, the real world provides such inherently insane context that the weird events of The Tenant make perfect sense.

The Tenant: FREAKY

The Candidate (1972)

          “Our lives are more and more determined by forces that overwhelm the individual,” remarks Senatorial candidate Bill McKay (Robert Redford) at one point in The Candidate. The same can be said of McKay’s life, because over the course of this remarkable movie, the idealistic young activist gets swallowed by the machine that sells politicians to the American public. And keep in mind this sobering film was made two decades before the emergence of the Internet as a key factor in campaigns, so the realities to which it speaks have only become more troubling in the ensuing years. The wild part, of course, is that The Candidate isn’t a pure drama—it’s got a strong thread of comedy, because the filmmakers zeroed in on the absurdity of modern American politics. This is mainstream cinema of the highest order, blending lively entertainment and important themes into a unique viewing experience.

          The Candidate was written by Jeremy Larner, a speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign and, incidentally, the author of the book and screenplay for the eccentric 1971 drama Drive, He Said. Larner netted a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for The Candidate—although, inexplicably, he’s never written another movie—and his work meshes beautifully with that of his two plugged-in collaborators, director Michael Ritchie and star Robert Redford. Together, the team present the fictional McKay as a keeper of the Kennedy flame, an unapologetic liberal concerned with the troubles of minorities and the underclass. He’s blessed and cursed with unique political gifts, not only because he’s articulate and handsome but also because he’s the son of a legendary Senator, John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas).

          When the story begins, Bill is happily involved with community activism and legal aid for the poor. He’s approached by ambitious campaign manger Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle), who envisions Bill as an ideal opponent for slick Republican incumbent Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter). Naïvely (or cunningly) accepting Marvin’s line that a Senatorial campaign can be used to air Bill’s favorite issues, Bill agrees to run, although he’s told there’s little chance of actually winning. Then, as the campaign gains momentum, Bill’s idealism suffers the death of a thousand cuts when he makes compromises and softens his rhetoric into noncommittal generalities. The magnificent tension of the story arises from the question of whether Bill genuinely regrets the changes he’s making. As he succumbs to power and temptation, does Bill retain his inherent goodness, or does he willingly accede to “forces that overwhelm the individual”?

          Director Ritchie, who previously collaborated with Redford on Downhill Racer (1969), delivers some of his career-best work here, orchestrating complex scenes that simultaneously explore multiple dynamics, and his use of montage to simulate the excitement and pageantry of political events is impressive. The filmmakers also benefit from outstanding performances across the board. Yet it’s the subtlety of The Candidate that impresses the most, from the way Larner’s script evokes the fraught relationships between Bill and the people in his life to the way Redford communicates tiny nuances as they pass through his character’s mind.

          The Candidate runs a bit long at 110 minutes, and the picture could have benefited from a few more jokes to arrive at a more consistent tone. The movie is also, to be frank, a bit on the clinical side. However, these quibbles are insignificant in the face of how many things this truly great movie gets right. The Candidate is without question among the handful of truly essential films ever made about American politics, and it’s a career milestone for everyone involved.

The Candidate: RIGHT ON

Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)

          While it's easy to see why Twilight's Las Gleaming tanked at the box office during its original release and remains, at best, a minor cult favorite to this day, the movie is a lively addition to the venerable tradition of loopy conspiracy flicks. Featuring an outlandish plot about a crazed U.S. general seizing control of a nuclear-missile launch site in order to force the president to reveal secret documents about America's involvement in Vietnam, the picture is far-fetched in the extreme. It's also ridiculously overlong, sprawling over two and a half hours. Furthermore, gonzo director Robert Aldrich filigrees the story with such unnecessary adornments as split-screen photography, which he uses to simultaneously show the goings-on at the launch site and the reactions of power-brokers in Washington, D.C. Plus, of course, the storyline is downbeat in every imaginable way. For adventurous moviegoers, however, these weaknesses are just as easily interpreted as strengths, particularly when the entertainment value of the acting is taken into consideration.

          Burt Lancaster stars as the general, memorably incarnating a macho idealist who uses duplicity and strategy to manipulate enemies and subordinates alike. Charles Durning, rarely cast as authority figures beyond the level of middle management, makes an unlikely president, his innate likability and the darkness that always simmered beneath his persona offering a complex image of humanistic leadership. Also populating the movie are leather-faced tough guy Richard Widmark, as the officer charged with wresting control of the launch site from the general’s gang; Paul Winfield and Burt Young, as two members of the gang; and reliable veterans Roscoe Lee Browne, Joseph Cotten, Melvyn Douglas, and Richard Jaeckel (to say nothing of Blacula himself, William Marshall). Quite a tony cast for a whackadoodle thriller that borders on science fiction.

          Based on a novel by Walter Wager, Twilight's Last Gleaming represents Aldrich's bleeding-heart storytelling at its most arch—the goal of Lancaster's character is revealing that the U.S. government knew Vietnam was a lost cause but kept fighting, at great cost of blood and treasure, simply to intimidate the Soviet Union. If there's a single ginormous logical flaw in the picture (in fact, there are probably many), it's that Lancaster's character could have achieved his goal through simpler means. But the ballsy contrivance of the picture is that seizing the launch site is a theatrical gesture meant to capture the world's attention. As such, the operatic bloat of Twilight's Last Gleaming reflects the protagonist's modus operandi--like the crusading general, Aldrich swings for the fences. Twilight's Last Gleaming is a strange hybrid of hand-wringing political drama (somewhat in the Rod Serling mode) with guns-a-blazin' action—for better or worse, there's not another movie like this one. Genuine novelty is a rare virtue, and so is the passion with which Aldrich made this offbeat picture.

Twilight's Last Gleaming: GROOVY

I Never Sang for My Father (1970)

          An elegant, insightful character piece grounded by precise writing and masterful acting, I Never Sang for My Father is one of the best small dramas of the ’70s, and it contains a crucial early performance by Gene Hackman. Already recognized as an extraordinary actor (his memorable supporting turn in 1967’s Bonnie & Clyde earned an Oscar nomination), Hackman was on the verge of becoming a Hollywood leading man, and he commands the screen throughout I Never Sang for My Father with the confidence of a veteran star. Indeed, had established actor Melvyn Douglas not received top billing for this movie, it’s likely Hackman’s well-deserved Oscar nomination for I Never Sang for My Father would have been in the leading-actor category, not the supporting-actor category.

          Such considerations aside, I Never Sang for My Father benefits from Douglas’ expert acting as much as it does from Hackman’s touching work. Hackman plays Gene Garrison, an author and teacher who has never been able to win the approval of his father, Tom (Douglas). A self-made man who rose from a miserable childhood to high achievement, Tom lords over every member of his family, exerting such merciless authority that Gene’s sister, Alice (Estelle Parsons), was excommunicated for the sin of marrying a Jew. Despite Tom’s hard edges, Gene struggles to find kindness in the man, especially after Gene’s mother dies and Tom becomes an aging widower with rapidly diminishing mental capacity. Meanwhile, Gene contemplates a move from the family’s East Coast home base to California, where Gene has a chance to start a new life with his girlfriend, Peggy (Elizabeth Hubbard). Thus, in the aftermath of his mother’s death, Gene becomes the de facto caretaker of his domineering dad, potentially at the cost of a chance for personal happiness.

          Exploring themes of duty, independence, love, and what it means to be a man, screenwriter Robert Anderson—adapting his successful play of the same name—digs deep into his characters, presenting everyone in the movie as a complex individual with warring impulses. For instance, Tom is nurturing and tender with his children until the instant he perceives disobedience, which instantly transforms him into a scornful monster. Similarly, Gene is soulful despite exhibiting faint echoes of his father’s macho stubbornness. That both Douglas and Hackman illustrate such subtle nuances is a testament to their thoughtful work. An even greater testament to their skill is that both actors assiduously avoid playing for cheap sentiment: Every painful moment in I Never Sang for My Father is earned. Producer-director Gilbert Cates, who worked on the Broadway presentation of Anderson’s play, serves the material well with unobtrusive camerawork, and his use of unvarnished locations adds greatly to the movie’s diligent realism. (Available through Columbia Screen Classics via WarnerArchive.com)

I Never Sang for My Father: RIGHT ON

The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)

          Only a curmudgeon could truly dislike Alan Alda’s work. A smooth actor equally adept at comedy and drama, a deft writer with compassionate narrative impulses, and a sensitive observer of the human condition, he easily qualifies for national-treasure status. That said, it’s easy to find fault with Alda’s handful of original screenplays, the first of which was this intelligent but timid political drama. Whereas Alda found a perfect vessel for his literary gifts when penning episodes of M*A*S*H, following the genius framework set by series developer Larry Gelbart, Alda’s big-screen stories succumb to excessive tendencies: He undercuts serious tales by going for jokes at the wrong times, and he diminishes credibility by making every character likeable. Peculiar as it may sound, Alda’s desire to please his audience is his biggest impediment as a movie storyteller.

          All of which is context for The Seduction of Joe Tynan, an admirable but frustrating movie. Alda stars as Tynan, a U.S. senator from New York seemingly on a path to the White House. Over the course of the movie, Tynan grows estranged from his wife, emotionally troubled Ellie (Barbara Harris); pursues a reckless affair with Southern political operative Karen (Meryl Streep); and tackles a headline-generating cause that alienates him from an aging mentor, Sen. Birney (Melvyn Douglas). The gist, obviously, is that one can’t make ethical compromises without becoming compromised on other levels, and that balancing personal responsibility with political ambition is a risky endeavor. In fact, the whole movie is as bluntly literal as the title. Consider this speech by one of Joe’s fellow senators, Edward Anderson (Maurice Copeland): “After a while, you start to forget what you’re here for. And then getting clout and keeping it is all there is. You start lying to your constituents, your colleagues, to everybody. And you forget what you thought you cared most about in life.” (Cut to a meaningful shot of Tynan looking out a window, because he’s, y’know, thinkin’ about stuff.) Given such clunky moralizing, The Seduction of Joe Tynan fails as a political story even though it’s pretty good as a character piece.

          Director Jerry Schatzberg—the former photographer whose ’70s output includes sensitive art pieces like 1973’s Scarecrow—contributes proficient but impersonal work, delivering Alda’s vision to the screen without the counterpoint of an additional artistic perspective. In the lead role, Alda wisely plays against his decent-guy persona by engaging in questionable behavior, while Streep imbues her underwritten part with engaging intelligence and luminous sexuality. Yet it’s the second-string supporting actors—Douglas, Harris, and Rip Torn—who get the most interesting scenes. Douglas essays his character’s slide into senility with grace and pathos, Harris poignantly captures a political wife’s ambivalence, and Torn energizes the movie with his character’s boisterous vulgarity. Thanks to qualities like these strong performances, The Seduction of Joe Tynan is worthwhile even though it never rises above mediocrity. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

The Seduction of Joe Tynan: FUNKY

Being There (1979)

          After spending much of the ’70s starring in schlocky comedies, British funnyman Peter Sellers doggedly pursued the lead role in this adaptation of Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski’s novel, recognizing a chance to deliver a subtle performance that would contrast his usual over-the-top silliness. The involvement of director Hal Ashby was an added incentive, since Ashby had scored with the offbeat comedies Harold and Maude (1971) and Shampoo (1975). Together, Ashby and Sellers present Kosinski’s social satire as a media-age fairy tale, to winning effect.
          When the story begins, Chance (Sellers) is the live-in gardener for a wealthy senior. Chance has never left his employer’s estate, and his main companion is television—Chance’s IQ is so low that he’s incapable of anything beyond bland remarks and mundane tasks. After his employer dies, lawyers inform a confused Chance that he must leave the estate, so he’s forced to explore the outside world for the first time in his life. Walking the streets of Washington, D.C., in a hand-be-down suit, Chance looks like a man of wealth and power though he’s actually a homeless simpleton.
           By the time night falls, Chance is bewildered and hungry, so he walks right into the path of a town car belonging to Eve Rand (Shirley MacLaine), the wife of an elderly but super-wealthy tycoon named Ben Rand (Melvyn Douglas). Accepting an invitation to receive care from the Rand family physician (Richard Dysart), Chance becomes an unexpected but welcome houseguest.
           The comic premise of Being There is that modern Americans are so narcissistic they only hear what they want to hear. Thus, whenever Chance makes childlike comments about the only thing he knows, gardening, the Rands perceive him as a guru delivering wisdom through cryptic metaphors. Taking the contrivance to a wonderfully farcical extreme, the story reveals that Rand has the ear of the U.S. president (Jack Warden), and shows the president falling under Chance’s spell. The strange and surprising paths the narrative follows thereafter are better discovered than discussed, but suffice to say the filmmakers gracefully advance from an outlandish premise to a poetic ending.

          Being There is not without its flaws, since the movie is paced quite slowly and the tone is precious (lots of tasteful classical music played over painterly shots of the lavish Rand estate). The movie also walks a fine line by asking viewers to accept the absurd concept of Chance becoming an important national figure, and also asking viewers to empathize with Chance’s plight as a lost little boy. Is he a metaphor or a character?

          Notwithstanding these issues, Ashby creates a wonderful framework for the film’s rich performances. Dysart and David Clennon (as a litigator who suspects the truth about Chance) leaven oiliness with sincerity, while Warden energizes his scenes with amiable bluster. MacLaine is charming and funny as the woman who transposes her fantasies onto Chance, and Douglas earned an Academy Award for his sly turn as an aging tycoon with an eye on his legacy. As for Sellers, the impressive thing about his performance is how little he actually does onscreen; given the frenetic nature of his usual comedy acting, it’s wild to see him pull back completely.

Being There: RIGHT ON