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

Manhattan (1979)

          Woody Allen’s most impassioned movie—if one accepts the popular notion that the great love of the comedian’s life is New York City, not any of his children or romantic companions—Manhattan is intoxicating from an aesthetic perspective. Allen’s genius notion of pairing George Gershwin’s resplendent music with artful black-and-white images of New York City turns every exterior shot into a cinematic postcard, and the way Allen stages an elaborate dance of interconnected romantic relationships against this magical backdrop accentuates the appealing idea that Manhattan is made for lovers. Yet the film is also challenging and complex, a hyper-literate saga starring Allen as a character for whom it’s difficult to sympathize.

          By the filmmaker’s own admission, Manhattan synthesizes elements from his two immediately preceding pictures, the bittersweet romance Annie Hall (1977) and the bleak family story Interiors (1978). Thus, Manhattan’s blend of farce and pathos arguably represents Allen’s first truly mature work, a human story that neither hides behind crowd-pleasing jokes nor indulges in pretentious psychodrama. Manhattan is not for every taste, to be sure, but it’s a fascinating film made with exceptional intelligence and skill. Plus, even if the characters are painfully neurotic and self-serving, that’s at least partially the point—building on the sharply observed character work in Annie Hall, Allen used Manhattan to further hone his skills for cultural observation and social satire, and none of the film’s characters (including the Allen-esque scribe whom the director portrays) escapes devastating scrutiny.

          The main plot concerns the romantic travails of Isaac Davis (Allen), a comedy writer who is sleeping with a 17-year-old student (Mariel Hemingway). Despite this entanglement, Isaac is also drawn to a woman his own age (Diane Keaton), who is having an adulterous fling with Issac’s (married) best friend (Michael Murphy). Meanwhile, Isaac’s ex-wife (Meryl Streep), who came out as a lesbian after her marriage to Isaac ended, is writing a tell-all book about their relationship. Working once more with Annie Hall cowriter Marshall Brickman, Allen constantly jogs back and forth between comedy and drama, often in the same scene, and the film’s acidic dialogue explores the many ways people impede their own happiness.

          The central love story isn’t as compelling as that in Annie Hall—it’s hard to root for a grown man who’s schtupping a schoolgirl—and the movie sometimes skews a little too downbeat. However, the blazingly intelligent writing, the uniformly wonderful performances, and Gordon Willis’ spectacular cinematography make the film thoroughly rewarding. (Of special note among the actors is Hemingway, who gives the best performance of her career at a very young age; the curiosity, emotion, and naïveté she brings to her character almost makes Isaac’s inappropriate involvement understandable.) Most of all, it’s compelling to watch Allen’s artistry reach an early peak, and to realize that over the course of the ’70s, he rapidly evolved from a lightweight jokester to one of the world’s most important cinematic storytellers. 

Manhattan: RIGHT ON

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

          There’s a bit of wish-fulfillment inherent to Kramer vs. Kramer, which depicts a modern man rising to the occasion when an unexpected divorce suddenly transforms him into a single parent, since statistics don’t paint the prettiest picture of men caught in that situation. Yet even if the film tweaks reality by portraying star Dustin Hoffman’s character as a man of superlative integrity, Kramer vs. Kramer features many emotional truths. The movie succinctly expresses the ennui of an era when divorce rates spiked to unprecedented levels, in part because married women inspired by the feminist movement began exploring social roles beyond that of homemaker. No other ’70s picture did a better job of exploring the ambiguous moral issues faced by adults struggling to balance familial responsibilities with self-realization.

        Hoffman stars as Ted Kramer, a fast-rising New York City ad man whose life is thrown off-kilter when his wife, Joanna (Meryl Streep), announces that she’s ending their marriage. Caught in the middle is the Kramers’ young son, Billy (Justin Henry). As the story progresses, Ted must leave his careerist/narcissist shell in order to handle caretaking tasks for which Joanna was previously responsible, and it’s to Hoffman’s great credit that he lets himself be completely unattractive during early scenes; rather than immediately realizing he took his wife for granted, Ted explodes with rage. In the signature moment, Ted burns his hand on a frying pan and throws the pan to the ground, but instead of yelling “Damn it!” he yells “Damn her!”

          Hoffman delivers a compelling performance filled with contradictory emotional colors, effectively sketching the outline of a complete human being. And despite appearing in far fewer scenes, Streep matches him on every level. (Her character returns with a vengeance when Joanna sues Ted for custody of their son.) Streep’s mixture of fragility and strength as a woman trying to align her maternal and spiritual needs is formidable, demonstrating how the intricate emotional life of women is something that men like Ted cannot ever fully comprehend. Adding to the indelible impression Streep makes here, the actress is also at her most radiantly beautiful.

          Writer-director Robert Benton, who adapted this movie from a novel by Avery Corman, was never this sharp elsewhere, even though he was involved with several fine pictures before and after Kramer vs. Kramer. Working with famed cinematographer Nestor Almendros, Benton built an intimate cushion around his actors and photographed the movie with gentle warmth; the sum effect of these directorial choices is that the characters never lose primacy and the story never loses focus. Even when minor characters played by skilled actors including Jane Alexander, George Coe, and a young JoBeth Williams drift through the story, Benton’s attention never departs the core theme of a man, a woman, and a child riding the currents of confusing social change.

          While the picture has its detractors, some of whom rightly questioned the plot’s use of Joanna as a villain, Kramer vs. Kramer received countless accolades, including Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor (Hoffman), and Best Supporting Actress (Streep). It also holds up beautifully today, a heartfelt story made with immaculate craftsmanship in front of and behind the camera.

Kramer vs. Kramer: RIGHT ON

The Deer Hunter (1978)

          The winner of five Oscars and one of the best-remembered movies of the ’70s, The Deer Hunter has undeniable strengths. The acting is across-the-board great, with Christopher Walken earning an Academy Award for the film’s crucial supporting role; Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep were nominated for the male and female leading roles, respectively, and John Cazale and John Savage both contribute mesmerizing work. The film’s level of intensity, once the story kicks into gear, is so high that many find the film too painful to watch. On every technical plane, the movie is gorgeous to behold, with immaculate costuming and production design filling cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond’s Oscar-nominated imagery to create a rich visual experience. And, finally, since The Deer Hunter was one of the first big-budget movies to address the issue of post-traumatic stress disorder as a major issue for veterans returning from the Vietnam War, it has historical importance.

          Having said all that, The Deer Hunter hasn’t aged well, and in fact its flaws were apparent to some discerning viewers back when the movie was new. First off, director and co-writer Michael Cimino’s storytelling is wildly undisciplined. The first hour of the picture, which introduces a group of male friends living in a Pennsylvania steel town, drags on endlessly. Although Cimino’s scheme of immersing viewers in mundane details of his characters’ lives before moving the story to Vietnam is sensible, Cimino ends up delivering the same information over and over again, resulting in tedium. In particular, the interminable sequence depicting the wedding of wide-eyed Steven (Savage) to his pregnant sweetheart unfolds in what feels like real time. Amid this narrative muck, De Niro’s character, Michael, emerges as the de facto leader of the group, an autodidactic tough guy whom the others fear and respect in equal measure.

          A long sequence of the male friends bonding for one last deer hunt before deploying to Vietnam has great visual poetry, but it’s jarring that the sequence was obviously shot in the Pacific Northwest (specifically, Washington state) even though it supposedly takes place in Pennsylvania. The movie really goes off the rails, however, after an abrupt mid-movie shift to Vietnam. For the remainder of the movie, the vicious game of Russian roulette becomes the dramatic focus, first when American POWs are forced to play the game by their animalistic captors, and then when Nick (Walken) becomes a champion Roulette player working the postwar Vietnamese underground. Michael is a kind of battlefield superhero during the POW scenes, and the manner in which he rescues his buddies stretches believability. Yet the story becomes even more audacious when Michael returns to postwar Vietnam in order to rescue Nick, who has become so traumatized, almost to the point of catatonia, that he plays Russian roulette for money.

          It turns out there’s a good reason why none of this hangs together particularly well. Producer Michael Deeley reportedly hired Cimino to expand a non-Vietnam script about Russian roulette into the story that eventually became The Deer Hunter. Perhaps reflecting this hodgepodge approach, the Russian roulette material is so overwrought, and so demeaning to the Vietnamese national character, that it completely derives the film of dramatic restraint and historical accuracy. Whether historical accuracy was ever the goal is another question, but The Deer Hunter ends up being an uncomfortable hybrid of incompatible narrative elements, and also a needlessly repetitive movie that slogs through 183 minutes of boredom and brutality. There are incandescent moments, mostly due to the valiant work of a remarkable cast, but in sum, The Deer Hunter is pretentious, sloppy, unpleasant, and not just a little racist.

The Deer Hunter: FUNKY