GG (Feb) chosen by Richard of Kirkham A Movie A Day! GG (Genre Grandeur) is a series Rob started a few years back where each month a different blogger chooses a genre for everyone to write a review of their favorite film (s) of the particular genre. (There is no limit or restrictions on the number of reviews)
A 1971 picture that contains a nomination for best actor, by one of the big stars of the sixties and seventies, that has largely been forgotten, despite the fact that is the lone directorial effort of another oscar-winning actor. Kotch features a sentimental story about an aged man, coping with the complications of being a burden to his family, while he is still relatively active, cogent, and financially independent. It also contains a sweet story about an unwed mother who's only 15 and is trying to navigate her pregnancy.
I saw this movie when it came out in 1971, and I remembered it slightly. The details of the story are hard to hold on to because nothing too dramatic happens in the course of events. This is really a character piece and that's the thing that's easy to remember here because Walter Matthau is a character in every role he plays but in particular in this one, where he is cast 30 years senior to his actual age. In fact he was only 5 years older than the actor who was portraying his son. Mathau had been in three successful sex comedies in the preceding 3 years, and was probably thought of as a comedian with the leading man's charisma if not looks. 20 years down the road he would be playing this same part at his own age and making a big success of that as well. If you want to you can kind of think of this as a prequel to “Grumpy Old Men”.
Joe Kotcher is a 73 year old man currently living with his son Gerald, daughter-in-law Wilma, and their toddler child Duncan,in a nice suburban house in Southern California. Kotch does not have dementia, there is no disease on the horizon, and he does not pose a threat to anyone except those who jump to the worst kinds of conclusions about what an old man is doing at a park. However, anyone who has lived with a person, who has personality quirks that may be bothersome, knows that it can be stressful. His daughter-in-law, is maybe wound a little too tight, but of course Joe Kotcher is an avuncular guy who is free with information, opinions, and advice. Those things may not always be welcome and sometimes seem like a bombardment of information that's unnecessary. Imagine a child who is telling you about their day, and tells you the name of every child that they sat with at lunch, and what they had to eat. It's not a bad thing but it's an unnecessary thing for the listener, it seems to be a needed function for the old man, he has to talk,and Kotch is a talker. He keeps a running commentary on all sorts of things, he has a vast knowledge of arcane information he's happy to drop into every conversation. That's the kind of thing that is driving a wedge into this family. Walter Matthau plays Kotch as a genial old man not as a curmudgeon, but sometimes you can just be too genial.
The son Gerald, is played by veteran television actor Charles Aidman, who anybody who has seen 70s television, will recognize from some program that they have watched. Aidman is great casting because he has the same hangdog face as his costar. Gerald is a sympathetic son and he is a little bit dominated by his wife who is struggling under the pressure of having her father-in-law live with them. At one point they have the delicate moment when the father and the son have to confront the possibility that Joe is going to relocate to a retirement community. The daughter-in-law is not a monster, she sees how tough this is for her husband and his father. She is the one in fact who sheds tears at the thought that this has become necessary by the way, she is played by the director’s wife). But like “Harry and Tonto”, which will arrive in a couple of years, old people can be a lot more resilient than their children want to think. Kotch has no intention of giving up living the life that he wants just to make his children feel secure.
At one point the old man feels a little bit like an informer because he has to share with his son the fact that the babysitter, while not being negligent, was distracted by having sex on the living room couch during an evening supposedly taking care of the grandson. When he shares this information we think he might simply be acting out of the feeling that he is being nudged out of his child care responsibilities by this young interloper. There's a nice moment done in a flashback, which reveals that Joe and his late wife Vera, faced some of the same issues that the babysitter did. The location for their assignations was An old Hudson, instead of his parents' living room couch. Erica, the babysitter, subsequently becomes an important character in the story. After Kotch has spent a little time away from his family traveling, he returns home to discover that the babysitter has been pushed out of school, sent to San Bernardino, because she became pregnant. We learned that her much older brother is her guardian, and there is a brief moment of sadness when we discover the story behind her orphan status. Koch is not going to take this lying down, he feels that he might have betrayed the girl and pushed her on this path because he told his son that the babysitter had misbehaved. He decides that he's going to help her as best he can.
The film meanders along, giving us a few incidents about how these two, the pregnant teen and the slightly distracted older man, form a dependent relationship and care for each other over the course of her pregnancy. Nothing too dramatic happens, they go out to eat, or they fix meals at home, where they spend time sitting in the living room working on some hobbies that are a little strange but charming. As the end of her term comes, she is faced with some important decisions about her future. And without telling her what to do, Kotch has a huge impact on the decisions that she makes.
This is the only film that Academy award-winning actor Jack Lemmon directed. He got an Oscar nominated performance out of his close friend and frequent co-star Walter Matthau, and efficiently tells the story without an excessive amount of sentimentality, but with just the right amount of humor to keep us going. This time period looks grand in the film, and you might think that Palm Springs would be a reasonable place to move to. Maybe the one big flaw in the story is the location, because even in 1971, Palm Springs was overpriced and maybe not a wise choice for a retiree and an unemployed pregnant girl.
The film received three other Academy Award nominations, so it was widely respected and even though it didn't win any of those Awards it seems to have gathered enough Goodwill to make it a multiple nominee. I bet if you ask anybody who the nominees for best actor were in 1971 people would only be able to name the winner, Gene Hackman, and maybe one other nominee and not this one. This for the most part is a forgotten film. Kotch is largely done in a style that is not typical anymore. It's not fast paced, it doesn't have surprise plot twists, and the characters are all generally good people without there being a villain in the scene. It's a nice story, about the struggles of a couple of nice people, who find a way to make the world work for them. That seems enough to recommend it.
