Swashbuckler 1976 A Movie A Day Day 60

SWASHBUCKLER: Movie TrailerMovie Trailers, Peter Boyle

OK, a second day in a row on the ocean with the great Robert Shaw. Amanda took a class on the films of Steven Spielberg last year, and her professor said that after making Jaws, Spielberg wanted to make a pirate movie with Robert Shaw. It turned out that he was already making this pirate movie so Spielberg waited 15 more years and made Hook, part pirate part kids movie. If you have ever seen Hook, you know it is a great looking movie but it moves like an elephant and feels like a musical without the songs. A pirate movie needs to be lively, quick and have a great sense of adventure to it, for the most part this movie accomplishes those objectives.

Shaw looks great in his red outfit, swinging from the mast to rescue his buddy in the opening scene. His pirate partner is none other then Darth Vader himself, the terrific James Earl Jones. The movie opens with Jones about to be hung and his pirate buddies coming to the rescue and shooting their cannons at the whole fort. They didn't waste time setting this up, it is as if we stepped into the story as is is actually going along. The only thing wrong with the opening is that Beau Bridges is overplaying the comedic role and seems not to be in on the fun. You know it is a lighthearted movie when the military man after the pirates is called Major Folly. He reoccurs in several places and there is just the same sort of edge to his performance. It does not seem relaxed and confident, it comes across as shrill and a bit annoying. Other than that I have no complaints about the picture.

A couple of things I had always remembered from the movie were how Peter Boyle, the evil Governor of Jamaica was having his back waxed as he lays out one of his plots. I always thought it was a little disgusting, especially when we see the dirt in the wax cast pulled off of his back. The other item I remember, was that he had a lute playing boyfriend that he is in the tub with at one point. This guy had some long claws that he would put on to torture a victim, and they turned out to be his undoing in the end. Boyle seems like an odd choice to be playing this part, he has a very modern voice and his eyes are a little out of whack, so I'm not sure it is the best choice in the world, but he plays the part oozing menace to everyone around him. There is no charm in him as a villain but there is plenty of hate that we build up and we are ready to see him vanquished.

A couple of other casting notes, Angelica Huston is cast as the villains female love interest and she is billed as Woman of Dark Visage. She has no name and she also has no lines, same as the boyfriend. I thought it was interesting that opposite Shaw was Genvieve Bujold, who played Anne Boleyn in "Anne of a 1000 Days" for which she received an Academy Award nomination. Two years before her nomination, Shaw had been nominated for an Academy Award for playing Henry VIII in "A Man for All Seasons". So in a way they were cast together again in this film, although they actually were in different movies. Geoffry Holder, know as Baron Samedi in the James Bond film, "Live and Let Die" also appears as a knife throwing pirate. People of my generation will remember him from the Uncola ads for 7Up in the 1970's. He also has a terrific voice, and works a lot like James Earl Jones doing voice-work. It is great to see them on screen and together here.

Dee and I saw this movie in Cerritos, the year it came out. We had really just begun dating seriously, so it might be one of the first movies I ever took her to. I'm not sure if she liked it as well as I did, but if she did not, she has kept it hidden for a long time. Amanda is a Robert Shaw completist, so she is looking for all of his movies. We watched this a year or so ago when it came in the mail and she seemed to like it. Today she was a little distracted as we all are since Dee and I are leaving for Alaska and we have a lot to do. I wanted to get this one last blog post in before I take a week off. Amanda will be updating you for the next few days so enjoy.

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The Deep (1977) - A Movie A Day Day 59

After Jaws was a huge bestsellar, and after it became the biggest movie in history, the author Peter Benchley was hot, hot, hot. He wrote several more books that featured nautical themes. The most successful of his non-Jaws works was "The Deep". Film makers were quick to grab onto his concepts and turn them into commercial properties. I have never read any of his novels except Jaws. It is an OK book, but a much better movie. I have even told Amanda that she should not taint her movie crush on Jaws by reading the novel. The Deep on the other hand is not in the same class. It is a fine film but not on the same plane of existence as Jaws, although the makers of the film did everything they could to keep the idea of Jaws in the audience's head while promoting the movie.


Of course the first thing to exploit was the name of Peter Benchley as the author. You heard it mentioned in the trailer, radio ads, TV ads and on the poster. Speaking of the poster, it is a reversal of the original Jaws image, the struggling girl is under the water trying to reach the surface instead of being on the surface threatened by something under the water. Even the color palate of the poster is reminiscent of the earlier film. Finally, they may have killed off Quint in the 1975 classic, but they try to revive him in this movie. Robert Shaw returns, not as the same rough-hewn fisherman, but as a well know treasure hunter that also knows the ins and outs of the local criminal scene. He doesn't have the same colorful mannerisms, but he has all the testosterone that a movie like this needs. Nick Nolte should have been enough, but his character is young, eager and although skilled at physical challenges like climbing Mt. Everest, he lacks much direction. It takes an old salt like Treece to show the young guns how things really work.

The biggest asset in promoting the movie was probably not any of these things. The other star of the movie is Jacqueline Bisset, and she earns half of the movies take in the opening scene of the movie. She was and is one of the most beautiful women to ever appear in films. In this movie, she is diving and searching through the sunken ship in the first segment, wearing a white tee shirt and her diving gear. This is where the idea for wet tee shirt contests came from. She is not nude in the film, but is tantalizingly close to it and that image was on posters and in movie magazines, so you know that the male segment of the audience came looking for her. The movie business changes in the 1980's, teen films featuring topless actresses would become ubiquitous, but in 1977 unless you went to a grindhouse or a drive-in, you did not see this kind of image, and no one in any of those kinds of movies ever looked like Jacqueline Bisset.

This is a great summer movie for some very basic reasons. There is adventure in the treasure hunt, danger in the shipwreck and on the land, and a beautiful woman in jeopardy, that everyone wants to see succeed. The opening segment brings in the under sea danger and sets up the resolution of the movie very clearly. It is telegraphed but not in such a way that we don't care when it happens. There are two or three good fight scenes that are violent and in two of the situations events come out the way we would hope for our heroes. Nick Nolte and Jacqueline Bisset are the eye candy, they are a bit stiff and shrill in their performances, but they are a good looking couple that the audience can identify with. Robert Shaw gets to match wits and acting talent with two well know scene stealers, Louis Gossett Jr. and Eli Wallach. Both of these pros bring exactly what is needed to the proceedings, a little bit of honest acting and some menace to ratchet up the tension. The music for The Deep was written by John Barry, a guy who did more James Bond films then either Sean Connery or Roger Moore. The score is effective but not obtrusive until the final credits, and then we get a disco tuned theme song. In the film as I looked at it today, we don't get a vocal performance, it may be somewhere in the background of the movie, but Donna Summer is credited with singing the title song. It is so out of place with the rest of the music it was a little startling. Maybe it would have fit if there had been some more Caribbean themed music in the movie.

For a summer evening in 1977, Dolores and I enjoyed this film at the Santa Anita Cinema. They were small theaters so when a moderately popular film played, the house was usually pretty full. The images of the film are what is memorable about it, the story is mostly boiler plate adventure stuff. It was well produced and competently directed, and best of all for the investors, it was sold properly. A couple of years later, Benchley's book "The Island" was made into another summer film, this one starring Michael Caine. He should apparently stay away from the ocean because,"The Island" ended Benchley's winning streak and Jaws the Revenge could have ended his. Better to remember the two summer films from Benchley that worked, including this effective but not classic thriller.

The Wind And The Lion-1975 A Movie A Day Day 58

This is the Rif. I am Mulay Ahmed Muhamed Raisuli the Magnificent, sherif of the Riffian Berbers. I am the true defender of the faithful and the blood of the prophet runs in me and I am but a servant of his will.

1975 was a fantastic year for movies. I have already written about the great Spielberg film of Jaws, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Bite the Bullet. Two of my favorite films of all time came out in 1975, both starred Sean Connery and both have a connection to the great John Huston. Huston directs Connery and Michael Caine in "The Man Who Would be King" which would not be released until December. In "The Wind and the Lion" however, John Huston is on screen as an actor, playing Secretary of State John Hay to Brian Keith's Theodore Roosevelt. This is our movie of the day posting for today, but it may be the Movie of the Week posting and maybe of the Summer. I have seen Jaws a hundred times and it is as I've said before, Spielberg's masterpiece. "The Wind and the Lion" may not be in the same league, but it is the most romantic, thrilling and emotionally evocative movie I have watched for this blog this summer. I have already said that I am a sucker for a swashbuckler movie. Errol Flynn in Robin Hood is my favorite film, but "The Wind and the Lion" came out in theaters when I was alive and going to movies. I did not experience it for the first time on Television, it did not exist before I was even born, instead, it burst forth the summer I graduated high school, it starred the man that made James Bond my favorite character and it features the music of my favorite film composer. This confluence of events is just too overwhelming for me to be dispassionate about. I have said before and my family will confirm, I am a romantic at heart. My throat closes tight at a romantic gesture, my eyes weal up in tears at heroic moments and I have to catch my breath at the beauty of certain images. All of these things happen in this movie.

When I wrote about seeing Jaws back on the fourth of July, I mentioned that Dan Hasegawa and I saw it without our friend Art Franz, because he was taking a girl out to another movie. This was the movie he took Laura Charca to see, before he went into the Army later that Summer. I saw this movie by myself, at the Alhambra Theater, probably in August of that summer. It took a while for it to make it's way out to our neighborhood. Art was trying to impress Laura, so I know he took her down to Hollywood to see this. My second year on the debate team at U.S.C., a guy from Fresno State transferred in, his name was Dave Cosloy. He actually was debate partners with Dan at the University of Utah tournament in January 1977. Rick Rollino and I were debating together at that point, and we all were staying at the home of one of the Utah debaters. I remember how cool it was when sitting in this house, surrounded by snow, getting ready to go to the tournament, Cosloy shouted out "I am Mulay Ahmed Muhamed Raisuli the Magnificent, sherif of the Riffian Berbers. I am the true defender of the faithful and the blood of the prophet runs in me and I am but a servant of his will." Another movie romantic was in our midst. Someone else shared my love of this movie, and he knew the quote and used it. I had never done that before, but I have many times since felt compelled to proclaim myself Raisuli.

There are historical and political overtones everywhere in this movie. So in addition to swordplay and horses and explosions, we get Theodore Roosevelt and the Big Stick Policy. The movie is based on an actual event involving a businessman being held for ransom by Berber pirates. The character is changed to a woman, which of course make the kidnapping and rescue romantic automatically. The goal is not mere ransom, but rather there are political objectives. And the two characters of the President of the U.S. and the Muslim sherif are contrasted as a way of seeing the change in world affairs and how each sees the adventure and romance being taken out of the conflicts and politics of the future. I apologize for another Jaws reference here but it is necessary. If Robert Shaw was robbed by not even being nominated for his role in Jaws, then Brian Keith was also mugged by the same bandits. He embodied the character of the American President so well, that even today, when I read biographies about Roosevelt, I can still hear Keith's voice. He has some incredible lines in the movie, that probably were never said by Teddy but should have been.Theodore Roosevelt:" The American grizzly is a symbol of the American character: strength, intelligence, ferocity. Maybe a little blind and reckless at times... but courageous beyond all doubt. And one other trait that goes with all previous.Loneliness. The American grizzly lives out his life alone. Indomitable, unconquered - but always alone. He has no real allies, only enemies, but none of them as great as he. The world will never love us. They respect us - they might even grow to fear us. But they will never love us, for we have too much audacity! And, we're a bit blind and reckless at times too.

The other stars of the film are also excellent. Sean Connery might seem an odd choice for the part of a desert dwelling Arab/Berber but the beard and the gleam in his eye work perfectly. The slap he gives Candice Bergen when they first meet is harsh, but we come to see that it has less to do with his personal ego and everything to do with the cultural standards of status in his world. At least he does not behead her as he does others that disrespect him. Candice Bergen is just proper and aloof enough to fit into the character of a woman of the time, but also sensitive enough to be romantically moved by a man that faces death to possess her, even if it is in a chaste way. Geoffrey Lewis, working without Clint this summer, was good casting as the American Ambassador, John Huston, with that magisterial voice comes across as the political voice of reason that understands what Roosevelt needs and also what he represents. Roosevelt is the American character at the turn of the twentieth century. Brash, confident, unwilling to acknowledge weakness but also recognizing the burdens we were assuming in the world, and sad that the world we would dominate will never be the one that we would most like it to be.

Jerry Goldsmith, was nominated 18 times for the Academy Award for his music. He won only once, for "The Omen" in 1976. The score for "The Wind and the Lion" may very well be his best. The timpani and horns are stirring and romantic. There are elements of two other scores of his in the film. In the battle scenes you can here the forerunner of his Klingon theme from the Star Trek film in 1979. And as Mrs. Pedecaris and her children are trying to escape, there are echos of the Planet of the Apes Theme he did a few years earlier. This is one of the pieces of music I have on my i-pod right now. The suite from the collection of music in this film is featured on the two disc Jerry Goldsmith collection that is available. Well worth listening to all by itself. There is a small taste included here.

I can't think of many ways to spend a better two hours than watching this movie. If you have the heart of a romantic and always wanted to be a hero in an adventure, you can identify with most of this movie. Even better than that, we have a real American Hero, portrayed warts and all in an indelible performance. So what are you waiting for?

To Theodore Roosevelt - you are like the Wind and I like the Lion. You form the Tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the Ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours. - Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates.

Smokey And The Bandit 1977 A Movie A Day Day 57

Watching this movie today is a bit of a revelation. I remember it being a lot better than it actually is. There is a laziness about the film that probably made it charming at one time, but now it seems a bit belabored. There is a nice sense of time and place in the film, and it is entertaining enough if you are not very discriminating. Burt Reynolds was a huge star in the 1970's, he and Clint Eastwood changed back and forth the position of number one box office star several times in the decade. Clint's movies are designed to tell a story in a careful manner and they all hold up over time. Burt on the other hand, gets by with some smirking and car chases, he has a big success with it and then the movie ages poorly. This is the second of the Burt Reynold's films on my list for the blog. I have at least two more, this one was the most financially successful of the movies on the list.

This movie was the number two box office hit of 1977, losing the number one spot to that little space movie that opened pretty much the same week. It is hard to believe that the movie was so popular but I think it caught several things at exactly the right time. Burt Reynolds was a good actor who was becoming a big movie star and his personality was being included more and more in his movies. Sally Field was on the cusp of becoming a serious actress after having been a TV personality for several years. Two years after this she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in Norma Rae. The CB phenomena was at it's height when the movie came out. The year before, when we traveled across the country in my parents Chrysler Town and Country Station Wagon, my brother brought along his CB radio that he had been using for several months. In those days, there were no mobile phones and the idea of talking to someone else in another vehicle seemed powerful and adventuresome. There had been songs and stories about truckers and this movie capitalized on that trend. It would be another year before a big trucker based movie, Convoy, would come out so this movie had the market all to itself. Coors beer was not available in all of the states and it had been written about as a special luxury, sort of like Cuban cigars. I remember reading a story about Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, requesting a case of Coors for some function, in part because it was hard to come by in D.C. and it would make a big splash. Since it was in the news and it is the contraband that the two truckers are trying to move, it probably added to the publicity. This movie is a success primarily because of good timing.

I know there were people out there who were big fans of the movie. Some probably saw it as often as I saw Star Wars that summer. I thought it was OK, but it failed to live up to earlier car chase movies that I had loved. Bullet, The French Connection and the Seven Ups all had good sequences involving car chases, so they raised the standard without having to sustain it for two hours. Vanishing Point is the ultimate car chase movie and it was played seriously, not just for laughs. I had also seen Dirty Mary,Crazy Larry and to a lesser degree it works as a chase film, even though I hated the characters. I wanted to like the characters in this movie as much as I liked Kowalski in Vanishing Point. The problem is, this was a comedy and the characters are so underwritten that it is hard to care about what happens. I enjoyed Jackie Gleason in some other things, including his variety show in the 1960s, but here he was just loud and annoying. Mike Henry, who had played Tarzan in the movies during the 60s, is reduced to playing an ineffectual muscle head that is dominated by his overbearing father. It was just sad.

I'm pretty sure that Dee and I saw this at the General Cinema at the Santa Anita Mall. We saw movies there all the time when we were dating and up though the time the kids were about six or seven. It was convenient to go to a movie at the mall because you could shop afterward and get something to eat. The experience was obviously not something that sticks in my mind, today is probably the third time I have seen the movie all the way through including the first time in 1977. It still seems ephemeral to me, since there is largely no plot and the characters are just stereotypes. The two things that I do remember from the film each time I see it are the bridge stunt with the Trans Am flying through the air and Jerry Reed, running over all the motorcycles after having fought the bikers in the diner. It was a scene based on a joke I had heard many years before and I thought it fit right in with the rest of the nonsense in this movie.

My buddy Jon Cassanelli acquired a black Trans Am, the summer this movie came out. I don't know why it never occurred to me before, but this movie was probably a big reason for him getting that car. I'll bet that Trans Am sales were up all over the place after this movie came out. That may be Smokey and the Bandits biggest legacy, providing one last kick for the muscle car market before gas prices started scaring everyone away from those types of guzzlers. So have a Coors, drive in your Trans Am, and wish your girlfriend was as cute as a button like Sally Field, but you should recognize that even Burt Reynolds doesn't have enough charm to keep this lifestyle fresh.

Jaws 2 -1978 A Movie A Day Day 56

The greatest adventure film ever made, with one of the best casts that is imaginable is the predecessor to this movie. The original Jaws is Steven Spielberg's masterpiece, everything he has done since is an attempt to reach the same heights of personal success and movie history glory. Sure he has made dozens of films since then, and won honors and accolades for most of them. There is popular and critical success in everything he does, but Jaws will be the movie he is remembered for. Jaws is the movie that scholars, critics and fans continue to write about thirty-five years after it's release. There is nothing to compare to it, which means that today's movie has an impossible task. You cannot fall in love for the first time on a second occasion. You can try to relive the moment, but it is never the same. I think Spielberg knows this and that's why he stayed away from the subsequent films in this series. Indiana Jones is a continuing story, but you can't kill Quint more than once.

Everyone in 1978 was looking forward to this movie despite the lack of Mr. Spielberg at the helm. The first movie was still in everybody's head and the energy from the movie hung in the air like electricity waiting for Ben Franklin to get out his key and try to capture it. The director for this movie was a TV director who had made one feature film before this, a horror film called Bug. It is on the list for the project, although I do not have a copy of it and I am running a bit low on time, we'll see. Anyway,he made a few other features including the beloved "Somewhere in Time", but he has never had the success he would expect from this movie again. He is still directing TV programs on a regular basis. Universal seems to have gone to their bullpen for a good relief pitcher and they got a solid inning out of him. Not one that would make him a star, but one that held the lead and advanced the team to the next inning. Of course it was a no win scenario, you can't top perfection. So what is it that Jeannot Szwarc managed to produce.

Jaws 2 is the movie that the first film would have been if two things had happened. If the mechanical shark had actually worked consistently, then we would have seen it early on and often, not just at the climax. This is what you get in Jaws 2, after the opening segment with two divers checking out the wreck of the Orca, we see the shark in every attack. Long shots, medium and close ups are used in all the subsequent attacks. Sometimes there are some good solid set ups, but they can't create the suspense that the first film was forced to improvise because of the lack of an actual shark to show. The other thing that would have made this version the original movie, would be the absence of Spielberg. The performances that he got out of the actors in the first movie, the small pieces of humor and imagination are missing here. Jaws 2 is a straightforward action thriller. There are some attempts to add drama to the mix, but they mostly lead to dead ends. For instance, the segment where Brody is fired, lasts just a couple of minutes before he is back in action, on a boat and off to save the day despite not being the Chief anymore. So what is the point of him losing his job?; it is to fill in time until we can get back to the shark attacks. In the original, everything happens for a reason, it builds character and makes motives relevant in the final resolution of the story. In this movie, we know the characters for the most part. They are cardboard figures that exist to move us to the next action sequence, or to try and give us a reason to care about the events that are coming. It is pretty standard stuff and works fine here, but it does not elevate the film-making.

We are set up for this movie with one of the greatest ad lines in the history of movies. The tagline is on a par with the tag for "Alien"..."In space, no one can hear you scream." The teaser poster for this movie put it plainly,..."Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water." The original really did keep people out of the ocean. Amanda to this day is not a fan of the beach for this very reason. It took twenty-two years to come up with a sequel to Psycho, but no one remembers much about it, in part because the memory of being afraid to shower was lost in the intervening years. The producer's of the Jaws films, did not make that mistake. They struck while the iron was hot, and as far as the fear factor, it works pretty well. There is a great sequence in the movie where the shark is stalking a water skier. We get some good looks at the fin, and some better point of view shots from under the water. The climax of the scene works not because of the close up of the shark attack on the boat, but because of the confusion and panic of the boat driver. In a similar vein, at the end of the movie, when all the kids are stranded on the boats, it is not the horror of undetectable death that holds us, it is the wild notion of what would happen if a shark attacked a helicopter? Brody's final showdown with the shark lacks any suspense, but the execution of the idea is pretty satisfying. Thus, this movie works fine, but it is just another action film.

Dolores and I saw this movie on opening day at the multiplex in the Cerritos shopping center. There was a long line and most people were anxious to know what was going to happen. I can say we were satisfied but not wowed. I thought it was a tight film that got to the action beats the audience expected without too much mucking around. I did appreciate that the kids in the picture were not overwritten. They are just teenagers, having summer fun and trying to figure their lives out. It looked at one point like a love story might be in the offing, and the Mayor's son is set up as a bit of a prick, but it never turns into a bully cliche, or a sappy romance. The Mayor's son turns out to be a pretty decent guy like all of the kids. If this movie were going to be lengthened, and you were going to attempt to add the same kinds of layers that the first movie had, the kids would have been the place to try it. I think they were smart to stay out of that pond and stick to the action. I suggest that you stay away from the other films in the series completely. Jaws 3-D was a gimmick film that suffered from the problem that most 3-D films in the 80's suffered from, not enough light. You have two or three good 3-D shots but the movie is so dark that even on shore in the sunshine it seems dim. And speaking of dim, Jaws the Revenge is just stupid. See Jaws 2 if you must, but remember, You can't fall in love for the first time again.

A Little Something Extra found on August 10, 2010

The Candidate 1972 A Movie A Day Day 55

Here is a movie about a left wing community organizer, that takes up the cause of running for a U.S. Senate seat. He doesn't really know what he is doing, he moves his public speeches and pronouncements to the center of the political spectrum, he abandons causes that he first stated were his reasons for running, and he gains ground by being effective as a public speaker. At one point a very telling incident occurs. He is on a plane with his political advisers, and he says, "You know what I'm going to do when this is all over?" and his main adviser responds, "Learn something about economics?" Ladies and Gentlemen, guess who is running the country. It might as well be Robert Redford's character in this movie. There are some other eerie parallels in the film as well. Two years before Jerry Brown was elected Governor, this movie came out, featuring a activist lawyer, who is the son of a previous Democratic Governor, choosing to run for higher office without much idea of what he was getting into. I had heard at one point that this was a movie actually based on the political campaign of John Tunney, who was California's Senator from 1971-1977. If true, the appearance of this film may have had something to do with his serving a single term.

Michael Richie, the director of this movie, used an interesting approach to get the footage he needed. He basically had the film crew run a campaign along with political operatives, that put Redford in scenes with real people at rally's and speaking events. There is a sequence at the Democratic State Convention (it must have been 1971), where prominent political figures of the day were featured. They appear as background in the movie, making them the most exclusive set of unpaid extras ever. I don't know how they got around union rules on this but it added an aura of authenticity to the film. Peter Boyle plays the political adviser who is really just interested in a job and pulls Redford's character into the race. The writer's get away without having to deal with a primary fight on the Democratic side by portraying the incumbent Republican Senator, as a polished smooth political natural who has no chance of losing, so no one else was anxious to get into the campaign. If you listen to the Republican candidate early in the film, you hear many of the same themes that drive the Republican political, philosophy today. He is for personal responsibility instead of government paternalism, he opposes abortion on moral grounds, and he sounds like he is a fiscal conservative. In fact, it was hard for me to see what was so annoying to the makers of the film. There is one scene that seems to push Redford's character into running. He goes to see the Senator at a campaign stop and the Senator after speaking to several well wishers and being surrounded by others, pretends to know Redford when he shakes his hand and asks if the Senator remembers him. Wow, what a phony, and this is Redford's tipping point. Of course later in the film, candidate Redford has to do some of the same things, he blows off an odd guy at a walking tour in Watts, who keeps asking him what he thinks of the guys dog. Wow, what a phony, he smiles and looks away while someone else handles the oddball. Of course I don't know that the film makers recognize the hypocrisy of their candidate.

This movie was released in 1972, during the Presidential election that I volunteered on for nearly nine months. I was a political junkie and this movie was like heroin to me. It gave me a high on the inside knowledge I was getting at the time from participating in the election and seeing the film. By the way I was fourteen at the time, I hated the politics of the movie candidate but I loved watching it all work. I know I went to see this movie at least twice that year. It is interesting that I saw it at the Garfield theater in Alhambra, because, two doors down from the theater was the election headquarters that I went to to volunteer. I did precinct canvasing, and made phone calls looking for support and then leads for others to call back on for donations. We painted posters for campaign rallies and went to several political presentations. The stuff that went on in "The Candidate" was several steps above my level, but it all made a lot of sense. The campaign ads in the movie look a little primitive by today's standards, but you can watch them and see how the theme of the campaign was being honed.

The movie cheats on the resolution of the campaign. There is not much explanation of why Redford's character suddenly turns on the electorate. He stops saying the things he means, and sells himself the way other candidates do. The collapse of the Republican incumbent is never really explained, and the subtle edge he loses in the one TV debate they have is really only likely to change the minds of people watching the movie, not real voters. There are some insightful looks into underhanded campaign techniques, for instance, to insure there is a crowd for a parade for the candidate in San Francisco, the campaign manages to have some cars break down and back up traffic so that the area will be packed. The candidate appears to have a casual fling with a supporter, it is hinted at in a pretty direct way, but no one ever discusses it and his wife is allowed to go on supporting him in her ignorance (John Edwards please step forward). The focus of the campaign becomes Change for "A Better Way" and a youthful Redford is cast against the image of the older Senator. The voters are shown but none ever articulates a reason that the newcomer is working for them. The candidate himself, mutters the usual liberal platitudes, they are presented well, but there is nothing compelling about any of the issues. In fact, his crime policy was created just to have a response in the debate on TV. He has to be told what it is. It is a little frighting to think that some sharp political operative could take a little know entity, turn him into a Senator, and then put him into a position where he could be President of the U.S. (Which is strongly hinted at by the playing of "Hail to the Chief" over the credits). Gee, I wonder why that is so scary?

Peter Boyle's character seems like a template for the character of Toby Zeigler on"the West Wing", right down to the beard and bald plate. The movie makes only one reference to fund raising, which seems like it misses a real chance to criticize the system. There are of course substantial differences in campaigns today compare to nearly forty years ago. News is not managed the same way, casual comments can become Youtube viral hits instantly, and nobody smokes in public places the way almost all of the background characters do in this show. Voters may be a little more sophisticated, but the issues are only slightly different. The one thing that has clearly not changed is the contempt that political figures on the left have for the average voter. They must be pandered to, turned against traditionally valid ways of living and trust that the smartest guy is better for them then the one who makes the most sense.