Friday night I attended the opening screenings in the Pacific Film Archive’s new series, The Outsiders: New Hollywood Cinema in the Seventies. These were not classics that everyone knows and loves, but movies of their time that few remember today: The Heartbreak Kid and The Landlord.
The Heartbreak Kid
When you think of the edgy “New Hollywood” born out of the success of The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and Easy Rider, you don’t think about Neil Simon. Yet the famed Broadway playwright’s screenplay gets him the possessive credit (“Neil Simon’s The Heartbreak Kid”) for this dark comedy. In 1972, Simon’s name pretty much guaranteed that the picture wasn’t part of the new youth culture. And it wasn’t. This is a very conventionally shot and edited film, without the edginess that makes 70’s Hollywood so unique.
But that doesn’t make it a bad movie.
In last week’s Ask Mick LaSalle column, the Chronicle critic talked about the challenges of comic acting. “Karin Viard, one of the best comedians in Europe…said that drama was too easy for her because all she had to was find the right ‘river of emotion’ and follow it. Comedy required staying inside the moment while simultaneously being aware of the ‘rhythm you have to keep.’" May and her cast clearly understood that, and created a movie that keeps you laughing while you squirm with discomfort at the story’s unbearable reality.
That story involves a young man (Charles Grodin) who realizes on his wedding night that his marriage was a mistake. Before the honeymoon is over, he’s in love with another woman. Simon and May also play here with Jewish assimilation issues and fears. The newlyweds are unquestionably Jewish, and they marry in a Jewish ceremony. May cast her own daughter, Jeannie Berlin, who looks very Jewish, as the jilted bride. But the new love interest is played by Cybill Shepherd—the 70’s ideal of perfect shiksa beauty.
The Heartbreak Kid is worth checking out, if you can. It’s not available on Netflix. The Farrelly brothers remade the movie in 2007; I have no idea if their version is any good.
The Landlord
I saw The Landlord in first run in 1970. I don’t remember if I had to lie about my age to get into this R-rated film. At the time, I had no idea that its first-time director, Hal Ashby, would become one of the major filmmakers of the decade.
Beau Bridges stars as the 29-year-old, stay-at-home son of a very wealthy family. He buys an apartment house in a Brooklyn ghetto with the intention of evicting the residents, remodeling it, and moving in. Instead, he becomes involved with their lives.
Ashby and screenwriter Bill Gunn give The Landlord all the edginess lacking in The Heartbreak Kid, but that doesn’t make it a better picture. It’s shot with daring and put together with montages that bring attention to its technique. The music is loud and full of soul. But it doesn’t quite hang together. The scenes with Bridges’ rich family are played as broad, exaggerated farce, with Lee Grant as his mother saying outrageously ridiculous things. Pearl Bailey, as one of the tenants, does the wise, ethnic mother figure who feeds people and sets them straight. Everything else in the film is dead serious. In the end, you get a lot of good scenes and a few near great ones, but it never jells into a single work.
You can buy The Landlord on DVD. The disc isn’t available on Netflix, but you can stream it from there.
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