The Landlord.

"Materializing during the Kent State spring of 1970, with M*A*S*H in release and The Angel Levine, not to mention Where's Poppa?, on the horizon, The Landlord - revived for a week at Film Forum in a new 35mm print - remains one of the funniest social comedies of the period, as well as the most human," writes J Hoberman in the Voice.

For the New York Times, Mike Hale talks with Beau Bridges, who stars, and with Norman Jewison, who didn't direct (instead, he moved himself and his family to Europe and made Fiddler on the Roof). This revival presents "a chance for audiences to see a pivotal moment not only in the career of [Hal] Ashby - presaging the style and themes of his breakout, Shampoo, five years later - but also in the histories of American film and, coincidentally, of New York real estate.... The Landlord, which brought Mr Ashby together with the cinematographer Gordon Willis (who would soon shoot Klute and go on to film the Godfather trilogy) and the cameraman Michael Chapman (who would be the cinematographer on Taxi Driver), can call itself one of the best early products of the now-hallowed American mavericks of the 1970s. Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather, Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and George Lucas's American Graffiti were still two to three years to come."

Updated through 9/20.

Update, 9/20: "Thirty-seven years on, The Landlord is still shocking, but not because it's salacious or cynical," writes Steven Boone at the House Next Door. "The film is shocking because of how tenderly and patiently Ashby attends to certain transgressive moments while asserting that in a sane, just world, they wouldn't be taboo at all." Further in: "Oh, man, Gordon Willis. Even though The Godfather series, Alan J Pakula thrillers and Woody Allen flicks were still in his future, The Landlord, with its use of naturalistic lighting and underexposure, might be his wildest adventure. Rooms and faces have an 'unlit,' documentary feel, but what modest light there is lends a warmth and ruminative feeling in perfect step with Ashby's stealth seriousness. Impenetrable shadows fall in precisely jagged sheets, swallowing up figures like tar pools. In the Enders estate scenes, Willis goes bright and flat, but the brownstone interiors are visual Soul."

Posted by dwhudson at September 19, 2007 1:54 AM