Warren Beatty is a high-end hairdresser who is trying to borrow money from Beverley Hills executive/businessman Jack Warden so he can open his own shop. Meanwhile, he's getting it on behind Warden's back with Warden's wife (Lee Grant), Warden's girl friend (Julie Christie), and Warden's daughter (Carrie Fisher), while at the same time he's dealing with his own girl, Goldie Hawn. Warden makes Beatty's tasks a little easier by believing he's gay. In the course of the 1968 election (Nixon wins over Humphrey), everything falls apart. Beatty finally decides he wants to spend his life with Christie but it's too late. Christie runs off to be married to Warden's wealthy businessman in Acapulco. Last shot: Beatty standing alone on a hill top looking forlornly after Christie's retreating car.
I don't remember my response when I first saw this in a San Rafael theater but I doubt that it would be the same that I had tonight, after seeing it again for the first time in thirty-some years.
For one thing, the protagonist, Beatty, is clearly the person we masculine types are meant to identify with. He only went to beauty school in the first place so that he could meet women, and except for a few nagging doubts, he's in heaven because, man, has he met a lot of rich and beautiful clients. We also must admire his skill. (I guess. I speak from a position of total ignorance.) All his clients seem to have identical hair styles. And, as he explains to Warden, he wants some capital to open his own business because "I'm better than the guy I'm working for." And, as his own boss, we presume new sensual vistas open before him. Beatty is basically a Jungian sensation type, hungry for new stimuli, careless, reckless even, about his means of getting them.
His obvious opposite is Jack Warden's character, this being one of Warden's best and most complex roles. Warden's only skill is making money. He listens only to stock market reports and the only television he watches is during Nixon's election. He's blind to everything else going on around him, the intrigues, the interactional dynamics, although he evidently feels good about his family life, loves his daughter. In the end he's brought down by his own complacency, his own feeling of invulnerability.
And yet, in many respects, he's a more honorable man than Warren Beatty. He really DOES love someone beside himself. And when he realizes that Beatty has been servicing his wife, his girl friend, and his daughter, he doesn't strike out in anger. He huffs and stalks away, then later returns for a rational conversation about solving some of the newly uncovered issues. He's not mean spirited in any way. He's open minded. Finding himself at a hippie psychedelic party, he is puzzled by the naked goings on, but curious too, and a little pleased. He doesn't turn down the joint that's offered him and he's perfectly willing to join a nude threesome in a jacuzzi. "Sure -- why not!" There's the political subtext too. The movie was released in 1975 but is placed in November 1968, meaning the audience knows what will follow. Everyone in the film seems apolitical except for Warden, who hopes things may be different under Nixon, but says, "Ahh, what's the difference? They're all jerks."
Everyone is dragged to a Republican party on election night to witness and celebrate Nixon's victory and it's all hollow and stilted -- tuxedos and formal gowns and only white folks over 50 allowed. The main speaker is Senator East, played by Brad Dexter, whose only memorable role was as the treacherous, murdering henchman in "The Asphalt Jungle." East's speech, about an American Indian legend, is suitably grotesque. The contrast with the fun, strobe-lighted hippie gathering couldn't be more obvious. We get to hear Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and snatches of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, almost enough in itself to make 1968 sound paradisaical, though to be sure, these are pretty well-heeled hippies and flower power was to turn into violent half-baked revolutions and 1968 was a great year for assassinations.
Still -- okay, Nixonian America was materialistic, Philistine, and shallow in all respects. I didn't vote for Nixon but from our current perspective, that is to say, 2007, and in light of the circumstances from which we now suffer, Nixon is beginning to look more and more like Saint Francis of Assisi, Watergate, the hit list, and all the rest notwithstanding.
I'm not sure that the interpretation I've just outline wasn't exactly the aim of the writers, Warren Beatty and Robert Towne. I might be wrong but both the writers are men of talent and intelligence and the ambiguity might have been what they intended. It's a movie that's filled with ironies that are at the same time bourgeois and heroic. It's well worth watching.
I don't remember my response when I first saw this in a San Rafael theater but I doubt that it would be the same that I had tonight, after seeing it again for the first time in thirty-some years.
For one thing, the protagonist, Beatty, is clearly the person we masculine types are meant to identify with. He only went to beauty school in the first place so that he could meet women, and except for a few nagging doubts, he's in heaven because, man, has he met a lot of rich and beautiful clients. We also must admire his skill. (I guess. I speak from a position of total ignorance.) All his clients seem to have identical hair styles. And, as he explains to Warden, he wants some capital to open his own business because "I'm better than the guy I'm working for." And, as his own boss, we presume new sensual vistas open before him. Beatty is basically a Jungian sensation type, hungry for new stimuli, careless, reckless even, about his means of getting them.
His obvious opposite is Jack Warden's character, this being one of Warden's best and most complex roles. Warden's only skill is making money. He listens only to stock market reports and the only television he watches is during Nixon's election. He's blind to everything else going on around him, the intrigues, the interactional dynamics, although he evidently feels good about his family life, loves his daughter. In the end he's brought down by his own complacency, his own feeling of invulnerability.
And yet, in many respects, he's a more honorable man than Warren Beatty. He really DOES love someone beside himself. And when he realizes that Beatty has been servicing his wife, his girl friend, and his daughter, he doesn't strike out in anger. He huffs and stalks away, then later returns for a rational conversation about solving some of the newly uncovered issues. He's not mean spirited in any way. He's open minded. Finding himself at a hippie psychedelic party, he is puzzled by the naked goings on, but curious too, and a little pleased. He doesn't turn down the joint that's offered him and he's perfectly willing to join a nude threesome in a jacuzzi. "Sure -- why not!" There's the political subtext too. The movie was released in 1975 but is placed in November 1968, meaning the audience knows what will follow. Everyone in the film seems apolitical except for Warden, who hopes things may be different under Nixon, but says, "Ahh, what's the difference? They're all jerks."
Everyone is dragged to a Republican party on election night to witness and celebrate Nixon's victory and it's all hollow and stilted -- tuxedos and formal gowns and only white folks over 50 allowed. The main speaker is Senator East, played by Brad Dexter, whose only memorable role was as the treacherous, murdering henchman in "The Asphalt Jungle." East's speech, about an American Indian legend, is suitably grotesque. The contrast with the fun, strobe-lighted hippie gathering couldn't be more obvious. We get to hear Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and snatches of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, almost enough in itself to make 1968 sound paradisaical, though to be sure, these are pretty well-heeled hippies and flower power was to turn into violent half-baked revolutions and 1968 was a great year for assassinations.
Still -- okay, Nixonian America was materialistic, Philistine, and shallow in all respects. I didn't vote for Nixon but from our current perspective, that is to say, 2007, and in light of the circumstances from which we now suffer, Nixon is beginning to look more and more like Saint Francis of Assisi, Watergate, the hit list, and all the rest notwithstanding.
I'm not sure that the interpretation I've just outline wasn't exactly the aim of the writers, Warren Beatty and Robert Towne. I might be wrong but both the writers are men of talent and intelligence and the ambiguity might have been what they intended. It's a movie that's filled with ironies that are at the same time bourgeois and heroic. It's well worth watching.