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Atlantic City [VHS]

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Europeans have always delighted in introducing America to itself. (I am thinking of de Tocqueville and Nabokov.) There is something very valuable about seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. In Atlantic City, assumptions about the American way of life, the American dream and the America reality, circa 1978, are examined through the artistry of master French film director, Louis Malle (Murmur of the Heart (1971), Pretty Baby (1978), Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987), etc.)

The film begins with a shot of Sallie Matthews (Susan Sarandon at 34) at the kitchen sink of her apartment squeezing lemons and rubbing them on her arms, her neck, her face as Lou Pasco (Burt Lancaster at 68) watches unbeknownst to her from across the way, the window of his apartment looking into hers. She works at a clam bar in a casino on the boardwalk, which is why she smells like fish, which is why she is squeezing lemon on herself to get rid of the smell. She is taking classes to be a blackjack dealer. Her dream is to go to Monaco and deal blackjack in one of resort casinos and perhaps catch a glimpse of Princess Grace. She listens to French tapes and achieves...an amusing accent. He is a has-been who never was, a pathetic old numbers runner well past any dream of his prime, pretending to be a "fancy man" as he picks up a few extra bucks waiting on an invalid woman.

Enter a hippy couple with all their belongings on their backs. It turns out that he is Sallie's estranged husband, a deceitful little guy who has found a bag of cocaine that he intends to cut and sell; and she is Sallie's not too bright sister, very pregnant. They need a place to stay and have the gall to impose on her.

Both Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances, as was director Louis Malle and writer John Guare for his script. But none of them won. This was the year of On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn taking the Oscars while Warren Beatty won Best Director for Reds. (Best film was Chariots of Fire with Colin Welland winning the Oscar for his original screenplay.) Nonetheless, Lancaster and Sarandon are outstanding, and they are both beautifully directed by Malle. Lancaster in particular demonstrated that at age 68 he could still fill up the screen with his sometimes larger than life presence. The familiar flamboyance and sheer physical energy that he displayed in so many films, e.g., Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), The Rose Tattoo (1955), Elmer Gantry (1960), to name four of my favorites, are here properly subdued. He moves slowly and is easily winded. He is a sad, cowardly old man whom Malle, to our delight, will miraculously transform.

Sarandon's performance is also one of her best, on a par with, or even better than her work in Thelma and Louise (1991) for which she was also nominated for Best Actress and also did not win. She is an actress with "legs" (this is a pun and an allusion to an inside joke about her famous other attributes-nicely displayed in Pretty Baby--over which perhaps too much fuss has already been made!)--an actress with "legs," as in a fine wine that will only get better with age. She, like Goldie Hawn, Catherine Deneuve and a few others, have the gift of looking as good (or better) at fifty as they did at thirty.

Louis Malle films are characterized by a tolerance of human differences, a deep psychological understanding, a gentle touch and an overriding sense of humanity. Atlantic City is no exception. What Malle is aiming at here is redemption. He wants to show how this pathetic old man finds self-respect (in an ironic way) and how the clam bar waitress might be liberated. But he also wants to say something about America, and he uses Atlantic City, New Jersey--the "lungs of Philadelphia," the mafia's playground, the New Yorker's escape, a slum by the sea "saved" (actually further exploited) by the influx of legalized gambling in the seventies--as his symbol. He begins with decadence and ends with renewal and triumph, and as usual, somewhere along the way, achieves something akin to the quality of myth. Even though he emphasizes the tawdry and the commonplace: the untalented trio singing off key, the slums semi-circling the casinos where Lou sells numbers, the boarded-up buildings, the sad, tiny apartments about to be torn down, Robert Goulet as a cheap Vegas-style lounge act, etc., in the end we feel that it's not so bad after all.

I should also mention Kate Reid who played Grace, the invalid, ex-beauty queen widow of a mobster, who orders Lou about. She does a great job. Her character too will be transformed.

If the late, great Louis Malle was running the world the gross transgressors would surely get theirs and the rest of us would find forgiveness for our sins, and renewal.

For whatever reasons, this film never has received the recognition and appreciation I think it deserves. It was directed by Louis Malle and stars Burt Lancaster as Lou. (In Atlantic City, first names are all you need to know about those around you.) Malle carefully develops three different story lines: Lou's long-term affair with Grace (Kate Reid), a mobster's widow; Lou's relationship with Sally (Susan Sarandon) to whom he feels both a paternal and romantic attraction; and his symbiotic relationship with Atlantic City. Both he and the city seem long past their prime. During the course of the film, Sally also becomes a widow. Credit Malle and his excellent cast as well as cinematographer Richard Ciupka for creating and then sustaining an atmosphere of deterioration and menace. Special note should also be made of John Guare's screenplay. He, Malle, Lancaster, Sarandon, and the film were all nominated for an Academy Award. (FYI, The respective winners in 1980 were Bo Goldman for Melvin and Howard, Robert Redford for Ordinary People, Robert De Niro for Raging Bull, Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner's Daughter, and Ordinary People.) Toward the end of his career, Lancaster accepted a series of roles (including this one) which enabled him to explore and reveal subtle nuances of character and personality which much earlier roles neither permitted nor required. My own opinion is that his performance as Lou is his greatest achievement as an actor.

However, in certain respects, Atlantic City itself really is the dominant character. I recall brief visits to it in the 1970s. The city then bore little resemblance to what it has since become, at least in the casino area. Of course the city then bore little resemblance, also, to the elegant seaside resort it once was 75 years earlier. My guess (only a guess) is that Malle's work in this film -- especially his establishment and enrichment of precisely appropriate tone and atmosphere -- had a significant influence on later films such as House of Games (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Road to Perdition (2002), and The Cooler (2003). As I said, just a guess.

One final point: I think it is a disgrace that the so-called "special features" provided with the DVD version are limited to "Theatrical trailer(s)" and "Widescreen anamorphic format."

A thorough pleasure. First and foremost, *Atlantic City* is about Burt Lancaster -- a more congenial subject than most, to be sure. The movie caters to sentimental feelings toward the actor and by extension his era, and there's nothing wrong with that. Lancaster's Lou tells a new acquaintance, a scuzzy young drug-dealer, all about the Good Old Days, back when they danced the "Floogie" and the "Floy Floy". Dreamily, he says, "Atlantic City was something in those days", and adds a sublime codicil: "The Atlantic OCEAN was something in those days." But playwright John Guare makes a point of infusing Lou with a dose of cynicism that acts as a healthy balance against his Old-Man sentimental nostalgia. He gripes about the "new" Atlantic City, with its Howard Johnson casinos and gentrified new boardwalk. "Too wholesome," he says with disdain. The old, seedy Atlantic City was a better match for old, seedy Lou, who is currently a penny-ante numbers runner, operating in the poor black neighborhoods, taking 50-cent bets. He lives alone in old apartment that's on schedule for demolition. His fellow tenants include a 1940's-era beauty queen (Kate Reid, who was the epileptic grouch in *The Andromeda Strain*), now widowed, who he once served as bodyguard and still takes care of (he even walks her poodle, since she's confined by hypochondria to her room) . . . and an aspiring blackjack dealer played by Susan Sarandon. The latter turns out to be the ex-wife of the scuzzy drug-dealer, and Lou ends up enmeshed in a petty Mob underworld in which -- despite his basic decrepitude -- he stands out as a sort of old-fashioned Man of the World. His involvement with this new breed of thugs culminates in his first "hit". (Don't worry; the two hoods he offs won't be missed.) Lou, who's never really been much of a criminal, finally earns his stripes, and the joy he exhibits in the aftermath should bring a smile to anybody's face. Perhaps *Atlantic City* should be shown to potential suicides: the movie tells us with great charm and wit that life is never over till it's over, and that there's no age-limit for finding self-respect. Technically speaking, old pro Louis Malle lets the city proclaim the film's themes, those being Changing Times, Old-and-New, and Regeneration. The many shots of simultaenous demolition and construction provide the appropriate visual backdrop.

Louis Malle's films often have a small theatre intimacy to them. Malle is interested in drawing real life portraits of real life characters in their real life settings. Pretty Baby was the film that immediately preceded this one and was set in 1917 New Orleans and also starred Susan Sarandon. That film was as much a study of a time and a place as it was of the characters involved & Atlantic City is similar in scope but both the portrait of the characters and their city is much more complete. In the Atlantic City of 1980 the city is past its heyday and has not yet been rebuilt. There is the past city preserved and embodied by Lancaster & there is the new Atlantic City just on the horizon represented by the wide eyed and dreaming Sarandon. Those two main characters occupy the same building but they share a space only in the most general sense as each inhabits their own version of the city. Lancaster is man who never really had a prime and has sustained himself with his lively imagination which has preserved a kind of childish readiness in him. In his real life he has always fled when things got heated up and so he has never really begun to live, and late in life a growing regret as well as his glimpses of Sarandon through her apartment window has sparked that youth into action. This time he will seize his moments and make the most of them. And he gets his opportunity. Sarandon has her sites set on self improvement. She listens to opera, teaches herself French and dreams of a future dealing cards in Monaco. Her dreams have so far come to nothing and she is just at that point where a stroke of luck could mean the difference between finally beginning to live and resigning herself to her own private and quiet desperation. Lancaster & Sarandon are magic together, and though the film is sometimes awkward like a rehearsal, that awkwardness is part of the small theatre charm. Lancaster nails every line and every scene like the master that he is, Sarandon is the novice who hits and misses but she has some immeasurable and indefinable inner quality, she virtually glows with it, that makes her infinitely watchable and when she hits she knocks you over. Lancaster dreaming of the past and Sarandon dreaming of the future,and neither occupying the present. When Lancaster finally has his moment though, and his dream is realized there is no one left to share it with, just him smiling alone. And Sarandon gets her break too and finally makes her getaway in a stolen car driving away alone into some as yet undefined future w/ drug money tucked in her pocket, she too smiling to herself, still eager to learn French. Solitary dreamers to the end despite the decay all around.
This movie along with a few others released in late 70's(Ashby's Being There) and early eighties(Lumet's Verdict) were like a last few great gasps when movies were still interested in real life and offered a genuine look at it.

"Atlantic City" is one of Louis Malle's finest films. It is an engaging picture from beginning to end, portraying the annihilation of America's past. This is the result not only of Malle's vibrant direction, but also of a lively screenplay (by John Guare), a playful soundtrack (by Michel LeGrand), and polished performances by Susan Sarandon, Burt Lancaster and a cast of talented supporting players.

Sarandon plays an ambitious working girl who labors in a clam bar by day and studies to be a croupier at night. It's her desire to graduate from the gambling parlors of Atlantic City to the more prestigious casinos of Monte Carlo. Lancaster portrays an old man who shares an apartment in the same condemned building as Sarandon. He is rooted in the romantic past, at a time when gambling provided illegal thrills and Atlantic City was devoid of its tawdry modern gloss. The lives of these two people converge on the Boardwalk, where they share a tangle of bizarre adventures involving a variety of fascinating friends and strangers.

The unusual relationships which develop between the young and old characters mirror the atmospheric ambivalence of Atlantic City, where vintage architecture stands side by side with sterile steel modernity. Malle emphasizes the contrast through the use of intriguing images. Few films feature such a memorable sequence of opening scenes. As the credits roll, viewers witness the destruction of a massive old building. It crumbles in slow motion, to the accompaniment of a soundtrack punctuated by the beat of jackhammers and wrecking balls. This shot fades to the sight of Sarandon slicing lemons at an open window. While Lancaster peeps from an adjacent apartment, the object of his gaze bathes her upper body with lemon juice. One "juicy" scene succeeds another in "Atlantic City." The outrageous interplay of beauty and decay, the silly and the serious, contribute to an exotically humorous, intriguing plot. Few films are as intelligent or entertaining.

FIRST THOUGHTS:

Seeing trailers of this film that showed Burt Lancaster in an uncharacteristically rueful light kept me from seeing this wonderfully understated film for 26 years!

IN A NUTSHELL: SHOWING RATHER THAN TELLING MAKES FOR GREAT STORYTELLING

For 104 minutes we live a few days of Lou's [Burt Lancaster] life with him. We see what he sees, and feel what he feels. Through the showing of his daily grind, we come to empathize, and eventually to respect the man that he is, though he desperately wants to be someone else.

WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT: [WARNING -*- PLOT SPOILERS BELOW -*-]

So who is Lou? Lou is an aging relic who lives in today but whose mind is on yesteryears long past. Yet -- he still is what he seems always to have been, a wanna-a-be gangster. Right now, his daily routine consists of looking after an old widow for cigarette money and cheap rent, collecting quarters as a numbers runner, and watching Sally [Susan Sarandon] through his venetian blinds. It is watching Sally perform her evening ritual of undressing while squezzing lemon juice over her arms and breasts that is the high point of his recent existence. Doesn't sound like much, but all that changes rather quickly when Lou seizes the opportunity to become a big-shot, sugar-daddy for Sally by literally stumbling into drug trafficing. It was quite by chance, but also by design, and Lou finds himself in for some high-stakes which involve some mortal risks. How he resolves the risks is at the core of both the film, "Atlantic City" and Lou, the human being.

THE EFFECT OF THE FILMMAKERS:

The director of the film, Louis Malle, a renowned French filmmaker, weaves his story of life in America's bottom rung from the perspective of someone on the outside looking in. Though it may not be an objective perspective, it is a relatively fresh one with an effective script by John Guare, who also wrote, "The Six Degrees of Separation". The effect of Guare and Malle on "Atlantic City" was simply to breathe new life, and a fresh angle into the "Crime/ Romance-Drama/ Casino/ Drug-Ring/ Life-Choices" genre which had long ago become a very tired and cliched topic.

THE CAST/ DIRECTOR/ SCREENWRITER:

---*- Burt Lancaster - Lou
---*- Susan Sarandon - Sally
---*- Michel Piccoli - Joseph
---*- Kate Reid - Grace
---*- Robert Joy - Dave
---*- Hollis McLaren - Chrissie

---*- Louis Malle - Director
---*- John Guare - Screenwriter

MAJOR AWARDS: THE ACADEMY AND GOLDEN GLOBE ONLY [Won many foreign awards]

---*- Best Actor [Nom] Burt Lancaster 1981 Academy
---*- Best Actress [Nom] Susan Sarandon 1981 Academy
---*- Best Director [Nom] Louis Malle 1981 Academy
---*- Best Original Screenplay [Nom] John Guare 1981 Academy
---*- Best Picture [Nom] 1981 Academy
---*- Best Actor- Drama [Nom] Burt Lancaster 1981 Golden Globe
---*- Best Director [nom] Louis Malle 1981 Golden Globe
---*- Best Foreign Film [nom] 1981 Golden Globe


ABOUT THE DVD:

It is an excellent widescreen transfer, but has only one theatrical trailer for a special feature, and you can choose English subtitles if you are hard of hearing.

BOTTOM LINE: POTENT FILM

This is a much better film than I expected it to be. Put simply, Lancaster and Sarandon had great chemistry, and ignited every scene they were in, especially in those they were in together. "ATLANTIC CITY" is a case of excellent acting combined with a taut script that shows rather than tells, which always spells - potent film.

1981's Atlantic City uses the New Jersey resort to effective use to show how the old is being moved out by the new. At the time Atlantic City was a fading beach resort that introduced legalized gambling in 1978 to save it from ruin. Burt Lancaster stars as Lou Pasco, an old time numbers runner who business is slowly fading away in part to the casinos, which he refers to as too wholesome. He is also the boyfriend/bodyguard for a former beauty queen from the 1940's who is now an invalid. Susan Sarandon co-stars as Sallie Matthews, an employee at a clam bar located in a casino, who dreams of going to Monte Carlo. Lou sees a naked Sallie rubbing lemons on herself (to get off the fish smell) through his apartment window into hers. Their paths cross and they come upon a package of cocaine that Sallie's estranged husband leaves behind. Looking for a last big score, Lou sells the coke, but instead of going with Sallie, stays with the beauty queen. Director Louis Malle perfectly captures the dark side of Atlantic City and Mr. Lancaster gives one of the best performances of his career and his last great one as lead actor while it is the first time Ms. Sarandon showed the skills that would make her one of the top actresses in the business. The film scored Academy Award nomination for Best Picture, Director, Actor & Actress but went home empty handed.

"Yes, the Atlantic Ocean was really something in those days..." -Lou Pascal

The above quote epitomizes the humour in Louis Malle's "Atlantic City"...wry, subtle, and extremely dry. The comic subtext in Malle's film may slip by viewers during their first screening, because the picture operates on such a low-key level. The script's pleasures are small-scale, yet incredibly rewarding.

"Atlantic City" is a character study about Lou Pascal (Burt Lancaster), a warm, charming, elderly man who finds himself caught in the vast chasm between the sad reality of his life as a nickel-and-dime numbers man, and his projected self-mythology as a tough-as-nails gangster. John Guare's sharp, witty script enables the audience to immediately fall in love with Pascal. As the story progresses, fate throws a set of circumstances in Lou's path that allow him to briefly live out his self-projection... we watch him make a fortune from a small drug smuggle, don a slick white suit, obtain a "moll" (Susan Sarandon), and surprise himself by gunning down two violent thugs. Much of Malle's humour is anachronistic -- Lancaster trying to act like Al Capone in Twentieth-century Atlantic City -- and ironic --- the fact that this behavior runs contrary to the charming naivete of Pascal's character.

Impressively, this film falls into a subgenre with several others (including Woody Allen's "Manhattan") that successfully juxtapose small, finely-crafted character studies against commentaries about larger environments. As Lou struggles to preserve a dying image, Malle cuts to shots of ancient hotels and high-rises being demolished. This suggests that the legendary "Old Atlantic City" Lou constantly recalls, of "rackets, guns, whoring" and gangsters, is itself crumbling, only to be replaced with casinos and ugliness. Thus, the film operates on two levels.

"Atlantic City" is a brilliant, funny, heartfelt film with much to offer, that demands a close viewing to be appreciated fully.

In the mid-'70s, Malle embarked upon a decade-long visit to America where, after 'Pretty Baby,' a sensitive but finally tedious look at child prostitution in 1971 New Orleans, he makes 'Atlantic City', in which an aging small-time mobster sees his romanticized memories of villainy become reality when he acts as father confessor, protector and, finally, lover to a lonely young croupier...

Part romantic comedy, part thriller, part fairy-tale, the film is simultaneously mythic and rooted in reality and charms through its wry acknowledgment of human delusions and its tender portrait of passion and dignity regained...

"Atlantic City" received critical acclaim and was nominated for five Oscars (best actor, best actress, best director, best film and best original screenplay), although it won none... It was to be Louis Malle's most successful film...

One of the great American films was actually produced by France!

Burt Lancaster plays aging bagman Lou. He has a long distance voyeurism of Sally (Susan Sarandon) a waitress at the Casino seafood bar and wannabe blackjack dealer. He also is the bodyguard of a faded beauty queen, Grace (Kate Reid).

What brings everyone together is a visit by Sally's brother and pregnant girlfriend. He has "found" some cocaine and is looking to sell it in Atlantic City. Lou sees an opportunity and grabs it. When the crooks catch up they kill Sally's brother. But Lou has the stash. After a shootout with the crooks, Lou and Sally leave Atlantic City.

This takes place in the 1980's Atlantic City which was before all commercial casinos came to town. Malle uses this city in the midst of change as a small microcosm of the flux that the United States was in. Lou represents the old regime that is trying to hold on to the old ways. Sally represents everyone trying to get ahead in the new America that is more interested in the bottom line than the people who make the money for them.

Both Lancaster and Sarandon deservedly received Oscar nominations but Kate Reid also gave a superlative performance.

This is a film to be savored like a fine wine, that only gets better with age.

DVD EXTRAS: None