Customer Reviews

House of Games [VHS]

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

If you've suffered through the bare-bones, full-screen MGM release that came out a few years ago, this new edition will come as a fantastic upgrade.

Easily, the highlight for David Mamet fans is the audio commentary with the man and actor Ricky Jay. These two old friends engage in lively philosophical discussions on a variety of topics, including why President Bush is such a terrible liar, the art of the con game and why psychiatry is a scam. Ricky Jay talks about the nature of the con and some of the lingo involved while keeping Mamet talking by prodding him with questions. Mamet is his usual blunt self as he constantly talks about how Orion messed up distributing the film in this engaging and thought-provoking commentary.

There is an interview with actress Lindsay Crouse who mentions that Mamet wrote the role of Dr. Ford for her (They were married at the time) and says that he spent five years trying to get the film made because the studios found the material too dark.

Also included is an interview with Joe Mantegna. He talks about his history with Mamet that goes back to Chicago theatre in the 1970s. He eventually appeared in the stage version of Glengarry Glen Ross when Al Pacino turned it down and went on to win a Tony for it. He talks about how he related to the character of Mike and recounts some amusing anecdotes about filming.

"David Mamet on House of Games" is 25-minute making of featurette that the film's producer and his wife shot in Vermont while Mamet was preparing the film and in Seattle while he was shooting it. There is some great footage of Mamet and his buddies playing poker in Vermont. The same guys also appear in the film in the poker scene.

"The Tap" features the original storyboards to the short con that Mike and his group demonstrate to Dr. Ford but in order to protect the working con man, Ricky Jay changed it to another con called the Flue.

Finally, there is a theatrical trailer.

This is an absolutely mesmerizing film. A wonderful addition to that genre known as "film noir", the movie is superlative in every way. In his directorial debut, David Mamet shows a keen understanding of the concept "less is more".

The two main characters in the film are a well known psychiatrist with a best selling book, Dr. Margaret Ford, played with chilly determinism by Lindsay Crouse, and a slick con man, known only as Mike, brilliantly played by Joe Mantegna with a sinister, charismatic charm. She is stiff and formal. He is casual and seemingly easygoing. Each is involved in a field of endeavor that requires a keen understanding of human nature.

They meet by virtue of what each of them does for a living. Dr. Ford is treating a young patient, who claims to be despondent over getting in over his head financially, while gambling at a disreputable and seedy locale known as the House of Games. She is worried about her patient's potential for suicide, so she decides to go to the House of Games to see if she can straighten out the whole mess.

There, she meets Mike, the person to whom the debt is owed. From the moment they meet, there is a latent, sexual tension between them and an aura of danger and seduction that permeates the air. Intrigued by him, she is drawn into his world, where things are not always what they seem. There are many twists and turns in this most unusual film, which deftly manipulates the viewer.

The film is tautly crafted, and the dialogue itself is highly stylized with its own peculiar cadence. This serves to add to the air of mystery and suspense which infuses this film. There is an excellent supporting cast whose strong performances contribute to the overall quality of this multi-layered film. There is even a small cameo by William H. Macy. It is with good reason that this film was touted by critics as one of the best films for 1987. It meets the high standards set for this genre of film by the late, great director, Alfred Hitchcock. It is simply a stunning tour de force.

Whenever you watch a Mamet film, you're in for the most subtle mind manipulation you're likely to get at the movies. Mamet is so skillful at his craft it's scary. 'House Of Games' is the quintessential Mamet film, not because it's the best, but because it has all his elements; a twisting and involving plot, perversely attractive characters and a big wallop of an ending, as expected by the master of manipulation. The film is admirable because of it's subtlety, it has no big noisy scenes, no real action scenes and no steamy romantic scenes, Mamet could of easily added one of each but that would of marred the effect of this expertly crafted film. The dialogue is right on the money, Mantegna talks just as a small-time grifter would talk, no one-liners or really smart conversation, just a low-key dose of reality. Lindsay Crouse if quietly effective as the thrill-seeking pyschiatrist who gets the experience of a lifetime. And Mantegna is perfection as the alluring con-man who does his job fatally well. An extremely well mounted film that leaves the intelligent viewer gasping. Extras: spot William H. Macy in a cameo. From a scale of 1-10 I give this film a 9!

The script of "House of Games" probably has some of the most brazen plot twists and wicked undercurrents that I've seen in all of film. You'd almost think the director, David Mamet - who won a Pulitzer for a 1984 play - holds the audience in contempt, since the main character in the movie, a psychiatrist with a best-selling motivational book, experiences every deception and con with as little perspicacity as the viewer (unless you know what to expect).

The movie is basically a study on ruses and truth. It's funny to see Dr. Ford being strung along by Byzantine plots throughout the film; but kind of disturbing to see how the experience has affected her in the end. The ploys perpetrated by the confidence men in the film should inspire some slack-jawed admiration and awe, even if there success in real life would be questionable. I think in certain works it is OK to accept these kinds of slightly dubious happenings if they further the thematic purpose of the film. I mean, how many people out there would really fall for Chance's unwitting façade in "Being There."

I hold the opinion that "House of Games" would have been an even greater achievement as a book. It might be one of those films where reading its screenplay is superior to actually watching the final product. The direction is good from a layman's perspective, but there's a strange forced, muted quality to the actor's interactions. They talk to each other like, well, con men and ultra-professionals. The actors are told to perform in a way that doesn't appeal to me much, but maybe I'm missing the point.

The doctor is a strong character - tough, competent, yet still with that hidden, unexplored crevice that cries out for genuine human affection and attachment. The warmer side of her personality is vital to the film's success because the audience couldn't identify with her if she was made of iron and never got hurt. It's also doubtful that she would have fallen into the long, convoluted trap that she did otherwise. The ending of the film is compelling and rather twisted, and probably created some good material for psychology term papers.

David Mamet wrote the screenplay and made his directorial debutwith "House of Games," a character study fraught withpsychological overtones, in which a psychiatrist is lured into thedark world of the confidence game. Margaret Ford (Lindsay Crouse) has a successful practice and has written a best-selling novel, "Driven." Still, she is somewhat discontented with her own personal life; there's an emptiness she can neither define nor resolve, and it primes her vulnerability. When a patient, Billy Hahn (Steven Goldstein), confides to her during a session that he owes big money to some gamblers, and that they're going to kill him if he doesn't pay, she decides to intervene on his behalf. This takes her to the "House of Games," a seedy little dive where she meets Mike (Joe Mantegna), a charismatic con-man who wastes no time before enticing her into his world. Instead of the "twenty-five large" that Billy claimed he owed, Mike shows her his book, and it turns out to be eight hundred dollars. And Mike agrees to wipe the slate clean, if she'll agree to do him one simple favor, which involves a card game he has going on in the back room. In the middle of a big hand, Mike is going to leave the room for a few minutes; while he is gone, her job is to watch for the "tell" of one of the other players. By this time, not only Margaret, but the audience, as well, is hooked. The dialogue, and Mamet's unique style and the precise cadence with which his actors deliver their lines, is mesmerizing. As Mike leads Margaret through his compelling, surreal realm of existence, and introduces her to the intricacies of the con game, we are swept right along with her. From that first memorable encounter, when he demonstrates what a "tell" is and how it works, to the lessons of the "short con," to the stunning climax of this film, Mamet keeps the con going with an urgency that is relentless. And nothing is what it seems. In the end, Margaret learns some hard lessons about life and human nature, and about herself. She changes; and whether or not it's for the better is open to speculation. Mantegna is absolutely riveting in this film; he lends every nuance possible to a complex character who must be able to lead you willingly into the shadows, and does. Crouse also turns in an outstanding performance here; you feel the rigid, up-tight turmoil roiling beneath that calm, self-assured exterior, and when her experiences with Mike induce the change in her, she makes you feel how deeply it has penetrated. She makes you believe that she is capable of what she does, and makes you understand it, as well. The dynamic supporting cast includes Mike Nussbaum (Joey), Lilia Skala (Dr. Littauer), J.T. Walsh (The Businessman), Ricky Jay (George) and William H. Macy (Sergeant Moran). "House of Games" is the quintessential Mamet; he's written and directed a number of high-caliber plays and films since, and will no doubt grace us with more in the future. But this film will be the one that defines him; and you can go to the dictionary and look it up. You'll find it under "Perfection." This is one great movie you do not want to miss.

Many years ago, someone recommended this film to me, and I can understand why. It's a clever film, full of surprises as the protagonist psychiatrist is drawn into the world of confidence men, finding herself fascinated by their very different life. Mamet is known for his dialogue, perfected on the stage, that tries to recreate "normal" speaking patterns. It might be normal, but it's not necessarily realistic. What I like about it is the quickness of it (something also from the stage), moving on from character to character without necessarily waiting for the audience to follow.

Unfortunately, I must have seen enough of these kinds of movies because I was able to predict a number of the surprises, including the major one. Still, I enjoyed the movie and would be willing to see another one by Mamet.

There are films that are just plain nasty, like almost anything involving Quentin Tarantino. And there are films that are just plain perfect of their kind. And there are films that are just nasty enough to be genuinely disturbing, yet perfect of their kind. 'House of Games' is in this category for me, and I put it loosely in the same shoebox with 'The Usual Suspects' despite enormous differences of style and tone.

House of Games is a terrific exploration of deception, detachment, and control in human interaction. What's the difference between a clinical psychologist who's a best selling self-help author, and a professional con artist? Not much, apparently. This film would be less disturbing if I were able to disagree more with this basic premise :-)

The con artist and the psychologist both stand at a distance from their "patients" and analyze them; both watch for the "tell," the giveaway, the crack through which they gain an advantage and peer into the other person's secrets. Both have an agenda; the con artist is going to let you hang yourself by giving you a nice bit of silken rope, and the psychiatrist is going to "help" you, or at least pretend to help you, find peace or resolution. Both are guiding, nudging, pushing, tricking their "client" along, with deliberation, towards a goal. Both trade on the confessional urge in people, the need for connection, the hunger for sympathy. Both make their living off the unhappy, the desperate, the lonely -- and a good living it is, too.

There is so much going on in this film that I felt rather tired after watching it. There's the truism that psychiatrists are seldom very healthy people themselves -- it takes a rather cold and calculating personality to survive this kind of work, and that's a personality that peeps out from behind the surface respectability and professional pseudo-warmth of our female protagonist. It's hard to forget the deadpan, affectless authority with which she instructs a disturbed patient to "put the gun down"; there is not a trace of fear in her eyes, no indication that she is not in perfect control of him and of the situation. Already the viewer must be wondering what kind of person this is.

There's a truism that street smarts will always beat rich-kid smarts; and this cliche' plays out at first predictably, but then gets overturned. Who's outwitting whom here? At first, our con man is calling all the shots. But his victim is also his protege'e -- in fact, his pretence of making her his apprentice and showing her how it's done, has caught up with him. She really *has* learned, as he finds out to his cost; she started out ignorant, but she's smart and she learns fast.

Mamet surprised me several times in the course of the film; by the time when, considerably later, the red convertible drives away leaving our protagonist desolate by the side of the road, I knew what was up. But up until that point I had the fun of being surprised more than once; this is not a one-trick film with a slow buildup like U.S., but a magic show with one card trick after another.

This film was recommended to me highly by a feminist friend despite the obvious "problem" plot: strong, competent, successful professional woman makes idiot of self over masochistic, romantic obsession with wily, low-class grifter. The "rich independent woman is really a needy, pathetic little girl yearning to be dominated by lower class stud" theme is boring as well as offensive, and if that were all there was here, it would be a flick to miss.

What rescues this film from being another 'Swept Away' (or any other D.H. Lawrence dittohead effort) is that our female anti-hero is in fact not pathetic, and not really needy. She may be temporarily dazzled by body chemistry and the promise of adventure and romance, and there's a lingering longing in her heart for the love and approval of a (hinted) brutal father. But there's a cool sociopathic core to her personality which makes her a match for the hardened criminal she's keeping company with. People have criticized L.C.'s acting, and she is a bit wooden, but I think in this case her woodenness works: it expresses the fatal flaw in her character's personality, a lack of affect, an emptiness, a coldness at the heart.

This is imho a lovely, nasty sendup of the genre theme "protagonist undergoes adventure and discovers True Self." Our protagonist has a wild adventure and she does indeed discover her True Self. And what a self it is. Perhaps Mamet's suggesting that it would be just as well if some of us never discover our inner nature :-) In fact, I don't know exactly what Mamet's suggesting here; rather than a message, a moral, or a motto, this film is a character study, a candid portrait of two characters locked in a power struggle from which only one can walk away.

In general I don't enjoy movies about characters who are all dislikeable. Perhaps it's a tribute to that genius which everyone ascribes to Mamet, that this film about two very amoral, quite unpleasant people is so fascinating; it isn't just the clever matryoshka plot that kept me glued to it, it's the dreadful unravelling of a character which at the beginning was apparently integrated with the world, positively engaged, even beneficial; and by the end has reverted, *happily*, to pure predator.

The most powerful scene in the film, for me, was the moment when our damp, bedraggled anti-heroine sneaks into the House of Games one last time, to see the whole cast assembled and reviewing the con. On the table you can see her "file" scattered -- her book, reviews, newspaper clippings, all the research they did on her to discover who she was and how to play her. Just like her files on her patients... As she glimpses this, she hears her quondam lover quip lightly that sleeping with her was "a small price to pay" for the cash they tricked out of her; and with this casual cruelty you can see her education is complete.

I could describe House of Games as a brutal variation on the Pygmalion story; in fact the play 'Pygmalion' by GBS has a somewhat similar, though less noir, ending; the girl educated (and bullied) by a condescending and patronizing master profits by her education to defy him and leave him behind. In House of Games, chilly and very noir indeed, he's left behind dead, and unmourned either by the viewer or our anti-heroine.

Perhaps the greatest riddle of this film is why it's so damned fascinating. One can make a film about evil people easily enough, and most such efforts are merely unpleasant or outright revolting ('Very Bad Things' comes to mind as something I would never voluntarily sit through again). But in House of Games, Mamet has managed to fascinate the viewer with the same promise his con man uses to lure in the prey: come on in, and we'll let you see behind the scenes. We'll show you how it's done, and you'll be in the know instead of just one of the damn-fool public. And you know, it works. We really do want to know which one of these smart, amoral, predatory people is going to win in the end.

Think of it as "Survivor" for intelligent audiences. And perhaps worry a little, about how captivating it really is.

In his 1987 directorial debut, HOUSE OF GAMES, master writer David Mamet delivers a chilling account of the relationship between Dr. Margaret Ford and a low rent gangster named Mike who tries to seduce her.

A psychological thriller that features the acting chops of Mamet's then wife, Lindsay Crouse and character actor Joe Montegna, HOUSE OF GAMES really stars Mamet's brilliant dialouge that captivates the audience with its hypnotic rhythms and captivating sentence structures.

In a nutshell the plot is simple. In this dark drama, Dr. Ford is an emotionally conservative psychologist and best selling author of a self help book. Through one of her patients she meets Mike, an underworld gangster type who charms her with his tales of the cons he and his cohorts use to swindle seemingly innocent people.

Believing she is becoming privvy to the secret world of gamblers and con artists, Dr. Ford drops her guard and follows Mike through a series of cons that seem to work flawlessly.

At times a suspicious person who trusts no one, Dr. Ford at other times appears to be pliable stooge, easily manipulated by a seasoned con man. But is she really as innocent and as naive as she appears? Or is Mike the real stool pigeon? It is never easy to say for sure, even when the film ends.

But one thing is definitely clear half way through the film: Dr. Margaret Ford is not as honest nor as much in control as her patients believe. But who will pay the price for a con gone awry? No one knows until the final scene closes and you are left to wonder what secrets lie behind the faces of the innocent and the guilty alike.

- Regina McMenamin

David Mamet's "House of Games," is another of that director's giant flip jobs. I've been working my way through the Mamet catalogue, and one can't help but feel the director sees the world itself as a giant con. Well, that's perhaps a bit simplistic, but Mamet does cling, in movie after movie, to some core principles. One of these is that you must trust no one. In "Spartan," "The Spanish Prisoner," and "House of Games," this very line is uttered, usually by a villain to an innocent. This sounds like a negative credo, but it really isn't. First, consider who's issuing the warning: the villain. Will the innocent learn from experience? And will the learning result in corruption? (Important questions for Mamet.) Second, trusting yourself and knowing yourself (weaknesses included) in a dangerous world is advisable, necessary, in order to survive . I have to believe Mamet is a big reader of Joseph Conrad.

The story behind "House of Games," involves Lindsay Crouse as Margaret Ford, a doctor and popular author. Her "big book" is titled "Driven," about compulsive and addictive personalities. It doesn't take long to figure out the book is about herself. So driven is Margaret that she is beginning to make Freudian slips in her conversations, slips that reveal dark corners of her own personality. She may be heading for a breakdown - and a teaching colleague warns her, tells her she must slow down. But "slowing down" comes as another writing project presents itself, seemingly accidently due to the dilemma of a patient , when Margaret is introduced to the world of the Con at a local bar and pool hall called "House of Games." This introduction comes at the hands of Mike (Joe Mantegna), a handsome and slick con man who is willing to provide a tour - though he does warn her: "Trust no one."

To reveal any more would be telling. Like all Mamet films, the dialogue is essential. I don't think I've ever seen a director make such interesting use of dialogue. On one level the dialogue in all of Mamet's films (that I've seen so far) is seemingly stilted. But it works! Why? I can only attribute this to Mamet's precision as a director. What seems stilted, comes across instead as elevated speech - as in Shakespeare. Mamet is a dramatic poet who no doubt has Shakespeare's great maxim engraved upon his mind, and present in the framing of each scene: "Suit the action to the word, and the word to the action." (Good actors must love working with this guy.) So pay attention, there's no fat in a Mamet film, and always plenty to ponder. "House of Games" is no different. See it.

I am a great devotee of the Con Artist movies. The Sting, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Grifters, Paper Moon, The Spanish Prisoner (also Mamet) and Traveller all were fine films, but none of them approach House of Games. The reason for that, I think, is that nearly all of these other movies leave the viewer on the outside looking in and the con is always discernable to a person of average intelligence or better. Here, however, Mamet cons the viewer right along with the female protagonist not once, but twice. The effect is terrific. There are a few rough edges in House, but overall it's Mamet's best work outside of Glengarry Glen Ross, which is in a class by itself. It takes a small amount of patience to become involved in the action through the apparently boring opening 20 or 30 minutes, but that is the psychological key to the effect. It would have been very much easier to start off with a bang like The Sting or Indiana Jones, but the initial subtlety of the screenplay (and direction) is what sets up the psychological aspect of the drama and allows such a big payoff at the end. Like most of Mamet's work, this is a thinking person's film and in this regard, in particular, it is a better work than his other effort in the field The Spanish Prisoner.