Product Details

• Actors: Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey, Walter Brooke
• Directors: Hal Ashby
• Writers: Bill Gunn, Kristin Hunter
• Producers: Norman Jewison, Patrick J. Palmer, Walter Mirisch
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• VHS Release Date: September 1, 1998
• Run Time: 112 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304084323
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #181,659 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Movies like The Landlord just don't get made anymore. Nowadays, the plot--an idle, wealthy young man (Beau Bridges) buys a tenement house in a poor black neighborhood and finds himself confronted and changed by the radically different lives his tenants lead--would be the basis for a broad comedy or a ponderous, self-important statement picture in which the hero comes to a profound understanding of something bland and inoffensive. But in the 1970s, a movie could be something too slippery to categorize. The Landlord is part social satire, part character study, part serious examination of race and class--and it delves into these things without having any answers or even strong advice, just a sense of the reality it depicts. Bridges, with his baby-faced innocence, is excellent, as are Lee Grant as his capricious mother and Pearl Bailey and Lou Gossett as some of his tenants; the rest of the cast is less recognizable but just as good. The movie uses abrupt editing to juxtapose the past and present or upper- and lower-class environments; the production and costume design use black and white to subtly comment on our responses to color in the world. The accumulation of all this lacks the focus that might make The Landlord a great movie, but it is a provocative, unpredictable, and engaging one, and well worth watching. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hal, we need you now!, November 13, 2001

By 

D. Hartley (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Landlord [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I agree- they DON'T make 'em like this anymore- honest, bold, uncompromising, socially and politically meaningful... yet (lest we forget) ENTERTAINING. Like Stanley Kubrick,the late Hal Ashby didn't direct a whole lot of films, but most of them were built to last ("Harold & Maude", "The Last Detail", "Being There", "Shampoo"). "The Landlord" was Ashby's impressive directorial debut in 1970. Spoiled rich kid Beau Bridges, worrisome to his parents due to his "liberal views", buys a run-down tenement building with intentions to rennovate. His introduction to, and subsequent involvement with, the various black tenants is played sometimes for laughs, sometimes for intense drama, but always for real, and that's the magic of Ashby's work. The social satire is dead-on, but never preachy (are you listening, Spike Lee?). The ensemble work is top-notch, with a young Lou Gossett (with hair!) giving a memorable dramatic turn, and the lovely Susan Anspach hilarious as Bridges' perpetually stoned and bemused sister. The scene in which Pearl Bailey and Lee Grant (two more knockout performances) get drunk and bond over a bottle of "sparkling" wine is a minor classic all on its own. Don't miss this one.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "explores black consciousness", March 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Landlord [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Based on the novel by African American novelist, Kristin Hunter, this movie explores the intricacies of black consciousness during the 1960's. Further it examines the effect of gentrification on existing communities. It stars Pearl Bailey, Lou Gossett and features a spectacular performance by the late, great Diana Sands. The film is visually provacative and incorporates a number of literary techniques that add dimension. It stands out above many of the "blaxploitation" flix of its day and is an overlooked classic.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last "The Landlord" - I LOVE THIS FILM!, April 30, 2010

By 

Michael S. Carroll "Mike Carroll" (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Landlord (DVD)

I first saw this film in the mid-70s when ABC ran it on TV. The movie grabbed me right away. I told everyone about this movie, but ABC never ran it again. It's played infrequently over the decades, but has lately been showing up on cable. Now, FINALLY, to have it released on DVD is the kind of respect this film deserves.
YearNightbeats
This is the first film directed by Hal Ashby, now regarded as one of the great directors of the 70s, and it's frankly my favorite of his films. Filled with energy and brilliant editing styles (Ashby won the Oscar for editing In The Heat Of The Night) and natural, low-key performances, which is unusual for a comedy from any decade. Visually it's just as striking, being the first feature film shot by Gordon Willis, who then went on to shoot The Godfather.

Beau Bridges gives one of his best performances of his career, as does Lee Grant, Pearl Bailey and Lou Gossett Jr.

It's one of the best edited films I've ever seen. Not fast cutting, but invisible and unpredictable. There's a brilliant scene with Pearl Bailey and Lee Grant which has to have been semi-improvised which is staggeringly brilliant. I've run it in classes when I talk about film editing.
The DVD could be better image-wise, but considering that it was shot on high-speed film at the time it's not surprising that there is a graininess to it. The color itself is wonderful. And, let's face it, to have this film available at all is to give kudos to MGM/UA and The Mirisch Corporation for finally releasing it.

There are not extras or even a menu, one of the new DVD-R on-demand DVDs that are being made available of older films from the studios' vaults, but I'm not complaining.

Finally, I was concerned about whether this film might be dated at all. It was made in 1968-1969 during the rise of the Black Power and Black Is Beautiful era. I gave the film to a close friend who is an actor and African American to get his input. He came back to me and said he watched the movie twice and that it was the film he'd been waiting his whole life to see: a film about the Black American Experience that wasn't trying to be definitive, but was completely honest with it's characters, none of which were caricatures or stereotypes, and where everyone looked like, spoke like and behaved like people he'd known and grew up with. This makes The Landlord even more of a rarity: a hip film from the late-60s/early-70s that still holds up today.

Thank you to MGM/UA and please keep more of these treasures from the vault coming.