Atlantic City ***** (1980, Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, Robert Joy, Hollis McLaren, Michel Piccoli, Al Waxman) – Classic Movie Review 2717

French director Louis Malle’s superb 1980 American-set romantic thriller is a triumph for him and his stars Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon. This magical film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1980 in a tie with John Cassavetes’s Gloria.

Lancaster rightly won the 1982 Bafta Film Award for Best Actor as a white-haired, old-time petty crook called Lou, who runs numbers in poor areas of Atlantic City. Malle was honoured with the Bafta for Best Direction.

Lou lusts after and befriends a young woman who lives in his apartment building, Sally (Susan Sarandon), a beleaguered waitress in an Atlantic City casino who has dreams of becoming a blackjack dealer in Monte Carlo. Sally’s estranged husband Dave (Robert Joy) convinces Lou to sell a large amount of cocaine he’s stolen for him. 

Playwright John Guare’s ingenious screenplay is elegiac and incisive by turns. But the movie is always gripping, sometimes moving, often dangerous and finally elating.

Malle revels in accumulating telling detail to conjure up a special time and place. He captures the old Atlantic City before the destruction of the old hotels and the construction of the new casinos. And he encourages Oscar-nominated Lancaster to give the best performance of his old age, a subtle masterwork of miniaturist nuance.

There is notable work too from the sensual Sarandon, who also Oscar-nominated and does wonderful things with lemons, and Kate Reid as Grace, the cantankerous elderly invalid Lou looks after as a caretaker.

There were five Oscar nominations but scandalously no wins at all. It is among the 41 films to be nominated for all the big five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay, and one of only eight in this group to not take home a single award. Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn in On Golden Pond killed the stars’ chances.

Also in the cast are Michel Piccoli, Hollis McLaren, Robert Joy, Al Waxman, Robert Goulet and Wallace Shawn in a cameo as a waiter in a restaurant. Malle’s next film is My Dinner with Andre, where Shawn is waited on as a customer.

Malle hired composer Michel Legrand to write a score, but decided against using it and opted for all the music in the film to be ambient. The only music is what exists in the film’s world, such as radios or musical instruments.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2717

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com