The Landlord **** (1970, Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey, Marki Bey, Louis Gossett, Susan Anspach) – Classic Movie Review 4645

Hal Ashby makes his debut as film director with this intriguingly oddball 1970 satirical comedy drama with a touch of romance.

It stars Beau Bridges as Elgar Enders, a rich young man at the age of 29, who buys a building in a black ghetto in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Elgar had originally decided to buy the house in order to evict the poor tenants and turn it into a posh apartments and a disco, but he changes his mind on meeting and getting to like the people there. So, instead, he decides to make life better for the tenants of his apartment block in the poor New York ethnic area.

William Gunn’s screenplay, based on a novel by Kristin Hunter, is both funny and intelligent. The film is cleverly handled by Ashby, and extremely well played.

Also in the cast are Lee Grant as Mrs Enders, Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey, Marki Bey, Louis Gossett Jr [Lou Gossett], Susan Anspach, Robert Kelin and Trish Van Devere.

It runs 113 minutes but the cut version for TV runs 104 minutes.

Ashby has a director cameo as the bearded hippie groom in the opening shot.

Ashby started out as a film editor, editing the films of director Norman Jewison, and winning a Best Film Editing Oscar for In the Heat of the Night (1967). As a reward, Jewison gave him to direct a script he was too busy to work on – The Landlord.

He went on to make Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978), Being There (1979) and the Rolling Stones concert film Let’s Spend the Night Together (1983).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4645

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