Love & Money ** (1981, Ray Sharkey, Ornella Muti, Klaus Kinski, Armand Assante) – Classic Movie Review 11,677

Writer-producer-director James Toback’s 1981 thriller Love & Money stars Ray Sharkey, Ornella Muti, Klaus Kinski and Armand Assante.

That great eccentric Klaus Kinski stars as a pop-eyed tycoon, Frederic Stockheinz, who draws LA bank employee Byron Levin (Ray Sharkey) into his political machinations in a South American republic, Costa Salva.

Sharkey is supposed to be swaying the politics of the dictator there (ie to the right) – Lorenzo Prado (Armand Assante) – with a business proposition, but soon he is dallying romantically with his billionaire boss Kinski’s gorgeous wife, Catherine (Ornella Muti).

Klaus Kinski.

The eccentric acting – particularly from Kinski – certainly helps to enliven Toback’s obscure, mixed-up, patchy thriller, with well-meaning political overtones and bizarre black-comedy undertones.

There’s a walk-on by old-time director King Vidor as Sharkey’s dotty grandpa: maybe it is a pity that he didn’t direct instead. Vidor took five days to film. The role was to be played by Harry Ritz of the Ritz Brothers, but he fell ill after a day’s filming.

Love & Money however ends up in the interesting category.

Toback wrote the script on spec. Then film critic Pauline Kael worked on the project but dropped out after a number of weeks. ‘She helped me immensely on the script,’ said Toback. ‘She had some ideas that I wasn’t willing to go along with but her contributions were large.’

Toback set up the film at Lorimar and filming started on 26 November 1979 with Ray Sharkey, whom he later called ‘the wrong actor’. It had been a project of Warren Beatty, who bought the script to produce and star but left to concentrate on Reds. Maybe Beatty was the right actor. It earned only $14,009.

Also in the cast are Rodolfo Hoyos Jr as General Sanzer, Susan Heldfond, William Prince, Tony Sirico, Jacqueline Brookes, Terry Jestrow, Tom McFadden, Tony Plana, Laura Grayson, Kathy Spring, and Suzie Welsh.

Films directed by James Toback: Fingers (1978), Love and Money (1982), Exposed (1983), The Pick-up Artist (1987), The Big Bang (1989), Two Girls and a Guy (1997), Black and White (1999), Harvard Man (2001), When Will I Be Loved (2004), Tyson (2008), Seduced and Abandoned (2013) and An Imperfect Murder (2017).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,677

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