The Thomas Crown Affair ***** (1968, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, Jack Weston, Biff McGuire, Yaphet Kotto) – Classic Movie Review 2,229

Director Norman Jewison’s entrancing, cucumber-cool 1968 thriller The Thomas Crown Affair is a highly polished, entertaining fake gem that perfectly captures the glitzy escapist, colour supplement aspect of the late Sixties zeitgeist.

Those fashionable beautiful people Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway are at their most charismatic and alluring as the debonair, adventurous bank executive called Thomas Crown who provocatively sets up the perfect multi-million dollar bank heist and Vicki Anderson, the amorously inclined, sexy insurance investigator who will do anything to get him.

The Thomas Crown Affair is eye-catchingly sparkly film-making with the glossiest veneer imaginable, what with the multiple image split-screen work, Haskell Wexler’s cute cinematography and Michel Legrand’s effective score and haunting tune ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ (which won the Best Original Song Oscar) sung by Rex Harrison’s son Noel Harrison, who had a chart hit with it.

Though it’s a manufactured diamond, it still catches the light and dazzles.

Also in the cast are Paul Burke, Jack Weston, Biff McGuire, Yaphet Kotto, Todd Martin, Sam Melville, Addison Powell, Sidney Armus, Jon Shank, Allen Emerson, Harry Cooper, John Silver, Astrid Heeren, Carol Corbett, John Orchard and Gordon Pinsent.

The use of multiple images was inspired by the Expo 67 film A Place to Stand (1967). Future director Hal Ashby was the film editor. The one-minute kissing sequence between the two stars took eight hours to film over a number of days.

Alan Bergman and Marilyn Bergman wrote English lyrics for Michel Legrand’s song ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’, which won them their first Academy Award for Best Original Song.

It was remade as The Thomas Crown Affair by director John McTiernan in 1999, starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, with Dunaway also appearing.

Haskell Wexler, the cinematographer on Sixties and Seventies classics, including The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), In the Heat of the Night, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Faces, The Conversation, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), and Coming Home, died peacefully in his sleep on December 27, 2015, aged 93. Considered one of the ten most influential cinematographers in movie history, he won Best Cinematography Oscars for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Bound for Glory and was nominated for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Matewan (1987) and Blaze (1989).

Canadian film director Norman Jewison was nominated for the Best Director Oscar three times in separate decades for In the Heat of the Night (1967), Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Moonstruck (1987).

He is also remembered for 40 Pounds of Trouble (1962), The Thrill of It All (1963), Send Me No Flowers (1964), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Rollerball (1975), F.I.S.T. (1978), …And Justice for All (1979), Best Friends (1982), A Soldier’s Story (1984), Agnes of God (1985), Other People’s Money (1991), Only You (1994), The Hurricane (1999), and The Statement (2003).

How many five star movies did he make?

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