THE LANDLORD
Directed by Hal Ashby
Written by Bill Gunn and Kristin Hunter
Starring Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Diane Sands, Lou Gossett Jr.
Released in 1970
Directed by Hal Ashby
Written by Bill Gunn and Kristin Hunter
Starring Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Diane Sands, Lou Gossett Jr.
Released in 1970
Beau Bridges moves into Pearl Bailey's neighborhood in this 1970 movie by Hal Ashby, the director's first foray into film.
The idea of this often moving film is that we have a rich white guy named Elgar who thinks it would be fun to renovate the ghetto apartment building he just purchased and to transform it into a swinging pad for his own bad self, what with mom becoming something of a drag and don't even get me started about dad. He moves in and discovers that he rather likes these black individuals. They possess a sense of reality that his material word so obviously lacks.
I suppose this wouldn't be that much of a story were it not for the innovative way in which Ashby transforms Kristin Hunter's novel. It's all about education in The Landlord and Ashby runs us through Elgar's early schooling as well as the teaching of a Park Slope "professor." There's no sugar-coating here, no pretenses to enlightenment that isn't earned. Liberal guilt gets smacked around just as much as conservative hatred does and not everybody in the African American community is made out to be a saint. This is a real movie with real people and a real soundtrack courtesy of Al Kooper.
What I think is most fascinating is that Elgar falls for two women in the movie, both of whom are black, both of whom are outside his socio-economic range, and both of whom his mother is certain to dislike. Both women are beautiful and when one of the two becomes pregnant, Elgar comes close to getting his head crushed by an angry and potentially quite dangerous lover played by Lou Gossett. Miscegenation is a big concept in The Landlord, with a group of men at a party lecturing Elgar on how white men have gone out of their way to dilute the gene pool.
It really doesn't matter how comfortable a person thinks he is with the idea of race relations. Until you are sitting in a parked car at midnight outside a convenience store waiting until a group of guys decide to step out of your way so you don't run over them, wondering if they are just standing there to torment you--until your girlfriend squeezes your knee and begs you to get her the hell out of there--then you don't really know what your feelings about other people actually are. The Landlord is just like that. No matter how hip you think you are, no matter how enlightened and free, the fact is this movie will challenge you.
Oh, and it's very funny. If that matters.
The idea of this often moving film is that we have a rich white guy named Elgar who thinks it would be fun to renovate the ghetto apartment building he just purchased and to transform it into a swinging pad for his own bad self, what with mom becoming something of a drag and don't even get me started about dad. He moves in and discovers that he rather likes these black individuals. They possess a sense of reality that his material word so obviously lacks.
I suppose this wouldn't be that much of a story were it not for the innovative way in which Ashby transforms Kristin Hunter's novel. It's all about education in The Landlord and Ashby runs us through Elgar's early schooling as well as the teaching of a Park Slope "professor." There's no sugar-coating here, no pretenses to enlightenment that isn't earned. Liberal guilt gets smacked around just as much as conservative hatred does and not everybody in the African American community is made out to be a saint. This is a real movie with real people and a real soundtrack courtesy of Al Kooper.
What I think is most fascinating is that Elgar falls for two women in the movie, both of whom are black, both of whom are outside his socio-economic range, and both of whom his mother is certain to dislike. Both women are beautiful and when one of the two becomes pregnant, Elgar comes close to getting his head crushed by an angry and potentially quite dangerous lover played by Lou Gossett. Miscegenation is a big concept in The Landlord, with a group of men at a party lecturing Elgar on how white men have gone out of their way to dilute the gene pool.
It really doesn't matter how comfortable a person thinks he is with the idea of race relations. Until you are sitting in a parked car at midnight outside a convenience store waiting until a group of guys decide to step out of your way so you don't run over them, wondering if they are just standing there to torment you--until your girlfriend squeezes your knee and begs you to get her the hell out of there--then you don't really know what your feelings about other people actually are. The Landlord is just like that. No matter how hip you think you are, no matter how enlightened and free, the fact is this movie will challenge you.
Oh, and it's very funny. If that matters.
