Does anyone agree that Hackman's performance in this film is one of the little known treasures of his career? I think his performance in this film is so special...it's one of my favorites, and that's saying a lot considering we're talking about an actor who rarely gives an off-kilter performance.
shareI thoughougly agree. I've always liked Gene Hackman, especially in "The Conversation," but until I saw this film he was eclipsed by other actors like Jack Nicholson, who is about the same age and always does outstanding work.
And thanks, ijonesiii, for keeping this board alive! I was thinking no one was interested in this film anymore.
No problem...I fell madly in love with this movie the first time I saw it and never get tired of watching it. I'd love to see a director's cut.
shareOne of my all time favorite Gene Hackman performances. Haved loved this movie for a long time, very underrated and unknown movie. Yes, this movie at times can be slow, and play out like a made-for-tv movie, but there is a great simplicity and realistic quality about this movie. The very last scene of the movie is my favorite - everyone else has left the wedding and Gene Hackman's character stands alone on the church steps, no one there except him, he turns and walks up the alley beside the church, wind blowing paper and leaves at his feet.
No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn ..... JM
It's been years since I've seen this film, but that last scene sticks with me. Gene Hackman and Ellen Burstyn give two superb performances in this movie, which is a fine character study about a couple whose spark has died.
Though it would be very easy to say Gene Hackman's character got what he deserved, I don't think his villainy is quite so cut and dried here. He felt he was going through the motions for years, and the relationship with Ann-Margret's character was the first time he felt truly alive since. Of course, it was fleeting and short-lived, but that's the nature of affairs. And affairs have a lot of casualties beyond the parties cheating (and getting cheated).
I love how that last scene leaves Harry's fate open to interpretation. I like to think that Harry came crawling back to Kate and learned his lesson, but once again, things aren't nearly so cut and dried.
I check this board every couple weeks or so just in case someone has anything to say about this sadly forgotten film, but it's been months since anyone's posted. Thanks for reviving it, FeinMess!
I agree. I totally fell in love with Gene Hackman in this film and to this day consider him the damn sexiest guy around...
I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special...
Ar the risk of being labeled a "classicist" I have to put my two cents in -
I think Hackman's great in pretty much everything he's in, but I have always felt that this movie, more than any other I have ever seen suffers from a kind of screenwriter's disease of having the characters "speak" in a way too far removed from their stations in life.
What I am trying to say is that in a movie about blue collar workers, everyone sounds like they graduated from Princeton. There is a disconnect between their diction, vocal tones and vocabulary and their lifestyles.
I am not suggesting that blue collar workers all speak in grunts or monosyllabic phrases, but from the first time I saw this, I recall being put off by this particular issue, and I cannot recall a single other movie with the same problem.
That's a very interesting observation. I'll have to watch this again with an ear for the diction. But I doubt this is the first or last film where the characters' speaking patterns seemed far removed from the people they represent.
shareThis Yak person from 12 years ago is wrong. First of all, he has a silly, stereotypical notion of how "blue-collar" people should talk. Second, he missed the several times Hackman and Burstyn failed to properly conjugate verbs. It is as possible for a man to know something without having been at school, as it is to have been at school and to know nothing (even if it's Princeton).
Definitely. Perhaps the most 'ordinary' role he's played, and one of the most gentle, he was hugely effective and robbed of an Oscar nomination that year.
shareAbsolutely agree. He is a great actor, but in many of his roles he has a cockiness or brashness that was absent here except maybe when palling around with the guys. A great illustration of how good his acting is here, and how uniquely he inhabits this character, is when he tries to patch things up with his eldest daughter at the wedding, and he awkwardly mumbles his dialogue from his extreme discomfort and his being at a loss for how to approach it.
Then there was the scene of the confrontation at the bar, which the audio commentary said was largely improvised; and his arm-wrestling scene with his son-in-law. So, so good.
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My top 250: http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?user=SlackerInc&perpage=250
Hackman was always great, and was probably the last of the big-name stars whose movies I looked forward to just because he was in them. There is nobody on his level today. Too bad he retired.
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