Atlantic City (1981)

A natty numbers runner certain that everything is outbound (5 Stars)

As Lou, an almost prissily natty numbers runner certain that everything - even the ocean - has deteriorated, Burt Lancaster gives the performance of his life in Louis Malle's Canadian-financed film Atlantic City (opening today at the Imperial).

It might be fairer to call the picture a John Guare film, for Malle, best known in Ontario as the director of the unseen Pretty Baby, has entered entirely into his gifted playwright's episodic, jazzy view of the universe - Guare's script for Atlantic City is a commodious comic masterpiece, but it's also a serious fable about the dangers of dreaming.

Everyone in the picture, placed affectionately in an evocative Atlantic City devolving from tasteful faded glory to tasteless refurbished glitter, dreams of getting ahead. (Is Atlantic City a metaphor for the filmmakers' America? Probably.) For the renegade sixties couple Dave (the talented Canadian actor Robert Joy) and Chrissie (Hollis McLaren, the schizo of Outrageous]), the boardwalk is a substitute for the San Francisco of 1966, buried as completely as Atlantis. The pregnant Chrissie wants to take LSD "so we can learn from the baby's wisdom" and Dave, a coke dealer, wants to dump his stash and his past.

Sally (Susan Sarandon), who is both Chrissie's sister and Dave's estranged wife, shovels shrimp behind the counter of a casino oyster bar but meanwhile sees to her dream by attending dealers' school - "I gotta develop my blackjack; I'm gonna deal my way to Europe" - and, total woman that she is, works on improving her body with lemon juice and her soul with a cassette of Bellini's Norma. When she becomes romantically involved with Lou, she has one request: "Teach me stuff." Near Sally's tattered domicile (Sally would use that word, rather than the mundane "apartment") Lou waits gallantly on Grace (Kate Reid), a former beauty queen and mobster's moll reduced by time and Lou's lack of discipline to a state of kitschy caterwaul.

Grace, lying in a bed strewn with ribbons and poodles and other fussy things, bitches at and about Lou; if she were an inanimate object, she'd be a battered pink plastic lawn flamingo, but Lou, a romantic to the tips of his carefully ironed silk ties, cherishes the memory of what she was, while mildy grousing at the monstrous Baby Jane she is.

Lou's most notable characteristic is his tolerance: a man old enough to have "run numbers for the dinosaurs," a man who can say wistfully, "The Atlantic Ocean was something then" - this is not a man apt to be angry long at infirmity, senility or even cruelty.

Lou's dapper, chivalrous, compassionate existence informs the sensibility of Atlantic City with something very much like love; the movie's unpredictably explosive, joke-like tone can be inferred from the fact that Lou's splendid reviviscence is made possible by murder. Atlantic City is a cautionary comedy about a place where dreams can come true. Too true. Conrad Alton, Filmbay Editor. July 21, 2008

Simply Lancaster

This movie in my opinion is the last great performance of Burt Lancaster. Lancaster plays an aging gambler, who falls for a young woman played by Susan Sarandon. All the performances in the film are good but it's Lancaster who shines the most. March 7, 2008

Excellent European film set in the USA

"Atlantic City" follows some small time losers in a city that has seen better days. Atlantic City - as much a character in the film as the human actors - is being pulled down and rebuilt, the old days - represented by Lou (Burt Lancaster) and Gracie (Kate Reid) - are long gone.

Sally Matthews (Susan Sarandon) is the new face of Altantic City, an outsider with no sense of history and a hopeless dreamer. Joseph (Michel Piccoli) represents the sophistication of Europe - although it hard to understand anything he says with his thick French accent.

With its deliberate pace and air of detachment, Altantic City has the feel of a European film. Not as great as many reviewers would lead you to believe but this is still an excellent film.
February 20, 2008

Wistful Never Was Meets Nubile Wannabe

Low-life Lou may like to boast that he "keeps in trim" with his lady friends and that he's still got solid connections in Vegas, but the plain fact is, it's mostly in his head. Unable to fulfill the grandiose life narrative that he has constructed for himself, and with the once-solid exterior of Atlantic City symbolically crumbling around him, Lou is relegated to literally "answering the bell" and catering to a gaudy, caterwauling shut-in for chump change.

Enter a young miss who uses lemons to freshen up within eyesight of Lou's hole-in-the-wall apartment, and everything changes. Growing ever-more dapper and self-assured, Lou decides to give life a second fling, with a stroke of good fortune (a dope dealer whose payoff falls in Lou's hands) helping things along.

Yet "Atlantic City" is no standard-fare romantic comedy; it seamlessly blends spitting ocean wind and decrepit neighborhoods with a tenderhearted character study of a man looking over his shoulder and an equally fascinating portrait of a blue-collar lovely suffering from hard knocks and longing for someone to respect her. The results of Malle's melange are glorious, and two scenes are emotional standouts: when his and her eyes lock in absolute understanding and, shortly after, when the bliss that Lou has just experienced collapses violently and he is reduced, helpless, to watching the woman he seeks to protect fend off the assault of a two-bit thug. It's not often we can sympathize with someone who shields ill-gotten gain from the woman he's romancing, but the successful act of honor that Lou will ultimately perform offers him - and us - the emotional closure that we crave.

Mixing gangland hijinks, a May-December romance and some outrageous supporting characters may sound impossible to pull off, but Malle does it sublimely. This is no heavy-handed crime drama, but an Atlantic cousin's very insightful observation of an aging would-be lion coming to terms with himself in the midst of a dowdy resort for Americans on the make. With extraordinarily clever dialogue, great casting - includy a "campy" Robert Goulet crooning to Susan Sarandon in a phone booth as she calls Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan - "Atlantic City" will make you smile, laugh out loud... and think.

5+ stars.

February 8, 2008

Grainy, Gritty And A Good Story

This is a little bit on the seedy side but it's well-done and Burt Lancaster, once again, provides us with a wonderful character study. This time he's "Lou Pascal," an old-time small hood playing out his days in pathetic manner in a dingy Atlantic City. In fact, "seedy" describes Atlantic City in this picture.

There's nothing seedy about the opening scene, however. It's an attention- grabber, at least if you're a male. We see Susan Sarandon, squeezing lemon juice over her breasts at the kitchen window. Later, we see her do the same thing. The film is no lemon, however. It's an excellent film and Lancaster, Sarandon ("Sally Matthews") and her husband "Dave" (Robert Joy) comprise most the early going. Joy's role as Sally's loser druggie husband was ugly but he doesn't last long in the film.

The second half of the film features mostly the two stars, both of whom were up for Academy Awards for their performance (and lost out in a sentimental vote for the On Golden Pond crowd). Not only do Lancaster and Sarandon excel, but so does director Louis Malle.

Malle makes this almost a modern-day film noir with the grittiness of the characters and the setting, when Atlantic City looked its worst. It's just solid film-making all-around, and few people could play intense characters, young or old, as well as Lancaster.

My only regret is the transfer on the DVD. It's a little grainy and this film deserves better treatment. although, come to think of it - the grain is appropriate considering it's a gritty story.
September 8, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...