How do you get the man who has everything? Faye Dunaway
attempts to demonstrate in Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) – a modish heist caper that Roger
Ebert once panned as the most “over
photographed movie of the year”. Dunaway is siren Vicki Anderson, a wily
insurance investigator hell bent on using her rather perversely dynamic charms
to outwit the deceptive and devilishly handsome millionaire, Thomas Crown
(played to perfection by Steve McQueen). This really is the story about the one
that got away. It’s also a tale of two temperaments; or rather – four: Crown
vs. Vicki and Dunaway vs. McQueen. By all accounts the shoot was a pleasurable
one for its director and stars. But McQueen was not above occasionally getting
impatient with Dunaway – a chronic procrastinator who infrequently delayed the
shoot by either arriving late on the set or simply forgetting to come out of her
dressing room when called. Indeed, when viewing the film today – particularly the
now famous ‘chess as sex’ scene – one is immediately struck by the mileage
Dunaway and McQueen get from a gesture and a look; cranking up the kink factor
without ever uttering a word or exposing a limb.
Haskell Wexler’s
cinematography is paramount to the film’s success – its use of the
multi-dynamic image technique, first exhibited at Expo 67, creates kinetic traveling
montages within a single frame that reveal to the viewer various angles of the
same event simultaneously. What is also evident, though only in retrospect, is
how much of a time capsule The Thomas
Crown Affair has become since its debut. Depending on one’s point of view Robert
Boyle’s iconic art direction and Theadora Van Ruckle’s costume design have
either dated very badly or remain the quintessence of what swingin’ 60s fashion
and frolicking was all about. My vote is for the latter, and in this regard, The Thomas Crown Affair is immeasurably
blessed by the presence of McQueen and Dunaway as the clothes horses; two of
the hippest cool cats of their generation, skulking about these Bostonian
backdrops with an air of ultramodern confidence.
You simply
have to love the premise for this one: a bored rich man employing thug muscle
to pull off a bank robbery for the sheer pleasure of getting away with it. The
money - $2 million – is incidental. In fact, it doesn’t even matter to this sophisticate.
But it does matter very much to the bank it was stolen from and so the chase
for the man with the gold-plated lifestyle begins. The film’s superb score by
Michel Legrand toys with the enigma that
is Thomas Crown. The now famous, oft repeated, though never equaled,
Oscar-winning Noel Harrison rendition of ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’
perfectly captures the paradox that is the romance between Crown and Vicki. “Round like a circle in a spiral, like a
wheel within a wheel” these two embrace the moody physicality of their
impossible love, all the while knowing that its premise is doomed to extinction
just as “the autumn leaves were turning
to the color of her hair.” One can debate the illogicalness of both the
song and the romance or even the film’s plot in its entirety, or simply run
with the idea that some situations can never be sufficiently explained away:
some people too.
Our story
begins in a seedy motel room with the arrival of Erwin Weaver (Jack Weston) who
is the last road show fugitive to be hired by Thomas Crown for his bank heist.
Crown floods the room with some high wattage lighting to conceal his identity,
using a microphone to distort his voice as the proposal is made: $15,000 for a
few minutes work, driving a getaway car filled with several heavy bags of money
stolen from the downtown depository. Weaver is nervous, but accepts the terms
and the payoff. He buys a ‘woody’ station wagon with Crown’s money and waits
for his cue. Crown telephones Weaver and the other accomplices – who have never
met one another or Crown face to face, with a single word to set his plans in
motion – “Go!” Descending on the bank, Crown’s mercenaries don their dark
glasses and three piece suits, effortlessly blending in until the moment of
truth. Their ambush goes off without a hitch.
However, as
Weaver hurries away his path is momentarily obstructed by a truck unloading fresh
eggs to market. Every second counts, and director Norman Jewison manages a few
tense moments along the way, with Weaver eventually making it to Crown’s
prearranged drop off – a metal ash can located along a grassy knoll in a remote
part of Cambridge Cemetery. Moments later Crown arrives in his Rolls Royce to
collect the loot, hiding it inside his trunk and later flying across the
Atlantic in his private plane to Geneva where he deposits all of the money
under an anonymous numbered account.
Back in Boston
the police are absolutely baffled. In fact, detective Eddie Malone (Paul Burke)
is downright frustrated. The bank commissioners send in their own private
investigator, Vicki Anderson, offering her a handsome percentage for its recovery.
Already suspecting an inside job, Vicki surveys the crime scene, perusing a
series of photographs quelled from the bank’s surveillance dossiers and
immediately pegs Thomas Crown as her man. Malone, who harbors some sort of
twisted attraction toward Vicki, whom he otherwise cannot abide, misperceives
her fascination in Crown as purely sexual. Indeed, it seems that way to Crown
too – at first. She is flirtatious with him during an auction of antiquities
and later shows up unexpectedly at a polo match to photograph him on horseback
with her handheld movie camera.
Crown, who has
spent a lifetime exorcising his chronic boredom with every possible diversion a
man of his wealth could exploit – including dune buggies, golf and flying his
glider at dangerous altitudes and speeds – has found his next conquest. It isn’t
going to be easy. He knows what Vicki is up to and she knows that he knows. The
trick is in not caring about the reality of their situation, but playing his
odds against the house in a seduction that could so easily go awry. To expedite
Crown’s capture Malone places a police guard at Crown’s front gate. Malone and
Vicki also take out an ad in the local paper that reads “Be A Fink for $25,000”
an inducement to flush out Crown’s accomplices. If only they had something to tell.
Unfortunately,
none of them has ever met the man they stole for in person. Tagging Weaver as
one of Crown’s crew Vicki has a couple of officers steal his station wagon and
later abduct his young son. Reuniting the boy with his father, Weaver
reluctantly admits his complicity in the crime but is quite unable to pick
Crown out of a line up as the brains of their operation – not even when Vicki
and Malone stage an ambush at the police station that has Weaver and Crown
sitting mere feet from one another. Now, the romance between Vicki and Crown
kicks into high gear. She is bitterly determined to get to him no matter what,
perhaps still unaware of her own feelings toward Crown that have begun to turn
in his favor.
Inviting Vicki
back to his home, Crown ignites an obvious friction in their platonic
relationship over a game of chess; he deliberately locking onto her gaze, she
sensually caressing the various pieces on the chess board to suggest what her
fingers would rather be doing. After Vicki wins the match, Crown paces for a
moment or two, finally suggesting “Let’s
try another game.” The two become locked in an immediate and very
passionate embrace – a panoramic kiss that in actuality took five days to film.
The next day Crown takes Vicki on a perilous trek across the windswept beach in
his dune buggy.
Attempting to
shake Vicki loose from her obvious infatuation with Crown, Malone tells her
that during their down time Crown is continuing to see Gwen (Astrid Heeren); an
elegant playgirl of his ilk and background. It’s unclear whether Vicki becomes
jealous after hearing this truth, but it certainly motivates her to press Crown
for more foreplay that will hopefully lead to his incarceration. Inside a steam
bath Vicki tells Crown that she can temper the repercussions of his involvement
in the theft, a decision flat out rejected by Malone. Determined to know
whether or not Vicki is on his side once and for all Crown decides to set
another robbery in motion. He even tells Vicki when and where, informing her of
the rules. If she allows him to get away with this second bite at the same
apple then he’ll know she truly loves him and the two can make their plans to
escape and continue their affair in Europe. If, however, the whole point of her
seduction has been nothing more than an attempt to play him for the fool Crown
advises Vicki she will be the one left holding the bag. The second robbery is
set in motion and Vicki has Malone assign all of his available men for a sting
operation.
After one of
the robbers places the money bags in the same ash can as before, Vicki and
Malone nervously await Crown’s arrival. A few excruciatingly long moments pass
before Crown’s Rolls appears on the horizon. Only this time it is being driven
by an errand boy who promptly presents Vicki with Crown’s farewell telegram. In
this high stakes gamble of love vs. duty she has lost everything. The film ends
with a close up of Crown, indeterminably pleased or disappointed with Vicki’s penultimate
decision.
The Thomas Crown Affair is perhaps the
greatest example of cinema style trumping substance. Indeed, the whole story
could have been pitched to the studio in four sentences or less. And
truthfully, without all that tangibly sizzling chemistry between McQueen and
Dunaway there’s not much to go on. The visual trappings – the modish glam-bam
of clothes, the poofed up hair, the backdrop of infinite wealth and power
mingling with the more finite common class, are all just heavy icing on a
hollowed out cake. That this elegant edifice never caves under its anemic plot
is a miracle – one that is self-sustainably fascinating to behold.
Steve McQueen’s
screen appeal has always been universal – as intoxicating to men (who wished
they could be like him) as it was to
women (who wanted to be with him). Many
today forget that The Thomas Crown
Affair afforded McQueen the rare opportunity to break out of his mold of
playing roguishly handsome cowboys or tough scrappers who didn’t even own a pair
of dress pants, much less the whole suit. But draped in his three piece finery,
a pocket watch fastened to his plaid vest, McQueen is equally at home in such
fancy duds, exuding a powerful sense of self lurking just beneath that buttoned
down exterior. He’s riveting precisely because he doesn’t quite fit into that
world of complacency that long ago ought to have eroded the sheer joys afforded
a man of his wealth and stature.
As for Fay
Dunaway, she slinks across the screen like a devious femme fatale from the noir
thriller. Her insurance investigator is a deliciously manipulative vixen, using
sex like a fly swatter that comes down hard on any man she deems worthy of her
fickle affections. Cribbing from the playbook of a Hitchcock cool blonde,
Dunaway exudes an amoral authority that is both possessive and yet
devil-may-care; a contradiction of smarts and sensual appeal that leave both
Malone and Crown bemused and bewitched during, and even apart from her
presence. Dunaway’s Vicki is precisely the girl someone of Crown’s ilk desperately
needs; as brash, manipulative, wholly unscrupulous and sinfully sensual as a
feral cat in heat.
But what’s it
all for? Well, in the end The Thomas
Crown Affair typifies MGM’s old adage of “ars gratis artis” or ‘art for art’s
sake’. Escapist to a fault and exuding
more fun than narrative ferocity, the film endures because of its two stars. “Like a circle in a spiral, never ending or beginning
on an ever spinning reel…” the lovers in The Thomas Crown Affair cling to each other better than its story
and that continues to make us feel as though something sinfully delicious has
just occurred – even if it’s only in the moment. Pure gold, if you ask me.
MGM/Fox Home
Video prove that even gold can be spun into abysmal second rate tin. The Thomas Crown Affair is in desperate
need of a full out restoration. I cannot understand the executive mentality
over at Fox that continues to release such woefully substandard junk on Blu-ray
while advertising it as “the ultimate
hi-def experience”. In its current state The Thomas Crown Affair never comes close to living up to Fox’s
thoroughly shameless and unsubstantiated marketing ploy. Colors on the whole
have severely dated and slightly faded. The image is often bathed in an
unacceptable reddish tint that makes anything brown, like the paneling in Crown’s
office, look more ruddy than muddy. The first few reels are slightly out of
focus too. Close ups are sharper than medium or long shots. But fine detail is,
on the whole, utterly lacking. The gimmicky multi-dynamic traveling mattes
exhibit some fairly heavy grain that is not very accurately reproduced and
occasionally plagued by more than a modicum of age related artifacts. I’m not sure
how much wool Fox thinks it’s pulling over the eyes of the average consumer but
this release looks terrible – period.
If only looks
were the only problem with this blu-ray transfer. But the audio is an even
greater disaster to wade through. It’s mono – as originally recorded. But the
Noel Harrison song under the main titles is so scratchy that it all but grates
on the ears. Fox could have easily remastered this iconic 60s theme from
stereophonic stems. I know. I own the Harrison recording in stereo and it
sounds a hell of a lot better than it does on this Blu-ray. Ditto for the rest of the score – its
ear-piercing treble consistently crackling from my center channel. I’m not sure
where Fox has been storing the original elements to this film but my guess
would be behind a very damp urinal in the executive washroom. Truly, I haven’t
heard a mono track sound this awful since my days of watching analog television
during a snow storm. Yeeeuck!
I keep saying
I’m going to start boycotting Fox Home Video by not adding any more of their
catalogue titles to my 3000 plus collection. Then a title as rare and as
anticipated as this gets released and I find myself shelling out for their
shell game once more. Shame on me! We get the same tired old audio commentary
from Norman Jewison previously made available on their DVD and a terribly worn
trailer and that’s it! Bottom line: Not recommended.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
1
EXTRAS
1
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