Atlantic City (1980)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Louis Malle

Writer:

John Guare (written by)

Release Date:

3 April 1981 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Romance

Tagline:

She made him become what he always wanted to be - a lover, a hero, a rich man...and a killer!

Plot:

Lou is a small time gangster, who thinks he used to be something big. He meets up with a younger girl...

Plot Keywords:

Gangster | Cocaine | Drug Dealer | Motel | Atlantic City New Jersey

Awards:

Nominated for 5 Oscars. Another 23 wins & 14 nominations

Cast

Burt Lancaster	...	Lou Pascal
Susan Sarandon	...	Sally Matthews
Kate Reid	...	Grace Pinza
Michel Piccoli	...	Joseph
Hollis McLaren	...	Chrissie
Robert Joy	...	Dave Matthews
Al Waxman	...	Alfie
Robert Goulet	...	Singer in hospital
Moses Znaimer	...	Felix
Angus MacInnes	...	Vinnie
Sean Sullivan	...	Buddy
Wallace Shawn	...	Waiter (as Wally Shawn)
Harvey Atkin	...	Bus driver
Norma Dell'Agnese	...	Jeanne
Louis Del Grande	...	Mr. Shapiro

Also Known As:

Atlantic City (USA)
Atlantic City, USA (Canada: English title)

Runtime:

104 min

Country:

Canada | France

Language:

English | French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:M | West Germany:16 (f) | Argentina:13 | Chile:14 | Finland:K-16 | Iceland:L | Sweden:15 | UK:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Albany Avenue, Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA

Company:

International Cinema

Trivia:

A French-Canadian production company gave director Louis Malle money to make a film under the stipulation that he use the money within an allotted period of time or he'd have to give it back. With time running out and not entirely happy with the one script that stood out from the ones he took under consideration, Malle's then-girlfriend Susan Sarandon introduced him to a good friend of hers, John Guare, a playwright ("House of Blue Leaves", "Six Degrees of Separation", and "Four Baboons Adoring the Sun" among others). Over dinner, Malle and Sarandon (who was attached to star) discussed the problems they had with the script and offered suggestions as to how Guare could possibly fix it so they could beat the pending deadline and start filming. Guare quickly reworked the script (it was his idea to set the film in Atlantic City) and filming got underway within a few months of the trio's initial meeting.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: In the beginning of this film we see a shot of a very large hotel being demolished, presumably to make way for the construction of a new hotel and casino. The imploded hotel is the old Traymore hotel one of Atlantic City's largest and most famous pre-casino resorts. The movie portrays the hotel as being demolished in 1979-80 so that it can be replaced with a new hotel/casino, gambling just being legalized in Atlantic City in 1978. However, the Traymore was closed and demolished in 1972 six years before gambling was legalized in AC and seven to eight years before the film was made.

Quotes:

Lou: Yes, it used to be beautiful - what with the rackets, whoring, guns.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Family Guy: Road to Rhode Island (#2.13)" (2000)

Soundtrack:

Song of India

A gem

Europeans have always delighted in introducing America to itself. (I am thinking of de Tocqueville and Nabokov.) There is something very valuable about seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. In Atlantic City, assumptions about the American way of life, the American dream and the America reality, circa 1978, are examined through the artistry of master French film director, Louis Malle (Murmur of the Heart (1971), Pretty Baby (1978), Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987), etc.)

The film begins with a shot of Sallie Matthews (Susan Sarandon at 34) at the kitchen sink of her apartment squeezing lemons and rubbing them on her arms, her neck, her face as Lou Pasco (Burt Lancaster at 68) watches unbeknownst to her from across the way, the window of his apartment looking into hers. She works at a clam bar in a casino on the boardwalk, which is why she smells like fish, which is why she is squeezing lemon on herself to get rid of the smell. She is taking classes to be a blackjack dealer. Her dream is to go to Monaco and deal blackjack in one of resort casinos and perhaps catch a glimpse of Princess Grace. She listens to French tapes and achieves...an amusing accent. He is a has-been who never was, a pathetic old numbers runner well past any dream of his prime, pretending to be a "fancy man" as he picks up a few extra bucks waiting on an invalid woman.

Enter a hippy couple with all their belongings on their backs. It turns out that he is Sallie's estranged husband, a deceitful little guy who has found a bag of cocaine that he intends to cut and sell; and she is Sallie's not too bright sister, very pregnant. They need a place to stay and have the gall to impose on her.

Both Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances, as was director Louis Malle and writer John Guare for his script. But none of them won. This was the year of On Golden Pond with Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn taking the Oscars while Warren Beatty won Best Director for Reds. (Best film was Chariots of Fire with Colin Welland winning the Oscar for his original screenplay.) Nonetheless, Lancaster and Sarandon are outstanding, and they are both beautifully directed by Malle. Lancaster in particular demonstrated that at age 68 he could still fill up the screen with his sometimes larger than life presence. The familiar flamboyance and sheer physical energy that he displayed in so many films, e.g., Come Back, Little Sheba (1952), From Here to Eternity (1953), The Rose Tattoo (1955), Elmer Gantry (1960), to name four of my favorites, are here properly subdued. He moves slowly and is easily winded. He is a sad, cowardly old man whom Malle, to our delight, will miraculously transform.

Sarandon's performance is also one of her best, on a par with, or even better than her work in Thelma and Louise (1991) for which she was also nominated for Best Actress and also did not win. She is an actress with "legs" (this is a pun and an allusion to an inside joke about her famous other attributes–nicely displayed in Pretty Baby--over which perhaps too much fuss has already been made!)--an actress with "legs," as in a fine wine that will only get better with age. She, like Goldie Hawn, Catherine Deneuve and a few others, have the gift of looking as good (or better) at fifty as they did at thirty.

Louis Malle films are characterized by a tolerance of human differences, a deep psychological understanding, a gentle touch and an overriding sense of humanity. Atlantic City is no exception. What Malle is aiming at here is redemption. He wants to show how this pathetic old man finds self-respect (in an ironic way) and how the clam bar waitress might be liberated. But he also wants to say something about America, and he uses Atlantic City, New Jersey--the "lungs of Philadelphia," the mafia's playground, the New Yorker's escape, a slum by the sea "saved" (actually further exploited) by the influx of legalized gambling in the seventies--as his symbol. He begins with decadence and ends with renewal and triumph, and as usual, somewhere along the way, achieves something akin to the quality of myth. Even though he emphasizes the tawdry and the commonplace: the untalented trio singing off key, the slums semi-circling the casinos where Lou sells numbers, the boarded-up buildings, the sad, tiny apartments about to be torn down, Robert Goulet as a cheap Vegas-style lounge act, etc., in the end we feel that it's not so bad after all.

I should also mention Kate Reid who played Grace, the invalid, ex-beauty queen widow of a mobster, who orders Lou about. She does a great job. Her character too will be transformed.

If the late, great Louis Malle was running the world the gross transgressors would surely get theirs and the rest of us would find forgiveness for our sins, and renewal.