Tuesday 18 June 2013

The Candidate (1972)


The Candidate (US 1972 - 105 min.) Directed by Michael Ritchie, written by Jeremy Larner.

Political drama starring Robert Redford and Peter Boyle. An idealistic young lawyer, whose father was a former governor of California, is persuaded to run for the Senate, but only on the condition that he is not forced to toe the party line.



Redford's is at the very heart of this film, it has the distinct feel of a personal project for the man who was, at the time, one of Hollywood's most bankable and popular leading men. He was the executive producer on the project and his character's small l West Coast liberal politics chime very clearly with Redford's public persona of the time.

He and director Michael Ritchie had previously worked together on the (now largely forgotten, but rather good) skiing and politics drama Downhill Racer (1969) and the original screenplay is by Jeremy Larner who later forged a career as a novelist and poet of works with distinct leftist themes.

But how does the film stand up forty years on : after we've seen the US political process dissected in dozens of film and TV documentaries, after the mighty television giant The West Wing pulled and scratched at the fabric of the series of compromises that are necessary to get anything at done under the fractured modern system? After all the inside story books, Watergate, Reagan, Clinton, the Bushs  et al. does this film retain it's freshness and is there still any novelty in the story of an idealistic candidate being slowly subsumed and absorbed by The Machine?

Well, the short answer is yes.

The key lies with the films star and its director. Redford has the looks, the youth, the manner and the conviction to make us believe in his character. Obviously there's more than a passing resemblance to the Kennedys (more Bobby than Jack, in truth) , especially with reference to the candidate's father (superbly played Melvyn Douglas) who begins the story as a distant figure but then can't help getting closer and closer to the action - pulling strings behind the scenes, calling in favours and helping create exactly the sort of candidate that Redford begins the film determined not to become.

As the film moves along Redford is excellent at conveying the internal struggle of a man who entered the race on the promise that the worst thing that could happen to him would be that he would lose the race at the primary stage. By the two-thirds mark he has, in reality, lost almost everything that mattered to him : his marriage has become cold and distant, his ideals lie in tatters, former colleagues and friends don't want to know him, shocked by his sell-out.
Redford sits in the back of a car on the way to yet another meeting, free associating the words of the slogans that have now come tor represent all that he stands for as a candidate. the final shreds of idealism have been stripped away and replaced with nothing other than a string of platitudes and meaningless word-strings.
Can't any longer play off black against old - young against poor. This country cannot house its houseless - feed its foodless.


Michael Ritchie's direction is also a key ingredient : he skilfully mixes styles - the sedate dolly shots and static cameras used to film the elder statesmen, comfortable in their mansions and hunting-lodge style homes contrast with the frantic, grabbed and garbled hand-held camerawork that surrounds most of the candidates public appearances. The sound design is also rather well handled, lots of naturalistic sounding background crackle and confusion which both drown out the message and make sensible conversation impossible. The sense of a whirling mass of confusion surrounding almost every waking moment of Redford's day is very well conveyed.

Redford is on screen in every scene of the film but he's surrounded by some excellent actors working hard with smaller parts. Most obviously Peter Boyle as his campaign manager, a professional who, despite his professed belief in the candidate and his views, is revealed as seeing his job as just another gig. Boyle's obviously having fun with the role which is, even down to the look, a walking prototype for The West wing's Toby Zeigler.
Elsewhere the reliable Don Porter is the Republican incumbent and opponent - all old world grace and manners hiding an entrenched conservatism unable to recognise that his days are over, the world has changed and left him and his beliefs behind (at least until they re-emerged in the Reaganite eighties).

There's also fun to be had spotting the (then) contemporary US political and media figures who appear as themselves, including Senators Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern and news reporters such as Ken Jones and Howard K. Smith as well as a brief cameo by Natalie Wood as the well-meaning but out-of-their-depth celebrity supporter that such candidates will always attract.

With a restrained running time but with plenty of ideas packed in per scene the film acts not just as an historical document of US politics at the point where sixties idealism ran into the cold reality of the Nixon White House but also as a fine example of what the New Cinema of post-Easy Rider Hollywood was able to get made when it had a big enough star involved and an interesting idea with which to run.

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