Watch Atlantic City Movie Online
 |
Watch Atlantic City Movie Online.
Movie Title: Atlantic City Atlantic City is available for streaming or downloading. |
Europeans have always contented in introducing America to itself. (I am thinking of de Tocqueville and Nabokov.) There is something very distinguished about seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. In Atlantic City, assumptions about the American map 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), Stunning 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 diagram, 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 obtain 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 come by a view of Princess Grace. She listens to French tapes and achieves…an funny accent. He is a has-been who never was, a pathetic feeble numbers runner well past any dream of his prime, pretending to be a “cherish 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 minute guy who has found a bag of cocaine that he intends to chop and sell; and she is Sallie’s not too shining sister, very pregnant. They need a status to finish and have the gall to impose on her.
Buy,Download, Or Stream Atlantic City! Click Here
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 novel 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 unexcited gain up the mask with his sometimes larger than life presence. The familiar flamboyance and sheer physical energy that he displayed in so many films, e.g., Reach Encourage, Microscopic 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 sunless, cowardly mature 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 collect. She is an actress with “legs” (this is a pun and an allusion to an inside joke about her illustrious other attributes-nicely displayed in Exquisite Baby–over which perhaps too mighty fuss has already been made!) –an actress with “legs,” as in a magnificent wine that will only find better with age. She, like Goldie Hawn, Catherine Deneuve and a few others, have the gift of looking as first-rate (or better) at fifty as they did at thirty.
Louis Malle films are characterized by a tolerance of human differences, a deep psychological notion, 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 reveal how this pathetic veteran man finds self-respect (in an ironic device) and how the clam bar waitress might be liberated. But he also wants to say something about America, and he uses Atlantic City, Original Jersey–the “lungs of Philadelphia,” the mafia’s playground, the Unique Yorker’s hurry, 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 arrangement, achieves something akin to the quality of memoir. 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 shadowy, minute apartments about to be torn down, Robert Goulet as a cheap Vegas-style lounge act, etc., in the slay we feel that it’s not so dreadful after all.
Buy,Download, Or Stream Atlantic City! Click Here
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 enormous job. Her character too will be transformed.
If the leisurely, expansive Louis Malle was running the world the injurious transgressors would surely collect theirs and the rest of us would earn forgiveness for our sins, and renewal.
For whatever reasons, this film never has received the recognition and appreciation I deem it deserves. It was directed by Louis Malle and stars Burt Lancaster as Lou. (In Atlantic City, first names are all you need to know about those around you.) Malle carefully develops three different tale lines: Lou’s long-term affair with Grace (Kate Reid), a mobster’s widow; Lou’s relationship with Sally (Susan Sarandon) to whom he feels both a paternal and romantic attraction; and his symbiotic relationship with Atlantic City. Both he and the city seem long past their prime. During the course of the film, Sally also becomes a widow. Credit Malle and his respectable cast as well as cinematographer Richard Ciupka for creating and then sustaining an atmosphere of deterioration and menace. Special impress should also be made of John Guare’s screenplay. He, Malle, Lancaster, Sarandon, and the film were all nominated for an Academy Award. (FYI, The respective winners in 1980 were Bo Goldman for Melvin and Howard, Robert Redford for Ordinary People, Robert De Niro for Raging Bull, Sissy Spacek for Coal Miner’s Daughter, and Ordinary People.) Toward the extinguish of his career, Lancaster celebrated a series of roles (including this one) which enabled him to ogle and speak subtle nuances of character and personality which powerful earlier roles neither permitted nor required. My absorb plan is that his performance as Lou is his greatest achievement as an actor.
However, in sure respects, Atlantic City itself really is the dominant character. I choose brief visits to it in the 1970s. The city then bore exiguous resemblance to what it has since become, at least in the casino station. Of course the city then bore limited resemblance, also, to the comely seaside resort it once was 75 years earlier. My guess (only a guess) is that Malle’s work in this film — especially his establishment and enrichment of precisely appropriate tone and atmosphere — had a critical influence on later films such as House of Games (1987), Miller’s Crossing (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Road to Perdition (2002), and The Cooler (2003) . As I said, unprejudiced a guess.
One final point: I believe it is a disgrace that the so-called “special features” provided with the DVD version are exiguous to “Theatrical trailer(s) ” and “Widescreen anamorphic format.”
Tags: Atlantic City, Atlantic City Streaming, Download Atlantic City Online, Stream Atlantic City, Watch Atlantic City Online