There are only a handful of movies that have been nominated inthe “big five” categories at the Academy Awards— picture, director, actor, actress, and screenplay — and fewer still thathave won those prizes on Oscar night(It Happened One Night,One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, andThe Silence of the Lambs). Among this elite group isAtlantic City, whichwon the Golden Lionat the 1980 Venice Film Festival before opening in US theaters the following year. Among the last gasps of the 1970s New Hollywood golden age, it’s a showcase forBurt LancasterandSusan Sarandonas a pair of desperate individuals who, in their own ways, see each other as their last chance for redemption.
‘Atlantic City’ Is an American Film With a European Sensibility
Lancaster plays Lou, an aging gangster living in a single room onAtlantic City’s decaying boardwalk. He spends his days running a small-scale numbers game and taking care of Grace (Kate Reid), a bedridden, aging beauty queen and widow to his former mob boss. At night, he watches his neighbor, Sally (Sarandon), bathe in lemon juice to wash away the smell that clings to her after working all day at a casino oyster bar. Sally dreams of becominga blackjack dealer, but her plans are derailed when her deadbeat husband, Dave (Robert Joy), shows up with her pregnant sister, Chrissie (Hollis McLaren). Dave has stolen $10,000 worth of cocaine from a mob drop site, and he enlists Lou to help him sell it. When Dave is killed, Lou uses the money to spruce up his life and romance Sally. Butthe mob wants the moneythey feel is owed to them, and they threaten Lou and Sally’s plans for escape.
Atlantic Citywas directed byLouis Malle, who withElevator to the GallowsandThe Lovers— both released in 1958 — becamea leading figure of the French New Wave. His American films — includingPretty Baby,My Dinner with Andre, andVanya on 42nd Street— retain the spirit of that pivotal era, which encouraged stylistic experimentation within intimate, human stories.Atlantic Cityis, at its core, a story about America told through a European lens, directed by a French filmmaker andco-financed by French and Canadian production companies. Shot in 1979, it represents the end of an era in American movie-making that was highly influenced bythe French New Wave, when personal storytelling and formal experimentation were the norm at big studios.
It seems appropriate thatAtlantic Citywould be among the lastHollywood films made in this style, since it is itself about the end of an era. Malle had the good fortune of shooting it at a time when the city itself was undergoing a massive cosmetic facelift, with old buildings getting torn down for new ones. The specter of destruction hangs over the movie, which isn’t reallyabout gangsters and drugs, but really about an old man realizing that time has passed him by, and a young woman who fears that the same fate may befall her.
The Burt Lancaster Movie Quentin Tarantino Hailed As “One of the Greatest Westerns” of Its Era
The classic currently sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
As you watch Lou go about his daily life, you wonder how a person could let themselves sink so low. Yet you soon realize that he didn’t really have that far to fall from to begin with. As Grace berates him, we learn that Lou neverrose through the ranks of organized crime, and his greatest claim to fame was sharing a cell for one night withBugsy Siegel. As he walks down the boardwalk of Atlantic City, he rues the loss of its former glamour, which is being torn down to make way for a gambler’s Disneylandin the style of Las Vegas. As the old ways make way for the new, Lou suddenly has an opportunity to be what he never was: a big shot. Likethe casinos on the boardwalk, he revamps his image by buying a new wardrobe, throwing money around, and bedding Sally. Yet it’s all for show, until the mobsters force him to protect Sally from their violent wrath.
Like Lou, Sally finds herself stuck in a rut of her own making. She only married Dave to get out of Saskatchewan, and now his reappearance threatens her chances ofbecoming a blackjack dealerand moving to Monte Carlo. It’s little wonder she leaps at Lou, who presents her with a chance for a better life. Yet when he proposes that they run off to Miami together, she takes off with the money, and he can’t help but let her. It’s for the best, because Lou, having finally proven himselfthe tough guy he always wanted to be, belongs on the dying boardwalk. You know what they say about big fish in small ponds.
Atlantic City
