Year: 1973
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Jack Gilford, Laurie Heineman, Norman Burton, Patricia Smith, Thayer David, William Hansen, Harvey Jason, Lin Von Linden, Lara Parker
Director: John G. Avildsen
Nominations: Best Actor (Lemmon), Best Supporting Actor (Gilford), Best Original Screenplay
I'll be honest; most of my life I've thought of Jack Lemmon as that congenial old guy who always acts with Walter Matthau.
I knew he could do drama, and in fact I knew that most of his eight (eight!) Oscar nominations were for dramatic roles, but until I saw this, the only one I saw him in was Glengarry Glen Ross. Review of that one coming...someday.
Lemmon always seemed like one of those actors who had a type, and stuck to it. There are many, and many of them have won Oscars. If you've got a type but do it really well, you're not a bad actor, even if there are actors who can swing from one kind of character to another with ease.
This movie convinced me that Lemmon's range was much broader than I realized. I figured it had to be; it's not as if I've seen much of his earlier work. It's weird; the role of increasingly desperate small business owner Harry Stoner seems written for Lemmon and yet it feels like a different type of performance than I expect from him.
Harry runs a clothing company that's going under despite his attempts to keep it afloat by cooking the books. He and his longtime business partner Phil Reeves (Jack Gilford) have been going over what to do about it for a long while now, and Harry's been driven to the point where he's ready to torch the place for the insurance money. Phil objects strongly: "There are some lines I will not cross!" he yells at Harry.
But Harry's past the point of listening. He's on a downward spiral and seems intent on taking some sort of action he can't take back. He's the kind of guy who spends most of his time talking about how the world was better back when he was younger. But when he actually talks about his younger days, it's clear they weren't exactly the greatest. Among other things he was in the Viet Nam war, and is almost definitely suffering from some sort of PTSD. At one point, while giving a speech at the show to introduce the company's new season, Harry starts seeing his departed war buddies sitting silently in the audience, just staring at him, possibly accusingly.
We follow him through a three-day stint where he takes action after action that makes him realize any principles he once held are long gone. He obtains a hooker (Lara Parker) for a married client (Norman Burton), and it's clear this isn't the first time as he and the hooker know each other already. He speaks to two disgruntled employees, one a gay man (Harvey Jason) who's forced to work with an older Jewish man who can't stand him (William Hansen), and he implies to both that the other is about to be fired. Finally, he manages to even convince Phil to go and meet with the arsonist (Thayer David) that will carry out the previously mentioned insurance scam. The final insult? He hasn't kept his building up to code and therefore it's not worth torching.
The action culminates in Harry picking up a young girl (Laurie Heineman) who's hitching for the fun of it. He had actually picked her up earlier, where she admitted she does little more than cruise the strip for fun. She offered sex, which he turned down, but on their second trip together, he's lost any resolve he might have had and takes comfort in her arms.
Lemmon is fantastic in this; best performance of his I've seen, as I mentioned. I thought I knew what to expect from him, and if you think the same, you should watch this film. He won his second Oscar for this, his first for Best Actor, and dangit if I'm not thinking the Academy might have gotten this one right (at least thus far; I have yet to see two of the nominated performances from that year).
Gilford, as Phil, is understated but just as good as Lemmon. The scenes where they act off each other are splendid, and you can feel that these are two men who have worked together for years and trust each other implicitly, and it's clear that Phil considered himself Harry's mentor, and is still trying to be his "angel on the shoulder", but the fact that he's older, tired and almost as desperate as Harry has diminished his capacity to play this role.
All in all, Gilford, one of those "haven't-I-seen-that-guy-somewhere" character actors who mostly did TV work, acquits himself well but it's mainly his acting off Lemmon that elevates his performance to something award-worthy. He's the last performance in this category that I've watched, and while not the least, I think I can say without too many spoilers that he's not my winner.
But Lemmon, so far, just might be for his category.
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