The Candidate

Michael Ritchie seems to have this thing for competition -- whether downhill racing, body building, water skiing, or, as here, politics. This isn't my favorite human motive, besting other people, so this one comes as a rather pleasant surprise, laden as it is with more social and political content than the with the details of the quest. I mean -- Redford doesn't even want the office!

"The Candidate" has the appearance of a made-for-TV movie. The credits are presented simply, as in a TV movies. There is no underscore but the music that we hear consists of marches with lots of drums and sometimes one or two instruments hitting clinkers, as they would on a bandstand behind a speaker.

The photography is highly colored and flat, as in a TV movie. Everybody seems to be dressed in suits or riding costumes. They look overly made up, freshly preened and pruned. They drive big new American cars and live in splendidly arid modern homes. In short they appear to lead the kind of lives to which naive screenwriters aspire.

That out of the way, this is a pretty brave movie. It's a story of an innocent and blunt lawyer who become progressively corrupted during the campaign as victory seems more nearly in his grasp and the grasp of his managers. They 86 his sideburns and give him a haircut and put him in expensive suits. Girls love him because he displays such, well, such Robert Redfordness. One guy belts him in the mouth at a rally and I can understand why. All men as handsome as Robert Redford should be illegal.

But he does a decent job in his minimal way. His forte lies in little moves, as when he cocks his head and says quizzically, "Eh"? Everybody else is quite good too, though his wife is mostly decorative. Peter Boyle is fine, and Allan Garfinkle is always believable as a cynical scuzz.

You have to admire the way the script does not spare Redford's character. He may be an idealist at first. What does he think of abortion? "I'm for it." How about property taxes. "I don't know." By the end of the movie he's learned fluent politicospeak. How's he feel about busing? "You can't solve the problems of this country with a bus." (Right.) He knows that he's selling himself out but he wants to WIN.

As the campaign gets into high gear he's late for a meeting with a labor leader, a grizzled Kenneth Toby given to smoking pinched little cigarettes. Everybody in the room is wondering where Redford is, and how he can treat an important man like Toby with such disrespect. And where is he? We see the door to a hotel room open and there emerges a girl so gorgeous that if she were an escort instead of a groupie she'd be extremely expensive. A few seconds later Redford comes out buttoning his jacket.

Nothing much is made of this incident. Boyle watches this parade in the hallway, staring after the girl, but nobody says anything and the scene lasts for only a few seconds. And here is where Ritchie and the writers earn my respect. Think of how easily this very effective scene could have been demolished. Boyle stopping the groupie and demanding to know what's been going on. Boyle admonishing Redford for cheating on his wife -- "If this ever gets out our goose is cooked!" Redford protesting that his private life is his own business.

But none of this happens. Not in this scene or in any of the others in which a piece of character is revealed. Ritchie trusts in the perspicacity of the viewer. He shows us, because he doesn't have to tell us. He figures we're smart enough to pick up this clues by ourselves. Thank you, Mister Ritchie.

We should be grateful to the writer as well, and to Redford's improvisational talents, when, alone in a car's rear seat, half crazed, he mangles the stump speech he's given a thousand times and comes up with a hilarious parody: "The basic indifference that made this country great."

Also admirable is that the movie deals with specific issues -- abortion, busing, unemployment, fire hazard, health concerns -- and Redford is the Democratic candidate while Don Porter is the Republican candidate (imagine actually NAMING the political parties and risking losing half the audience).

Porter comes across like an actor, an old ham of an actor, which suits the part. He's smooth and wily at seducing the public, a kind of Don Juan of the political arena. Ritchie has taken some real chances here. Porter comes up with something like, "Oh, sure, when I was a kid we were all poor too. Why some of us didn't even have our own SOCIAL WORKER."

It took guts to make this movie. And talent to make it so well.

I saw this film in 1972 when it came out, and I just saw it again on cable. I am amazed at how prescient this film was. Remember, this was before Jerry Brown, the real life politician most people will think of as a counterpart to Redford's character, had not yet run for governor and was still unknown outside of California. Nixon was still in office and was about to be re-elected by a landslide. Abortion was still illegal in all 50 states, and Roe v. Wade had not yet been decided. The term "sound bite" had not yet been coined. "Spin" was something a washing machine did.

Redford plays an idealistic young storefront lawyer who is persuaded to run for the Senate as a Democrat against a Republican incumbent running for his fourth term. He feels free to speak his mind because he knows he hasn't a chance of winning. His freshness and honesty win over a lot of people favorable to his politics, and suddenly the gap closes. Now he has a chance of winning, but to do so he has to win over the "undecided voters" in the middle of the political spectrum. (Sound familiar? I'm writing this nine days before the Bush-Kerry election, and no one knows who will win.) Guess what happens? Suddenly he's not so fresh and honest anymore. And by the time he finally has a televised debate with the incumbent, he has mastered the art of the non-answer answer, that is, responding to a reporter's question by making a vague statement of his own without ever answering the question.

Fast forward to 2004. The spin doctors now run the show. This film was intended as satire and as a warning. Regrettably, it has become a prediction. 10/10

"The Candidate" is a very simple movie. It follows a guy (Robert Redford) who is running for the Senate and you see him from agreeing to run to his eventual election. Throughout, the guy tries (not always successfully) to keep his idealism but there is a strong push by his handlers to get him to talk more and say less at the same time. This aspect of the story is very believable and this man is, more or less, relatively 'normal' and without any earth-shattering secrets or personal deficiencies. In fact, the film has little in the way of excitement--no 'bombshells', no real controversies--just a look at the political process and the men who handle these candidates. Certainly not a must-see film but well worth your time.

This 1972 feature film is funny as it is scary now in the Untied States we can see it as form of prophecy.

This film stars Robert Redford in a remarkable performance as a Senatorial Candidate in California. Robert plays Bill McKay as son of a former state senator who never planned on running for public office. In fact he has never registered to vote. A political election specialist talks him into running who is expertly played by the late Peter Boyle. What both Bill McKay never thinks of at the beginning is the fact he might win. Released in 1972 the film seemed as a farce but just like the 1976 film "Network" what once seemed impossible is now "non fiction".

Natalie Wood also appears as herself.

Robert Redford, in one of his unjustly overlooked films from 1972, stars as a lawyer and the son of the former governor of the state of California in an election year where the senatorial incumbent has no competition. Peter Boyle convinces Redford to run, fully expecting and anticipating to lose, therefore being able to run on a platform of pure integrity to show how out of touch the current senator has become. But suddenly the public realizes that some fresh, younger blood with an idealistic eye might be what they truly want rather than another in a long succession of terms by the same old huckster. Melvyn Douglas also stars as Redford's father. Even though this film is almost 30 years old, the Oscar-winning screenplay by Jeremy Larner shows just how timeless the same old issues the candidate has to decide where he stands upon (abortion, the environment, health care) actually are. The script really is eye-opening, because it underlines very well the point that even if, say, Jesus Christ were to run for office today, what He would say is not as important as how and when He'd say it. Directed by Michael Ritchie (Smile, The Bad News Bears, Semi-Tough), one of the few American directors who has been able to successfully show the black humor of the strange, fetid underbelly of competition in this society. Blink and you'll miss Natalie Wood at a fund-raiser. Completely climatized to the Seventies, she looks like Donovan's aide-de-camp.