La storia di Wanda

"Hustling" was made for TV in 1975, back when "Movies of the Week" were more of an "Event" and were taken more seriously than they are today. I'd be willing to bet that whatever network first aired this film, probably preceded it with ads saying that it was "Ripped from the headlines" or "The Shocking True Story..." It obviously worked, as I understand the film won several Emmy Awards. 35 years after the fact, "Hustling" is still a decent, although a bit dry, melodrama.

Considering that I found this film on a budget-priced DVD collection called "GREAT BAD GIRL MOVIES," I was hoping for something a little more sleazy/exploitative than what I got. No such luck. "Hustling" turned out to be a pretty straightforward drama, with the basic message being "Hey, prostitutes are people too, man." Lee Remick (pre-"The Omen") stars as a reporter for a major New York magazine who wants to write an expose on the prostitution problem in the Times Square area, which at the time was reaching critical mass. She befriends a reluctant veteran hooker named Wanda (Jill Clayburgh, whose Noo Yawk accent is so thick you can cut it with a steak knife) and uses her as her 'source' for the article, which causes problems for Wanda not only with the other "girls" but with her pimp, who doesn't want her discussing "the business" with an outsider. Of course, since this is a made for TV film the language and action are mostly squeaky clean. The most suggestive dialogue you'll hear is a "prostie" suggesting to a john that he take "two girls" instead of just one, and the only violence is implied or happens offscreen. The upbeat ending is unrealistic and feels as if it were tacked on at the last minute. If this movie were made today, it would probably air on the Lifetime Channel and it would star Alyssa Milano as the reporter and Jennifer Love Hewitt as Wanda. (Y'know what? Now that I think about it, I'd watch that. Haha.)

So while "Hustling" was not exactly what I expected, it was still worth a look,, mainly for the way-cool shot-on-location scenes in the mean streets of New York City circa 1975. The city was a lot dirtier and scarier than it is nowadays. It's also fun to play "spot the character actor" with the supporting cast; you'll see such dependables as Alex Rocco, Burt Young, and even Howard Hesseman ("WKRP") in small roles. Trivia geeks alert, director Joseph Sargent directed multitudes of other TV movies and mini series throughout the '70s and '80s as well as the occasional theatrical film, including 1987's legendary disaster "Jaws: The Revenge!" If nothing else, "Hustling" is far superior to that famed turkey. Retro movie fans should get a few kicks from this dusty offering.

The characters are gritty and earthy. Jill Clayburgh was desrcibd as having a new York accent so thick you could cut it with a steak knife, and for a debut role she didn't do too badly at all.

So why criticism of her Flatbush dialect I'm not sure, but I know she was from a better part of NYNY. But hey opinions make the world go round.

The scenes are very 1975 so totally amazing to see, nice canvasses of Street life and soem beautiful touches of real people peering back at the camera as it trawls the streets. Oppressive police offices manned by jerks. Aesthetically I felt drawn completely into a compelling seedy and familiar underworld, even if the plot and script was a little watery at times. That's th problem they give Lee Remick I think.

The performance of JC was a taste of things to come, Remick was a little by her best, and all the seedy cops and fleabag hotel managers an pimps play fine roles and from the totally delicious across the decades Beverly Hope Atkinson brings some laughter to the scenes and she really put he stamp on those-when she was given lines to deliver-then in her 30s, still looking about 18. Total romp and immersion, ino a time lost, a very good movie.

This movie is basically The French Connection but instead of narcotics being the centrepiece of the movie , in Hustling ,it's prostitution. Jill Clayburgh gives an outstanding performance as Wanda the high priced hooker. At certain points she resembles Sandra Bullock. The movie is a no holds barred, save perhaps for language, portrait of life on the mean mean streets of NYC at perhaps it's most vile and dangerous time the mid- 70s. Lee Remick is her usual solid , dependable, and beautiful self as the reporter writing an expose on the lives of these desperate, and often abused women. Don't let the rating and other reviews (?) mislead . This is a lost gem of a movie. Gritty, powerful with excellent performances.

This film is based upon Gail Sheehy's pseudo-sociological book dealing with streetwalking prostitution in midtown New York, and features Lee Remick as a middle class magazine journalist who selects one particular harlot named Wanda (Jill Clayburgh) with whom she somewhat bonds in the course of investigating unsavoury real estate dealings involving socially prominent figures who ostensibly benefit from prostitution income. Despite the use of open mikes and harshly grained lighting to bring about a sense of aural and visual realism, the work suffers from a romantic approach to its subject, presenting the prostitutes and local police who arrest them as one reluctantly interlaced family, with the pimps grotesque caricatures, and the direction by Joseph Sargent vying with Jerry Fielding's jazzy score for being the most unimaginative contribution, whereas those real problems associated with this type of vice activity: venereal disease, the deleterious effect upon local business establishments, etc., are barely touched upon, indeed being submerged beneath a flurry of bootless subplots.

Casting Jill Clayburgh as a NY prostitute sounds somewhat absurd in theory, and isn't much better in practice. But back then she wasn't well-known. Normally actresses have a field day playing hookers (I wonder why...), and do it with ease, very well - even the bad actresses. It's as if they were born to play them.

Far from being a bad actress, the beautiful Jill is simply wrong for the role, yet another example that casting is an "art form" that requires brains, something a bunch of film-makers lack. She might have been convincing as a Cincinnati hooker, or a Nevadan prostitute, but that Nu Yoyk accent makes her appear to be going for laughs. Sure, there are smaller elements of humour here too, but it is predominantly a social drama. If you manage to get past Jill doing that silly accent then you can believe her. I couldn't, at least not always.

How realistic is this film? For a TV drama it's realistic, but if you'd compare it to "Serpico", for example, or "Working Girls" (not to be confused with that dumb Griffiths film), then perhaps it isn't particularly.

What I like about it is that the writers made an effort to get acquainted with the NY street scene, rather than just make up an obviously artificial world of prostitution as happens so often on the small and big screens, which would completely defeat the purpose. The ins-and-outs of 70s NY Hookerlandia are pretty well covered.

Another plus is that the outdoor scenes were shot in the 70s, on location, a year before "Taxi Driver" came out. True, TD is much grittier, not to mention stylistically brilliant, but both movies give you the "old NYC" in similar ways: the one that punks, pimps, muggers, hipsters, lunatics and liberals still long for, still weep over, because they claim "it was better that way".

Yeah, it was better: but only for "hip" observers, tourists-with-bodyguards, millionaires hidden away in limos, and others wealthy enough to waltz through those areas safe and protected from the reality of such surroundings. They didn't have to live there. When I listen to the likes of Scorsese wax poetic about the "good old days" of muggings and pimps and hookers, I don't know whether to laugh or start a petition to get him locked up in a psychiatric ward. Ditto hipster punks, they too glamourize this era, as if hookers and muggings should be a mainstay of Manhattan life! Laughable. I understand the "romantic" appeal, it's not that I don't, but some people are also enamored with Nazi Germany, but without actually HOPING for a return to that era, without becoming Nazis. They are simply fascinated by that bizarre evil world without actually craving that ideology. Why can't Scorsese and the hipsters do the same?

Another positive is that the plot isn't over-dramatized. There aren't any ridiculous bombastic plot-twists to "create conflict", but things are kept low-key i.e. Mostly realistic, or as much as a TV movie can allow for.

What I didn't like is the stereotypical portrayal of the "idealistic" journalist, doing a story for all the right reasons. Lee Remick's character is pure fiction. American journalists (and journalists in general) are anything but idealist romantics: they are cynical, greedy, over-ambitious careerists who ruin lives at the drop of a hat. Their kind is only one rung above that of defense lawyers and politicians... (It's no coincidence that so many politicians stem from these two dark professions.)