The Candidate (1972): Seductive and Instructive After Five Decades
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- čas přidán 13. 09. 2024
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Now with enhanced closed captioning (cc).
Warning: Spoilers
This video takes a look back at Michael Ritchie's 1972 classic political satire, The Candidate (starring Robert Redford), and examines why it remains relevant and entertaining some fifty years on. When the movie opens, we meet Democratic political operative Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle), who is interested in finding a vibrant young candidate to run for a senate in California. He believes that Bill McKay, the son of a former governor, might be the right man to run. McKay (Robert Redford), a left wing activist, is very much his own man and is reluctant to run at first. Lucas convinces him that he has no chance against the Republican incumbent in any event (Senator Jarmon, played by Don Porter), so McKay can safely run and do as he likes in the campaign, raise the issues that interest him and talk about solutions, without worrying about the campaign. Lucas assures him that he is destined to lose to Jarmon, no matter what. By the time that McKay wraps up the Democratic nomination, however, it is fast becoming apparent to Lucas that McKay is such a compelling candidate that he might actually have a chance to win the senate seat outright. Lucas takes stricter control of the campaign and its message and McKay begins rising in popularity. His campaign gradually becomes more about stage management and photo opportunities and moving to the political centre and not offending or alienating any potential voters. The campaign also hires a media expert named Howard Klein (Allen Garfield) to begin shooting glossy political ads. It is smart politics, but McKay chafes at the restrictions. Nevertheless he continues to rise in the polls. Near the end of the campaign, when it looks like he might win, his father, former governor John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas) shows up to join the campaign and put his son over the top. From the beginning to the end of the film, McKay evolves into an entirely different kind of candidate, who eventually loses track of who he is, what he believes and what he wanted to do for Californians in the first place. Under Lucas' stewardship, McKay wins, but he does not really know who he is anymore, nor what he wishes to achieve in the senate. The final line of the film is a query from Bill McKay to Marvin Lucas: "What do we do now?" Lucas does not answer.
#thecandidate #RobertRedford #politicalsatire #comedy #BillMcKay #MelvynDouglas #PeterBoyle #MarvinLucas
I’m actually in this movie as an extra. I’m in the crowd scene at 5:16-. Tiny part but lots of fun for a 13 yr old to meet Redford!
I try to watch this movie every four years, before every Presidential election. My favorite scene is the one where McKay's handlers are working out the details of an important campaign event in a hotel room when their lunch arrives, and they try to figure out who ordered what.
This is still the BEST movie ever: 51 years later.
Damn, your stuff is good. One of my faves, viewed many times but rarely broken down and explained so well. Well done and thank you.
This was one the movies my mother had me watched 🍿before I volunteered for my first a political campaign. By the time I was in high school I ditched school to go make calls on behalf of candidates.
Always liked the ending when he says, " What do we do now? "
9:20 Old man must've hated McKay's guts.
Too bad a sequel was never done.
As somone who has worked on campaigns at every level i really appreicate how accurate this movie is. Polticans are people and anything above a run for mayor in a small city and your in for a tough ride. Thats assuming you have enough money that you can mostly give up your job. For people who still need to work campainging bascially saps any free time they have. Instead of returning home they are at a fundraiser or a rally or public event. On the weekedends they are canvassing during the day and at fundraisers or a rally or a public event at night. That ontop of the fact everything they say and how they are shown is carefully managed. Its tough and it takes a tough person to go through all that and not end up like mckay. Also i have to disagree about Mckays father. I think that Mckay and his father where implied to have a bad relationship from the fact Mckay showed little respect towards his fathers tenure as governor and didnt even reach out to his father until it was absolutey neccessary. Mckays dad seems excited that his son is following in his footsteps and as he gets more and more involved because its Mckay seeding more ground to his campaing team who want Mckays dad to be a bigger part of the campaign due to his name id, connections and expertise.
This has to be based on Jerry Brown and his rise to the California Governor's Mansion.
5:15 sounds like a young Joe Biden!
Curious of your thoughts about Bulworth.
Bulworth is basically The Candidate in reverse. Instead of handlers constraining everything Bill McKay says and does, to the point that he becomes a homogenized version of himself (in order to stand a chance against the Republican incumbent), Senator Bulworth's life goes in the opposite direction. Because of sleep deprivation and insane levels of stress, and a fixation with ending his life, Jay Billington Bulworth starts telling (or yelling or singing) the sad truth about how American politics works (or more precisely, how it is dysfunctional). Knowing he will be murdered frees him to say what he wants. In turn, the public seem to understand what he is trying to say, but ultimately he has to be removed because speaking truth to power usually ends this way. He cannot be permitted to try to speak up for the poor, for example. Instead, he has to pretend he is in favour of the kind of welfare reform that was advocated by President Clinton. He does not believe in it, but he is relegated to advocating for it because that is the Democratic party line on welfare at that particular moment.
In my view, and I should say that I enjoyed both films, The Candidate (which has existed for about twice as long as Bulworth) somehow holds up better and is ironically much, much less dated. It is also funnier…because it is inherently less predictable and procedural. It is not dependent on one plot point going off the rails. We aren’t totally sure which way Michael Ritchie is going to take the film, that is, whether Bill McKay will win. It seemed very rooted in the reality of how uncertain a first time campaign might end up being. It just comes down to positioning and saying what is expected and avoiding mistakes.
For its moment in 1998, I recall thinking that Bulworth was a prescient film about the nature of entrenched interest groups. It raised important questions about the nature of political reality and whether speaking truth aloud was brave or foolhardy. The way Bulworth votes in congress is a case in point. During his ‘breakdown’, people learn that what he believes is quite different than how he votes, since he is beholden to whomever agrees to pay the bills for his 100 million dollar campaigns. The inevitability of the Weekend Research Project going off the rails and somehow killing him anyway, after he decides that there are things worth living for, seemed to make the movie more difficult to watch-although it doesn’t quite play out exactly that way, in the end. That is, there is a slight twist.
Both movies, in the end, are about entropy: why nothing much ever changes. Bulworth just accomplishes this in a more inherently fictional, perhaps outrageous and grotesque way, whereas The Candidate is more about the process of running, how it makes the candidates seem the same. I am not exactly sure why, but both films have scenes where the candidates eat Kentucky Fried Chicken-and enjoy it.
To me, Bulworth is more like a fairy tale of what could happen if a politician ever really told the truth. Today, this seems so inherently impossible that the most outrageous science fiction film seems more plausible in comparison with the plot of Bulworth. Conversely, it is possible that Michael Ritchie’s 1972 film fares better than Beatty’s 1998 film, precisely because it is less ambitious and settles for doing the doable: showing what campaigns (generally) are like from the ground up, rather than trying to create a morality tale about that particular moment in the 1990s. The other thing I found curious about Bulworth was that it was advertised as some kind of romantic comedy. Again, unlike Ritchie’s film, sometimes Bulworth appeared as a much more tragic film than a comedic one (though I know they are often two heads of the same coin). It is also interesting that it never once felt romantic. Sometimes success and failure can be determined in the process of casting. Despite Halle Berry and Warren Beatty being two of the most beautiful actors in the history of Hollywood, somehow there just wasn’t much chemistry between them.
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Splendid and thoughtful response, and a great take!
I saw Bulworth again recently and thought Trump must have seen it. He does it from the right, while Bulworth did it from the left, but the idea that he says outrageous things that the political pros say you can’t say that! You’ll offend too many people! But that only increases his popularity, at least with his base. I am not a Trump supporter but I can see how difficult it is to defeat a candidate who offers simplistic answers to complex problems.