Political newcomer Bill McKay (Robert Redford) runs for the Senate in THE CANDIDATE
THE CANDIDATE (Michael Ritchie, 1972)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Saturday, July 23, 2:00, 7:00, 9:30
Series runs July 15 – August 3
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Four years before playing real-life Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) blew the lid off the Watergate cover-up, in the Oscar-nominated All the President’s Men, Robert Redford found himself portraying the other side of the political spectrum, starring as a progressive legal aid lawyer who is chosen to run for the Senate in Michael Ritchie’s savvy, documentary-style film The Candidate. The Democratic Party needs someone to run against incumbent Republican Senator Crocker Jarmon (Gidget’s Don Porter), so political operative Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) approaches McKay, an attractive, well-respected, and popular community activist whose father, John J. McKay (Melvyn Douglas), was California governor. At first the younger McKay has no interest in running for office, but when Lucas tells him he can say whatever he wants to get his message out — because he’ll have no chance to win — McKay signs on. He hits the streets shaking hands and spreading his philosophy, closely followed by media man Howard Klein (Allen Garfield), who is amassing footage for television advertisements promoting “the better way” with Bill McKay. (McKay’s ads are narrated by Barry Sullivan, who appeared with Redford in Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, Jarmon’s commercials by Broderick Crawford, who won an Oscar for playing the Huey Long–like Louisiana governor Willie Stark in All the King’s Men in 1949.) It’s clear from the start that McKay is a political newbie while Jarmon is a seasoned pro who knows all the right things to say and do, but McKay’s grass-roots approach soon begins taking hold, and as the race heats up, the challenger is suddenly faced with tough decisions about taking power, compromising his principles, and falling in line with the party machine instead of fighting the good fight as he has done all his life.
Ritchie (Smile, The Bad News Bears) and Redford, who previously collaborated on the director’s first film, Downhill Racer, shoot The Candidate in a cinéma vérité style, blending fiction and reality with cameos by television newsmen Howard K. Smith and Rollin Post, reporter Mike Barnicle, actress Natalie Wood (who starred with Redford in This Property Is Condemned), and such politicians as Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Alan Cranston, and John Tunney, whom McKay is loosely based on (along with Jerry Brown). Ritchie had worked on Tunney’s 1970 Senate campaign, which was run by Candidate associate producer Nelson Rising. In addition, screenwriter Jeremy Larner, who won an Oscar for his script, had been the principal speechwriter for Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential bid. (And as a bonus, Douglas’s wife, Helen Gahagan, was the first California Democratic woman to be elected to Congress and ran against Richard M. Nixon for Senate in 1950, losing while coining the nickname “Tricky Dick.”) The excellent cast also features Michael Lerner, Quinn Redeker, Morgan Upton, Kenneth Tobey as a union man, and Karen Carlson as McKay’s wife, Nancy. Photographed by Victor J. Kemper (Husbands, Dog Day Afternoon) and with a score by actor-musician John Rubinstein (son of concert pianist Artur Rubinstein), the film gets right to the heart of the faults of the two-party political system and the manipulation of the media, feeling as relevant as ever despite all the major changes in technology, the 24/7 news cycle, and the advent of social media over the ensuing forty-plus years. There have been many McKay-like candidates over the years, from Dan Quayle to John Edwards to even Barack Obama, with varying degrees of success. But especially with the 2016 Republican National Convention under way, The Candidate seems as fresh and alive, as believable and engaging as ever. “He’s got the name, the looks, and the power,” Nancy McKay says in the film, which concludes with one of the great lines in cinema history. The Candidate is screening July 23 in the BAMcinématek series “Four More Years: An Election Special,” which continues through August 3 with such other politically tinged works as Robert Altman’s Nashville, Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog, D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus’s The War Room, and Mike Nichols’s Primary Colors.