The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

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Directed by Norman Jewison
Ssript by Alan Trusman
Director of Photography Haskell Wexler
Music by Michael LeGrand

Steve McQueen – Thomas Crown
Faye Dunaway, Vicki Anderson, an Insurance Investigator
Paul Burke – Eddy Malone, chief police detective
Jack Weston – Erwin, the getaway driver

The 60s retrospective series continues …

I loathed The Thomas Crown Affair in 1968. It was a major disappointment. With its flashy split screen cinematography, they sold it on the back of Bonnie & Clyde to the youth market and that was the issue. The massive hit theme Windmills of Your Mind sounded too middle of the road (then), and the cool jazz instrumentals were weird. Bonnie & Clyde was the problem, in selling the “See Faye Dunaway in another bank robber story.”

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Even the credits are split screen

No film has ever had the shock impact on me that Bonnie & Clyde had. In 1967 I was working lime-lights on a summer show. In the afternoons, I hung out with the musicians from the show. There wasn’t a lot to do. The summer show ran the same show twice nightly for three months because there was a constant turnover of tourists, and so the cinemas did the same – they ran a single blockbuster for months. I think they were running the two-year old Dr Zhivago at the biggest one. So we heard about a preview of a film. We went along. Bonnie & Clyde? We guessed it might be like Rob Roy or worse, Greyfriars Bobby but we went anyway. We were pinned to our seats, shocked, in awe. I had a Bonnie & Clyde poster in my room.

Then we saw Steve McQueen as Thomas Crown, and Faye Dunaway as the insurance investigator. Suits. Both looked old to me then. Warren Beatty had been 30 when he made Bonnie & Clyde and looked wild, piratical, counter-cuture. Steve McQueen was seven years older, so add the year, thirty-eight. The posters called him “young.” He seemed middle-aged, “corporate” (not a word in use then). Faye Dunaway looked ten years older than she had the year before, though she was still twenty-seven. Her clothes were smart designer, and looked more 1965 than 1968 to British eyes. We did not identify. Both seemed unsexy. Obviously, as fifty years have passed, they don’t look “old” to me anymore.

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Jack Weston as the getaway driver. Paul Burke as Eddy Malone, Faye Dunaway, Steve McQueen. Malone wants to see if the driver (who has been arrested) recognizes Crown. He doesn’t.

The story is simple. Thomas Crown is a Boston millionaire who plans a bank robbery. The secret being that none of the robbers have ever met. When we first see Crown, he is in a hotel interviewing the getaway driver (Jack Weston). The room is lit so that Crown is only a silhouette. The driver never sees his face. There’s very little violence during the robbery … one guy gets shot in the calf. No visible blood. Paul Burke is Eddy Malone, the investigating detective. Faye Dunaway is the insurance investigator chasing after the $2.6 million which would be about $20 million in 2018. Her reward will be 10% of the recovered value, which is why she is so expensively dressed. She knows intuitively that Crown is the mastermind. They have an affair. She begins to get closer. He admits stashing the cash in Switzerland. They have long sequences of no-dialogue activity … McQueen in a glider, both driving around in a dune buggy. Eventually he says he’s going to try it again. We know from a golf sequence that he’ll gamble on anything for a thrill. The second robbery is a few seconds of split screen images. They distinguish it from the first by having a yellow smoke bomb instead of an earlier red smoke bomb (probably to help editing!) McQueen gets away. Dunaway is left.

Re-watching time. First the music is fabulous. More on this. Second is its non-violent, has long wordless sequences, lots of purely filmic things. Much of the story is told purely visually. The split screen is way over-used, it was a new toy. Often only one panel, a ninth of the screen, has a picture. McQueen and Dunaway are still surprisingly sterile.

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The only sexy bit is the long erotically-charged chess sequence. I thought it was cut and performed with a great debt to the dinner sequence in Tom Jones. It is extremely well-done with Dunaway caressing the curved side of the bishop, finger on lips.

Ultra tight close ups for chess game

Then they have a long tight close up snog. Actresses nowadays will watch in envy. No need to get undressed. McQueen smoking a cigar when in bed together rather than a cigarette seems disgusting nowadays. The long sweeping dune buggy bits are a warm up for Bullitt, I guess. That film will be covered in this series too.

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More split screen: the polo match sequence – lots of black

Norman Jewison originally cut the dreamy glider sequence to Strawberry Fields Forever, which would have stuck out like a sore thumb in such a totally “un-psychedelic” film. Legrand wrote Windmills of My Mind and they wanted Andy Williams to sing it. He declined and Noel Harrison took it over. There were long arguments over one word, shone which the Americans insisted rhymed with own, and Harrison rightly pointed out that he was using his natural English accent where it rhymed with gone.They cut it with shone-own but Harrison redid it for the single as shone-gone which gave him the last say as that’s the one that stuck. After watching it, we listened to other versions, Dusty Springfield and Jose Feliciano. They don’t get it right. They sing it and emote. Harrison said it had to be recited as if a mantra. He was correct. His version is easily the best. It played in my head all night.

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The glider: originally cut to Strawberry Fields Forever

The instrumentals were too cool for me in 1968, and they quote the title track at a tangent in points. Then there are some orchestral sequences. If I saw an OST album now, I’d buy one.

THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, THE (1968)
Steve McQueen as Crown: loadsamoney

The Switzerland sequence struck a chord. Crowne carries the cash in a suitcase to a Swiss bank. No one asks to examine the case at customs. He explains that the Swiss never investigate wealthy visitors with suitcases. That was true twenty years later. I spoke at an ELT conference near Zurich, and flew in on the morning flight, and back on the evening flight. Day return London to Zurich. At Heathrow we boarded the plane and were told they were waiting for a group of transit passengers (i.e. they had not immigrated into the UK). Several pairs of Africans got on. One in each pair was big and tough. The other had a briefcase chained to his wrist which stayed on his lap. They all got off in Zurich and walked rapidly through immigration. No customs check. OK. Seven hours later, on the return flight, the same Africans got on, but without briefcases. At Heathrow, they turned straight into the Transit area. I drew my conclusions.

This film was a late entrant, a “I used to think it bad” one rather than the opposite. I must have seen it in the 80s again as I recall having a VHS tape which ended up in landfill. I found this DVD in a charity shop for £1. I can’t have been impressed when I re-watched the video in the 80s, but have no recall . I avoided the 1999 Pierce Brosnan remake. Another is on the way for 2019.

Yes, much better than I thought it was.

STEVE McQUEEN
Nevada Smith (1966)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …