Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Romancefest 2018: The Thomas Crown Affair

I saw the Pierce Brosnan/Rene Russo remake of THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR back in the 90s when it came out, and I always meant to check out the original, but never got around to it – until now.

This 1968 heist flick from Norman Jewison is the epitome of cool. Steve McQueen stars as Thomas Crown, a millionaire who plans and pulls off the perfect crime (robbing a Boston bank) just because he feels like it.

Faye Dunaway investigates and guesses early on Crown must be behind it. But, she falls in love with the guy because he's McQueen, and he falls in love with her because she's Dunaway.

The movie uses lots of editing techniques that would have been cutting edge at the time, using lots of split screen to show actions that are going on simultaneously, which comes in handy during the heist scenes. The shapes and sizes of the split screens change and adjust throughout sequences to highlight what we should be looking at and how we should be looking at it. It's mostly successful but it's also easy to see why more movies don't do stuff like this today (or do it far more sparingly when they do). Hal Ashby, who went on to become a great director in his own right, was on the editing team.

So, if you want something romantic and sexy but also super cool, this one's for you.

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