Born to Win (1971)

It’s impossible to completely dismiss Born to Win, a would-be comedy about heroin addiction, even though the film is a disaster from a tonal perspective and not especially satisfying from a narrative perspective, because the film’s saving graces include gritty performances by several actors and a great sense of place. So, while Born to Win is laughable compared to the same year’s The Panic in Needle Park, a truly harrowing take on the same subject matter, Born to Win isn’t an outright dud. George Segal stars as J, a former hairdresser who has fallen into petty crime as a means of supporting his habit. Over the course of the story, J embarks on a new romance with Parm (Karen Black), a rich girl with a taste for dangerous adventure, and he gets into a complicated hassle with his dealer, Vivian (Hector Elizondo). The romantic stuff with Parm defies logic right from the beginning—Parm discovers J trying to steal her car, but instead of calling the police, she takes him to bed. Huh? The drug-culture material is more believable, especially when two cops (one of whom is played by a young Robert De Niro) coerce J into helping them entrap Vivian. In general, the seedier the scene in question, the more watchable Born to Win becomes. For instance, one of the best sequences involves J sweet-talking a mobster’s wife by pretending he wants sex, when in fact he’s simply trying to enter the mobster’s apartment for purposes of robbery. Segal’s not the right actor for this story—he’s too charming and urbane—but it’s interesting to imagine the circumstances by which a character fitting Segal’s persona might have fallen into such desperation. Had Born to Win focused on J’s descent (and had the filmmakers not opted for such a glib treatment of addiction), the picture could have had impact. Alas, director/co-writer Ivan Passer fumbles, badly, by attempting to merge black comedy with inner-city tragedy, and his undisciplined storytelling is exacerbated by a truly horrible music score. Predictably, De Niro (whose role is inconsequential) and Elizondo fare best in this milieu, while Black and costar Paul Prentiss barely register. Yet the real star of the movie, if only by default, is New York City, with the dirty streets of Manhattan amplifying the film’s implied theme of lost souls getting chewed up by an unforgiving universe.

Born to Win: FUNKY

Crime and Passion (1976)

          Ivan Passer, a Czech writer/director of considerable skill who emerged in tandem with Milos Forman, has worked steadily in Hollywood but never joined Forman on the A-list. Projects such as Crime and Passion explain way. A discombobulated mess for which Passer deserves much of the blame—in addition to directing, he was one of seven (!) writers—this would-be caper flick lurches tonally from carefree to creepy and back again, often within the space of a single scene. The script combines countless incompatible elements, and the awful leading performances are delivered by two actors who simply don’t exist in the same universe—Omar Sharif acts with his usual swarthy intensity, while Karen Black pitches her portrayal to the level of operatic campiness for which she is (in)famous. Poor Joseph Bottoms forms the third side of a romantic triangle, but his laconic energy is smothered by the work of the other stars.

          The nonsensical story goes something like this. Andre Ferren (Sharif) is a European investment counselor who plays games with his clients’ money. His associate/mistress, Susan Winters (Black), agrees to manipulate a rich aristocrat into marriage, with the intention of divorcing him for a huge financial settlement that Susan will share with Andre. Things get complicated when Susan meets a handsome American (Bottoms) and when Susan becomes convinced that the aristocrat’s castle is haunted. There’s also a subplot about the aristocrat electronically spying on Susan, so the aristocrat may or may not be hip to the fact that she and Andre are running a con. Yet the story isn’t the only bizarre element of Crime and Passion so bizarre—the film is decorated with deeply strange flourishes.

          Andre gets aroused whenever he experiences professional setbacks, so Susan’s pillow talk consists of stock losses and so forth; during scenes featuring this behavior, Sharif seems frightening rather than eccentric, as if he’s about to rape Black. The unpleasant vibe is exacerbated by the film’s heavy-handed score, comprising moody electric-piano music and sudden, horror-movie-style stings. Toward the end of the movie, Bottoms sits in the castle dining room, receiving (offscreen) oral sex from Black until he hallucinates—or does he?—that a knight in full battle armor has entered the room. This bit is topped by the finale, during which Black and Sharif hump outside the castle while Black shoots a dead body out of a cannon into the valley below the castle. How any of this actually got filmed is a mystery. For instance, did anyone think the vignette of Sharif taking a bath and singing “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain” was a good idea?

Crime and Passion: LAME

Law and Disorder (1974)

          This offbeat cop film is an admirable curiosity, marred by the lack of a consistent tone. Carroll O’Connor and Ernest Borgnine play New Yorkers who are so fed up with the street crime plaguing their blue-collar neighborhoods that they (and several friends) join the NYPD’s auxiliary police force. Armed with badges, nightsticks, and uniforms, these pseudo-cops discover that criminals have as little respect for law-enforcement officers as they do for residents. This unusual premise could have gone in one of two directions, each potentially rewarding—broad comedy or tragic irony. Alas, director/co-writer Ivan Passer attempts both styles at once, and the hybrid doesn’t work. Passer’s visuals are too grimly realistic for the silly scenes to take flight, and his storytelling lacks the gravitas to support dark elements that enter the story during the final act. A truly awful score by Angelo Badalamenti (credited as Andy Badale) doesn’t help matters, because Badalamenti provides music that’s corny enough for silent-era comedy—which clashes with the nuanced textures of the film’s photography and performances.

          Still, within this jumble are several meritorious elements, such as the naturalistic acting of the leading players. O’Connor basically reprises his Archie Bunker characterization from All in the Family, portraying an uneducated cabbie given to crude racial epithets. He’s believably crass and hostile. Borgnine, working a similar vein, plays a he-man hairdresser (!) whose sex drive resurges once he gets a charge out of strutting around in NYPD blue. (Brace yourself for the image of Borgnine leaping onto a woman in a frenzy of slow-mo lust.) Passer generates many vivid scenes, from throwaway bits of the boys hanging out in their cramped apartments to plaintive vignettes of O’Connor’s character trying to restart his life by purchasing a run-down diner. But for every spot-on moment, there’s a dissonant stretch like the sequence in which Alan Arbus plays a weirdo shrink who counsels potential rape victims to cuddle their attackers. However, Law and Disorder looks great, with cinematographer Arthur J. Ornitz capturing Manhattan at its filthiest, and the movie is a valuable time capsule thanks to its unflinching depictions of crude attitudes toward gender and race.

Law and Disorder: FUNKY