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The Fortune -- One of Those Weird "Can't Miss" Misfires

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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What has always fascinated me about The Fortune is that, not only does it pair Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson(or Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty) together(for the first time, and for the most "at length time") but that it came out in 1975, the year that Beatty got one of his biggest hits in Shampoo and that Nicholson got one of his(and his first Best Actor Oscar) in Cuckoo's Nest.

And yet, in this year of triumphs apart, Nicholson and Beatty pretty much tanked in this one. Same year. Star power means very little if the vehicle is no good.

Someone else flopped with this one -- director Mike Nichols, whose "The Graduate" was an influential classic(and blockbuster) for the ages -- and yet who seems here to have lost total control of the situation. This is a movie that literally FEELS "badly directed" as scenes swerve from screaming and overwrought to stumbling and going nowhere.

Nichols would take an eight-year break from making movies, returning with Silkwood.

Nicholson(working a lot) and Beatty(working not so much) kept on going and seem to have forgotten about this one on their resumes.

Like a lot of "misfires," The Fortune rather tantalizingly starts out showing us what he could have been. Beatty and Nicholson, appearing in a film set in the 20's, are out to re-create one of those slapstick comedy duos of yesteryear -- Laurel and Hardy a little bit, Abbott and Costello a whole lot more(Beatty is the mean straight man; Nicholson is the befuddled comedy guy). And Nicholson shows us that much of the same "star persona" he would use to better effect in Cuckoo's Nest, and The Shining could here be used to comedy effect -- and that his "dumb guy" had a lot in common with his smarter, usual self. Like for instance: yelling. Nicholson did rage with the best of 'em, and his "dumb guy" rages here are as carefully timed as his rages in such more serious films as Five Easy Pieces and Chinatown.

I suppose its the plot that kills "The Fortune." Our comedy team are out to fleece, and competitively bed, a sympathetic and daft heiress to ,yes, a fortune -- and eventually, they try to murder her in earnest for the dough. Thus Nicholson and Beatty(in the 70's tradition) are very much playing bad guys in this... out to kill a nice woman for money and via such brutal implements as a rattlesnake -- but also in the 70's tradition, all is forgiven and nobody gets punished.

And getting there is a noisy, poorly timed slog.

I suppose fault could be laid with the script, by a screenwriter who was Nicholson's friend and who wrote Five Easy Pieces, which, while a "great film," isn't particularly accessible or well structured, either.

Its funny. Nicholson had some big hits and classics in the 70's on his own, but he also paired up with a few other major stars in those years -- Beatty, Brando(The Missouri Breaks) , and in a short cameo-plus, DeNiro(The Last Tycoon.) And something is a little "off" with all of those movies, despite the pleasure in seeing "two major stars on the screen."

Maybe what we were seeing was the spectacle of stars being just a little bit uncomfortable with each other, not quite committing to the project, choosing projects that really weren't that good but making them just to act with the other star.

But The Fortune is the most embarrassing of those.

By contrast and admittedly on the safe side: Paul Newman and Steve McQueen put THEIR star power into a big action disaster epic, The Towering Inferno, and that WAS a hit. Newman and Redford re-teamed for The Sting which proved(unlike the similarly period "Fortune") to be from a spectacularly good and inventive script that filled in for the spectacle in "Inferno." Another blockbuster.

[–] BeaSouth (3284) 4 years ago

Very interesting context you provide. I watched it last night and thought it was poorly done from the beginning. The plot was very strange. I still don’t comprehend why the three characters were going to California. And, the driving motivation for the sham marriage was this all consuming fear of Mann Act prosecution re interstate travel with a woman for immoral purposes. Yet neither Oscar or Nicky were even slightly phased about the likelihood of a felony prosecution when they were overtly conspiring and attempting to murder Freddie. Once they got to California, the movie just went into neutral with none of the characters having any direction or purpose. Then there was the bizarre wing walking scene that had no connection to anything we knew or came to learn about Oscar. It was completely untethered from his character (not to mention it completely defied any reality in which the movie was supposed to be taking place). I agree that what I watched seemed to involve a half baked script and actors who were completely uncommitted to presenting a coherent movie

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Yep..that's it.

I suppose we can also note that in 1975, both Cuckoo's Nest(Jack Nicholson's hit) and Shampoo(Warren Beatty's hit) DID have good coherent scripts. Cuckoo's Nest was more gripping and led to wins for Picture, Actor, Actress and more; but Shampoo got an Oscar win(for Lee Grant) and was well regarded.

"The play's the thing"...The Fortune had a terrible script. By a friend of Nicholson's who had written the well-regarded but rather strange "Five Easy Pieces."

..and something tells me that Nicholson and Beatty eventually knew that there were trying to bring a bad script to life(i have read that major stars usually know if they are in a "stinker" or not AS they are making it.)