The Landlord (1970) Raising Laughs and Awareness not Rent (Review)

Released by Radiance this week is The Landlord, Hal Ashby’s 1970 directorial debut. As a movie, The Landlord may have some of the rough edges of a first effort, but it also has the distinctive offbeat talent and approach that the inimitable Ashby would bring to his successive ventures. Specifically seen from the off here is the satirical and caustic eye he had for America’s rich, eccentric, blissfully ignorant and self centred WASP families – characters and ideals he would go on to explore and poke fun at, more successfully, in the likes of Being There, Shampoo and Harold and Maude.

Based on a novel by Black female author Kristen Hunter, adapted for cinema by Black renaissance man Bill Gunn (Ganja & Hess) and produced by Norman Jewison as he came off the back of In the Heat of the Night, The Landlord stars the cherubic Beau Bridges as Elgar Enders; a 29 year old moneyed, liberal-identiying white kid, who one day decides to up and leave his families rich, palatial surroundings and buy property for himself. He settles upon a run-down tenement in an exclusively Black urban ghetto with some half arsed and selfish idea to knock it all through to the skylight and hang a chandelier from there, and that’s it. Oblivious to the damage he is setting out to wreak upon this community, he turns up dressed in a white suit and wreathed in an open-faced smile, only to find himself laughed at, jeered at and, quite rightly, chased off by the less than impressed Black tenants.

Whilst, on the surface, a lot of The Landlord may initially look like the (now somewhat dated) race comedy it was originally billed as, the film routinely takes a far more pleasing turn into the territory of urgent social commentary.  The Landlord digs deep into the inherent perceived notions of race, hypocrisy and awkwardness therein that resonated for 70s audiences, whilst also continuing to speak with relevance (not only on those issues) but on the wider issues of gentrification and poverty, in ways which surely resonate with today’s audiences.

The twist away from some racial comedy of manners in which Elgar “goes native” in a Dashiki shirt and falls in love with a Black girl to the horror of his conservative mother (things that do happen in the movie to an extent) into something more meditative and thought provoking first arises when the privileged and naively ignorant Elgar’s eyes are somewhat opened to the hardships his Black tenants face. Forming a particular relationship with afro-hair stylist Fanny (Diana Sands), whose partner Copee (Louis Gossett Jr, who sadly died earlier this year) is a volatile activist undergoing an identity crisis, he observes the pride they have in their skin colour and class, alongside the rage they feel from the fact that his own skin colour and class keep them at the bottom rung of society. Conveniently and expediently for the plot, Elgar ends up sleeping with Fanny on the night that Copee is imprisoned for some protesting down town. But whilst the sex means nothing to Fanny – who makes a point of reiterating that she loves Copee dearly – it clearly means something to Elgar. Indeed, it enables him to commit to the feelings he has for Marki Bey’s Lanie, a biracial girl he previously had conflicting feelings for, having initially presumed on their meeting that she was white. With his eyes open to both his emotions and his latent, ingrained prejudice, audiences may expect the film to deliver a Lesson Learned message followed by a Happily Ever After. But Hunter’s original novel isn’t about to sacrifice a Black woman at the alter of enlightenment for a white protagonist to go off and love a light-skinned sister more acceptable to his social circle. The Landlord opened with a white man’s intention to fuck things up for a Black, underprivileged community and that’s exactly how it is going to end too, albeit inadvertently. With the knowledge that a white liberal can be just as much bad news as a white bigot, it is revealed that Elgar’s meaningless night of passion with Fanny has led to her pregnancy…

The Landlord is a heartfelt, articulate, and intelligent film. An impressive feature debut from Ashby, his previous duties as an editor are displayed to great effect with montages and sudden jump cuts, such as the one in which Elgar’s mother (Lee Grant, in an Academy Award nominated turn – a big deal, considering she was once blacklisted in Hollywood by the HUAC for twelve years) has a brief vision of a Zulu woman dancing when he discusses his interracial love affair. His sense of drama and emotion as a filmmaker is strong, nicely handled and beautifully composed too, with the scene in which Elgar overhears the growing argument between Fanny and Copee, knowing that he is the reason for it, a particular stand out. The Landlord remains a film that has something, and it speaks its message in an interesting, albeit quirky manner. It is honest but by no means optimistic, taking the pulse of the nation at the time and making audiences laugh as well as think.

The Radiance release includes a clutch of extra features. Two exclusives are an overview of the film and Ashby by his biographer, Nick Dawson, and an exploration of the racial politics in the film and the work of Bill Gunn by critic Ellen E. Jones, author of Screen Deep: How Film and Television Can Solve Racism and Save the World. There’s also a set of 2019 interview with Beau Bridges, Lee Grant and Norman Jewison recorded for Kino Lorber, and a trailer.

Mark’s Archive – The Landlord (1970)