Dyan Cannon – Movie Musings

Deliberately old-fashioned and comforting drama, probably why it was a big hit when released

Director: Warren Beatty, Buck Henry

Cast: Warren Beatty (Joe Pendleton), Julie Christie (Betty Logan), James Mason (Mr Jordan), Jack Warden (Max Corkle), Charles Grodin (Tony Abbott), Dyan Cannon (Julia Farnsworth), Buck Henry (The Escort), Vincent Gardenia (Inspector Krim), Joseph Maher (Sisk), Hamilton Camp (Bentley), Arthur Malet (Everett)

Beatty’s cosily old-fashioned directorial debut – in which, Welles like, he celebrated Oscar nominations for producing, directing, writing and acting – might well be the reason for its financial success. Perhaps a world in turmoil needed a remake of the smooth 1941 studio film Here Comes Mr Jordan, becoming the third adaptation of Harry Segall’s 1938 play. Heaven Can Wait reshuffles a few bits and pieces here and there, while aiming to capture as much of the tone of the original as possible.

Beatty is Joe Pendleton, promising quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams… until, facing certain death in a road accident he is plucked to Heaven by his guardian angel (Buck Henry). But the angel was overzealous, as supervisor Mr Jordan (James Mason) reveals Joe had 50 years to live. With his body cremated, Jordan arranges for Joe to take the body of billionaire Leo Farnsworth, recently murdered by his gold digger wife Julia (Dyan Cannon) and her lover, Farnsworth’s secretary, Tony Abbott (Charles Grodin). In his new body, Joe, inspired by environmentalist Betty Logan (Julie Christie), tries to make his company care while buying the Rams and persuading old coach Max (Jack Warden) that it’s really Joe and he needs his help to train his new body for the Super Bowl.

Heaven Can Wait shifts Here Comes Mr Jordan from the world of boxing to the world of football – possibly when original casting choice, Muhammad Ali, turned it down and Beatty’s high school football experience was a better fit. Ali wasn’t the only sought after legend – Beatty offered the sun and moon to Cary Grant to play Mr Jordan, but not even the presence of Grant’s wife Dyan Cannon could tempt him from retirement.

There are the odd tweaks here and there – the plane to Heaven is now a proto-Concorde for starters – but honestly Heaven Can Wait would have been made almost identically in the 1940s, with its dry wit, gentle romance and the Capraesque idea that the little guy can fix the world’s problems with a little bit of honesty, decency and common sense. There is almost nothing of the cynicism of the 1970s at all. It’s a gently reassuring throwback. Nothing wrong with that, but nothing inventive or original either.

Beatty does a decent job of directing things with a classical gentleness, and he’s also pretty good as the good-natured Joe, a sort of sweetly dim guy obsessed with health food and dodgy saxophone playing (roughly in that order). He’s got an endearing simplicity, the sort of guy who takes ages to work out he’s in a way-station for heaven, bounds into his new life with a chattiness that confuses his army of staff (used to an austere employer) and tries to corral his board of directors with a winningly earnest speech crammed with football metaphors, so intently well-meant it even manages to convince (some of) the crusty bean-counters sitting around the table.

Fish-out-of-water comedy emerges rather nicely out of how bemused both Beatty’s character is at the life he finds himself in, and how politely his staff and employees turn a blind eye to what must be a juddering change in personality of their boss. After all, Beatty and Elaine May’s script lands more than a few subtle digs suggesting Farnsworth must have been quite the dick. His wardrobe is a mix of ludicrous sailor and polo outfits and garish mock military uniforms. He had the staff raise a flag and fire a cannon every day. And his company is mercilessly gutting the environment.

Must be a shock for the staff then, that their new boss keeps popping into a cleaning cupboard on the stairs for surreptitious chats with invisible angels. Or that he corrals them en masse for a good-natured football training session in the grounds. The dry, carefully reserved reactions of these servants – led by Joseph Maher’s perfectly straight-faced butler – is consistently funny.

Also consistently funny are Dyan Cannon (Oscar-nominated) and Charles Grodin as a pair of conniving schemers, trying everything they can think of to pocket Farnsworth’s money. Cannon is hilarious, consistently oscillating between hysterical shock and resigned confusion at the unexpected appearances of ‘Farnsworth’. Grodin is perfect as the dry Abbott, a master of the micro-reaction, loathing his boss while also being pathetically deferential to him and wheedling a parade of schemes to try and dispatch his boss. These two are the film’s stand-out performers and funniest characters.

Not that there isn’t merit elsewhere. James Mason is perhaps the perfect substitute for Claude Rains, dry and suave as Head Angel Jordan and forming a good double act with co-director Buck Henry’s harassed junior angel. Jack Warden gained an Oscar nomination for a warmer, gentler version of his distracted coach from 12 Angry Men. Julie Christie’s chemistry with Beatty is not surprisingly on point, although the script gives her very little to play with for the film’s least developed role.

What is surprising though is the sudden bleak note Heaven Can Wait ends on: Joe will eventually lose all memories of his previous lives. It’s so sudden, I had to remind myself the same thing happens in the original (but with a bit more forewarning). Here, it emerges out of left-field and feels unbearably harsh, as if Heaven is cleaning up a clerical error by wiping Joe from existence. The film fails to prep us for this possibility – in the way the original did – as if it was felt the danger of being wiped from existence would spoil all that apeing of 40’s lightness (in which case why not just change it?).

Heaven Can Wait was garlanded by Oscar nominations (including those four for Beatty) but won only one for its admittedly clever set design which plays up the grandiose nonsense of Farnsworth’s mansion (I enjoyed Cannon’s bedroom with its matching fabric covering every wall and surface). Was that because it was so gently reassuringly, old fashioned, but fundamentally a very close remake? It’s a sentimental, charming little crowd-pleaser the sort of thing that perhaps made everyone feel better at the time, a decent, inoffensive film.

Sean Connery plans the perfect crime under the noses of the government in The Anderson Tapes

Director: Sidney Lumet

Cast: Sean Connery (John “Duke” Anderson), Dyan Cannon (Ingrid Everleigh), Martin Balsam (Tommy Haskins), Ralph Meeker (Captain Delaney), Alan King (Pat Angelo), Christopher Walken (The Kid), Val Avery (“Socks” Parelli), Dick Anthony Williams (Edward Spencer), Garrett Morris (Everson), Stan Gottleib (“Pop”)

Everywhere we go now we kind of know that we are being watched. There are cameras everywhere. Satellite links build into our cars. Heck we all carry everywhere we go a portable tracking and recording device that can be listened into. So the idea of surveillance being ever present wouldn’t be a surprise to us. But in 1971, the idea that the government could be listening all the time, at any time was something that couldn’t cross anyone’s mind.

It certainly doesn’t occur to John “Duke” Anderson (Sean Connery) just out of chokey after a ten year stretch. He’s back into a world he hardly understands, but it doesn’t take longer than five minutes in the swanky apartment block of his girlfriend Ingrid (Dyan Cannon) for him to case the joint and plan to do it over – all the apartments at once. Putting a crew together, Duke plans to clean out all the whole block of all its valuable property in one go, with financial backing from the Mafia (who owe him for unspecified reasons). Problem is, Duke’s entire plan is being recorded and monitored by different government agencies from top to bottom who – even if they aren’t speaking to each other – are in position to wreck his plans the instant anyone puts the clues together…

The Anderson Tapes is part crime thriller, part black comedy caper. It generally plays it pretty light – with flashes of violence or danger – and throws in some satire on the surveillance age. The tapes in question are different levels of surveillance at every location Duke seems to stop at. His time in the apartment is recorded by a PI following his girlfriend. The feds bugging his mafia contacts. Most of his criminal gang are being watched by the cops. All this recording creates a load of trees which block the view of the forest. Not one of these agencies thinks about joining up their thinking, meaning the actual robbery comes as a complete surprise to all of them. It’s a neat satirical mark on the incompetence of administrative led organisations – when the robbery is finally being reported by a ham radio operator, the news almost doesn’t get through because of a refusal by the 911 operator to transfer a call without an agreement on who will pay the charges for the call.

In all this surveillance Duke is like a romantic hangover from a by-gone time. As played by Sean Connery he’s a romantic figure, like some sort of working-class Raffles, living by the principles of a gentleman thief. He abhors violence, gets on well with all races and creeds, respects his victims and protects them (so long as they don’t get in his way) and runs operations designed to be clean, quick and painless. He justifies his thievery with talk of how most of the property he nicks is just sitting pointlessly in safes, that the insurance will pay out and that in a way he’s giving a bit of excitement to bored middle-class people. Connery is rather good in this role, channelling this rogueishness and expertly maintaining Lumet’s light tone.

Lumet’s direction is competent, professional and assured. Lumet did not hold the film in high regard – it was one he did “for the money” – but he expertly constructs the film, keeps it tight and brings more than enough intriguing directorial flourishes to it. The action frequently pauses in the criminals conversation for a jump cut to the feds listening to the recordings, having paused the recordings themselves (the paused action even uses voiceover from the feds asking for confirmation of who they are listening to). Later, Lumet uses a similar device in the robbery interjecting flash forwards to the people in the apartment bloc being interviewed on site by the police, commenting on events we have often just seen while the aftermath plays out behind them, that throws in plenty of narrative curve balls and misdirects as the action pans out.

The film is dated in places. Quincy Jones’ score often uses a jarring series of electronic beeps that are meant to echo the surveillance of the piece, but actually sounds impossibly dated and jarring. An opening monologue of Connery on the thrill of safe cracking uncomfortably sounds like he is comparing it to non-consensual sex, Martin Balsam’s gang member is an impossibly limp-wristed antiques expert (although he is immediately believable as someone who wouldn’t be questioned surveying apartments for architectural improvements while he is actually casing the joint). There are other moments – but the film gets by because it never leans too hard on any of these attitudes. Indeed the apartment concierge, is depicted as inflatteringly racist and homophobic, in stark contrast to the multi-ethnic, un-prejudiced gang carrying out the robbery.

The Anderson Tapes is an enjoyable, is very 1970s, piece of work that has more than enough to entertain you. It has a clever structure and makes some sound points on surveillance which probably make it more relevant today than it even was then. Connery is very good in the lead role and there is some excellent support (Christopher Walken is strikingly charismatic in one of his first roles). It’s not in the first rank of its director’s films, but it’s still a very fine caper thriller.