The Candidate (1972 film)

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The Candidate

DVD cover of "The Candidate"
Directed by Michael Ritchie
Produced by Walter Coblenz
Written by Jeremy Larner
Starring Robert Redford,
Peter Boyle
Music by John Rubinstein
Cinematography Victor J. Kemper,
John Korty
Editing by Robert Estrin,
Richard A. Harris
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date(s) 29 June 1972 (USA)
Running time 109 minutes
Country United States
Language English
IMDb profile

The Candidate is an American film released in 1972, starring Robert Redford. Themes of the film include that of how the political machine corrupts, and the pointlessness of politics. There are also parallels between John F. Kennedy and Redford's character Bill McKay. The film serves mainly to show how a race for a seat in the Senate develops.

The film was shot in Northern California in 1971. Peter Boyle plays the political consultant Marvin Lucas. The screenplay was written by Jeremy Larner, a speech-writer for Senator Eugene J. McCarthy during McCarthy's campaign for the 1968 Democratic Presidential nomination. The film won a Best Writing Oscar and was also nominated for Best Sound.

Tagline: Nothing matters more than winning. Not even what you believe in.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle), a political election specialist, is given the unenviable task of finding a Democratic candidate to unseat California U.S. Senator Crocker Jarmon, a popular Republican. With no big-name Democrat eager to enter the seemingly unwinnable race, Lucas seeks out Bill McKay (Robert Redford), a thirty-something, married, attractive man who couldn’t be further removed from politics. Despite being the son of former governor John J. McKay (played by Melvyn Douglas), Bill was never interested in politics and instead acts as a lawyer for liberal causes.

Lucas gives McKay a blunt proposition: Jarmon can’t lose; and since the race is already decided, McKay is free to get out on the campaign trail and say exactly what he wants because none of it matters anyway. Though he now knows he will definitely lose, McKay accepts the proposition because it gives him the chance to speak to groups of people and spread his liberal values (which include abortion rights, busing, environmental regulations and welfare). He rejects help or involvement from his father, wanting to make it on his own steam.

McKay hits the campaign trail and begins courting voters. His team of campaign staffers start airing pro-McKay commercials while creating ads designed to make Jarmon look old and weary. With no serious Democratic opposition, McKay cruises to the Democratic nomination on his name alone. He is then confronted by Lucas, who has distressing news: According to the latest election projections, McKay is set to be defeated by an overwhelming margin come November. While McKay counted on losing, he never counted on being “humiliated” – and the recent primary win means he can no longer back out and quit the race. Worried by a possible blowout, he agrees to start “broadening” his message to appeal to more voters.

Throughout the next several months, McKay travels the state and campaigns, with his liberal statements eroding each day. His early support of abortion rights and gun control fade to mush, while his stump speech is reduced to the same few clichés and a new slogan: “For a better way: Bill McKay!” The new approach causes McKay to gain in the public opinion polls, but he has a new problem. Because McKay’s father has stayed completely out of the race, the media speculates that such silence is actually an endorsement of Jarmon. McKay begrudgingly meets his father and tells him the problem. McKay’s father then tells the media he is not endorsing Jarmon, simply honoring his son’s wishes to stay out of the race. As McKay continues to do as he’s told (rather than say what’s in his heart), he continues to gain in the polls. As the campaign continues, McKay suddenly becomes self-aware that he is being manipulated and yells at Lucas to explain what the campaign has become. Though Lucas never verbalizes it, it’s evident that, in his wisdom, Lucas saw McKay as an unpolished gem – a candidate who began with things you couldn’t buy: good looks, confidence and massive name recognition. Lucas then counted on molding McKay as the months went along. Lucas tells McKay that the shift in election strategy isn’t important. What is important, he says, is that McKay is now only four points down – so close, in fact, that Jarmon proposed a debate. Lucas says the debate will provide a chance to close the last gap in the polls. McKay, somewhat resigned to his new course of strategy, agrees to give tailored answers in the debate, rather than his real opinions.

The debate happens, and the two candidates trade barbs, with McKay the slight winner overall. Just as the debate is ending, McKay has a pang of conscience and blurts out that the debate didn’t address any real subjects, such as poverty and race. Lucas and his staffers are furious, knowing this outburst will hurt the campaign. The media go to confront McKay backstage about his remarks but arrive just as John J. McKay appears and vigorously congratulates his son on the debate, apparently having been very impressed with the honesty McKay showed at the end (but probably, as a seasoned pol, actually pulling the stunt to deflect from his son's political gaffe). Instead of the media reporting on McKay’s outburst, the story becomes the reemergence of former Gov. McKay to help his son. The positive story, coupled with McKay’s father’s help on the campaign trail, puts things neck and neck with Jarmon.

Election day arrives and volunteers canvass to get out the vote. McKay, meanwhile, has strayed so far from his original values that he’s in a hotel room having an affair with a staffer. The votes are counted and McKay wins. In one of the movie’s more famous scenes, McKay escapes the victory party and pulls Lucas into a room while throngs of journalists clamor outside. McKay then asks Lucas: “Marvin ... What do we do now?” The media throng arrives to drag them out at that moment and McKay never receives an answer.

This movie also features Michael Ritchie's sister, Elsie Ritchie, as the secretary.

[edit] Analysis

The film highlights many criticisms of modern day American politics, such as the importance of money and the emphasis on the image of political candidates. In particular, the degeneration of McKay from an idealistic public-interest lawyer working for unpopular and then-little-known causes (the young environmentalist movement, civil rights for Latinos, integration through busing) and strong opinions on all issues into a construct of his campaign, dominated by idiotic little slogans (most notably "Bill McKay: the better way") and a road-weary nervous wreck, to boot.

The titular candidate is politically disaffected. It is revealed that he has not registered to vote and does not have a clear political message to communicate. But there are issues he is interested in (‘saved some trees and got a clinic open’ as Lucas baldy explains) and this opportunity presents a public platform and the facility to be in a position to communicate his ideas. In agreeing to run, after Lucas guarantees that he’ll lose, he makes what Ian Scott describes as a ‘Faustian pact’ [1], which will inevitably lead to his ideology being submerged during the process of campaigning.

McKay naively believes that Lucas will let him, to paraphrase, go where he wants, do what he wants and say what he pleases. As the narrative progresses this promised freedom evaporates, his ideology becomes eroded and he is compromised. His ‘straightforward stands on issues’ [2] are blanded out in interview rehearsals – he is revealed to be pro-choice on abortion but advised to say that he is considering what his position should be. When he does go off message, and presents his own ideas, particular at the end of a television debate with his rival, it is treated with the same collective horror as a basketball player dropping the ball at a crucial moment of a game. Despite some early scenes in which the candidate strolls onto a beach to talk off the cuff to youngsters about environmental issues and doing walkabouts in Watts (recorded footage of which are used in television commercials throughout the campaign), by the end of the film he’s standing on soap boxes working a pre-prepared speech in front of middle class garden parties and factory workers. McKay changes the social classes he talks to in order to win votes. He is even quoting the campaign slogan in the stump speech.

McKay becomes corrupted, but it is largely his own choice. In a key scene, he is called into Lucas’ war room and shown the results of a poll in which he is losing badly, he asks why that is so important since he was going to lose anyway. ‘Lucas asks him is he really wants to be humiliated. McKay answers, “That wasn’t part of the deal.”’ [3] Even when he makes attempts to distance himself from the process -- he ‘collapses into helpless laughter while trying to tape a television statement; he mocks his own stump speech.’ [4] and sits in the back of the campaign car mocking his stump speech (‘this country cannot house its houseless’) – it is clear that he cares for his own image, especially in the eyes of the voting public. When a rumour suggests that his father, whom he has hitherto kept out of the campaign, is backing Jarman, his rival, he immediately pays him a visit in order to get a statement released. Indeed his decent into politics becomes a cliché – it is visually hinted that he is going to be late for an important meeting with a labour leader after a brief romantic tryst with a campaign worker. ‘There is a sexual compromise for the candidate and an association between sex and power’ [5]. In the closing moments he is chaste. ‘I wonder if anybody understood what I was trying to do’, to which is father replies, ‘Don’t worry son, if won’t make any difference’.

Unusually, in a film so steeped in political and electoral process, the iconography usually associated with a campaign and in particular the stars and stripes only appear at certain key moments in order to demonstrate the corruption of the candidate. Unlike Tim Robbin’s Bob Roberts (1992) in which the American flag is fetishised to the point of parody with the titular Roberts in one key image standing naked but for a flag wrapped about his form, McKay is distanced from even the colours through much of the film. Although it is worth noting that the poster for the film has Robert Redford front and centre with the US flag in the background, which is an odd choice considering its lack of an appearance through much of the film.

His campaign banner is in green and yellow and at the rallies organised by his own campaign team, red, white and blue are nowhere to be seen. The only deployment of the flag itself in the film happens almost subliminally during an archive television commercial for his Republican competitor. When the colours do finally appear, draped over a car during a tickertape parade with McKay standing in the centre, it emphasises that the candidate’s approach has utterly changed – in these late successful stages he has embraced the standard iconography of a political campaign and is aligning himself with expectation.

One central message of the film is that the business of campaigning has overridden the condition of taking office. At the end of the film rather than being ‘triumphant in victory: Bill McKay is only confused’. [6] The weakness is that the spectator does not clearly see the consequences of the campaign. As Scott describes ‘The dilemma for the director was to answer these charges of media power and sound bite manipulation, not simply pointedly to allow campaign guru Lucas to fly off to his next candidate as if going to a sales meeting.’ [7] just after the oft-quoted line from McKay ‘What do I do now?’ Monaco agrees that it is not ‘enough to excuse the film by explaining that it works in a Brechtian way, to ask questions rather than to answer them. Brecht always implied answers.’ [8]

It has been reported that upon viewing the film, Dan Quayle came to conclusion that since he was more handsome than Robert Redford, and that he would be well equipped to win a campaign to enter the White House [9]. Ironically, the future vice-president of the United States, perhaps inadvertently, highlights one of the themes of the piece – that no matter the ideology or interests of the candidate, the business of political campaigning is driven by image.

[edit] Reception

N.Y. Times (June 30, 1972) reviewer Vincent Canby applauded Redford's performance and commented that: "The Candidate is serious, but its tone is coldly comic, as if it had been put together by people who had given up hope." [10]Christopher Null from filmcritic.com gave the film 4.5/5 and said: "... this satire on an American institution continues to gain relevance instead of lose it."[11]

[edit] Cast

[edit] Selected quotations

  • Bill McKay: It's the basic indifference that made this country great.
  • Marvin Lucas: You're the Democratic nominee for Senator.
    Bill McKay: You make that sound like a death sentence.
  • Bill McKay: So vote once, vote twice, for Bill McKay... you middle class honkees.
  • In an ominous voice, an election-day sound truck bellows: What has Bill McKay done for California? Not much... but his father was governor.
  • Bill McKay: What do we do now?

[edit] Trivia

 Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines.
The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.
  • Groucho Marx has an uncredited walk-on cameo in what would be his last screen appearance.
  • Numerous real-life politicians, such as George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, Alan Cranston, Sam Yorty, and Jesse Unruh, make cameo appearances as themselves, as do a number of journalists -- notably, KGO-TV anchor Van Amburg, the debate moderator.
  • Many people who see the film today think it is based on the life of Jerry Brown, whose father, Edmund G. Brown, also served as governor of California. But the younger Brown had not yet been elected governor when the film was released. (He was serving as California Secretary of State at the time.) The campaign of Bill McKay was inspired by the campaign of California Sen. John V. Tunney [1].
  • At one point in the film, an aide says that "Evans and Novak" are about to run a potentially embarrassing item about McKay in their column. The reference is to real-life "inside dope" political columnists Robert Novak and the late Rowland Evans. Novak later commented that not only did the producers not ask the duo's permission to use their name, but they were not paid any royalties either.[12]
  • The parade scene was shot in the town of Tracy, California, during Tracy High School's Homecoming Parade. The campaign colors of green and gold were chosen because they are the school colors. This made filming much cheaper.[13]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Scott, Ian. 2000. American Politics in Hollywood Film. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. p79
  2. ^ Gianos, Philip L. 1998. Politics and Politicians in American Film. Praeger Publishers, Wesport. p193
  3. ^ Alkana, Linda. 2003. The Absent President: Mr. Smith, The Candidate and Bulworth. In. Hollywood’s White House: The American Presidency in Film and History. Edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. Connor. The University Press of Kentucky, Kentucky
  4. ^ Gianos, Philip L. 1998. Politics and Politicians in American Film. Praeger Publishers, Westport. p193
  5. ^ Gianos, Philip L. 1998. Politics and Politicians in American Film. Praeger Publishers, Wesport. p194
  6. ^ Alkana, Linda. 2003. The Absent President: Mr. Smith, The Candidate and Bulworth. In. Hollywood’s White House: The American Presidency in Film and History. Edited by Peter C. Rollins and John E. Connor. The University Press of Kentucky, Kentucky. p136
  7. ^ Scott, Ian. 2000. American Politics in Hollywood Film. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. p80
  8. ^ Monaco, James. 1975. Irony: the films of Michael Ritchie. Sight and Sound. 44:3. p83
  9. ^ Baumgartner, Jody C. 2000. Modern Presidential Electioneering: An Organizational and Comparative Approach. Praeger Publishers, Wesport. p160
  10. ^ N.Y. Times review by V. Canby June 30, 1972
  11. ^ Filmcritic.com review
  12. ^ Personal interview, Robert Novak
  13. ^ Shooting locations for The Candidate

[edit] External links