SHERDOG MOVIE CLUB: Week 157 - The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

[europe1]

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Here's a quick list of all movies watched by the SMC. Or if you prefer, here's a more detailed examination.

Our Director
Norman Jewison

Norman Frederick Jewison was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Dorothy Irene (Weaver) and Percy Joseph Jewison, who managed a post office and a convenience store. His mother was an English immigrant, and his father was of English and Ulster-Scots descent. Jewison got his BA at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and after moving to London, where he wrote scripts and acted for the BBC, he returned to Toronto and directed TV shows for the CBC (1952-1958), then musicals and variety in New York, before embarking on a film career. In 1986 he established the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies in Toronto.

Our Stars
Steve McQueen

Faye Dunaway

Film Overview

Premise: A debonair, adventuresome bank executive believes he has pulled off the perfect multi-million dollar heist, only to match wits with a sexy insurance investigator who will do anything to get her man.

Budget: $4.3 million

Box Office: $14 million​

Trivia
(courtesy of IMDB)

* Writer Alan Trustman got the idea for the film when he was working in a bank and spent his more idle moments imagining how to rob it.

* The one-minute kissing sequence between the two leads took eight hours to film over a number of days.
​

* Faye Dunaway cited this as one of her favourite movie-making experiences.

* One of the more noteworthy aspects of the film is its split screen opening sequence. While some claim that this is an example of style over content, the real reason the split screen was adopted was because editor Hal Ashby was tasked with reducing the running time of the opening.

* Sean Connery had been the original choice for the title role but declined, exhausted from filming You Only Live Twice (1967). He later regretted the decision. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Rock Hudson were also considered.​

Members: @europe1 @MusterX @TheOldMan @Kyojiro @HHJ @Cubo de Sangre @FrontNakedChoke @Sakurabaism @Mr Mojo Lane @Minotauro Rex Foot @Tufts @chickenluver @Coolthulu @OMGstreetfight @Yotsuya @jei @LHWBelt @moreorless87 @HARRISON_3 @Bullitt68 @HenryFlower @BeardotheWeirdo @Zer @TheLinguist @Rimbaud82

 

[europe1]

Whoops, I forgot the new guys

@Sakurabaism
@Mr Mojo Lane

 

[Bullitt68]

As if my name isn't proof enough, I'm a MASSIVE Steve McQueen fan. I still remember renting The Great Escape from my public library forever ago - when they'd release long movies in those giant, double-tape VHS boxes - and watching it first thing after I woke up in the morning and loving it so much that I watched it again with dinner that night. All of his major films - The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Cincinnati Kid, The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, The Getaway, and Papillon - are among my all-time favorite movies...except for The Thomas Crown Affair

Now, that's not to say that I think that this is a bad movie. It absolutely isn't. But it just doesn't pop. There's something about it that's a little flat. It's tough to put my finger on (part of it, I have no doubt, is that I was never crazy about Faye Dunaway and I'm really not crazy for the way that her character in this film was written, just too ostentatious like the writer was trying to amuse himself rather than find the best character to match with McQueen's) but the movie is too languid to really be that effective as a cat-and-mouse game, the characters are too aloof for the romance to really sizzle, and the filmmaking is a little too flamboyant for the plot to truly enthrall. The first act is top-notch IMO, but it loses a lot of steam in the middle and because the whole cat-and-mouse romance thing was a bit flat the ending, while awesome, doesn't have the impact that it should (though fans of Hannibal should get to the ending and immediately think of the end tag on the Season 2 finale ).

That said, there are a number of great scenes: The legendary opening credits sequence; the whole robbery sequence, which is really a superb display of plotting, cinematography, editing, and sound design; the chess sequence, of course; and, my personal favorite, the scene where they bring McQueen in with the getaway driver.

So, again, this is by no means a bad movie. It's just one of those movies that could've/should've been better given the talent involved. At the end of the day, though, you get to watch Steve McQueen be Steve McQueen, so you know it's going to be a good day at the movies. I also give it some bonus points for being McQueen's favorite of his own movies due to the fact that he grew up so rough and so poor that to be able to play such a distinguished and high-class character was a surreal treat for him.

 

[MusterX]

I don't know what I can say about this film. I liked so much of it, and also hated other parts. I loved the score, especially the opening song.



I also liked that the film jumped straight into the heist and wasted no time. I like that Thomas Crown set it up so that the guys only saw each other one time. What really bugged me though was the way Vicki was able to walk in, pick up a stack of photos, and accurately pick Steve McQueen out of the stack. I can't even comprehend why was Steve McQueen's picture even in that stack much less how Vicki could pick a more unlikely candidate for a bank robbery.

Thomas Crown, played by Steve McQueen, is the most unlikely candidate to be doing bank robberies in history. He himself is a successful bank executive. He's wealthy, lives in an upscale mansion, plays polo and gold, why in the name of fuck would Vicki somehow pick him as the bank robber? Then we had the equivalent of the neck snapping scene in Henry when Thomas Crown managed to instantly KO a man with a slight bonk on the head, drag him to his car and frame him for drunk driving, which btw, seemed to amuse Thomas Crown greatly.

The last half of the film shows very little in the way of Vicki collecting evidence to bust Crown, instead we get a lot of scenes that appear to show Vicki falling in love with Crown. Ultimately she becomes conflicted between her job of busting Crown and her love for Crown. At the end we get a montage of bank robberies as Crown continues to knock down jobs and finally at the end when Vicki is on a stake out to bust Crown at the money pick up, he doesn't show up and instead its a telegram for Vicki.

She reads the telegram which says Crown is gone and she can either meet up with him or just keep the car. Vicki tears up the telegram which is really the most inexplicable thing in the entire movie because the police were going to look at that telegram no matter what, they wouldn't let her read it, tear it up, and throw it in the air. I mean, they are on a stake out for him. The guy gets out of the suspects car and has a telegram for Vicki.

Was she in love with him or wanted to bust him? We get indications of both but at the end when she tries to bust him, she's happy he got away.

 

[Coolthulu]

The Thomas Crown Affair is a lot like Ocean’s 11, except instead of the combined badassery of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon, you get all that baddassery wrapped in one single awe inspiring badass, Steve McQueen, the coolest motherfucker around at that time. However, he is definitely more suited to the underdog rascally types as opposed to the suave billionaire types. You can very clearly see the way certain editing and even musical tricks here made an imprint on Soderbergh’s Ocean’s movies. There's some really interesting editing throughout, specifically with scene transitions and the plethora of split-screening to show multiple lines of connected action. The flirty chess match was something else. For director Norman Jewison, it's a showy display of his remarkable versatility.

I love how Thomas Crown is just in it for the fun. The opening robbery is amazing, very meticulous yet stylized. Sadly the rest of the movie doesn't quite live up to its beginning. Seeing Dunaway and McQueen spare against each other in their wonderfully complicated relationship is great stuff. I love seeing Boston during this era. The film as itself doesn't quite gel together as a whole, with some drag and lack of focus, but it is still quite a cool and enjoyable movie.

 

[europe1]

Well, for all that pizzazz, this movie really falls flat outside of some key scenes.

All of his major films - The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Cincinnati Kid, The Sand Pebbles, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, The Getaway, and Papillon

Wait... no The Blob!?

Tell me, Bullitt, do you just not think that a 28 years old McQueen could play a teenager?

I mean, just look at that fresh-faced look of his!

the characters are too aloof for the romance to really sizzle

During this movie, I got big "these people are hot and famous, therefore we should care about watching the bang" vibes. You know, the kind of romance where starpower shoulders the load instead of a feeling of intimacy or eroticism.

but the movie is too languid to really be that effective as a cat-and-mouse game, the characters are too aloof for the romance to really sizzle

The remake with Brosnan and Rene Russo has its own problems. But at least it nails the impression that these people lust after one-another (or at least Russo, since it's focused more on her impressions). In it, the way you have Russo getting excited as she's watching 007 perform his heist is a great vehicle for these emotions since it ties together the cat-and-mouse game with their romance and imbues them with a sense of immediacy and presence that this film lacks. Erotic chess-matches are all well and fine, but it's all a bit too abstract and dejected to make for a torridness that follows through with the film.

the characters are too aloof for the romance to really sizzle, and the filmmaking is a little too flamboyant for the plot to truly enthrall

Continuing on with comparing this to other movies, I'm not sure the flamboyant filmmaking and the suave aloofness of the characters really married well. The energy of the first doesn't really jive or give strength to the placidness of the other. Take something like Deadly Sweet (1967) which was also a romance with very similar ostentatious camera-trickery. But in that, the romantic aspects focused more on the youthful lustfulness and delirium one can experience during an amorous hook-up. So, it felt more like filmmaking and theme working in tandem, the experimentality of one lending a sense of energy to the other.

the whole robbery sequence, which is really a superb display of plotting, cinematography, editing, and sound design

I wouldn't call it superb. Great maybe. Making even more contemporary comparisons, I'd think of something superb as the jewel-heist in Melville's Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

; the chess sequence, of course; and, my personal favorite

Judging by the way she handled those pieces. It's too bad for McQueen that Dunaway prefers black

I'll see myself out...

is that I was never crazy about Faye Dunaway

As someone who really enjoys Dunaway, I didn't like her either in this picture. The way she smiles in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) makes me believe that she's a girl who really wants to go on a wild ride and forsake all societal pretexes. Here, it's just that heartless suaveness.

But c'mon, that hairdo? We're talking Ali MacGraw in Convoy levels of garish and unbecoming coiffures with that hornets-nest she's carrying around

I also give it some bonus points for being McQueen's favorite of his own movies due to the fact that he grew up so rough and so poor that to be able to play such a distinguished and high-class character was a surreal treat for him.

He should have had a British accent like Michael Caine and then they'd have sent him such characters by the boatload despite his upbringing.

. I also give it some bonus points for being McQueen's favorite

I saw that on the IMDB Trivia page and went, "Nah... I'm not going to believe that. Not with his other movies"

At the end of the day, though, you get to watch Steve McQueen be Steve McQueen,

I guess we're supposed to intune that rich adrenaline-junkie McQueen is attracted to Dunaway because of the danger she posses him. Now he can get the sort of rushes he feels in an aeroplane or marionetting a robbery within the confines of a relationship. But, when they do get together, I don't think McQueen exudes a balancing act between danger and attraction. He just seems very chilled and mellowed by her presence. There is no vulnerability to him.

What really bugged me though was the way Vicki was able to walk in, pick up a stack of photos, and accurately pick Steve McQueen out of the stack.

Yeah. That was one of those instances where I went: "They're not going to be THAT stupid, are they?"

and then they did...

She reads the telegram which says Crown is gone and she can either meet up with him or just keep the car. Vicki tears up the telegram which is really the most inexplicable thing in the entire movie because the police were going to look at that telegram no matter what, they wouldn't let her read it, tear it up, and throw it in the air. I mean, they are on a stake out for him. The guy gets out of the suspects car and has a telegram for Vicki.

Style over substance Muster... style over substance.

 

[Mr Mojo Lane]

I could see why this was so popular in the 60s. Interesting watch just to look at the 60s from more of a realism point of view.

 

[LHWBelt]

I tried to watch this twice but couldn't get into it so imma have to just try and hop back in next week y'all.

 

[Yotsuya]

Thomas Crown Affair and The Sting are both movies I dodged for long time because they didn’t seem that good. The Sting turned out to be just as mediocre as I thought when I finally gave it a try and now reading this thread it seems, that I should keep dodging TCA.

 

[Bullitt68]

Well, it looks like I'm still going to have to go ahead as originally planned and have my next round be a Steve McQueen round, because this showing doesn't come anywhere near doing justice to how awesome he is and how awesome most of his movies are. Granted, I had a feeling that this would happen, so it's not some heartbreaking surprise, but it's still unfortunate that the first Steve McQueen movie in SMC history had to be closer to the bottom than the top of the barrel.

What really bugged me though was the way Vicki was able to walk in, pick up a stack of photos, and accurately pick Steve McQueen out of the stack. I can't even comprehend why was Steve McQueen's picture even in that stack much less how Vicki could pick a more unlikely candidate for a bank robbery.

Thomas Crown, played by Steve McQueen, is the most unlikely candidate to be doing bank robberies in history. He himself is a successful bank executive. He's wealthy, lives in an upscale mansion, plays polo and gold, why in the name of fuck would Vicki somehow pick him as the bank robber?

The problem is that the psychology makes sense - like europe was saying in his post, the dude's an alpha gambler adrenaline-junkie winner, so the idea of a dude like that at the top (with "no more worlds to conquer," so to speak) looking for new challenges and new thrills has some psychological plausibility - but only after-the-fact. Once you zero-in on him, you can start to connect the dots, but you need some kind of tie or link first, because on the surface, like you're saying, there's no reason for him to even be on anyone's radar.

Was she in love with him or wanted to bust him? We get indications of both but at the end when she tries to bust him, she's happy he got away.

It was sort of like the Pacino/De Niro dynamic in Heat: A part of Pacino liked thinking that De Niro had really gone "bon voyage, motherfucker," that he was really gone - even though the hunter in him would've loved that showdown. Then, when he gets to go back on the hunt and he gets that showdown, he hates it that he had to kill him - even though the hunter in him got exactly what he wanted.

In her case, she loves the hunt, she loves putting the puzzle together and getting her man - even though the woman in her wanted him to escape and avoid prison. Then, when she thought that she had the drop on him, she hated the prospect of arresting him - even though the hunter in her would've gotten exactly what she wanted.

Throwing love into the mix, I think that there was more ambivalence in the Dunaway/McQueen dynamic than there was in the Pacino/De Niro dynamic - after all, Pacino did say explicitly that even though he wouldn't like it he'd still put De Niro down - but, in the end, I think that she was happier that he got away than she was disappointed that she didn't get her man.

Like I said, the writing wasn't strong enough for the ending to really hit with the impact that it should've, but from McQueen's side of it, the orchestration and then the slick get away and him up in the air - no matter what you think of the movie as a whole, the ending's pretty fucking cool

Wait... no The Blob!?

I like my '50s sci-fi, but even with McQueen that one never really did it for me. I actually prefer the 1988 version.

During this movie, I got big "these people are hot and famous, therefore we should care about watching the bang" vibes. You know, the kind of romance where starpower shoulders the load instead of a feeling of intimacy or eroticism.

Yep.

The remake with Brosnan and Rene Russo has its own problems. But at least it nails the impression that these people lust after one-another (or at least Russo, since it's focused more on her impressions). In it, the way you have Russo getting excited as she's watching 007 perform his heist is a great vehicle for these emotions since it ties together the cat-and-mouse game with their romance and imbues them with a sense of immediacy and presence that this film lacks. Erotic chess-matches are all well and fine, but it's all a bit too abstract and dejected to make for a torridness that follows through with the film.

Even though I'm not the biggest fan of the 1968 version, I've never been able to bring myself to watch the 1999 one. And I'm a massive John McTiernan fan. I'm just not fans of either Brosnan or Russo, so that combined with my not really loving the original in the first place has kept me away from it.

Continuing on with comparing this to other movies, I'm not sure the flamboyant filmmaking and the suave aloofness of the characters really married well. The energy of the first doesn't really jive or give strength to the placidness of the other. Take something like Deadly Sweet (1967) which was also a romance with very similar ostentatious camera-trickery. But in that, the romantic aspects focused more on the youthful lustfulness and delirium one can experience during an amorous hook-up. So, it felt more like filmmaking and theme working in tandem, the experimentality of one lending a sense of energy to the other.

Haven't seen Deadly Sweet but I know what you mean and I agree.

I wouldn't call it superb. Great maybe. Making even more contemporary comparisons, I'd think of something superb as the jewel-heist in Melville's Le Cercle Rouge (1970)

You and your Melville

Judging by the way she handled those pieces. It's too bad for McQueen that Dunaway prefers black

Thomas Crown Affair and The Sting are both movies I dodged for long time because they didn’t seem that good. The Sting turned out to be just as mediocre as I thought when I finally gave it a try and now reading this thread it seems, that I should keep dodging TCA.

I get what you're saying and I get where you're coming from, but the McQueen fan in me still wants to encourage you to watch The Thomas Crown Affair if for no other reason because McQueen >>>>>>>>> Newman and The Thomas Crown Affair >>>>>>>>> The Sting and to have seen the Newman one but not the McQueen one isn't the correct ratio

 

[europe1]

I like my '50s sci-fi, but even with McQueen that one never really did it for me. I actually prefer the 1988 version.

Yeah, that's a really good remake, actually.

And I'm a massive John McTiernan fan.

I even like the 13th Warrior. But I get migraines whenever I remember he was the criminal responsible for Rollerball. The 1999 version isn't all-to similar to this one. The same setup of investigator-vs-criminal but it feels quite different though. Strong opening and ending but drags a lot in the middle, if memory serves.

You and your Melville

I know that I'm at risk of Flanderizing myself, but I just find Melville such a great benchmark to compare someones greatness against. He made straight genre-stories but didn't rely on any ostentatious camera-tomfoolery to make his mark. I just like the guy, okay!

McQueen >>>>>>>>> Newman

Me: Bird
Bullitt: Unassuming girl
@MusterX when he realizes you said THAT about Cool Hand Luke: Coke Bottle going Nuclear

 

[Andersons Foot]

I was really rooting for American Animals but this wasn’t a bad second option. AA is probably in my top 15 movies of all time.

I didn’t find anything I particularly loved about this movie but as a whole I enjoyed it. The opening credits were pretty awesome.

I liked how Thomas was able to pull this off without any of the guys involved knowing who he is, & that he did all of it just for fun. It was also interesting to see the heist so early. It seems like every heist movie spends half the movie on the decision to do the heist and the planning of the heist before it actually happens.

Faye was gorgeous back in the day. I don’t recall ever seeing any of her earlier work.

Enjoyable movie but I hope we get to discuss American Animals one day.

 

[JayPettryMMA]

I haven't been this distracted while attempting to watch a SMC movie in a long time. Let's see if I can put my thoughts together. Been a bit of a trying week, to say the least. Luckily, I had my Mandy thoughts mostly drafted up and just added some things at the bottom to give it some depth. My lack of attention does not reflect on the quality of this movie, which is solid, but rather what else is going on. Life finds a way.

I will always love the chess scene. It's one of the better examples of terrific non-verbal communication in film. But then the scene right after, I do hate the insanely long kissing scene, it always feels so painful to watch. Even worse knowing from the note that the scene took eight hours of film.

But to be perfectly frank, this movie was not up to the Steve McQueen level of excellence. The leads only had chemistry in spurts, like the chess scene, and to echo earlier sentiments exactly, were "here are two pretty people, let's watch them fall in 'love'". It had its moments, but the inconsistency really hurt this picture. The robbery at the beginning set the bar a little too high for the rest of it. Remember that heist documentary Smash and Grab? Yeah, sort of like that.

A lot of the things some of you said earlier, I also felt similarly, like her picking his picture out of the lineup despite that he'd be the last person ever considered in a lineup like that.

6.5/10. Repeated sentiments and similar ideas and feelings that others have expressed. It could have been so much more. You know what? I might get ostracized for this because I dare speak ill of the McQueen, but I think the remake was actually slightly better. The charisma between Pierce Brosnan and the incomparable Rene Russo was better, and I think the casting of Thomas Crown was better with a slick guy like Brosnan rather than a guy like McQueen that almost seemed like he might yell at or punch someone suddenly. I don't know how to describe that feeling, but he felt out of place some of the time. Maybe we can owe that to his personal feelings of growing up very differently so playing a man living a life of luxury was uncomfortable for him, but the fit was only 80-90%. Also, Sinnerman > any song from the original including Windmills.

 

[Yotsuya]

I get what you're saying and I get where you're coming from, but the McQueen fan in me still wants to encourage you to watch The Thomas Crown Affair if for no other reason because McQueen >>>>>>>>> Newman and The Thomas Crown Affair >>>>>>>>> The Sting and to have seen the Newman one but not the McQueen one isn't the correct ratio

Me: Bird
Bullitt: Unassuming girl
@MusterX when he realizes you said THAT about Cool Hand Luke: Coke Bottle going Nuclear

Yeah, I'd hate to be divisive, but the way I see it is like:

 

[Bullitt68]

I even like the 13th Warrior. But I get migraines whenever I remember he was the criminal responsible for Rollerball. The 1999 version isn't all-to similar to this one. The same setup of investigator-vs-criminal but it feels quite different though. Strong opening and ending but drags a lot in the middle, if memory serves.

In both cases - Rollerball and The Thomas Crown Affair - since I neither loved nor hated the originals I just wasn't compelled to see remakes of them. So those have remained for many years the only films of his that I've never bothered watching.

As for his military version of Rashomon, that's my fucking jam.

Easily one of the most underrated movies of the 21st Century. I absolutely love this movie.

Me: Bird
Bullitt: Unassuming girl
@MusterX when he realizes you said THAT about Cool Hand Luke: Coke Bottle going Nuclear

And here's me listening to someone who thinks that Paul Newman is either (a) a better actor or (b) cooler than Steve McQueen:

Yeah, I'd hate to be divisive, but the way I see it is like:

I don't know if you've had the sense slapped out of you or if you need some sense slapped into you. Either way...

 

[europe1]

and I think the casting of Thomas Crown was better with a slick guy like Brosnan rather than a guy like McQueen that almost seemed like he might yell at or punch someone suddenly

For sure.

McQueen didn't really look like he belonged in those early business-scenes. To whether-bitten.

Also, Sinnerman > any song from the original including Windmills.

Even someone who is absolutely music-deaf like me than see that!

Though, Sinnerman is almost hilariously inappropriate considering its theme and the context of the film. Here you have a song about the freaking apocalypse and its juxtaposed against a freaking crime-romance.