The Landlord

Plot synopsis:
Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges), a man who lives off his parents' wealth, buys himself an inner-city tenement, in the transitional neighborhood of 1970 Park Slope, Brooklyn, planning to evict all the occupants and construct a luxury home for himself. However, once he ventures into the tenement, he gradually grows fond of the low-income black residents who dwell there. Enders decides to remain as the landlord, and help fix the apartment building. He rebels against his WASP upbringing, and to his parents' dismay, he romances two black women.
Elgar falls for Lanie (Marki Bey), a dancer at a local black club. Lanie is a beautiful black woman who has a mother of Irish descent, and a father of African descent, thus she has light skin and features, and has experienced colorism because of it. Their relationship is strained, as Elgar has an affair with one of his tenants, Fanny (Diana Sands), and gets her pregnant. Consequently, her boyfriend Copee (Louis Gossett, Jr.), a black activist with an identity crisis, is enraged when he finds out about the pregnancy, and tries to kill Elgar with an axe. He ultimately stops. The Enders family is shaken and stirred by their son's decisions and behavior, but reluctantly accepts him. Ultimately, Fanny gives the child up for adoption to start a new life. The story ends with Elgar taking custody of child, mending his relationship with Lanie, and moving in with her and the baby.

Tags: satire, flashback

Review:
This story is about a young white entrepreneur named Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges) and he buys a New York tenement in a ghetto with plans on having the tenants move out so he can renovate it into his own place to live.
Elgar gets a lot of flack from his parents and his mother Joyce (Lee Grant) who doesn't understand him says she will help him with new curtains.
Elgar meets a light skinned black woman named Lanie (Marki Bey) and he falls in love and wants to marry her but Franny shows up at his door one day and tells him that she is pregnant with his child.
This film was directed by the great Hal Ashby who makes his directorial debut after spending many years working as an editor.
Ashby uses colors to make points like the all white house and white clothing that the Enders have while the run down tenement that is occupied by mainly black residents has mainly gray tones with some of the interior shots having red.
Lee Grant picked up an Oscar Nomination for her funny role as Bridges mother and the scene with her and Pearl Bailey is a classic.
It dealt with people trying to break free from stereotypes, people struggling to be proud of who they are and be accepted for who they are, and some people not even knowing who they are, trying to find their niche.I love the scene at the party that was supposedly in honor of Elgar, where more than one person tells him what it feels like to go from being an outcast to being the envy of everyone.
As one of the scruffy underdog filmmakers of the 1970s- who's career unfortunately faltered in the 80s before his untimely death at 59- Hal Ashby was good at taking a set of characters and a particular idea or theme and getting under the surface just enough to make a mark, while also keeping it an oddly entertaining and accessible as a picture for the art houses.
Many times he'll just let a scene play out, giving the actors the freedom to work with the script their way, and then other times he'll implement montage- or just a subliminal cut-away (or not so subliminal, as Lee Grant envisions an African tribe going to the Park Slope building, and a whole pack of black babies upon hearing about a little 'accident' her step-son caused late in the film).I was really struck by how he uses experimentation for equal uses of humor, abstraction, and to just feel out the mood of the character(s) in the scene.
Meanwhile, Ashby has the best photography back up a first-time director could ask for: Gordon Willis and Michael Chapman, who give the film a look sometimes of lightness, especially when Elgar is at the family home and the walls are all a bland white, or seem to be; then other times they light it darker, like in a more intimate setting like Elgar and Lanie out by the beach at night, or just when at the Park Slope apartment.
A scene especially with Elgar and Fanny is effective, not simply because she actually comments on how the red light makes her look a certain way- it's the timing of the actors, the awkward but strong sexual tension, and the red light, and the soft soul music coming up, that makes it one of the best scenes Ashby's ever filmed, thanks to the right team.If the style verges on being a little "dated" here and there, like in the opening minutes as Elgar talks to the camera and says what he intends to do with the tenement, or those extreme close-ups of Elgar kissing with Lanie (which are quite striking on their own), its attitude towards the pure human problems of race haven't diminished that much.
I liked seeing Bridges, who is spot-on as the total naive future yuppie who's heart is in the right place but confused how to really go about it as the new landlord, interact with the other apartment dwellers, their 'welcoming' by chasing him away with a flowered pot in his hands, or at the party when after getting him good and drunk tell him what it's really all about in first-person takes.
And most of all it's funny and challenging to see, especially during a tense period around 1969 when it was filmed, how essential decency on either side of the race coin could get complicated by love and lust, of the rich family understandably not understanding how Elgar could go through this- not to mention the eventual 'mixed' dating and the pregnancy- and at the same time the tenees never totally knowing why, aside from foolish design ambitions, wanted to run the place to start with.The best laughs end up coming from the awkward moments, and the obvious ones, as the subtle moments are meant to be more quiet and the 'big' laughs to come from the interaction of not just in terms of race but class; watch as everyone in the building uses the drapes from Joyce (Lee Grant in a well deserved Oscar nom performance) as clothes and head-dressing, or when Joyce has some pot liquor with Marge, who knows her better than her own family probably does.
Ashby and his writers (both screenwriter and novelist were African-Americans) know not to slam every point home either, which uplifts the comedy to an honest playing field, which means that when a scene like the quasi-climax when Copee finds out about the pregnancy and flips out with an ax at Elgar it's not really all that jokey, when it easily could've been played as such for an exploitation effect.
Only the very ending, which feels complicated by a sort of need to tidy things up with Elgar, Janie and the baby, feels sort of forced (not helped by the end song, not too ironic, called God Bless the Children).But as it stands, the Landlord is provocative fun, if that makes sense, as it works as cool satire, led by sure-fire performances (Bridges has rarely been this good at being true to a mostly unsympathetic character), and it points the way for a career that the director would have where oddball slices of life wouldn't mean there wasn't larger points being made.
It is a great movie that is able to drive several points home--consisting of racial prejudice, the view of African-American lifestyle at that point in time, and even the social snobbery that can occur in the upper-class.
Recently watched Hal Ashby's directorial debut, "The Landlord" at Manhattan's Film Forum.
Certainly one of the Top 10 films of 1970, this ingenious comedy directed by Hal Ashby has never gotten the recognition it so deserves.
Lee Grant (one of the best) is coy and cunning and wonderful as Bridges' mother and Diana Sands is heartbreaking, with excellent work from Lou Gossett and Pearl Bailey.Great music and a topical plot, you can't help but get involved with this rich young man's "plight".
Of all the pictures I have seen dealing with race in America, it is by far the most confrontational, and really the only of this period that really challenges white social supremacy as well as overt racism.The late 60s and early 70s was really the age of the odd-looking movie, especially with all the new, young directors that were cropping up.
The Landlord was the debut of Hal Ashby, a former editor who had recently won an Oscar for his very fine job on another race-related movie, In the Heat of the Night.
He will then suddenly take us by surprise with a close-up as a character delivers some key line of dialogue.In line with Mr Ashby having been an editor, The Landlord is very much an editor's movie.
Hal Ashby's debut film may be somewhat over-directed, but it is one of his best;funny, provocative and pointed.
Lee Grant is terrific as Bridge's mother and earned an Oscar nomination for supporting actress and no less memorable are Diana Sands, Pearl Bailey, and Louis Gossett Jr. Bridges is winning as the landlord who arrives to make change and winds up being changed and Trish Van Devere is funny in her one scene.
And, while it was meant as a bit of shocking film in its day, today it seems a tad dated and Bridges' character a bit unlikable.I think aside from this mixed focus, I was also disappointed because the film was directed by the same man that did the delicious black comedy, HAROLD AND MAUDE.
Hal Ashby (famous for the likes of "Harold and Maude", "The Last Detail", "Shampoo", "Bound for Glory", "Coming Home" and "Being There") made his directorial debut with the offbeat Beau Bridges vehicle "The Landlord".
Bridges plays Elgar Enders, the son of a wealthy - but pretty despondent - landlady (Lee Grant).
So when Elgar takes over the apartment building, he not only decides to change things for the better, but he also begins to develop a relationship with one of the women in the building.Like many movies that came out around 1970, this one features numerous jump cuts between totally different scenes.
Our hero here is Elgar Winthrop Julius Enders (Beau Bridges), age 29, a White, rich, and very naïve man who, much to the disgust of his hateful bourgeoisie family, cheerily buys a rundown urban tenement building, filled with Black, poor, and very sophisticated adults and street-wise kids.
Elgar thus sets himself up to be caught in the middle of an inevitable culture clash.Director Hal Ashby creates a cinematic social commentary suited to the late 1960s and early 70s that is both comedic and thoughtful.
Thanks to the smart and adroit direction of Hal Ashby, The Landlord is pretty funny considering the uneven and misappropriated dialogue.
Beau Bridges plays a rich white kid who buys a tenement slum in a Brooklyn neighborhood mostly populated by blacks; he quickly butts heads with the ambivalent tenants over his plans for the property.
It's an ambitious movie with a fine cast (including Lee Grant as Bridges' dotty mother and Diana Sands as his eventual lover), but the picture intrinsically has no style at all--it's a movie made in the editing room, and it is so punctuated with a kind of lazy ambition that there's very little to respond to.
Thank God there was a time that wasn't PC and things could be shown as they were and not as someone wished they would be.As America struggled with the issues of race and prejudice, a movie such as this came along and tried to show that color shouldn't be a barrier to true love and friendship.
The barriers have been somewhat broken, although some may say it was forced on white america with all the affirmative action laws and equal rights.I always thought Beau Bridges was one of the least attractive actors whatwith his big bushy eyebrows,  but after I saw The Landlord, he was actually somewhat handsome and cute in his 20's!
Beau Bridges even mentions it to his mother that she might like his new black girlfriend because she was "very light".
His eccentric mother, played wonderfully by Lee Grant is a real hoot, but the heart of the film belongs to the people who live, dream, struggle and love in this apartment building.
With direction by Hal Ashby, the film has an affection for its complicated characters and their drive to get through today and to have a better tomorrow.
Watch "The Landlord" and see Beau Bridges at his best as he is in the raw reality of 1970s New York..
Continuing to review movies featuring African-Americans in chronological order for Black History Month, we're now at 1970 when Diana Sands, Louis Gossett Jr., Pearl Bailey, Mel Stewart, and a light-skinned Marki Bey appeared in Hal Ashby's directorial debut having just won the Oscar for Best Editing on In the Heat of the Night for mentor Norman Jewison who produced this.
The actual star is Caucasian Beau Bridges who's a rich son of Lee Grant who wants his own place so he buys a tenement building to convert into his own pad but is reluctant to throw the mostly dark-skinned borders out.
Sheltered rich boy Beau Bridges buys a tenement in an African-American Brooklyn ghetto, with the idea of fixing it up as a home for himself, only to get deeply involved with the various eccentric characters who live there.While making a cartoon of the rich white world, it's a funny, insightful cartoon (maybe not quite up to "Harold and Maude", but in a similar universe), and the fact that no one i either world is let off the hook for their actions and attitudes, and real people pay real prices gives this an edge.
Beau Bridges in a great , rare seen film.
I saw on it on Turner Classic Movies and after a couple ofminutes of watching it, I knew it was good.Beau Bridges is the son of a wealthy but racist white mom, who falls in love with a black woman named Fanny and who ends up actually having a baby with her!!!Elgar's mother, Mrs. Enders is the owner of a building inwhich several black people live in.
Mrs. Enders cares nothing about the people except that they pay her on time with rent.Elgar, on the other hand, is a sensitive and open mindedguy who gets along with everyone in the building with theexception of a black racist professor named Professor Duboise (Melvin Stewart).
Making things more complicated isthe fact, that black men and women still didn't have the rights that white people in the time.
It's a great example of great cinema directing, in one scene, Elgar Enders (Beau) has just made love toFanny, then the girls leans over and tells him that sheloves her boyfriend Copee (played by Louis Gosset Jr inone of his first movie appearences).
In fact, throughout the film, Elgar is actually happier with hisblack friends than with his own mother.*There are several messages about the dysfunctional family.Elgar's mother (Lee Grant) is a rich white woman who has everything, yet she is a cold, miserable woman.
Lee Grant plays Bridges' mother, and does so with panache, being the classic bitchy White snob.
Hal Ashby released a string of excellent films in the 1970s ("Harold and Maude", "The Last Detail", "Bound for Glory", "Coming Home", "Being There", "Shampoo").
The first film by director Hal Ashby, "The Landlord" is a mixed bag.
The story centers on Elgar (Beau Bridges), a white man from a wealthy upper class family who moves into a lower class apartment building in New York.
Elgar takes over the building as the landlord, intending to evict all of the African American tenants living inside.
Scenes, such as the party in the middle of the movie, where the tenants discuss with Elgar what it is to be a minority at the time, or one towards the end of the film, where an African American activist breaks down and goes on a rant of racial self hate, are both chilling and unforgettable.
Dianna Sands is the standout of the movie, playing the tragic Fanny with such real emotion and likability that you can't help but feel for her character during the more dramatic scenes of the film.
Lou Gossett Jr, Pearl Bailey, Mel Stewart, and Lee Grant are also great in their respective roles.That said, the film does have its share of problems.
Lanie, Elgar's biracial girlfriend, never gets enough screen time for their confessed love towards the end of the movie to seem as genuine as it should.
The mentioned third act pregnancy plot takes the character back to the thoughtlessness he displayed in the beginning of the film, making it difficult to like him or care much about his trials in the end.
The Landlord is a good film with biting social and racial commentary, however the melodramatic elements in the story, and uneven script hold it back from being truly great..
Social satire about a rich white kid (Beau Bridges) buying a tenement in a poor black neighborhood (Park Slope, Brooklyn).
The lighter side of the wealthy white on Long Island versus a black Brooklyn ghetto is depicted in this 1970 film.The Jeff Bridges character isn't as fair as you would think a 29 year old liberal would be.
He buys a building in the ghetto with the idea of forcing out the tenants living there and making it a luxury house.It is true that Lee Grant steals the film and received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.
pearl Bailey shows up in the film as a tenant in the building.
One of the moments is a movie called "The Landlord," an adept, racially-charged and thoughtful satire that makes "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" looks like "Enchanted April".Wanting to leave his family's affluent Long Island abode, breezy, twenty-nine-year-old, blue blood Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges of "The Fabulous Baker Boys" and "Jerry Maguire") buys a tenement building in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn and hopes to convert into a rich hippie pad.
It's fascinating and ironic that a white director (despite being middle-age at the time, Ashby was quite the hippie) and a black screenwriter (Gunn was a writer of all trades) worked in sync to examine the racial, social and economical gaps between their ethic camps.
Directed by the great Hal Ashby, THE LANDLORD stars Beau Bridges as a not so spoiled rich kid from Long Island who decides to buy and refurbish a Brooklyn brownstone only to have his conscience raised once he meets the tenants...a group that includes foxy Diana Sand and her lunatic husband Lou Gossett Jr., along with rifle wielding Earth mother Pearl Bailey.
Bridges gives his best ever performance and he's matched by Sand, Gossett, Bailey, and Lee Grant, who's unforgettable as his faddist mother.
While Ashby's directing career would be made a year later with HAROLD AND MAUDE, THE LANDLORD should be seen again and again.