The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

the audience applauded

From my favorite movies..

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

The blatant miscasting of both Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway is one reason why the heist movie "The Thomas Crown Affair" doesn't work for me. He's a high-class entrepenurial criminal and she's the insurance investigator who's on to him; they're like Ken and Barbie playing at being grown-ups. It was directed by Norman Jewison, hot from his success with "In the Heat of the Night" and this time he's aiming at cool. Dunaway and McQueen are cool alright but they are also all wrong. It's a clever picture that revels in its own cleverness, (and use of the split-screen), and it was a huge success but it's also not nearly as clever as it thinks it is.

"The Thomas Crown Affair", 1968, a fantastic film by Norman Jewison. Hal Ashby as an editor and associate producer made a meaningful artistic contribution to the film. A lot of people remember this film as well because of Noel Harrison's song "The Windmills Of Your Mind" (music by Michel Legrand, lyrics by Alan & Marilyn Bergman). Two wonderful actors: Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, and many other remarkable artists gathered together. A time when experimentation and artistic freedom brought us captivating cinematic storytelling. Exciting, cynical, extremely beautiful, delicate and humorous – until film-making felt in the hand of the corporations and their marketing departments.

A few thoughts...some of the ways that they try to capture the crooks are so unethical that truly all the law enforcement and insurance investigators would be up on criminal charges. What a previous reviewer found sexy in the chess game would probably draw snickers from today's audiences...almost as a parody. Lastly, I guess they still felt that the cops and robbers had to wear hats, when this was really filmed at a time when hats were no longer being worn except by old men. It was out of style by then. I hear that the remake was also quite good but over-sexed. Unfortunately, Hollywood likes to remake good movies more than remaking bad movies and making them better.

When a mystery man assembles a five man team to commit a bank robbery it is going to be difficult to catch him as none of them have seen his face and before the robbery none of them have seen each other. The Mystery man is millionaire Thomas Crown and he didn't mastermind a two million dollar robbery because he needed the cash he did it to see if he could. After the robbers get away there is little to suggest who they were; they were all dressed alike and it is the clothes that the witnesses remember. The police aren't happy to fail but the insurers are even less happy to have to pay out. They call in investigator Vicki Anderson who soon suspects Crown who is one of the five people to know the bank well enough and to have made several trips to Switzerland since the robbery. Of course she has no proof so sets about getting close to him; she tells him that she will get him but he doesn't seem too worried, if anything it just makes life more interesting for him. Eventually it looks as if she has got him but he just says that if he did it once he can do it again… This stylish caper movie is thoroughly amoral; the protagonist is a bank robber who just does it for the thrills, like so many other things he does and the person trying to stop him is quite happy to break the law to catch him… yet it is a lot of fun and the viewer is likely to find himself hoping he will get away with it. Steve McQueen, the epitome of cool, and Faye Dunaway do fine jobs in the lead roles and have a good chemistry; they even manage to make a game of chess erotic! As well as having a good story the film looks great; featuring multiply split scenes and fast cuts that work rather than confusing the viewer.