Hal Ashby in the 70's

Hal Ashby started out as an editor for films such as The Russians are Coming The Russians are Coming and In the Heat of the Night before making his directorial debut with 1970’s The Landlord. He directed a total of 7 films in the 1970’s, becoming one of the defining auteurs of the New Hollywood Cinema. His films are socially conscious in the vein of Robert Altman or John Cassavetes rather than the more violent films of Martin Scorsese, Brian DePalma and Francis Ford Coppolla.

                The Landlord, starring a very young Beau Bridges, is about an upper-class white man who becomes the landlord of an inner-city all black apartment building. The film is probably Bridges best role. His work is down to earth and humorous. Like many Ashby characters, he feels alienated and out of place among his peers.  Lee Grant almost steals the movie as Bridges’ prejudiced mother, for which she earned an Academy Award nomination. The film stands out to me because of its realistic portrayal of African Americans. Previous to this film, any black actor whose name wasn’t Poitier played strictly stereotypical roles. The following year saw the beginning of the blaxploitation boom with the release of Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, showing that Ashby was slightly ahead of his time by having a mostly black cast.

                Ashby followed up with Harold and Maude (1971), a dark comedy dealing with the May-December romance of the titular outcasts. It has since became one of the greatest cult films of all time and is Ashby’s best film in my opinion. Bud Cort plays Harold as dead pan and very removed emotionally from the rest of the world. He strives for attention from his society obsessed mother, another recurring theme for Ashby. Cort’s performance here should have made him a huge star, but unfortunately he has been relegated to small roles in films by directors such as Wes Anderson and Kevin Smith, mostly out of nostalgia for this film. Harold is finally able to connect with someone upon meeting Maude, whose outlook on life is 180 degrees from Harold’s. Maude is played by the great Ruth Gordon in her most fun and spirited role.  The polar opposite personalities, ages, and classes allow for the two to balance out and find happiness during their short romance. The score by Cat Stevens perfectly accompanies the film’s free spirited attitude.

                With two films under his belt, Ashby was able to attract star power with Jack Nicholson for The Last Detail (1973). The film cast Nicholson as “Badass” Buddusky, a Naval Petty Officer, who escorts Randy Quaid’s kleptomaniac Seaman from Norfolk up the east coast to the brig. Buddusky’s partner is Otis Young’s Mulhall, another example of Ashby’s color blind casting. The film serves as the most accurate portrayal of Navy life I have seen on film, at least when it comes to shore duty. Nicholson turns in one of his signature loose screw performances while also portraying genuine compassion to Quaid’s martyr prisoner. Like Harold’s uncle in Harold and Maude and his later film, Coming Home, Ashby manages to savagely satirize the military, a counter cultural response to the still open wounds of Vietnam.

                Shampoo (1975) and Bound for Glory (1976) were the low point of Ashby’s 70’s films. They aren’t bad films (Both were nominated for Oscars, Bound for Glory for Best Picture even); they just lack the unique voice of his other 70’s films. Shampoo was written, produced, and stars Warren Beatty and comes off feeling more like Beatty’s picture than Ashby’s. It is a pretty straightforward sex comedy and doesn’t seem to have much on its mind besides a poorly executed allegory to the Nixon administration. Bound For Glory is a Woody Guthrie biopic that suffers from star David Carradine’s lack of charisma in the role of Guthrie. 

                 Ashby returns to form with Coming Home (1978). The film was the closest Ashby ever got to winning an Oscar for best picture, barely being beaten out by another film about the aftermath of Vietnam, The Deer Hunter. Coming Home is less about Vietnam than it is about how people change over time and grow apart from loved ones and closer to others as they mature. Jon Voight does the best work of his career in this film as a paralyzed war vet, who is given a reason to move on through Jane Fonda’s hospital volunteer. Voight manages to make his character both loveable and an asshole at the same time. The movie really belongs to Fonda. She starts as a conservative officer’s wife and through her relationship with Voight, becomes liberated and empowered. Bruce Dern rounds out the perfectly cast film as Fonda’s husband. Dern’s portrayal of a man suffering from PTSD is one of the earliest in film alongside Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter.  The film’s score consists of a sampling of nearly every popular song from the late 60’s. It gives the film a slight feeling of ADD and is sometimes distracting.    

                Being There (1979) closed out the decade for Ashby. The film is a satire of presidential politics and is still pretty relevant today. Peter Sellers gives one of his final performances as Chance the gardener, a mentally handicapped savant who through several misunderstandings is brought in as an advisor to the President of the United States and captures the public’s imagination. Sellers plays the part with a child like quality. His character befriends Melvyn Douglas’s political man behind the curtain and their chemistry is amazing. Shirley MacClaine costars in the type of no-nonsense role that she perfects in the decade following.

                Ashby’s mental health declined in the 1980’s. He directed a Rolling Stones documentary and some television pilots as well as a handful of lesser successful films. He died in 1988, but his films have continued to gain stature as the years have passed.   With his themes of racial and social equality, he was a pioneer of auteur filmmaking in the United States.