FAT CITY (USA/1972)

John Huston's adaptation of the titular novel by Leonard Gardner was well-received at its Cannes premiere. When it was released in the States, it got uniformly excellent reviews. It was a flop.

"My God, what happened? Why didn't anybody see it? So they took out an ad in the LA Times, full-page ad, signed by hundreds of movie stars. Paul Newman and all kinds of people urging you to go see this picture. They re-released it. Guess what? Nobody went to see it. It's a cult film. Nobody wants to know about failure." (Cinematographer Conrad Hall).

John Huston had been making films about failure for over 30 years. Great films about losers like the prospectors looking for The Treasure of Sierra Madre and the adventurers in The Man Who Would Be King. One can sense from the start that Stacy Keach's tentative comeback as a boxer in the amateur circuit is doomed to fail and that teenage wanna-be Jeff Bridges won't amount to much. They will never make it to "fat city". Their environment, the underbelly of Stockton, California is rendered with pungency and amazing detail by Huston and Hall (American Beauty, In Cold Blood). The pictures exudes a gritty realism and a complete lack of artistic compromises. Candy Clark (soon to become famous in American Grafitti) and the bizarre, edgy Susan Tyrrell are both wonderful in supporting roles. Tyrrell got an Oscar nomination, a rare moment of mainstream acceptance for the decidedly unconventional actress. The film captures the downbeat historical period in which it was released yet nothing about it has dated at all.