WUSA (1970)

People are voting emotionally.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This one of my favorite movies of all time with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Antony Perkins, Cloris Leachman and Pat Hingle all at their best. Reinhart (Newman), a man who's washed up as a musician becomes a "communicator" at WUSA, a right-wing radio station in New Orleans. He is not an ideologue himself –not a Rush Limbaugh character– just an employee, a DJ– I think he reads the news. But the fact that he works there at all paints him a right winger to his antagonist played by Perkins. The film contains some of my favorite lines of dialog in film, like when Reinhart gets the job and Leachman is thrilled. "Yeah, just great. I'm part of a pattern in someone else's head." He's long past being thrilled.There are two important and tense scenes between Perkins, a do-gooder who lacks the basic confidence that gets Newman shacked up within minutes of his arrival in New Orleans. In one of them, Perkins stutters through his outrage, wanting to know what's going on at WUSA. Newman coolly listens and responds acidly: "I understand your situation... because I too am a moralist." Perkins responds with a smirk and an "oh yeah, right" which Newman cuts off, "...but there IS a solution to your dilemma..." to which Perkins stammers "a-a-and w-w-w-what w-would that be Reinhart?" Newman's smile disappears and he responds with his thumbs down: "Drop dead." He repeats the line with all the rage and contempt he can muster, all his feelings so twisted inside him that he can barely function. The feelings Perkins needs to make him feel competent Newman has felt too and they have hollowed him out. Newman's not right wing. He's just beat. Dropped out. If you don't know that, you don't understand where Reinhart's coming from. He's a sleepwalking man but mostly he is as disappointed and disillusioned as a man can be. Unfortunately, the character played by Perkins is much better at retaining his illusions with tragic consequences.This movie is about ideological exhaustion and the delusions of the ideologically pure, both left and right wing.What is so good about WUSA for me is that it's the only time, other than Hud, when Newman was an actor first, a star second. And this one's the grittiest. The reason for its unpopularity is that it is uncompromisingly honest about a political situation which to some extent still exists today. It really comes down on neither side of the political divide or, to be more accurate, pretty gruesomely insults both, thus satisfying no one who expects a movie to be partisan. It's ironic that it's hated because it is a "message movie."

If you like this movie you will love the book it comes from:HALL OF MIRRORS by Robert Stone.This is another example of a book that is so literary it could not really be done justice in a movie.Still I love both the book and the movie.But check out the book for the full experience ofRobert Stone's wit and wisdom.This is my favorite Robert Stone book(Hall of Mirrors)along with his other masterpiece DOG SOLDIERS which was made into the movie WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN. Note: The info here gives the filming location as Louisiana but the final political rally scenes were filmed in Hollywood.

It's one of the best examples of the kind of American films that they don't know how to make anymore in the US. It made a huge impression on me when I was 15 and again 10 years later. Newman might not be at his best but he conveys exactly what's needed - moral corruption and self-disgust. Joanne Woodward's turn is a masterclass, such raw intensity it's almost unbearable to watch. Anthony Perkins is touching and vulnerable, his performance is so emotionally honest it's devastating to witness and his character would be at home in any of the best of Tennessee Williams' works - once more he proves that he deserves to be remembered for much more than just his masterpiece - that N.B. - It's a perennial shame on the Academy that he was not even nominated for such work as in this film as well as in "Play as it Lays", "Fear Strikes Out", "The Trial" and, of course, "Psycho" and "Psycho II" - one of the greatest talents ever to be wasted by Hollywood. A masterpiece from an unforgettable era in movie-making history.

Perhaps because the drama is so overwrought, Newman's acute underplaying is effective… Rheinhardt is his most thorough cynic: a failure at marriage and as a musician, he's become a wandering, alcoholic opportunist, so spineless and corrupt he thinks nothing of taking a job as announcer for WUSA… At last—a Newman character who's abandoned all ideals, ambitions and principles, who concentrates exclusively on surviving at all costs… He's even worse than "Hud," because he realizes his corruption but persists… In fact, he uses his self-knowledge to pretend superiority—to laugh secretly at the Neo-Fascists, while working for them… He acts cynically and viciously toward liberal Do-Gooders because presumably he "knows the score," although he really envies their idealism; and he rises above it all to a liquor-soaked detachment… His only ability is the put-on—once the essence of Harper's charm, now exposed as the weapon of a destructive mind… Rheinhardt's first appearance—he drifts into New Orleans, unshaven, tired, defeated, broke—is like Fast Eddie's after his loss to Fats… Like Eddie, he picks up a despairing, fallen woman, Geraldine (Joanne Woodward), a former hooker who, like Sarah, is physically and emotionally scarred… As always, Woodward flawlessly portrays the fragile, easily hurt woman who is wary of Newman, but who ends up giving him more affection than he can return… They have some tender scenes, but with her, as with everyone else, he's most1y indifferent and uninvolved…"WUSA" suffers from conversations that sound like speeches, heavy-handed direction, and a paradoxical reluctance really to meet the issues head-on