Mister Buddwing (1966)

Sadly Over-hyped

Admirable film.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

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

This is probably a spoiler. I watched the film wondering what reality was being depicted. The movie runs nearly two hours covering a span of maybe a dozen years. The man's (James Garner's) real time might have been anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Understanding that the entire film is the man's nightmare is the key to figuring it out. It seems that the movie was not really released in the US, I think it had little popular appeal because the viewer needs to think in order to understand it. I disagree with James Garner's assessment that it was the worst movie he ever made, rather I believe it might be the darkest and artsiest film he ever made. The man's name is Edward Volner, it took two viewings to figure that out. It is important to understand that the film is a recurring nightmare, pay attention to the opening shot and the final few seconds. The unhappy lower class house wife, Angela Landsbury, thrusting a handful of cash on him, Jack Gilford happily feeding him free of charge, the crowd that comes to his aid thwarting an over zealous policeman form a flash protest mob complete with signs; make little sense until the viewer realizes the entire film is a dream.

I love James Garner, but he's miscast in this stilted movie about a man who's lost his memory wandering the streets of mid-sixties Manhattan. He awkwardly confronts random young women whom he confuses with a woman he knows named Grace. These startled women, played by Katharine Ross and Suzanne Pleshette. do a a great job, but they're too young for him and his fixation on these much younger women make him look creepier than the film intended. It's only when he meets a woman who accosts him, played by an older and more appropriate Jean Simmons, that he connects with his true identity. As another reviewer here noted, Garner is out of his natural range as an actor in this picture. Watching the film now, the real attraction is that it's shot on location in Manhattan, during a time when the city was sinking into the urban malaise that would affect it until the mid-nineties. Mister Buddwing's Manhattan is dingy and affordable and accessible to ordinary people in a way it isn't today. There are no steel and glass buildings blocking the sky. It's a more human place.

A man (James Garner) wakes up on a bench in NY Central Park with no memory. He has a phone number on a piece of paper. He calls the number and Gloria (Angela Lansbury) is woken up calling him Sam. He sees a Budweiser truck and a plane in the sky. So he calls himself Sam Buddwing. He goes to see Gloria but she doesn't recognize him. He thinks he knows a girl on the street calling out "Grace!" He follows her in a cab but her name is Janet (Katharine Ross). Although he recalls her as Grace during a long college romance. There is an escaped insane mental patients in the city. He notices his cracked ring is inscripted FROM G.V. He meets actress Fiddle Corwin (Suzanne Pleshette) who helps out the handsome man. Then he has a flashback with Fiddle as Grace and he's a musician as they struggle as a couple. A rich drunk socialite in a game picks up Sam. A memory is jogged and he recalls his life before he lost his memory.This could have been a great movie about paranoia. When the cop gets surrounded by a crowd and then they follow it up with a raving lunatic, I thought it was going somewhere interesting. I thought maybe Katharine Ross was actually Grace and she was hiding from him. That would have been a much better movie. This is rather bland. The end really has no tension. The flashback gets tiresome. The high hopes early on soon fades away.

I'm not surprised to see mixed reviews for this odd, artsy and challenging film. I only caught it by accident, as part of the day-long tribute to James Garner aired by TCM a few days after he'd passed away. Despite being a life-long fan of Garner, this was a film I'd missed. When it started, I didn't even know what it was. For the first few minutes, I didn't know it starred Garner.This turned out to be an extremely fortuitous way to experience Mister Buddwing. I was enthralled by the visual style even before I knew what I was watching. As the narrative evolved, I became even more enthralled. This is a miraculously good film - perhaps not perfect, but so audacious it really deserves a 10 out of 10. (And I hand them out *very* grudgingly.)There are many things to enjoy here, but I'll focus on just three aspects of the film.First and foremost, there's the magnificent black and white photography of New York City in the 1960s. It works both as pure composition and as a visual tribute to the 'old' New York, that dark, grimy one that was already fading into history when this film was made. I'd say this film does New York at least as well as Woody Allen's Manhattan, and in support of a far more clever drama. (I'm a huge Allen fan, but I see Manhattan as one of his rare failures - aside from the photography.)Second, there's the clever structure. Some reviews have noted that it does work like a stage play. But in a good way. The story progresses by a series of repeated approximations. Several different women all serve as surrogates for Buddwing's lost love, Grace. Each portrays a different aspect of this phantom lady, and each helps to flesh out a different aspect of Buddwing's life - both for him and for us. Bits of dialog echo from one version to another. Mirrors play an important role, accentuating the reverberations. This film is as good a cinematic simulation of a drug trip, or a lucid dream, as you're going to find. You really start to feel that there's a memory that's just escaping you, a reality that you can't quite recapture.Third, there are the performances. Angela Lansbury deserves special credit for her frowsy blonde, an uncharacteristic part that reminds us of this lady's true acting prowess. The other women are all excellent, in their own ways. Suzanne Pleshette is adorable, Katharine Ross at her most wholesomely appealing, and Jean Simmons at her most acidic. Jack Gilford has a wonderful bit as "Mr. Schwartz," and George Voskovec is perfect as 'God.' ("You're crazier than I am," wails Garner.)Hollywood rarely creates this kind of 'art' film. Mister Buddwing could be slipped into a Fellini, or Antonioni or Bergman retrospective, without seeming out of place. But where so many 'art' films are merely 'arty', Mister Buddwing gets it right. It's got human drama, wit and enormous style. It's not merely vague, or obscure; it's visionary. It's about something.In short, I can't recommend this film highly enough. Don't expect The Thrill of It All, or Maverick, or Murphy's Romance. Think of Mister Buddwing as a more-romantic companion to 36 Hours. Or a 1960s equivalent of Forest Gump. This is clearly intended as a film about redemption, not of just one man, but of an entire generation that was just awakening to the realization that it had lost its way.