Film: Crime’s Wages

Time was when the good guys wore white hats, baddies sported mustaches and got theirs in the end; when cops merited affection and robbers paid for their crimes as surely as Tarzan always rescued Cheetah from spear-toters in the bush. It was that way on film because it was that way in the public imagination, if not in reality. No longer. Now, thanks partly to the Supreme Court, but more to a national wave of masochistic breast-beating about “society’s unfortunates,” to shocking and often accurate revelations of police corruption, and also to the political and societal degeneracy of our time, convicts run prisons in this state and that, Indians at Wounded Knee act like stereotypes of their savage ancestors, and half or more of the younger generation cheers lawlessness and castigates officialdom. Movies bespeak the new sensibility.

We come this time around to a dozen or so films of late 1972 and early ’73, each reflective of one side of this debased coin: criminal as hero or lawman as paramilitarist. The Getaway, about which I commented here earlier, got away with its message—the lovely, lovable criminals for whom we wish only the very best—because of splendid performances and writing. But it worked precisely in opposition to the supposed American respect for law and order. Now in that mold: The Thief Who Came to Dinner (Ryan O’Neal) and his socialite girlfriend (Jacqueline Bisset) stealing from the rich (three cheers, baby) to uplift themselves. Getaway and Thief differ mainly in that the former glorifies killing and theft while the latter shies from violence and confines itself to the lure of loot. “Everybody cheats. In a world of thieves I wanted to be an honest thief,” O’Neal declares.

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David Brudnoy

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Time was when the good guys wore white hats, baddies sported mustaches and got theirs in the end; when cops merited affection and robbers paid for their crimes as surely as Tarzan always rescued Cheetah from spear-toters in the bush. It was that way on film because it was that way in the public imagination, if not in reality. No longer. Now, thanks partly to the Supreme Court, but more to a national wave of masochistic breast-beating about “society’s unfortunates,” to shocking and often accurate revelations of police corruption, and also to the political and societal degeneracy of our time, convicts run prisons in this state and that, Indians at Wounded Knee act like stereotypes of their savage ancestors, and half or more of the younger generation cheers lawlessness and castigates officialdom. Movies bespeak the new sensibility.

We come this time around to a dozen or so films of late 1972 and early ’73, each reflective of one side of this debased coin: criminal as hero or lawman as paramilitarist. The Getaway, about which I commented here earlier, got away with its message—the lovely, lovable criminals for whom we wish only the very best—because of splendid performances and writing. But it worked precisely in opposition to the supposed American respect for law and order. Now in that mold: The Thief Who Came to Dinner (Ryan O’Neal) and his socialite girlfriend (Jacqueline Bisset) stealing from the rich (three cheers, baby) to uplift themselves. Getaway and Thief differ mainly in that the former glorifies killing and theft while the latter shies from violence and confines itself to the lure of loot. “Everybody cheats. In a world of thieves I wanted to be an honest thief,” O’Neal declares.