Season 19, Episode 5
I'm not sure when it happened. It might be a reflection of my added years on this Earth or the amount of movies I've seen, but I have developed an affinity toward 70s cinema over the years. This week's Forgotten Cinema episode — The Candidate — was a movie I watched while going down a rabbit hole of 70s films over the span of a few weeks. But, like I say on the podcast, I'm not really sure how I found my way to this movie.
We all come with baggage to a movie and it's very hard to separate what you believe in or what you might be feeling when we start watching a film. I'm not a political person, so coming into my first watch of The Candidate, I was focused on the character piece it's meant to be. And much like my second watch, I was into it. Redford, much like, Paul Newman and many actors of their caliber, has such an effortless feel when he's performing on screen. Nothing feels fake. Nothing feels like a performance. He just is.
Is that born from the style of cinema in the 70s? Does that feel of becoming a character, rather than performing a character, more prominent in acting of yesteryear, than now? I don't know. Sometimes, it feels like that. Like anything, it comes down to preference. I highly recommend you watch The Candidate and many other films from the 70s. You might be amazed how much you come to enjoy them. This might be a good place to start.
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