Born to Win ('71)

It was this shot in particular that made me sit up and pay attention to Born to Win. Something about the fact that I immediately realized J (George Segal) couldn't enter Lauren Bacall's Applause (on the marquee in background), and Lauren Bacall couldn't enter George Segal's Born to Win. Born to Win is in some ways dissimilar from typical movies, because its structure and rhythm and aesthetics attempt to use cinema to come near reality, rather than create a special and artificial movie reality. There was sometimes a slight tension between reality and art: throughout the movie clever details made moments interesting and memorable, like when J hides from a cop in a drying machine and the cop figures it out and turns the machine on,

when J is locked in a room by some drug thugs and attempts to get the girl across the street to call the cops through flashing his genitals by opening and closing the lady's nightgown he's incongruously wearing due to his situation,

when the elevator door keeps trying to close during a dramatic scene,

the colors of the closing credits,

and an earlier moment wherein Parm (Karen Black) kisses J's heroin tracks. I've always felt kissing heroin tracks is the most romantic thing possible.

Tell you the truth, I have all sorts of problems with J and Parm's relationship. I think it's a relationship that's filmpossible, which is a word I created right now that combines 'impossible' with 'film' to denote a thing that could only happen if some filmmaker or filmwriter made it happen. The situation wherein J and Parm meet: she approaches a car he's stealing and asks for a ride, he agrees to give her a ride, it's revealed it's her car, they go to her house, she's very flirty and immediately head-over-heels, they make love etc. I guess maybe things like that happened in '71, maybe there was a more relaxed attitude about relationships and hooking up, but it was difficult for me to care about a relationship that happened so randomly and sustained itself not only for no good reason but even sustained itself despite the fact that J has a couple character flaws. It's like, if you're going for realism, why do that.

When the romance worked it was by sheer perseverance, like on their car trip when they ask each other for kisses, and he says he feels like he's a teenager and he says he likes feeling like a teenager, and he orally stimulates her sexual organs while she drives and recites a nursery rhyme.

Their trip takes them to the beach, and if there was ever a perfect movie to have a scene on a beach with grey skies, it was this movie about the ex-hairdresser (did I forget to mention?) heroin junky who takes his free-spirited gf to the beach.

The movie was Ivan Passer's second directorial effort. He made his name in Czech in the mid-60s, writing on Loves of a Blonde and The Fireman's Ball for fellow Czech moviemaker Milos Forman. Of his own films, Cutter's Way seems most famous. His most recent was 2005's Nomad: The Warrior, which appears to be one of those giant historical epics.

The relationship I thought was well-developed was J's relationship with drugs, which seemed all-consuming, and also I liked his friendship with Little Davey (Tim Pelt). They have misadventures trying to score their next fix, and are kind of sweet to each other.

Even though charismatic J has "Born to Win" tattooed on his arm, he has all kinds of bad luck during the movie. It's hard to be a destitute heroin junkie, cops always after you (including Robert De Niro), trying to get paid, do the thing that'll bring the next fix, etc.