The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Director: Norman Jewison                              Writer: Alan Trustman
Film Score: Michel Legrand                           Cinematography: Haskell Wexler
Starring: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Jack Weston and Yaphet Kotto

It’s one thing when a film from the sixties simply looks dated (and they pretty much all do) but it’s another thing when the film seems to embrace the sixties with both arms. Such is the feeling one has when viewing Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair. Made in 1968, it has it all, from Faye Dunaway’s mod fashions to Steve McQueen’s groovy dune buggy, a jazzy score, an acid-trip fade out, and a mosaic of split-screen images. Once you’ve allowed yourself to embrace the far-out aesthetic of the picture, it’s actually a pretty good film.

Steve McQueen is Thomas Crown, a real estate investor with a multi-million dollar company. He has a beautiful house in Boston, an unfinished beach house, an airplane and a beautiful woman--and he’s bored. So, to pass the time, he figures out a way to rob a bank and succeeds beautifully. Enter insurance investigator Faye Dunaway, who is sure that she can figure out who the perpetrator is, soon latches on to Crown as her most likely suspect, and commences to break as many police procedures and ethics as she needs to in order to get the proof. And that includes falling in love with Crown himself . . . apparently.

Unlike the insipid 1999 remake with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo, which is devoted almost solely to the relationship and the caper itself is almost a throwaway, the original takes a good deal of time to set up the caper and allow McQueen the luxury of reveling in its success before Dunaway comes along. The relationship between McQueen and Dunaway also crackles with tension, far more than the remake. Dunaway’s character is much more interesting that Russo’s blunt interpretation. But the relationship is also different in another crucial way. One only has to look at McQueen’s character and his addiction to excitement and danger--the reason why his real estate company was putting him to sleep--to understand the superior satisfaction of the original film’s ending

One of the great things about the film is that so much of it goes unsaid. When Dunaway learns from her detective friend that McQueen is still apparently seeing his girlfriend, she says almost nothing. And the chess game between the two is probably the most wonderful seduction scene in film. Jewison had a way with couples, going on to make romantic comedies like Moonstruck and Only You, along with his more serious pieces like In the Heat of the Night and A Soldier’s Story, embraced the sixties ethos to the extreme and made the original Thomas Crown Affair a real jewel.