Wow, What a Flick: Atlantic City, 1980

My mom recently recommended the movie Atlantic City to me because she knows how much I love Atlantic City. She gave me no details other than telling me that Burt Lancaster and Susan Sarandon are in it. I didn't know anything else, and I made sure it stayed that way. I love it when movies are great surprises. Atlantic City was an amazing--albeit depressing-- surprise. Apparently it was also nominated for 5 Oscars. This is no surprise.

Atlantic City has everything: romance, action, drama, suspense, murder, hopes, dreams, and despair. Written by John Guare and directed by the great Louis Malle, the movie came out in 1980 and was released in the States in 1981. It depicts an AC coming out of one of the most brutally depressing decades in the resort town's history. Developers touted with signs on delapidated buildings destined for destruction: "Atlantic City's Rebirth" or the "New Atlantic City on the Rise," as a way to announce new casinos moving in* (gambling was legalized in 1978).

Unbeknownst to Sally (Susan Sarandon), she and Lou (Burt Lancaster) live next door to each other in one of these delapidated buildings destined for demolition. Lou is a washed up old bookie who when he's not peering at Sally through her kitchen windows or talking shit "I was big in Vegas," he runs bets for locals in the neighborhood and takes care of an old lady (his age) on the first floor for a few bucks. Sally is a fresh-faced hopeful running away from a dead-end life in Canada and trying to start a new one in AC by learning to be a dealer in a casino. The contrast between the two is intriguing. Lancaster and Sarandon are fantastic. You don't have to have ever been to Atlantic City to feel it, Malle's direction is superb. I don't want to spoil the movie with a crappy review, so just rent it, kids. Trust me, it's good.

*There's footage of the old Traymore Hotel being imploded in 1972