Word: jewison
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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F.I.S.T. can only be appreciated, perhaps, as a series of images--maybe it would only be necessary to turn off the sound to make this Norman (Fiddler on the Roof, Rollerball) Jewison production a good movie. Stallone shares writing discredit for the movie with Joe Eszterhas, who, I am told, should have known better. The script is an encumbrance which even the most vivid images of strike-breaking riots, negotiating sessions and Senate hearings cannot rise above. When we are forced to listen to Stallone for any extended period of time, we are reminded of how Adrian must have felt...
Stallone / Eszterhas / Jewison wanted to offend no one too much, and they end up offending everyone just a little. Johnny Kovak's commitment to the union becomes little more than a grand obsession after a while; stripped of his early idealism, Kovak becomes an inadvertently fascistic figure--ever-vigilant against management abuses, he gradually loses sight of the "enemy within." Ultimately, F.I.S.T. fails because it decides that the easiest way to pull off a story glorifying the triumph of labor over capital is to apotheosize Stallone; yet in furthering--if unwittingly--the alienation of the rank-and-file from union...
Directed by Norman Jewison...
...Norman Jewison, the director, seems unable to coax any interesting colors out of a supporting cast of usually excellent players. His action sequences, strikes, and strong-arm stuff in the early days of the union are congealed. When he is not having Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs bathe the hard times in the golden glow of false nostalgia, his moviemaking is without dynamics. Vague and distant, it offers a succession of clichés instead of a concrete sense of the class or the lives the film is pretending to examine. About all that can be said for "F.I.S.T." is that...
...Manhattan headquarters, U.A. has no production facilities, but operates in effect as a banker and distributor for movie people seeking an honest count at the box office and exceptional artistic freedom. It has attracted such diverse talents as Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Joe Levine. Laments Producer Norman Jewison: "You could walk into United Artists with any crazy dream, and no one would say it was preposterous." U.A.'s venturesomeness paid well too: its 1977 revenues of $469 million from movies, TV rentals, records and music publishing represented a 24% increase, while net profits for the first nine...