Word: pakula
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...council is hoping to bring "Starting Over" co-star Candice Bergen to Harvard in two weeks, and director Alan J. Pakula in March...
COMES A HORSEMAN Directed by Alan J. Pakula Screenplay by Dennis Lynton Clark
...movie is not without curiosity value, however, for some of Hollywood's brightest figures have tried to whip it int shape The stars are Jane Fonda, James Caan and Jason Robards. The director is Alan J. Pakula (Klute, The Parallax View, All the President's Men), a major cinematic stylist who works equally well with actors and ideas. Cinematographer Gordon Willis (The Godfather, Interiors), though overly enraptured with the poetic uses of shadows, is one of the top craftsmen in American movies. There's only one wild card in this impressive pack: first-time Screenwriter Dennis Lynton...
...Since Pakula's recent films have dealt with little guys battling huge conspiracies of money and power, it is easy to see why he was drawn to Clark's script. What is missing here is the director's usual skill at transforming abstract evil into a palpable and frightening force. Perhaps Pakula has been lulled by Horseman's bucolic landscapes, because his characteristic tension is missing here. In this director's best movies, he arouses terror and paranoia by making it impossible to separate heroes from villains until the end. This time around the cast...
...technical level, there is nothing in Comes a Horseman to be embarrassed about: Pakula seems incapable of visual sloppiness or vulgarity. He has also coaxed a performance from Fonda that is superior to her rather saintly appearances in Julia and Coming Home. Her face as weatherbeaten as her dad's in The Grapes of Wrath, this beautiful woman manages to capture the essence of frontier toughness in the film's first half. When she finally melts for a man, Fonda's blushing radiance almost melts a movie that has long since congealed. - Frank Rich