WINDMILLS OF OUR OUR MIND SPIN 'ROUND 'N ROUND.....AS WE WISH THE COOLEST 50TH TO "THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR"

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)   So.......how cool was Steve McQueen in this movie?

         (Picture BQ widening our hands as far in each direction as they'll go.....)

          That much.

           We know it's dated as hell.......(in 1968, some film directors, including 'Crown's Norman Jewison, fell head over heels for multiple screen sequences.....)

          Hey, it's the 60's , baby. Contrary to Dennis Hopper's funny pronouncement.......we do remember the 60's.....and we most definitely were there to remember it all.....

           First thing to love about "The Thomas Crown Affair"........the streetwise, blue collar McQueen cast against type, as a slick corporate tycoon, complete with three piece suits.  Some folks thought it didn't work.  Not us.

            McQueen, along with a few other 60's leading men (Sean Connery was one), had mastered the art of physical movement for the camera.  You can watch him forever as he carefully calibrated how much stillness and action to bring to a character........his subdued acting becomes almost superfluous......because he's cinematic poetry in motion.

            The Michel Legrand score.......a great gift to director Jewison, who uses it extensively to make the movie look and sound like some sort of American-ized French New Wave thriller......

           Faye Dunaway.........a far more skilled actor than McQueen, you can sense how hard she's working to match his coolness factor. With Dunaway, you can always see the wheels turning behind the performance.........but it in this case, it's an asset, because she struggles to give subtext to a movie that's really nothing but shiny, glossy surfaces.

             The famous chess game foreplay.......impossible to watch now without smirks 'n giggles, but take our word for it.....in 1968, the triple-entrendre coolness of it reigned......

            And that brings us to the ending, a perfect way to cap off a romantic cat-and-mouse game between two characters who aren't much more emotional and animated than the carved pieces in McQueen's chess set.

             "I'm funding an orgy for two sex freaks!"  complains a Police detective at one point........true enough........but the guy didn't realize......it's a cool orgy.  4 stars (****)......now if only we could remember more than three words of the "Windmills Of Your Mind" lyrics........