Taglines: Where dreamers can be winners.
Atlantic City is a place where people go to realize their dreams, the promise of the future manifested by the demolition of the old crumbling buildings to be replaced by new hotels and casinos. Someone who recently came to Atlantic City for that promise is native Moose Javian (Saskatchewan) Sally Matthews, who currently works as a waitress at a hotel oyster bar, but who is training to be a black jack croupier and wants to be more cultured, such as learning French, in order to work at the casinos in Monte Carlo.
Another dreamer who came to Atlantic City decades ago is Lou Pascal, who has long worked as a numbers runner and who claims to have been a cellmate and thus implied confidante of Bugsy Siegel. Although Lou still dresses to the standard to which he is accustomed, his dream long died as he only works penny ante stuff for Fred, most of his current income from being the kept man of widowed recluse, Grace Pinza.
Grace too came to Atlantic City to fulfill her dreams – most specifically to participate in a Betty Grable lookalike contest – and ended up staying, marrying a player named Cookie Pinza. Sally, Lou and Grace all live in the same soon to be demolished apartment building – Sally and Lou who are next door neighbors – although Sally knows neither of her neighbors. Lou, however, secretly spies Sally through their respective apartment windows as she goes through a daily ritual.
The dreams of this collective are potentially affected – largely dashed or reawakened – with the arrival into Atlantic City of Dave Matthews, Sally’s estranged, deadbeat husband, and his very pregnant new ageist girlfriend Chrissie, who happens to be Sally’s younger sister. It is the unknown to Sally that Dave and Chrissie bring with them that affects those dreams, namely a large cache of cocaine stolen from criminal sources.
Atlantic City (French: Atlantic City, USA) is a 1980 romantic crime film directed by Louis Malle and starring Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, Robert Joy, Hollis McLaren, Michel Piccoli, and Al Waxman. A Canadian-French co-production filmed in late 1979, it was released in France and Germany in September 1980 and in the United States later that year by Paramount Pictures. The script was written by John Guare.
The film opened to critical acclaim and was nominated for the Big Five Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (for Lancaster), Best Actress (for Sarandon), and Best Original Screenplay, but did not win in any category. In Canada, it won Genie Awards for Best Performance by a Foreign Actress (for Sarandon), Best Supporting Actress (for Reid), and Best Art Direction, with three additional nominations.
In France, it was nominated for the César Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Music. In 2003, Atlantic City was among the 25 motion pictures added annually to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and recommended for preservation.
Atlantic City (1980)
Directed by: Louis Malle
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, Robert Joy, Hollis McLaren, Michel Piccoli, Al Waxman, Sean Sullivan, Angus MacInnes, Moses Znaimer, Norma Dell’Agnese, Wallace Shawn
Screenplay by: John Guare
Production Design by: Anne Pritchard
Cinematography by: Richard Ciupka
Film Editing by: Suzanne Baron
Costume Design by: François Barbeau
Set Decoration by: Gretchen Rau
Music by: Michel Legrand
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: September 3, 1980 (France), December 19, 1980 (Canada)
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