The Landlord

1970. USA. Directed by Hal Ashby. A Mirisch Production Company/United Artists. Produced by Norman Jewison. Screenplay by Bill Gunn. With Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Louis Gossett, Jr. This slyly subversive look at race and class in America is one of the major rediscoveries of the exhibition. Mirisch and United Artists gambled $2 million on Ashby, who won an Oscar for Best Achievement in Film Editing for Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night, as director of this trenchant—and timely—comedy about a rich white kid who buys a Brooklyn tenement and tries to have the black tenants evicted, only to find himself drawn into their starkly different lives. 110 min.