The Candidate

Colour, 35 mm
USA, 1972, 109 min
Section: Tribute to Robert Redford

Synopsis

Delving behind the scenes for a look inside politics has long been an American filmmaking passion. The Candidate makes a significant contribution to this subgenre, analyzing the mentality of those who enter the political arena and their subsequent internal transformation. The hero of the film is an inexperienced young man, Bill McKay, who allows himself to be persuaded to run for office only because he thinks he won’t win - his candidacy is to be a mere formality, to "fill out the ballot," so to speak. But Bill’s indignant speeches, in which he candidly admits that he doesn’t have all the answers, and his cautionary analyses (e.g. about the protection of the environment), earn him ever more adherents. The result is a foregone conclusion: he takes a liking to politics and there finds self-realization. But an election campaign is a costly business and those who finance it are looking after their own interests. Soon the question arises whether or not Bill is corruptible, whether he will sacrifice his principles for the pipe dream of a political career. Robert Redford expertly portrays the transformation of a naive beginner into something he would never have imagined.

About the director

Michael Ritchie (1938-2001), originally a television director, interested Robert Redford enough that the latter agreed to co-finance (and star in) two of his early films: the ski competition picture Downhill Racer (1969) and the 1972 political drama The Candidate. While Ritchie’s first films raised considerable hopes, he failed to fulfil his promise - and work with Redford came to an end. He still drew attention for an ambitious look behind the scenes at a beauty contest in Smile (1974), but then he tried to follow up his victories with box-office hits; the most successful were the "sports" films The Bad News Bears (1976) and Wildcats (1986). At the end of his career he returned to television. As part of a series of portraits of famous people for the L’ encyclopédie audiovisuelle he shot one on Einstein (1992).