Now that you’ve (hopefully) had a chance to watch The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, please join us in discussing this film by posting your comments below.
The Cinema Sight Film Club #1: Discussion
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6 responses to “The Cinema Sight Film Club #1: Discussion”
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This is a good film with a solid central performance from Richard Dreyfuss. Tripp comments on Dreyfuss are quite fitting. This is a rather restrained performance for Dreyfuss, but I wonder if that has more to do with the director reigning him in or a lack of experience. He hadn’t yet made his Oscar-winning film The Goodbye Girl and I’d almost hazard a guess that it was Goodbye Girl that encouraged him to fly over the top at a moment’s notice. I don’t remember him being that exuberant in Jaws or Close Encounters. It’s possible that winning the Oscar for such a bombastic performance may have given him the indication that he just needed to let loose to get respect which is quite the opposite for most of us.
As for the film, it seems to focus too heavily on just how selfish Duddy Kravitz is and perhaps that’s the point. The film plays out like a sweeping character epic, but then cuts itself down to digestible character incidents that don’t linger in an attempt to make this seem like an intimate character portrait. Ted Kotcheff seems to be trying for both, which makes the film feel like it’s being unfairly stretched between the two extremes. As Sabin said, the film feels a bit choppy. We have only barely resolved one scene before we’re on to the next one.
Duddy doesn’t have the richness of surrounding story elements that make character epics like The Godfather or Reds or even Schindler’s List work. I’m not sure there is an adequate comparison for decade-spanning film that tries to be intimate and succeeds.
Not that I didn’t like the film. I did. A lot of its observations of human nature, in particular the need to win parental approval, the desire to be wealthy and independent, and the need to be respeted and appreciated, are nicely observed, but when the charcater’s own flaws make him unlikable, it becomes hard to root for the protagonist. Duddy never gets his moment of revelation, he continues to believe he’s right and will continue to act selfishly so he can obtain everything even if it means burning every last bridge linking him to his humble beginnings.
I might even hazard to say that Duddy reminds me of Donald Trump and, as most of us know, he’s not the figure we once thought he was and most of us have gotten tired of him and his motives and his ego. No matter how fascinating Trump’s life might be, I don’t think I could stomach watching a film about him. The only thing that keeps this from being Trump’s story is that Dreyfuss is indeed quite likable. He’s charismatic in a non-abrasive way, but that doesn’t mean we are required to like him in the end.
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Well, four of us have seen it anyway.
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Next to Close Encounters, this may be my favorite Richard Dreyfus performance. Dreyfus is an actor who tends to push things a little too far, and go a little too big at the sacrifice of honesty, but he doesn’t have a dishonest note here at all. That is all the more remarkable when you think back on the actions Duddy goes through in the film, all of which are a little hyperreal, and think about how easy it would be for him to push those negative traits of Duddy. Instead, he keeps him fairly endearing for most of the film. Dreyfus believes this is his worst performance…what does that say about him?
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This film isn’t often cited as one of the great 70s portraits of morally compromised leads, and the name Duddy Kravitz isn’t likely to join the ranks of Corleone or Buddinsky. But The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is a great film I hesitate to call little. It sprawls through the highs and lows of a young man’s career with the same throttle and intensity as Richard Dreyfuss’ performance. It’s a very funny piece of work that teeters back and forth on the edge of intolerability. His insults are casual afterthoughts following favor requests. He’s a prick, but he’s an endearing one…and a funny one. The film wisely places him within the context of the business world he inhabits. Duddy wants to swim with the sharks. Dreyfuss plays his desperations boyishly. His actions have incredibly consequences, but you get the impression that the business world is still his schoolyard. He’s a snot. Perhaps his lowest moment is when he forges a check with Virgil’s name and then gets angry at him for forcing him to do it by not being home an hour earlier.
This is a film of cultural morality. This is not a generic world in which Duddy seeks to triumph. It’s a world of Jewish businessmen and Jewish prejudices. He was bred to be a scrapper, a survivor, and some of his lessons early on become an obsession. He is told early on in the film by his grandfather that a man without land is nothing. I didn’t like Duddy at the end of the film but I certainly understood how he got there. And I have a pretty good idea of where he is going.
Peter is right that Jack Warden never entirely seems of the same family, but I didn’t mind. He’s very good in this film, stronger than in his two Oscar nominated works. It’s hard to really imagine a better reception for the film in 1974. One year later, I could easily see the film reaping nominations for Dreyfuss, the screenplay, and perhaps more. One of my few criticisms of the film is the most understandable. Several scenes feel chopped to maintain a pace where I would prefer it to linger a moment or two longer. The film is almost too cued up with the intensity of Dreyfuss’ Duddy.
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What a wonderful little movie. One of the very first films I saw starring Richard Dreyfuss, who manages to make Duddy a funny, loathsome and sensitive character. A sad film showing the corruption and greed of youth.
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First of all, thanks to Sabin for recommending this somewhat forgotten film of the early 1970s.
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was the first Canadian film most people in the U.S. had ever heard of, let alone went to see.
While Mordecai Richler’s 1959 novel took place in the late 1930s and early 40s, the film moves the story up a decade to the late 40s and early 50s.
Richard Dreyfuss had his first starring role as the young hustler who uses and abuses everyone he comes into contact with.
Raised in the Jewish ghetto of Montreal in the shadow of his older brother who is studying to become a doctor, Duddy (Dreyfuss) sets out to make money to make his father and grandfather proud. In the end the gandfather sees thorugh him but his delusional cab driver/part time pimp father (Jack Warden) is in awe of him.
The film is gorgeously photographed in the Candadian countryside as well as in the harsh streets of Montreal. The acting is first-rate, particualry Dreyfuss who you keep hoping will wake up and smell the roses but never does; Micheline Lanctot as his put-upon gentile girlfriend; Randy Quaid as the epileptic kid Duddy screws over so many times you’ll lose track of them and Joseph Wiseman as Warden’s older, smarter brother. Although Warden’s performance is technically fine, I never got the feeling that he was part of the same family.
A good companion piece to film is Barney’s Version, the 2010 film of Richler’s last novel with Paul Giamatti as an older, but not smarter and definitely not wiser character who could have been Duddy’s cousin.
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