Atlantic City: The French on the Shore

I am from New Jersey. This is no secret. I love seeking out movies by our filmmakers, but perhaps the most intriguing is when someone from elsewhere (rather rarely) decides to represent the Garden State. How, then, could I avoid Louis Malle’s Atlantic City (1980)? A Frenchman takes on the Shore? With Burt Lancaster? Sign me up.

As a sign near the building where our main characters live announces: “Atlantic City, you’re back. Again!” AC seems always to be in a state of decay. Since its zenith in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as a summer resort town, it’s moved into vice and then vice-filled urban decay. Malle’s picture captures this beautifully. Lou (Burt Lancaster) is an old gangster who runs the numbers for a local club owner. Wistful for his days alongside criminal greats like Bugsy Siegal, Lou seeks a chance at redemption. He wants to be a real thug once again. Though the degree to which he was ever all that successful is unclear—he believes he was.

Sally (Susan Sarandon) is a Canadian runaway turned wannabe casino dealer who ends up drawn in by what she thinks will be a relatively brief time in Atlantic City. She becomes sexually involved with Lou—all part of his overwhelming desire to feel young and useful again.

There’s so much more to say and nowhere near enough time to say it. The gist: Atlantic City is a film about a repulsive place’s magnetic power, about the lies we tell ourselves to make it through a difficult, fraught life. In that sense, it feels both very universal and very New Jersey.

Which is great: it means you should check it out, even if you’ve never visited the hometown of saltwater taffy and legalized gambling in the US.