The Scottish writer-director Bill Forsyth had a run of good fortune in the 1980s but then suffered a humiliating Hollywood experience working on “Being Human” in the early 1990s that made him decide to give up active filmmaking.
Tonight, it will be my pleasure to introduce Forsyth’s 1983 masterpiece, “Local Hero,” at a free “Martini and a Movie” screening at the Fairfield Theatre Company.
The film is the third in a series of business-related comedies that I programmed at the FTC for this winter of our discontent.
“Local Hero” is a hard-to-describe comedy-drama about a young Houston oil executive named Mac (Peter Riegert) who is sent to a small town on the coast of Scotland that his company plans to buy and turn into a refinery complex.
Mac is an all-business stereotypical 1980s yuppie who wants to fly in, get the negotiations done quickly, and then fly back to Texas.
But, the young man sees what he has been missing in life — leisure, friendship, real romantic attachments — and is seduced by the people and the place. He comes to regret what his company is planning to do to the area.
The first big whimsical twist in Forsyth’s story is that many of the villagers can’t wait to sell out and reap the consumerist rewards they’ve been denied in their coastal isolation.
Burt Lancaster gives one of his best late performances as Felix Happer, the head of the oil company, who is used to getting whatever he wants out of whoever he asks. Happer becomes annoyed by the delay in Mac’s negotiations and flies in to takeover the business deal himself.
Lancaster was perhaps the most adventurous of all Old Hollywood stars in terms of using his clout to push himself as an actor. He left the United States regularly to find daring work in Europe starting in the early 1960s. Unlike such peers as Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas, Lancaster was willing to take enormous chances with his “image” by working with decidedly anti-Hollywood filmmakers such as Luchino Visconti and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Lancaster’s determination to keep expanding his range as an artist continued into his 60s and 70s. As a result, the star had two big late-in-life triumphs — first in his great Oscar-nominated performance as the sad old numbers runner in Louis Malle’s “Atlantic City” (1981) and then two years later as the scary and funny mogul in the Forsyth comedy.
(“Local Hero” will be screened tonight at 8 p.m. at the Fairfield Theatre Company, 70 Sanford St. Doors will open at 7 p.m.)
