The Landlord

This film was all over the place. Hal Ashby's debut would be somewhat unhinged but with less finesse than his later films.

Like The Graduate, this is a comedy where a sheltered young man undergoes a personal crises that exemplifies the times. Yet this film's clunky structure & avant-garde editing distract from the sweet and fun parts. It smartly mocks white privilege, cultural collision, and self-congratulatory liberals (the last of which is ironic as "woke" Hollywood never found a place for a great actress like Marki Bey). Still, recommended, even if the final third shifts from sharp satire to average melodrama.

Has a couple good jokes and performances but it's kind of a mess cinematically and politically

All films are films of their time, but some remain moreso than others. Ashby's satire on race and class is clearly dated to the period, but the expressions of liberal condescension towards minorities are still relevant today, even if they take on a slightly different form. Ashby fails to balance the comedy with the drama as satisfactorily as he did in films like The Last Detail and Being There, but when it focuses on tensely comic racially charged exchanges it's a real success.

Race relations in America has been a hot topic for films this year, but none of them seemed to tackle the subject with as much insight, scathing humour, and control over so many emotions as this brilliant debut. Switching between laugh-out-loud moments, comically tense race/class interactions, thoughtful pathos, and even a few sequences of terror, this stunning debut is an ambitious microcosm of '70s New York that has truly captured this specific setting in a wonderfully cinematic experience.

Seemed like it should have been better.

I didn't really get much of a laugh out of this one, but I found it pretty darn entertaining anyway. Everyone did a pretty decent job and the script was well written, but I'll be damned if I could think anything the entire time except: "holy crap, Beau Bridges used to look like that!"

Generally not funny (unless you're the kind of liberal who finds white guys troubled by stereotypical blacks hilarious), it is interesting how the film radically changes tone midway through. It's also interesting as an early form of Woke ideology as it conflates whites w/ the cluelessly rich & paints blacks as exempt from judgment. Blacks not paying rent is played for comedy. Bridges' character is also painted as problematic because his non-bigoted &"free love" behavior negatively affects blacks

Pauline Kael wrote, "Hal Ashby's début film as a director is one of his best.[...] The distributors may have been frightened off by the tense, interracial byplay--or perhaps the public was; relatively few people saw the picture and it's rarely revived." I don't quite agree with her assessment, and one can certainly see why it didn't get a lot of play. All these years later, much of it seems quite naïve, but it somehow (mostly) works. Good cast, especially Bridges, Diana Sands, and Lee Grant.

if you're stuck watching concepts instead of characters for two hours, you'd better hope they express a vision, or at least a plan. first half of this weak-chinned dumptruck is like if a Farrelly bros movie went to a costume party; second half is like an overly long Robin Williams depression-movie. in totality, the film plays out like an unfunny Arrested Development (which is to say, Arrested Development but with bad dialogue). but hey, who am i to judge? it's a romp-com about a fun landlord!

I'm not sure I get the point of what the film was trying to say (something about class and race? Am I dumb or is this movie just too scattershot) but at least it looks pretty, especially the party scenes.

Amor Sem Barreiras estreava há 50 anos nos EUA. Que pecado esse filme não receber tanto amor quanto os outros filmes que o Ashby fez nos anos 70, com aquela mistura de tristeza com humor que só o diretor sabia fazer, é uma daquelas pequenas pérolas que o período da busca dos direitos civis dos negros produziu e meio que ensina os brancos capitalistas a serem gente. Uma delícia. Box Versátil O Cinema da Nova Hollywood Volume 2.

Goes from a fun fish out of water comedy to a serious drama the way only a 70's movie can. The tenement vibe is inviting and the writing is sharp. Plus, it has great performances, especially from Beau Bridges and Lee Grant. There's also evidence of the great filmmaker that Hal Ashby would become. Somebody put this on DVD already.