The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

(On Cable TV, June 2019) Even at more than fifty years of age, The Thomas Crown Affair remains the epitome of cool for several good reasons. The incredible pairing of Steve MacQueen and Faye Dunaway is reason alone to be interested, but there’s more. The film is extremely stylized, which is not something we necessarily expect from chameleon director Norman Jewison. This stylistic approach (all the way to a split-screen heist and a great soundtrack with odd choices that eventually make sense) more than compensate for some very light plotting, which seems more determined to bring the protagonists together and then drive them apart than making any kind of sense. The insurance investigator doesn’t deduce very much, as the plot manipulates her through hunches that happen to be right and the film’s ending interrupts what could have been interesting had it gone longer. But The Thomas Crown Affair is a film that revels in details, set-pieces and characters more than sustained plotting—the chess sequence is still impressive, and the sand buggy driving is made even more interesting by knowing that MacQueen did those stunts himself. The main character is emblematic of the film’s flaws and strengths, incredibly cool yet deeply flawed in interesting ways: As a highly successful businessman who turns into a criminal mastermind for thrills, he’s not exactly believable or approachable, but he is a grander-than-life archetype fit for MacQueen. The Thomas Crowne Affair is a film that could only have been made in the late 1960s (even the 1990s remake was a more controlled but less exciting take)—crammed with style and excitement, but not always so shiny under scrutiny. Still, it shows the burst of energy coursing through Hollywood at a time without falling into the excesses of New Hollywood, and that remains a good thing.