The erotic chess match between Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway in the original version of "The Thomas Crown Affair" is so over-the-top that the makers of "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" hardly needed to exaggerate when they decided to parody it.
Dunaway rubs her fingernail along her lip; McQueen's eyes bug. Dunaway caresses a bishop's miter; McQueen's lip curls. And so on.With its unabashed R-rated sex, this summer's Pierce Brosnan-Rene Russo remake of "The Thomas Crown Affair" didn't need to resort to such innuendo. In addition, the hit remake's ingeniously staged caper sequences, set in an art museum, are much more exciting than the bank robberies engineered by the ultrarich Thomas Crown (McQueen) in the first film.
But although the remake is more gripping, the 1968 original -- now available on video and DVD from MGM Home Entertainment -- is more sophisticated.
It's a sad commentary on the times that in 1999 the insurance investigator (Russo) who falls for Thomas Crown (Brosnan) ultimately is unable to do her job because of her love-torn heart, whereas the same character 30 years earlier (Dunaway) remains uncompromised throughout the movie's cat-and-mouse game of crime and sex.
In other words, in the remake, Thomas Crown outsmarts the investigator who loves him; in the original version, the investigator outsmarts herself.
The remake represents plot-driven, adult escapism at its slickest, but the first version of screenwriter Alan Trustman's story is more a character study than a caper film, as the title of its Oscar-winning song suggests: "The Windmills of Your Mind."
The first "Thomas Crown Affair" is essentially the portrait of a quintessential 1960s antihero: an existential soul-searcher, seeking some sort of identity or enlightenment or ecstatic fulfillment through danger and the defiance of convention.
When a beautiful young woman asks Thomas Crown, "What do you have to worry about?," he replies: "Who I want to be tomorrow."
The Beatles turned to psychedelic drugs and the Maharishi when they felt lost; their contemporary, Thomas Crown, turns to crime. "It's not the money," he explains to the investigator, Vicki. "It's me. It's me, and the system -- the system."
Or, in the period jargon of the film's befuddled police detective: "Is that what it all comes down to? Kicks?"
Similar remarks were uttered by skeptics in many other 1960s movies, often in reference to experimental drug use, juvenile delinquency and other anti-establishment activities.
Just as McQueen himself did, Thomas Crown also gets his kicks by racing dune buggies, piloting gliders and throwing money away. Crown justifies his reckless bets on the golf course by saying: "What else can we do on Sunday?"
As that remark indicates, Crown -- like many other '60s seekers -- has rejected the conventional church. Yet, the character often is associated with the very thing that causes most people to think about God: death. Unlike Pierce Brosnan's Thomas Crown, McQueen's millionaire wheeler-dealer seems motivated, at least in part, by an awareness of his mortality.
Crown collects his bank robbery money from a drop point in a cemetery. Another scene finds Crown and Vicki strolling through an old graveyard. "I'm all hung up," he says at one point. Later, he adds, "Time's running out." And when Vicki cautions him about continuing his criminal activity, he replies: "It's my funeral. You're just along for the ride."
Crown's hobbies seem to be ways of flirting with death. His crime, too -- unlike the art theft of Brosnan's Thomas Crown -- is potentially deadly. In fact, an innocent bystander is shot in the leg by one of Crown's gang members.
Vicki is no angel, either. In her quest to best Crown, she resorts to kidnapping, car theft and blackmail. When Crown expresses surprise at her tactics, she retorts: "It's a funny, dirty little job -- so shoot me in the leg."
Stylistically as well as thematically, Thomas Crown is redolent of its era, from its clothing to its decor to its cool, jazzy score. Director Norman Jewison -- whose previous film, "In the Heat of the Night," was awarded the Best Picture Oscar -- and cinematographer Haskell Wexler utilize a hodgepodge of hip visual techniques that identify the film as a product of the 1960s as surely as if it were a Peter Max poster.
The depiction of the first kiss between McQueen and Dunaway, for example, dissolves into a prism of colors. Other scenes begin in a blur before coming into focus.
The film is remembered especially for its use of multiple images, as the screen divides itself into a series of panels, like a bank of TV screens. The widescreen version of "Thomas Crown" available on DVD offers the best way to view this gimmick.
The 1968 version of "The Thomas Crown Affair" will fascinate some viewers with its chic savoir-faire and frustrate others with its datedness. Still, it's hard not to be amused by a film in which the oh-so-cool lovers have near-monosyllabic conversatons like this one, which occurs after their first meeting:
Crown: "Tomorrow."
Vicki: "What about it?"
Crown: "Us. Dinner."
Vicki: "Marvelous."
Crown: "About six."
Vicki: "Perfect."
Then she gets out of the car and walks away.
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John Beifuss is film critic at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. He can be reached at beifuss@gomemphis.com