Film Forum

(1974, Ted Kotcheff) In 1948 Montreal, Richard Dreyfuss’ go-getting pisher Duddy screws everyone and anyone to get his hands on the land that’ll one day make him a “somebody” – cheered on by zaydeh Zvee Scooler, cab drive/pimp dad Jack Warden, nouveau riche junkman Joe Silver, trusting epileptic bumpkin Randy Quaid, and French-Canadian shiksa girlfriend Micheline Lanctôt, but with stern warnings from Marxist factory-owning uncle Joseph Wiseman (Dr. No) – as he hustles tables in the Canadian “Catskills,” runs dope across the border for local gangster legend “Wonder Boy,” and produces alcoholic blacklisted director Denholm Elliott’s ethnographic bar mitzvah movie to end all bar mitzvah movies. Based on the novel by director Ted Kotcheff’s former roommate Mordecai Richler – Kotcheff had already adapted it for Canadian television in the early 1960s – with Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay (by Richler and Lionel Chetwynd). DCP restoration courtesy TIFF. Approx. 120 min.