Review of The Fortune (1975) by Ola G — 09 Dec 2015

Nicky Wilson (Warren Beatty) and Oscar Sullivan (Jack Nicholson) are inept 1920s scam artists who see pay dirt in the guise of Fredericka Quintessa Bigard (Stockard Channing), the millionaire heiress to a sanitary napkin fortune. She loves the already married Nicky, but because the Mann Act prohibits him from taking her across state lines and engaging in immoral relations, he proposes that she marry Oscar and then carry on an affair with the man she wants. Oscar, who is wanted for embezzlement and anxious to get out of town, is happy to comply with the plan, although he intends to claim his spousal privileges after they are wed. Once they reach Los Angeles, the men try everything they can to separate Freddie from her inheritance without success, but with sufficient determination to arouse her suspicions. When she announces her plan to donate her money to charity, Nicky and Oscar conclude that murder might be their only recourse if they're going to get rich quick...

Time Out London said this about "The Fortune": "Starts promisingly as a sardonic comedy, but once in California lethargy settles in. The film becomes almost static, a series of stagy, glossy tableaux: such lack of momentum may be an adequate assessment of the characters' limited capacity for development, but it has a disastrous effect on the film's pacing. Events degenerate into miscalculated farce and underline Nichols' continuing slick superficiality. Adrien Joyce's much hacked-about script sounds as though it was once excellent: a pity everyone treats it so off-handedly." Channel 4 called it a "flat-footed attempt to revive the 1930s screwball comedy" but liked the leads, commenting, "The trio's timing and delivery almost rescue the movie from degenerating into bad farce." This so called screw ball comedy is a bomb from scene one and maybe if the take on the story had been dramatic it might´ve been so much better. Beatty and Nicholson compete in who can be the most over the top in his role it seems and the lovely Channing is lost in all the incoherent silliness. The movie lacks everything you want in comedy. Timing, a proper script, actors that can handle comedy and comic hooks. It feels like Nichols, Beatty and Nicholson had such ballooned egos at the time, that they thought they could get away with anything. They couldn´t. "The Fortune" is just painful to watch and I have just erased it from my mind. Trivia: In an interview on Trio's series Face Time (2002), producer Peter Guber revealed that the film Shampoo (1975) was only made because its creators insisted on its being green-lit along with The Fortune (1975). Everyone concerned was convinced The Fortune (1975) would be a huge hit, given its stellar line-up of filmmakers, so the deal was accepted. As it turned out, The Fortune (1975) was a flop and Shampoo (1975) was the huge hit.