The Landlord (1970) poster
1970 · comedy · drama

The Landlord

Directed by Hal Ashby1h 52m1970
ElsewhereIMDb6.93kRT93%Metacritic75TMDB5.950
  • brisk
  • intimate
Movie DNA

Neutral, kinetic, measured comedy / drama, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

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At the age of twenty-nine, Elgar Enders "runs away" from home. This running away consists of buying a building in a black ghetto in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Initially, his intention is to evict the black tenants and convert the building into a posh flat. But Elgar is not one to be bound by yesterday's urges, and soon he has other thoughts on his mind.

Our read · The Landlord (1970) reads as a neutral, kinetic, grounded comedy · drama entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

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The shape of The Landlord

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What watching it is actually like.

You want a perceptive 1970s comedy-drama on race, class and unexpected bonds in Brooklyn.

ends bittersweetit stays with yousteady all the waygrips by minute 15attention 3/5earns its length
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around

Skip it tonightSkip if interracial affairs and 60s social upheaval feel too loaded or dated.

DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
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