The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)

Film: The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)

Stars: Alan Alda, Barbara Harris, Meryl Streep, Rip Torn, Melvyn Douglas

Director: Jerry Schatzberg

Oscar History: No nominations, though it was kind of in the conversation.  Streep & Douglas would go on to win the Oscars later that year for different performances, but won alongside Joe Tynan at major critics prizes as a sort of "let's honor all of their work" accolade that frequently happens from major critics prizes.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Barbara Harris-click here to learn more about Ms. Harris (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Well, after three years, it was bound to happen.  In a two-month period where life honestly overwhelmed me & I just couldn't handle it anymore (my job, the expectations of the holiday, the general unrest of Omicron, honestly my mental health itself), it makes sense that eventually I was going to miss a Saturday in our series. I'm not going to focus too hard on it, both because it was literally Christmas & because checking out was what was best for me (always remember-take care of yourself), but I am bummed our streak is over, and with such a unique star as Barbara Harris.  So I will be post-dating this for posterity, but today we will end our month looking at Barbara Harris, and indeed our year looking at the leading ladies of Alfred Hitchcock's movies, with a "Mondays with the Stars" segment.  

(Spoilers Ahead) The Seduction of Joe Tynan is a late 1970's political drama centering on Joe Tynan (Alda, who also wrote the film).  Tynan is a liberal New York senator who has made something of a name for himself, and clearly has presidential aspirations.  His wife Ellie (Harris) is ambitious as well, a smart woman who is studying psychology & is a proponent for analysis (which seems too "East Coast intellectual" for Tynan's staffers).  Tynan is getting pushed on the upcoming Supreme Court nominee from both sides.  On his right is longtime Senator Birney (Douglas), who knows the Supreme Court nominee will challenge him in the primary if he can't get him on the Court, while on his left is a lot of progressives, including Karen Traynor (Streep), an attorney who wants Tynan to make a stand against the nominee, in the process tanking a segregationist from making it onto the Court and setting up Tynan as a future presidential challenger.

This is the premise, and much of your opinion on what happens later will inform what you think of the movie.  I am not one of those people who judge movies of the past based on a new rubric; I think that is foolishness, and while I don't think we necessarily need to celebrate movies that clearly have aged poorly, I do think that we need to recognize that all things age one-way-or-another.  This is worth mentioning because the center of this movie is around Karen, a smart, capable woman in her own right, having an affair with Joe Tynan.  This doesn't appear to impact his vote (though he does, it's worth noting, side with Karen & eventually tanks the nomination), but what makes this remarkable isn't that Alda's screenplay has the beautiful woman in politics sleep with a powerful man, but that he does so while keeping her smart.  Streep's Karen is placid (Streep famously said that she was on "auto pilot" during this movie in the wake of the death of her longtime love John Cazale), but she's knowing.  She's done this before, and she knows not to put her heart too into the center.

Honestly, Joe Tynan is a bit dull as an overall movie (the direction is slow, and takes too many detours), but the script has a knowing glance at politics & it's filled with strong performances.  Alda is borrowing from Ted Kennedy in this part (it's hard not to see the Massachusetts senator in every policy speech), a deeply imperfect man who might well be perfect for America in 1980 (sadly, that didn't happen-I'd take a philandering liberal over Ronald Reagan any day), and he nails the well-meaning "still a man" role well.  Same could be said for Melvyn Douglas, who brings such instant stature you don't realize until late in the movie that he's clearly suffering from dementia, and has no business staying in politics longer.  There's a moment where he starts soliloquizing in French during a congressional hearing that is remarkably effective (it's the sort of thing that Aaron Sorkin would vastly overplay but here they get just right).

And best of all is our star of the month.  Harris could just be playing the neglected wife, but Harris (and Ellie) are too smart for such things.  She's a modern woman, and she won't take her husband back easily.  She also won't put herself into a closet without getting something in return.  Harris does, it's worth noting, take Joe back, but she does so with the real promise that he has to change...cause if he doesn't, she knows she can take him down.  It's a great, subtle part from an actress who would never really get an opportunity like this again.  She'd star in Hal Ashby's famously awful Second-Hand Hearts, which caused any momentum in her career to stall (she wouldn't make another movie for five years).  She would appear in films like Peggy Sue Got Married and Grosse Point Blank, but her heart wasn't really into it (she'd always kept film acting at a distance as it was), and she retired from acting to become a teacher at the turn of the century.  Harris died of lung cancer in 2018, one of the last of Hitchcock's living stars.

While it is just Monday, we will still have time before the new year (Saturday is the first of the year) to not only do a retrospective of our year devoted to Hitchcock, but also to take a peak at next season of the show, as yes, there will be a fourth season of Saturdays with the Stars (with a new theme!).  Stay tuned!