Everybody Loves A Con
Man-Except-Ryan and Tatum O’Neal’s “Paper Moon” (1973)-A Film Review
DVD Review
By Film Critic Sandy
Salmon
Paper Moon, starring
Ryan O’Neil, Tatum O’Neal,directed by Peter Bogdanovich, 1973
Every theater-goer, at
least I am going to assume so, likes a “feel good” storyline. Maybe not as
first choice but in the basket. I confess to that feeling. But as an old corner
boy from the working class neighborhoods where I grew up in Nashua, New
Hampshire I also appreciate a good “con” storyline. Not con as in convict but
as in con artist and although we had plenty of both in the old Acre
neighborhood I gravitated toward the latter, except when the con was on me
which it was a few times. The film under review Paper Moon with the father-daughter team of Ryan and Tatum O’Neal
going through their paces gives us that combination I have mentioned.
Here’s the spiel. Here’s
basis of the con in this one. Moses Pray
(great name given the grift he is working) is a Bible salesmen in Great
Depression-era Kansas and Missouri (that Great Depression the one in the 1930s
not the more recent one this century). His grift, check out the obituary
columns of the local newspapers to see what men had passed to the great beyond
recently (in the days when such publications were plentiful) and head out to
the bereaved widow and hustle her into paying for a Bible, a deluxe edition
Bible, which the late breadwinner had ordered prior to passing away. Since the
Bible was inscribed to the vulnerable widow they usually paid for the thing.
Nice steady work. Later when times were tough Moses would step up in class and
do the classic sell (bootleg whiskey in the specific case) the owner his own
goods con (with untoward results). But the basic style of Moses had been etched
in that Bible hustle.
The “feel good” parts in
when Moses attends the funeral in Kansas of a woman friend with whom he had
been intimate. That is when he met his nemesis (and maybe his on-screen
daughter) Addie, played by Ryan’s real life daughter Tatum. She is an orphan
with no place to go except her mother’s sister’s house in Missouri. Moses gets
corralled into taking her to the sister’s house and the bulk of the film is
centered on the adventures and misadventures of the pair on the way there. The
most important part to note of this pairing is that Addie has almost as
larcenous a heart as Moses. Maybe it was genetic if the suspicions about Addie’s
unknown father had any basis. Through a series of events, cons, including that
ill-fated hustle of that irate bootlegger Moses and Addie bond, bond as thick
as thieves. Yeah, a con and “feel good” that is the ticket.
