It was the first major film to focus on the pervasiveness of electronic surveillance, from security cameras in public places to hidden recording devices.[2]
Plot
Safe-cracker John "Duke" Anderson (Sean Connery) is released after ten years in prison. He immediately renews his relationship with his old girlfriend, Ingrid Everleigh (Dyan Cannon). While Anderson was away in prison, Ingrid has been "kept" by a wealthy man named Werner (Richard Shull), who put her up in an upper-class apartment block in Manhattan. Anderson determines rapidly to burgle the entire building in a single sweep – filling a furniture van with the proceeds. He gains financing from a nostalgic Mafia boss, Pat Angelo (Alan King), and gathers his four-man crew. Included in this crime team is an ancient ex-con drunk, "Pop" (Stan Gottlieb), who was released from prison the same day as Anderson, and "The Kid" played by Christopher Walken.
Unwittingly, Anderson is under pervasive surveillance almost the entire operation, from the earliest planning to the execution. This includes a private detective hired by Werner to eavesdrop on his mistress Ingrid; the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, checking on a released drug dealer; the FBI, investigating Black activists and the interstate smuggling of antiques; and the IRS, which is after the mob boss who is financing the operation. The various surveilling Federal, state, and municipal agencies all have different missions (and targets), so none is able to "connect the dots" and anticipate the robbery.
Anderson taps crooked antique dealer Tommy Haskins (Martin Balsam) to go through the apartment building, identifying valuables, and assess the potential loot. He brings in Edward Spencer (Dick Anthony Williams) to drive the getaway truck. "The Kid" will take care of burglar alarms and telephones. He tells "Pops", who calls to ask if he can move in with Anderson, to stand by for a "job". The Mafia foists the thuggish Rocco "Socks" Parelli (Val Avery), a psychopath who has become a liability to the mob, onto the crime team. As part of the deal, Anderson must kill him in the course of the robbery. Anderson sees the operation as complicated enough already, but goes along reluctantly.
The operation proceeds over a Labor Day weekend. Disguised as a Mayflower moving and storage crew, the crooks cut telephone and alarm wires and move up through the building, gathering the residents as they go and robbing each apartment. "Pops" plays concierge while the real one is bound and gagged in the cellar.
Jerry Bingham (Scott Jacoby),[3] the son of two of the residents, is a paraplegic and asthmatic who is left behind in his air-conditioned room. Using his amateur radio equipment, he calls up other radio amateurs, based in other states, who contact the police. The alarm is thus raised, but only after resolving which side (callers or emergency services) should take the phone bill.
As the oblivious criminals work, the police array enormous forces outside to prevent their escape and send a team in via a neighboring rooftop.
In the shootout that follows, Anderson kills "Socks", but is himself shot by the police. The other robbers are killed, injured or captured. "Pop" gives himself up while covering for the others by putting all the blame on "Socks". Having never adapted to life on the outside, he looks forward to going back to prison.
In the course of searching the building, the police discover some audio listening equipment left behind by the private detective who was hired to check up on Ingrid. They track it to find Anderson in critical condition (after having tried to escape). To avoid embarrassment over the failure to discover the robbery despite having Anderson on tape in several surveillance operations, and since many of the recordings were illegal, each of the agencies orders its tapes to be erased.
This was the first major motion picture for Christopher Walken, as well as the last on-screen film appearance by Margaret Hamilton.[2]
Sean Connery, Martin Balsam, and director Sidney Lumet were to work together again on Murder on the Orient Express. Connery had previously worked with the director on The Hill, and they would reunite the following year on The Offence, and again many years later for Family Business. Balsam and Lumet had worked together previously on 12 Angry Men.
Two characters from the novel on which the film was based were merged for the film: "Ingrid Macht" and "Agnes Everleigh" became "Ingrid Everleigh".[4]
Sean Connery's performance as the likeable criminal Duke Anderson was instrumental in his breakout from being typecast as James Bond. It also restored him to the ranks of top male actors in the United States.[2]
Production
The Anderson Tapes was filmed on location in New York City on Fifth Avenue at the Convent of the Sacred Heart (the luxury apartment building), Rikers Island Prison, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Luxor Health Club and on the Lower East Side. Interiors scenes were filmed at Hi Brown Studio[5] and ABC-Pathé Studio, both in New York City.[4] The production was on a tight budget, and filming was completed from mid-August to October 16, 1970.[2] The film was the first for producer Robert M. Weitman as an independent producer.[4]
Columbia Pictures was not happy with the concept for the ending of the film, in which Connery escaped to be pursued by police helicopters, fearing that it would hurt sales to television, which generally required that bad deeds do not go unpunished.[2]
The Anderson Tapes made its U.S. network television premiere on September 11, 1972, as an installment of NBC Monday Night at the Movies.[6]
Box office and critical response
The film generated $5 million in U.S. and Canada rentals.
Roger Greenspun of The New York Times called The Anderson Tapes "well done and entertaining". He noted Lumet's direction by writing "The quality of professionalism appears in rather lovely manifestations to raise a by no means perfect film to a level of intelligent efficiency that is not so very far beneath the reach of art".[7] Roger Ebert enjoyed the film but called Lumet's emphasis on electronic surveillance a "serious structural flaw".[8]Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice wrote that there was only "eleven good minutes in it", calling the rest of the film "confused and uncertain".[9]
