Re[tro]view

Tuesday December 16 2025

THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR 1968 & 1999

AUDIO REVIEW:
“We asked these techknow times friend AI to ask us questions about movies. AI is an excellent Assisting Intelligence, particularly when used by intelligent Human Imagination. 
All answers, content, information, shared knowledge, deep dive research, critical thinking, occasional typos, powered by HI.” – 🙏🏽 SN and DL
1. What was your overall impression of the film? AUDIO (00:53): 
2. Can you summarize the main plot or storyline? Who were the key characters, what roles did they play and who played them? AUDIO (06:38):
3: How did the setting and background contribute to the film’s atmosphere? How would you evaluate the acting performances of the cast? What can you say about the direction and filmmaking style? How effective were the visuals, special effects, and cinematography? What emotional impact or message did the movie convey, and would you recommend it? AUDIO (33:05):
SN: I have always been a big fan of Steve McQueen, the King of Cool but until we did this RETROVIEW, I had no idea that he was cooler than his on screen persona. Read McQeen’s biography at everyone’s Fountain of Information, Wikipedia.
 
Don’t start me on Faye Dunaway! One of Ms Dunaway’s characters impacted my sense of style and flair greatly when I was 13 even though she was the villain in this movie, a childhood favourite. [RETROVIEW soon.] I love Faye Dunaway, even though she was considered “difficult”, strong, artistic Women always are.
 
“Dunaway has often highlighted Elia Kazan’s impact on her acting method. The director encouraged her to draw on her rawest and most potent feelings in her work and to not be ashamed of the emotional outbursts that fuelled her performances.
 
Naturally, this explosive emotional quality became the source of her power and her biggest weakness, with her roles possessing a vulnerability that made her completely mesmerising onscreen, despite the problems this might have caused behind it.
 

But while Dunaway’s name has been dragged through the mud over the years, the actor has finally addressed the notorious stories from this period of her career, opening up about her personal struggles with mental illness and bipolar disorder that led to this damaging label.“

 
– ‘The truth behind the rumours about Faye Dunaway and her “difficult” on-set behaviour’ –  Far Out Magazine. Thu 10 April 2025
 
Further reading:
– ‘The unforgettable scene that almost ruined Faye Dunaway’s career’ –
Far Out Magazine.
Sun 14 January 2024
 
– ‘The Many lives of Faye Dunaway’ – “the Faye Dunaway documentary is unusually frank”-
Guardian.
Mon 22 July 2024.

THE MOVIES

The Thomas Crown Affair 1968
Director: Norman Jewison
Main Cast: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway.
BUY OR RENT ON YOUTUBE
The Thomas Crown Affair 1999
Director: John McTiernan
Main Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis Leary.
BUY OR RENT ON YOUTUBE

The Thomas Crown Affair 2027
Director: Michael B Jordan
Cast: Michael B Jordan, Adria Arjona, Danai Gurira, Lily Gladstone, Kenneth Branagh.

– Read more at The Hollywood Reporter.

OPENING CREDITS 1968

We both love the opening credits of the 1968 film. Read more about it here, at The Art of The Title.

THE CARS

1. ‘Here are the top five’- Automedia
2. Steve’s 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 – Classic Driver.
“McQueen’s true passion was the hard driving of visceral speed machines, from luxury sports cars and motorcycles to racecars. His garage variously featured such gems as a Jaguar XKSS and four different Ferraris, including one of the uber-rare 275 GTS/4 NART Spiders. 
The featured lot, chassis number 10621, was one of these Prancing Horses, and its story is actually rooted in the fate of the NART Spider, in which McQueen was reportedly rear-ended while waiting at a stoplight in Malibu. Understandably not content to be patient with what would have been time-consuming body repairs, McQueen instead chose to purchase this 275 GTB/4 berlinetta to replace the NART Spider.“
 
It was the fifth-most expensive car of the week, behind four other Ferraris, including a 1962 Ferrari 330 LM / 250 GTO by Scaglietti, which sold for US$38M in 2014. In 2023 it was sold for US$51,705,000 by Sothebys making it the most  New owner unknown.
As much as we love cars and view them as art… this is ridiculous and frankly, evil.]
 
“The Monday sale, which came in at $51.7 million including fees, did not break the all-time record for a car sold at auction—a title still held by the 2022 sale of a Mercedes 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe for $143 million—but is notable nonetheless. 
The record for the most expensive Ferrari also still stands, at a reported $78 million for a 250 GTO sold privately in 2018.” – Forbes Australia. November 2023.

THE CHESS SET

The game Anderson and Crown are playing [the CHESS one] is based on a game played in Vienna in 1898 between Gustav Zeissl and Walter von Walthoffen.

THE
FASHION

1968: Costume Designer – the legendary Theadora Van Runkle
 
LA Times 1999
– “With 35 films to her credit, Van Runkle is a living legend to the crowd now seated for her slideshow   […] But she saves the best for last – Dunaway, her muse, as gun-toting Bonnie Parker in Van Runkle’s 1967 trend-setting creations  […] A year later, Van Runkle and Dunaway did double duty again on “The Thomas Crown Affair.” 
 
The actress sexily sleuthed her way onto the screen in the designer’s mini-skirted, big-belted suits, double breasted coats and a revealing backless, bra-less chiffon creation for a sexy chess game scene that took three days to film.“
 
[Notes: The Chess Scene is at 1:06:22 in the YT video above, with information about the game below the videos”- SN]
 
“The Thomas Crown Affair is often lauded as the most stylish film ever made. Screenwriter Alan Trustman had originally penned the story under the assumption that Sean Connery was to be the leading man, but having just completed the filming of Bond movie “You Only Live Twice” (1967) he turned the job down.
 
The role was offered to Steve McQueen, but Trustman was concerned that the actor, who’d only ever played blue-collar roles, lacked the polish required to play the sophisticated character – which was Ian Fleming’s initial reaction to Connery’s casting as 007. Trustman rewrote the script to suit McQueen’s persona and (as was the case with Connery) the finishing touch was provided with a trip to a master tailor.” 
 
“Having just completed the filming of the 007 movie, […]  Connery was said to be exhausted and in no hurry to get back on set. He eventually declined the role of Thomas Crown (a decision that he later regretted). Waiting in the wings was another global movie star – Steve McQueen. […] 
 
Previously, McQueen had only played the part of blue-collar characters, and Trustman didn’t believe he could convincingly portray the polished figure created in his screenplay. […]
The final transformation from rebellious action hero to debonair playboy not only involved a change of script, but also a serious wardrobe consideration.“
 
The Rake. August 2020.
“…The Thomas Crown Affair, […] one of the most influential moments in men’s style. To this day, the film remains one of the most empowering intersections between masculinity and sartorial expression ever captured by the camera’s lens. Created during an era when American cinema was focused on gritty social realism, it was perhaps understandable for reviewers to dismiss a movie like The Thomas Crown Affair with[Dunaway’s 29 or 31 costume changes, Ferrari GT 250s, Rolls-Royces and McQueen’s British-tailored splendour]as mindless eye-candy. […which ] entirely misses the point. 
 
[… TCA is] a pure exercise in style, and is as significant to cinema as Kazimir Malevich’s experiments in total non-objectivity are to art — which is to say, instrumental. Style is expressed in everything from the languid cool score, to the split-screen technique of the credits and bank robbery...”
 
“Costumes are credited to Theadora van Runkle, but she was largely restricted to the women’s wardrobe alone.  […] Faye’s costumes are very of the moment…they’re on trend for the late 1960s, but seem a bit dated now especially when her accessories are often white tights with white shoes.  But what I’ve tried to do here is narrow those featured to my favourite looks since there’s still a lot to love, whether it’s her clothes, hair, or makeup.” 
1999: Costumes – Kate Harrington
 
1. ‘Dressing for An Affair‘ – LA Times 1999
“I went shopping,” says Harrington, 38, who makes her debut as a costume designer when the film opens next Friday. With only two months “to pull the clothes together,” that left no room to create anything from scratch: not a sketch, a pattern, a garment. 
Harrington settled on a wardrobe for Russo selected from the 1997 F/W Celine collection by Michael Kors (one of Russo’s suggestions) and a few Halston creations.” 
[Randolph Duke’s Spring/Summer 1998 show for Halston – the black dress Russo wears in the Dance Seduction Scene -58mins in- is from this collection]
“For Brosnan’s many suits befitting the self-made billionaire Thomas Crown, Harrington passed on Prada and Gucci and went with the hand-tailored detailing of Gianni Campagna…”
 
“Although Russo wears Kors’s designs in almost every scene, he got involved only at the last minute, after the actress called him. A top print model in the late ’70s, Russo had pivoted to film before Kors came of age as a designer, but they knew each other socially, and she wore his clothes. After years of playing unglamorous roles to build her reputation as an actress rather than a model- actress, Russo told Kors, “I decided it was time to make a movie where I get to look great.

Shooting had already begun, leaving no time for him to break out the sketchpad. Russo, at 45, had retained her model body and could wear samples. Kors offered access to two runway collections, Michael Kors Fall 1998 and his debut for Celine, where he worked as creative director until 2004, during that heady moment of young Americans designing for European houses.
Kors describes Catherine Banning as “the woman in control in the room. She’s a boss lady, but she’s not a ballbuster.” And she likes to make an entrance. He saw her as “the queen of coats.” A fitting title, as she wears many.”

3. ‘RICH CLOTHES ARE THE JEWEL IN ‘THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR‘ – San Francisco Examiner. August 22, 1999
“In one of the character-establishing scenes in The Thomas Crown Affair, Crown (Pierce Brosnan), an international billionaire businessman with a taste for great art and grand theft, is being fitted for a bespoke suit. 

As Brosnan moves around his office with its panoramic views of New York City, he is oblivious to the two Italian tailors who patiently are chalk-marking the half-finished jacket he wears. It is the only unscripted scene in the film. And the tailors are real.
Gianni Campagna, Milan’s premier bespoke tailor and his son, Andrea, had made suits for Brosnan’s personal wardrobe and, at one time, he mentioned he wanted them to design a wardrobe for a future film. The opportunity presented itself last summer when they were called back from a vacation by the Thomas Crown producers, who requested that the Campagnas create the $ 400,000 wardrobe the title character wears.
The fashion look for the film was designed by MGM costumer Kate Harrington, […] And the costumes were to become to Thomas Crown as important a signature as the theme song, Michel Legrand’s Windmills of Your Mind.

Clothing […] had to telegraph the message that Crown was not only relaxed, adventuresome and rich, but active, handsome and addicted to risk.
Russo’s character, the insurance investigator sent to track the culprit […] also was delineated by her clothes – beautiful, peripatetic, rich, reckless and dangerous. (When a woman wears butter-soft black leather, black cashmere and silver fox, you can bet she’s got more than an edge going for her.)“

4. ‘Feud: Capote vs The Swans : Who is Kate Harrington?‘ – Esquire. Feb 20, 2024
This story [riddled with mistakes! ] is about the costumer herself, Kate Harrington. She was married to John McTiernan the director of TCA 1999 from 2003 till 2011.
“Harrington and Capote remained close until his death in 1984. After he died, Kate stopped modeling and moved into the fashion industry, working as a stylist and designer. She began her fashion career as an assistant to Diana Vreeland, an editor at Vogue at the time; then, she worked for Interview Magazine and Vanity Fair before finding her footing as a costume designer.”

THE SONGS

1. 1999
Sinnerman
Singer: Nina Simone “the High Priestess of Soul”.
“Sinnerman” (spelled as one word) is one of Nina Simone’s most famous songs. She recorded her definitive 10-minute-plus version on her 1965 album Pastel Blues, on which the credit is simply given as “arranged by Nina Simone”. Simone learned the lyrics of the song in her childhood when it was used at revival meetings by her mother, a Methodist minister, to help people confess their sins. 
In the early days of her career during the early sixties, when she was heavily involved in the Greenwich Village scene, Simone often used the long piece to end her live performances. – Wikipedia
[RETROVIEW on NINA SIMONE TS: February].
 
It’s not certain who composed the song but it is considered an African American traditional spiritual song, the lyrics describe a sinner attempting to hide from “divine justice on Judgement Day“.
However, the first famous release was recorded by the white-American Les Baxter in 1956, with vocals by white-American folk singer Will Holt, who according to online searches and Wikipedia, co-wrote the song with Baxter, and they “performed in the style of an African American traditional spiritual song“.
 
Baxter was also the developer of the musical style ‘Exotica‘
“The musical colloquialism exotica means tropical ersatz, the non-native, pseudo experience of insular Oceania, Southeast Asia, Hawaii, the Amazon basin, the Andes, the Caribbean and tribal Africa. […] “a combination of the South Pacific and the Orient…what a lot of people imagined the islands to be like…it’s pure fantasy though.”
 
Research shows that the actual first recording of this track was released two years before Baxter’s version, ‘On The Judgement Day‘ by The Sensational Nightingales, which certainly sounds like the same song. Some of the lyrics from this song can also be traced back to a 1928 Spiritual song called ‘No Hiding Place Down Here‘, recorded by the Old South Quartette. Brace yourself dear reader, you’re about to enter the Deep South. 
 
 ‘Sinnerman’ was used to great effect as the soundtrack to the art gallery scene. Simone’s ancient-jazz rasp, the undercurrent of fury in her fingers paired with René Magritte’s  The Son of Man is one of the all time top unions of song and scene…. and a point we feel got lost in the glamour of it all. Hollywood has hidden its truths in audience sight. – SN
Simone doesn’t sing in this clip but her genius jumps out of the screen.
2. 1968
The Windmills of Your Mind:
Composer: Michel Legrand. 
Lyricists: Alan and Marilyn Bergman (English)
Singer: Noel Harrison [son of actor Rex Harrison*, and bit of a Thomas McQueen 😉 type himself]
 
“The song (with the English lyrics) was introduced in the film The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. […] the song is heard during the opening credits; and, during the film, in a scene in which the character Thomas Crown flies a glider at the glider airport in Salem, New Hampshire.
Producer/director Norman Jewison had edited the rough cut for the glider scene using the Beatles track “Strawberry Fields Forever”, but then commissioned an original song which would reference the ambivalent feelings of Thomas Crown as he engages in a favorite pastime while experiencing the tension of preparing to commit a major robbery.
[…] A cover by Sting was used in the 1999 remake of The Thomas Crown Affair.” – Wikipedia
 
SN – I find the song eerie. It suits the 1968 Thomas Crown because he has a darkness that he himself can’t see so doesn’t understand, just knows he is constantly chasing fulfillment.

Director John McTiernan

1. ‘Chats, carpentry and sunshine: Die Hard director John McTiernan on why prison was ‘great’ – The Guardian. July 2023
“...he says that he was given an insight into the way he believes the government regularly abuses its power. He quotes Nelson Mandela’s remark, “No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.” In particular, McTiernan says the non-white prisoners were discriminated against and humiliated and that 90% of “the black and brown guys” in prison alongside him “were not criminals”. “They were just local kids who, if they had anything to do with the local drug industry at all, they were working at the only thing where they could make more than working at McDonald’s.”

McTiernan spoke to around “250 guys” when he was in prison and “snuck the interviews out”; he plans eventually to publish this material. “Their stories were amazing, just sickening and shocking. The war on drugs in the United States is really just [racist] Jim Crow [law]. There is no Republican party, it is the Confederacy, simply the Confederacy … the war on drugs is a disenfranchisement programme. In the South and in some of the border states like Missouri, 30% of the black and brown men can never vote for the rest of their lives.”

It’s not the conversation you would expect to have with McTiernan; he is far keener to talk politics than action stunts. We briefly discuss Bruce Willis who was diagnosed with dementia last year. He says that Willis still recognises him. “He knows I am a friend but he doesn’t know why.” McTiernan says many of his old pals stuck by him when he was in prison. “Alec Baldwin was wonderful, Arnold was wonderful.” 

John McTiernan was celebrated at the festival of the French Cinemateque in Paris, March 2025. 
Watch In Conversation with ‘John McTiernan: A Master of Action Cinema‘ on YouTube.
 
“The theater was packed for the opening night […] “Well, here I am, another destroyed American, come to you from the belly of the beast,” said the director after a rapturous round of applause. In his speech, McTiernan was referring to the current deep political divide in the U.S. […]
 
With a grave voice that resonated inside the silent auditorium, […] he said, “That until such dishonorable, deceitful and disgraceful men no longer control the path of any nation, there will be war, there will only be war. That until such monsters and secret policemen and fantasists of apartheid, are as abandoned and disgraced as the National Socialists, there will be war. There will only be war. And I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
McTiernan may not have made a movie in over 20 years, but his impact on the action genre in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s is indisputable. 
“If McTiernan was to make a comeback with a poignant prison movie, wouldn’t it be the perfect timing for him personally as well as politically speaking? 

He said, “Perhaps, possibly. It’s difficult, they made prison movies in the late 1940s and 1950s. The secret was that there was a political vogue in it, which made it ok, but you know why they really made it? They were cheap to make. The set, the costumes, everything is the same, you can shoot it in one stage, in 12 days. Done. There was an economic reason for it.”

He added: “Prison movies are not fun, not for anyone, really. It’s very very difficult to make an entertaining movie out of that. So I’ve never been really drawn to it.”

So would his next movie be an action movie? He said, “Sure, I have 3 possibly 4 pieces that I would like to do, I don’t know whether I will. Maybe I’ll have enough strength and energy. Or not.”

McTiernan added that they would only be independent movies: “As I said, there’s no studio left, really.”

The director also compared the state of the film industry to the automobile industry. He said, “Why can’t you tell a difference between a Toyota, or a Volvo or a Peugeot, or a Ford or something manufactured in Korea? Because they’re all the same marketing.

They all make exactly the same cars, they’re identical. Because none of them are car makers, they’re in the money business. They guarantee to bring the most money back to the owners that they work for. That’s exactly the same situation in the film industry.”

One of the reasons why McTiernan hasn’t done as many films as his fans would have wanted him to, is because the director refuses to make the same movie twice.

He said, “There’s never been a vogue in movies that lasted 30 years. They made Westerns for 10 years, 15 maybe. They made detective movies for 10 years, all sorts of vogues, one after another. Except, we get the comic books. And they make comic book movies for 30 years. And they make the same movies over and over again. 

Why? Because they’re not filmmakers running the studios, they’re here for the money. And they make whatever is most likely to be sellable for the largest group of people, which for a filmmaker who built the studio, would be shameful.”
 
7. Director John McTiernan: U.S. Embroiled In ‘Second Civil War’ – The Hollywood Reporter. September 09, 2014
 
“I can only plead with you to examine the current political and cultural works of my country [the U.S.]. We are in the hands of a terrible counterrevolution and a great reaction, a second Civil War sponsored by the same people that lost the first Civil War,” the director said.
 
“And it has created a good president who is a prisoner of the White House who can do little beyond the ceremonial,” McTiernan continued. “It has made, despite of what you may see on screens, a prison country, and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing what most people in our class are never allowed to see. I’ve seen the engine of the beast..”
 
THE MEND

Written and curated by Sandhya Nand.

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