CinemaLit - Coming Home (1978)

January 24 - Coming Home (1978), 128 minutes, directed by Hal Ashby, starring Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, and Bruce Dern.

The American film industry took its time addressing the war in Vietnam. Though set in 1968, Coming Home appeared three years after the fall of Saigon. Two veterans return, both deeply wounded but in different ways. The wife of one becomes the lover of the other. All are transformed by war. Ashby was Oscar nominated, with Jane Fonda and Jon Voight both winning for their sensitive performances. Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote “[Coming Home] effectively translated a changed national consciousness into credible and touching personal terms.”

January 2025 CinemaLit - Directed by Hal Ashby

We recently screened two films by Hal Ashby, The Landlord (1970) and The Last Detail (1973), at CinemaLit. Both went over so well that we’re dedicating January to him and three of his classics.

Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Robert Altman are better known, but no director personifies the renegade free-wheeling style of the 1970s “New Hollywood” more than Hal Ashby (1929-1988). Certainly no one was more committed to films that were as socially conscious and quick to expose injustice and hypocrisy in American society. Born into a Mormon family in Utah, Ashby dropped out of high school and subsequently moved to Los Angeles, where he became an assistant film editor. He won an Oscar for cutting In the Heat of the Night (1967), a tense drama of racism and M**der that proved to be his stepping stone to directing. When a conflict prevented Heat director Norman Jewison from accepting The Landlord, a pointed comedy-drama of race, class, and wealth in America, he suggested Ashby as his debut. The resulting film immediately established Ashby as a uniquely irreverent and invigorating voice in American film.

Ashby thrived by tackling subjects that had been previously ignored or forbidden on the screen. Harold and Maude (1971) features a May-September romance that’s more like March 1-New Year’s Eve. The Last Detail (1973) tore open dysfunctionality in the military. Shampoo (1975) treats Beverly Hills as a decadent hothouse of greed, political apathy, and sexual immorality. Bound for Glory (1976) is an evocative biopic of folk singer-songwriter and political activist Woody Gutherie. Coming Home (1978) confronts the enormous domestic cost of the war in Vietnam.

Ashby’s preoccupation with politics and sociology may sound like a recipe for sermonizing pedantic movies, but not so. They are often funny, even hysterical, always avoiding preachiness while deftly balancing their more serious commentary. Join us for three Hal Ashby winners: Harold and Maude, Shampoo, and Coming Home.

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