As George Peppard said in The A-Team he did all that he did with the A Team for 'the jazz'. The Gypsy Moths is a film about 3 parachute jumpers who entertain in small town red state America in the late sixties. One is a young man Scott Wilson and he's brought the show back to his small Kansas town of Bridgewater. His two fellow jumpers are Burt Lancaster and Gene Hackman and these guys are at varying degrees of having their fill of 'the jazz'. Especially Lancaster, not too many notes left in his horn to blow any jazz.
But all three feel they have an image to maintain especially in Wilson's home town. They all get invited to a home cooked meal at the house where William Windom, wife Deborah Kerr, and daughter Bonnie Bedelia live. There's some unusual history with Wilson and that family and all three are drawn into this unhappy family's domestic dispute.
Burt Lancaster who was one of the most vitally alive men on the big screen is great as that vitally alive parachute jumper who jumps out of airplanes for people's entertainment. Alive only when he's in the air and even that's coming to an end. But he's one who wants to be in control of his own destiny and will be to the very end.
Gene Hackman has his doubts and fears and gets them exorcised he feels at the midnight mass of the Catholic Church of wherever he's performing. Otherwise he's the original good time man who's in the business because it makes him money and gets him women. Lancaster and Hackman both have qualities that Wilson should emulate and distance himself from.
This was the 6th and final collaboration between director John Frankenheimer and Burt Lancaster and all six of their films mark some of the best films of the Sixties. Gene Hackman was continuing to break out after his rave reviews from Bonnie And Clyde. And Deborah Kerr ignites some of that old From Here To Eternity chemistry with Lancaster as she realizes he might be her chance at happiness.
The aerial and jump sequences are photographed beyond reproach. Those spectacular stunts and the men who do them stand in sharp contrast to some empty lives they lead.
Definitely for fans Lancaster, Kerr, and Hackman.
But all three feel they have an image to maintain especially in Wilson's home town. They all get invited to a home cooked meal at the house where William Windom, wife Deborah Kerr, and daughter Bonnie Bedelia live. There's some unusual history with Wilson and that family and all three are drawn into this unhappy family's domestic dispute.
Burt Lancaster who was one of the most vitally alive men on the big screen is great as that vitally alive parachute jumper who jumps out of airplanes for people's entertainment. Alive only when he's in the air and even that's coming to an end. But he's one who wants to be in control of his own destiny and will be to the very end.
Gene Hackman has his doubts and fears and gets them exorcised he feels at the midnight mass of the Catholic Church of wherever he's performing. Otherwise he's the original good time man who's in the business because it makes him money and gets him women. Lancaster and Hackman both have qualities that Wilson should emulate and distance himself from.
This was the 6th and final collaboration between director John Frankenheimer and Burt Lancaster and all six of their films mark some of the best films of the Sixties. Gene Hackman was continuing to break out after his rave reviews from Bonnie And Clyde. And Deborah Kerr ignites some of that old From Here To Eternity chemistry with Lancaster as she realizes he might be her chance at happiness.
The aerial and jump sequences are photographed beyond reproach. Those spectacular stunts and the men who do them stand in sharp contrast to some empty lives they lead.
Definitely for fans Lancaster, Kerr, and Hackman.