If there’s one ’90s movie I’m determined to never, ever watch again, it’s Adrien Lyne‘s Indecent Proposal (’93). It was bad enough sitting through it the first time.
I lost it early on when Demi Moore‘s narration track used the term “dream house”. (Anyone who says those two words in that sequence deserves an instant, life-long demerit.)
Robert Redford‘s John Gage was supposed to be an odious millionaire, but there was no believing that because Redford can’t do odious, much less icky — it’s not in him. No matter the role (and I’m not counting Little Fauss and Big Halsy), he always played fair-minded straight-shooters.
As a testament to its own cynicism, Indecent Proposal uses a two-headed coin in the exact opposite way that Only Angels Have Wings uses one, which is interesting.
Just before his million-dollar night with Moore is about to commence on a yacht, Redford/Gage offers to forget the whole deal based on a coin toss — heads she submits, tails she walks.
Redford flips a half-dollar coin and it comes up heads, and so Moore stays and fulfills the deal by “doing” him every which way. At the finale he gives the coin to Moore for good luck. She flips it over and realizes it has heads on both sides. Redford/Gage therefore confirms that he’s a dishonest, manipulative shit.
Posted in 2018: The realm of Only Angels Have Wings is all-male, all the time. Feelings run quite strong (the pilots who are “good enough” love each other like brothers) but nobody lays their emotional cards on the table face-up.
Particularly Cary Grant‘s Geoff, a brusque, hard-headed type who never has a match on him. He gradually falls in love with Jean Arthur but refuses to say so or even show it very much.
But he does subtly reveal his feelings at the end with the help of a two-headed coin. It’s not what any woman or poet would call a profound declaration of love, but it’s as close to profound as it’s going to get in this 1939 Howard Hawks film. If Angels were remade today with Jennifer Lawrence in the Arthur role she’d probably say “to hell with it” and catch the boat, but in ’39 the coin was enough. Easily one of the greatest finales in Hollywood history.
