“Ever get the feeling you was being watched?”

The other day friend of ds106 Grant Potter noted that the tech noir adjacent theme of surveillance is a theme on the Criterion Channel this month. One of the films on their list is The Anderson Tapes, which conveniently happens to be available on tubitv. I was drawn to it because it’s directed by Sidney Lumet (whose book Making Movies is highly recommended to anyone interested in the topic), and finding out that it has Christopher Walken’s first steps sealed the deal.

We noted that there’s a sort of retro-futurism to tech noir. This is definitely retro, dated by the photo of Nixon on the government office wall. Those weird computerish bleeps and bloops in the soundtrack and trailer are supposed give a pseudo sci fi feel, I suppose. It’s a conventional heist film, except that the viewer isn’t the only one watching. From the Wikipedia entry:

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.

Throughout the story we see cameras, screens, wires and recorders. Everything is watched, everything is recorded. A big difference from today is that everything is siloed. I guess they hadn’t figured out the power of data fusion back then. In the end, everything gets erased because most of it wasn’t exactly legal. Oh to live in such innocent times.

One of the underappreciated highlights though has to be Martin Balsam’s toupee.