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| Images courtesy of VCI Entertainment |
Indian born television director Waris Hussein first started
out working in television including but not limited to directing ten episodes
of the original Doctor Who series before working his way up to his first
feature film with the romantic drama A Touch of Love in 1969. A year later, Hussein returned with an
adaptation of Gabriel Walsh’s Dublin, Ireland set romantic dramedy Quackser
Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx.
Starring Gene Wilder and Margo Kidder in the leading roles, it is an
unlikely Irish-American dose of mumblecore and an early example of what would
or wouldn’t become New Hollywood filmmaking.
Picked up by MVD Visual and VCI Entertainment for blu-ray disc release,
this underrated little number offers audiences a Gene Wilder they’ve never seen
or heard before and as such is somewhere between Hal Ashby and Woody Allen.
In Dublin, a well-to-do working-class family is having a
hard time convincing their son Aloysius “Quackser” Fortune who earned the
nickname by sounding like a duck as a child to get a real job. Something of a lovable street-smart idiot, Quackser
prefers trailing around horses in the city with a wagon only to stop and scoop up
the horse poop and resell it to flower gardens for fertilizer. One day, an American exchange student speeding
by in her car nearly runs him and his wagon over. Feeling bad about the incident, the American
woman introduces herself as Zazel Pierce (Margot Kidder) and the two hit it off
swimmingly almost immediately forming a romantic bond. However, things are complicated by her fellow
classmates who regard Quackser as dim-witted riff raff and soon after his world
is turned upside down when horses have been banned in Dublin effectively ending
his makeshift fertilizer business. Worse
yet, pretty soon Zazel will have to return to America, leaving Quackser with a
difficult choice of staying or leaving Dublin too.
A lighthearted Irish dramedy featuring an underrated if not
unlikely leading performance from Gene Wilder who feigns an Irish accent with a
bit of a slur, indicating his lack of education and Margot Kidder as a
happy-go-lucky exchange student wanting to taste a slice of Irish lifestyle, Quackser
Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx despite the title is very entrenched in
Ireland. Featuring utilitarian cinematography
by eventual Star Wars cameraman Gilbert Taylor presented in 1.66:1
despite the cover box saying 1.33:1 and a subtle regional score by The House
That Dripped Blood composer Michael Dress, the film looks and sounds nice
enough though nothing in it feels necessarily remarkable from a technical
end. Mainly an actor’s movie that feels
a bit like a stage-to-screen adaptation functioning as a snapshot of contemporary
Dublin, it feels again like a precursor to mumblecore where it’s dialogue heavy
and is less interested in plot machinations than simply following characters
going about their day.
Made and released right before Willy Wonka & the
Chocolate Factory which would immortalize Gene Wilder on film, Quackser
Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx came and went without much press although
reviews were favorable with Leonard Maltin praising it. The film was eventually nominated for Best
Comedy Written Directly for the Screen at the 1971 Writers Guild of America
awards ceremony but didn’t win before coming out in Irish cinemas a year
later. Looking at it now, the film is a
gentle natured character study with harsh unforgiving realities of life
crashing in on our hero’s happy-go-lucky carefree existence. Not necessarily a hidden gem but it means
well and the VCI Entertainment disc release looks decent. If you’re a Gene Wilder completist this will
give you a side of the actor you’ve never seen before or arguably since. If you’re keen on Irish cinema trying to show
off life in the country, this will invariably grow on you.
--Andrew Kotwicki
