Fictional Date: 1963

Score:

When two “tin men,” salesmen pushing the then amazing innovation of aluminum siding for homeowners, find themselves engaged in a battle of wits that leads to one of them losing a wife and the other one taking her in (after using her in the fight in a rather sleazy and sadistic way), their misery is only beginning.

Levinson examines the historical period when Baltimore’s runaway fixation on home improvement spawned a group of hustlers more interested in the art of selling and acquiring money than doing business with any concern for ethics. The result: the rise of the Home Improvement Commission and the death of a generation of salesmen who put their hearts in their work and ignored their lives until it was almost too late.

Danny DeVito’s Tilley is one of many here, a guy who knows how to sell sell sell but can’t seem to make a go of it with wife Barbara Hershey. Their relationship echoes that of Shrevie and Beth from DINER, but unlike that happier, younger pairing, this one leads to divorce and Hershey’s Nora winds up in the arms of Tilley’s rival, the equally crooked Bill Babowsky (Richard Dreyfuss). There aren’t many redeemable characters here (even Nora’s situation is only created when she consciously chooses to cheat on her husband), but they come off as far more likeable than the scummier cast of LIBERTY HEIGHTS. Still, they are more disgusting than the DINER guys. While Boog never committed adultery with Beth, Bill sees no problem doing it with Nora for pure revenge!

DINER’s Bagel makes his second and final appearance here, and as before, he serves as peacemaker, trying to resolve the enmity between Bill and Tilley as he smoothed things over for Boog and his bet with Tank. He’s less successful here, however, As with DINER, the best character scenes are those that take us back to the diner.

This time we join the tin men on the other side for some typically mundane conversations, usually highlighted by Jackie Gayle’s riffs on BONANZA (yup, the Ponderosa again). While DeVito tries a bit too hard with his Baltimore accent, he usually sounds pretty good, and repeats a bit of wisdom first heard in DINER: that it’s rare, if not unheard of, to see a girl enter what is evidently a male fortress of chrome-edged solitude.

While TIN MEN doesn’t aspire to the level of philosophical introspection or even clever humor that makes DINER so enjoyable, it has its moments and showcases another aspect of life in Baltimore during a time of rapid change. It lacks the warmth (or attempt at such) that characterizes the other films, however, mainly because it moves so far away from the cultural aspects of family and community that typify the rest of the series.

Cars: Those Cadillacs are irresistable, symbolically lined up outside the tin men’s offices as examples of their financial and social status. But when one gets smashed in the opening of the movie, it’s the catalyst for an escalating psychological war between Bill and Ernest. Levinson has quite a thing for the Caddy, lovingly tracing its lines in multiple scenes and putting the power of its finned glory center stage through much of the movie. LIBERTY HEIGHTS would see the Caddy as an icon return to prominence in the series.

Music: It’s not as crucial a theme in this movie as in DINER or LIBERTY HEIGHTS, but period music is once more a backdrop to the action. Sinatra and Mathis are once more invoked as gods of the rhtyhmic muse, and another bad lounge singer rears his head.

Baltimore Geography: We see endless shots of rowhouses, the defining architecture of Baltimore, complete with their trademark marble steps. The Forest Park neighborhood, central to some of the other movies in the series, comes up here, as does the legendary Memorial Stadium. We may get a glimpse of Carlin’s Drive-In at one point. Tilley seems to live near Park Heights and the Pimlico race track. We even get a look at one of the downtown landmarks, the Domino’s Sugar sign.

That Tabakin Touch: As a gullible mark who buys Tilley’s latest scam to sell aluminum siding (Tilley signs him for a “free” job then sends Sam in to claim Tilley is insane and they should pay something to cover for him), Ralph doesn’t have as distinctive a scene as he did in DINER, but it’s always nice to see his timeworn face expressing the usual degree of confusion. His acting (if it can be called that) is so effortless, it’s as if Tabakin just shows up on the set and wanders into a scene - which by all accounts may be pretty close to the truth.

Next: We take a look at AVALON.

ATB