If some old actorsjust fade away, Burt Lancaster just gets better and better. As Lou, asmall-time gangster in an Atlantic City that is trying to go big-time,Lancaster may dream of the past, but he remains a remarkably physicalpresence. Watching the old town give way to the honky-tonk insincerityof the new hotel-casinos is like watching nature's sad, destructivecourse; Lou recalls the days when there was culture, in songs like "FlatFoot Floogie with the Floy Floy," the days when "the Atlantic Ocean wasreally something." Apart from Lancaster's extraordinary physicality, andthe other-worldly pastels of its location cinematography, Atlantic Cityis an eccentric dialogue film the likes of which are rare indeed fromHollywood. The script is by playwright John Guare, and as New Yorkercritic Pauline Kael notes, "(Director) Louis Malle has entered intoGuare's way of seeing-a mixture of observation, flights of invention,satire, perversity, anecdote, fable. And depth of feeling-whatLancaster...brings to the film. And he brings it to the jokes." AtlanticCity won the Grand Prize at the 1980 Venice Film Festival.