Save the Tiger

A film that takes place over two days in Los Angeles. Harry manufactures clothing. He built a company with a partner; the collection is coming out, a show is being prepared, and the company is about to go under. The problem looks like bookkeeping and is not: there is no cash, the credit is closed and the creditors are waiting. His partner proposes a solution. There is a factory, it is insured, and if it burns the company survives. For that they need to meet a man. Harry cannot decide. From there the film follows two days. The show, a woman arranged to keep a buyer happy, an employee falling ill, a meeting at the bank, and a restlessness that lasts all night. In between, Harry goes elsewhere in his mind. He remembers his unit in the Second World War, counts the names, and walking down the street cannot recognise the people he sees. What the narrative is interested in is not bankruptcy but rot: the man cannot defend the work he does, cannot find anything he believed in when young, and cannot say so to anyone. The title comes from a T-shirt; a campaign to save tigers, and Harry's inability to make sense of it, is the narrative's plainest symbol. Jack Lemmon plays Harry and won an Academy Award for it; he was better known for comedy and the part changed that. Jack Gilford is in the cast and was nominated as well. John G. Avildsen directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes bleak American drama of the 1970s and films built on performance. Who it is not for: anyone looking for plot; the film takes place almost entirely inside one man's head and the pace is low.