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Margaret Coleman (Diana McLean) is having a party to celebrate her investment in the film project of her lover Mangione (Frank Gallacher) but things are not going well. Her husband Dick (Ronald Falk) has discovered just how much money Margaret has sunk into the film – and that she is having an affair. Their son Tim (Ari Unglik) has also found out. Meanwhile John Catani (Sean Myers), a co-investor in the film, is having a meltdown. He is bankrupt and knows the drug bosses to whom he owes money are coming after him. The partygoers discover he is carrying a gun. Catani is determined to make merry in spite of it all and makes the film project’s lead actress join him in a dance.
Curator’s notes
Winner Take All delivers melodrama with a comic touch. Sean Myers puts in a terrifically camp turn as dodgy entrepreneur John Catani, here experiencing an extravagant undoing. Catani’s forced merry-making at the party results in some great dialogue, particularly with Falk.
His menacing flirtation with Margaret results in a tension that is broken only when Coleman roughly drags her into a nearby bedroom where secrets are laid bare. The tracking shot from the tape deck to Catani’s dance routine, across the faces of his decidedly non-merry fellow ‘revellers’, is a nice flourish, with a slightly surreal quality.
