As I left the "warm, happy place" that is Harvard University and felt the grey chill of the cruel world suffusing over me, I knew instinctively that it would be one of those nights. Wandering homeless and uncared for through the great city, a tragic victim of the carniverous academic world, I would shuffle from place to place, window to window, and finally wind up at a French sex flick. I was, as usual, correct.

It had been a long time, and weeks of grinding had dulled my critical faculties to an all-time low. For this reason, the movie, a weak-kneed effort called Tides of Passion, met with my most enthusiastic response. I was touched by the plight of an unfortunate orphan--female--who, tossed into the heartless world with no protector, was buffeted by the fates only to find true love at last.

I watched with rapt attention as one tender scene after another rolled past my eyes. Etchika Choreau, the new Brigitte Bardot according to the American-made posters which touch up her rather disfiguring freckles, played the leading role with all the tender delicacy it deserved; a man whose name I could not read played the part of a collossal boor with collossal boorishness; and there were many lovelies who displayed their carefully concealed charms (a seeming paradox) with the poise and savior seduire which can come only from several year's experience in French export films.

Leaving the picture, I came momentarily to my senses. "A thorough-going loser," I sneered in a burst of slashing iconoclasm.

But I had only walked a few paces when I stumbled upon an M.P. sitting on a sailor who had passed out in front of the Boston Public Library. The world surged into my stomach and I suddenly saw Tides of Passion as it really was. For $1.50 I had escaped for three full hours (there were several short subjects). Escape, pure and simple. At fifty cents an hour, what more could you ask for?