It'd be nice to say, "Welcome to a new year of films at Harvard." But with "classics" passed from one house film society to the next, "classics" screened and rescreened at the Brattle, Harvard Square, etc., and "classics" remade into things like "Heaven Can Wait," currently in Boston commercial conemas, by rights you should be seeing a lot of "CLASSIC" Dewitt capsules. But maybe not. Gotta keep it fresh.
The Exorcist. William Friedkin's film of William Peter Blatty's reasonably entertaining novel is cinematic vomit--in a word, a gross-out. Or maybe two words. Friedkin, whose hit-'em-over the head style should confine him to urban crime thrillers, shoves his disgusting images into our faces in a manner reminiscent of Linda Blair shoving a crucifix into her crotch. Crunch, crunch. Blatty's novel needed: a) someone less pretentious than Blatty to write the screenplay, and b) a director with more of a sense of lyricism and wit, a modern James Whale, or a Hitchcock, or even a DePalma. Friedkin and Blatty successfully induce nausea, not terror--unless you're one of the impressionable innocents who gave this film its reputation, in which case, frankly, you have no taste. An excellent performance by Max Von Sydow, a pretty good one by Ellen Burstyn, a lifeless one by Jason Miller (who should stick to--or rather go back to--writing plays), and one by Linda Blair that is as disgusting as anything else in the movie.
Network. Speaking of impressionable innocents, a lot of them found this film a revelation. It was intended as a revelation, and by rights the book of Paddy ought to take its place beside those of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John--except that Paddy suggests a cross between Puritan windbag Jonathan Edwards and Jerry Lewis. His characters pontificate and huff and puff and the whole thing is so shrill, pretentious and heavy-handed (not to mention boring) that it won Paddy an Oscar for his writing and it's called Paddy's Network. Which is just as well, because Sidney Lumet was the wrong director for Paddy's script--which could only have worked under a flaky, crazy director with a sense of visual satire, not Lumet, who ridiculed television far better in Dog Day Afternoon. He does, however, evoke magnificent performances, especially from Peter Finch (who seems to have dropped out of sight lately), Faye Dunaway (well cast) and Robert Duvall. In any case, you would do well to pass this one by.
Cat and Mouse. That Lelouch is at it again! His camera dips and swirls and flip-flops, but it didn't move as much as I did--shifting in my seat. This is a slight mystery made intolerable by technique. Maybe he should have directed Network, and given Cat and Mouse to Lumet.
Girl Friends. Independently produced and directed by Claudia Weill '68, it's a pleasant but lightweight portrait of a young woman photographer in New York. She's a nice Jewish girl with a great sense of humor (your mother would love her), but unfortuantely the movie is a little short in the plot department. There are some great cameo roles by well-known actors, however; Eli Wallach as the 60-year-old rabbi she has a brief affair with is one of the best. It's short and sweet, and, all in all, a fairly innocuous way to spend an evening.
Animal House. What? You were in the States all summer and you didn't see this movie? What's the matter with you? Anyway, this is what you might call a very funny movie, if you can manage to disengage your refinement and prepare yourself to laugh at some incredibly sophomoric humor. This is the ultimate college frat movie, complete with sex jokes, beer jokes, dope jokes, preppies jokes, and just plain dumb jokes. Nevertheless, this story of a renegade frat at an uptight early-'60s college is a good way to spend three bucks and a couple of hours. And, you know, it even reminds me of Dartmouth.
The River. An extraordinary effort from Jean Renoir--one of the most daring films of his career, a lyrical, colorful examination of East meets West, in which he also met ol' Satty Ray, who gave him a hand in the shooting. The tone has been correctly identified as ironic, but the director is involved, not detached, and this gives the film a richness of feeling and intelligence that represents the director well. Incidentally, this film will be screened tonight (Thursday) at Harvard-Epworth Church, just a ways up Mass Avenue and certainly the worthiest film organization in the area, run by friendly, dedicated cinema buffs who could make good use of your small (only a dollar) donation Duck Soup. Hail, hail, Freedonia, land of the brave and free. Forget what anyone else says; this is quite simply the best film the Marx brothers ever made. Where their other films confined their revolutionary energies to Florida, the opera house, the racetrack, and so forth, Duck Soup gives the Marxist troika a world--or at least a nation--to win. Groucho is Rufus T. Firefly, the President of Fredonia; his slogan, an eerie anticipation of Proposition 13, is "Whatever it is, I'm against it." Chico and Harpo are spies for Sylvania, a rival power. (Chico also enjoys a brief stint as a Public Nusiance in Groucho's cabinet). Margaret Dumont is a rich widow who is quite literally Groucho's biggest backer. There are millions of classic scenes in the film, including Chico's trial for treason, a war conference that evolves into a revival meeting ("I got guns, you got guns, all God's chillun got guns."), and the famous mirror sequence. Serious critics have tried to treat the film as a sophisticated surrealistic masterpiece; that kind of analysis, while plausible, just misses the point. Duck Soup works because it whisks away the hypocritical veneer of rationality which policymakers too often use to conceal the real meaning of their actions; like all comic materpieces, it reveals truths the existence of which we find discomforting.
Rebel Without a Cause. This Nicholas Ray-directed production was James Dean's first movie. Also starring the nubile 13-year old Natalie Wood and the late Sal Mineo as a Troubled Youth. ("Why'd you shoot the puppies Plato?" has to be one of the greatest non sequiturs in American film history--and also in the annals of cap writing. How the '50s really were; John and Olivia were never like this.
Furtivos. Another in the harsh, backcountry European genre of Padre Padrone, Jose Luis Borau's film manages to capture the hard beauty and violence of a remote area in Spain. Borau fought extensive censorship efforts to produce this strike at Franco's assertion that "Spain is a peaceful forest," and managed to come up with a boxoffice hit.
Unfortunately, the film often degnerates into a who-will-do-it-to-whom-when style in its look at the violently unstable relationship of a poacher (Ovide Montlior), his possesive mother who harbors incestuous designs, and the beguiling young wife (Alicia Sanchez). Even when Borau becomes overly-fascinated with violence toward the end of the film, however, the beautiful photography and the fine score carry the film.
Interiors. Woody Allen's first serious effort chronicles the disintegration of a suburban family, and beyond the unintentional yocks elicited by the script, Allen's film is not the disaster it's cracked up to be. It is, in fact, an admittedly Bergmanesque study of how parents can screw up children and siblings screw up each other, that always holds attention and succeeds, in its splashy finale, in involving us totally. Moreover Allen provides fresh insight into the sources of some of his comedy. The female performances are exquisite especially by Marybeth Hurt, as the youngest daughter in the family. Allen's funniest (intentionally) scene in the film, incidentally, seems a little out of place.
