THE LAST PICTURE SHOW 1971

It's been my experience that certain films adapted from novels play much better if you've read the book first: Doctor Zhivago, The Great Gatsby, and The Day of the Locust. Conversely, some screen adaptations are such vast improvements on their source material that reading the book after seeing the film can feel, at best, a recessive experience: The Godfather, That Cold Day in The Park. Then there are those films so faithful to their origins that both book and motion picture complement one another: Women in Love, A Room With A View. And, of course, there are the movies that deviate so significantly from the books upon which they're based that it's best to regard them as distinct, isolated entities: The Shining and A Place in the Sun.

In the case of The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich's sweetly evocative film of Larry McMurtry's 1966 novel, it's one of the rare movie adaptations to succeed in capturing the power and poetry of the written word in terms wholly and eloquently cinematic (Roman Polanski accomplished much the same in adapting Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby).

Timothy Bottoms as Sonny Crawford

Jeff Bridges as Duane Jackson

Cybill Shepherd as Jacy Farrow

Ben Johnson as Sam the Lion

Cloris Leachman as Ruth Popper

Ellen Burstyn as Lois Farrow

A slice-of-life allegory of loss and passage as reflected in the lives of the residents of a small, dying Texas oil town in the early 1950s, The Last Picture Show benefits from having McMurtry adapt his own semi-autobiographical novel for the screen. It's a sensitively-written contemplation of a place and time that resonates with subtle details of dialogue and character only possible from first-hand experience. McMurtry wrote about his hometown of Archer, Texas (fictionalized and renamed Thalia, Texas in the book), the very location Bogdanovich uses in the film. The town of Archer—whose largest export seems to be dust—is called Anarene in the movie.
McMurtry's characters and dialog are vivid, even for someone like myself who never spent much time ins mall towns. And Bogdanovich's contributions (technically and in the deft handling of his cast of newcomers and veterans) are assured and perceptive. Small wonder, then, that when I saw The Last Picture Show for the first time on TCM back in 2008 as part of a month-long salute to Academy Award-winning films, I instantly fell in love with it.

As Genevieve Morgan, the waitress in the town's only diner, Eileen Brennan gives a sublimely understated performance 

Let me tell you, it's really out of character for me to have waited so long to see a film considered by many to be one of the seminal motion pictures of the '70s (especially since I absolutely adore Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc? and Paper Moon), but I had my reasons.

The Last Picture Show and the hazily sentimental The Summer of '42 were both released in 1971, kicking off the decade's pop-culture fascination with all things nostalgic. I was 14 years old at the time, and as a Black youth inspired by the emerging prominence of Black actors on the screen and excited about the upsurge in positive depictions of African-American life in movies of the 1970s, these retro films—with their all-white casts and dreamy idealization of a time in America's past that was, in all probability, a living nightmare for my parents and grandparents—felt like a step in the wrong direction. The antennae of my adolescent cynicism told me that all this rear-view fetishism was just Hollywood's way of avoiding the unwieldy game-change presented by the demand for more ethnic inclusion onscreen, the evolving role of women in society, the increasing visibility of gays, and the touchy topic of America and the Vietnam War.

The Royal Theater in desolate Anarene, Texas

Finding little of what I consider to be either heroic or noble in the mythology of the American West, I was at a loss to imagine what I could possibly find poignant in a film I perceived as attempting to mourn and mythologize the passing of an era which, for me, symbolized hatred and ignorance more than it did simplicity and lost innocence. (In her 2007 memoir Lessons in Becoming Myself, actress Ellen Burstyn recounts that even as late as 1970, the racist harassment of local blacks was something of a recreational pastime engaged in by some of the idle white youths of Archer, Texas hired as extras during the filming of The Last Picture Show.) 

Jumping ahead some thirty-some years later, I'm glad I waited so long to see The Last Picture Show. Why? Well, for one, enough time had passed for me to be able to look at the film in a context unrelated to the year it was made. No longer an impatient youngster annoyed at the idea of a film looking at yesterday when there were so many "today" stories that needed telling, I had a better perspective on what might be called the subjectivity of the nostalgic experience. It didn't matter that I couldn't specifically relate to the era or the small-town life depicted; the film had something significant to say about small, everyday, human things like loneliness and the risk of allowing oneself to be emotionally vulnerable. 

A coupla good ol' boys and their gal

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
Ironic, given how much my distaste for sentimental nostalgia played a part in avoiding The Last Picture Show for so long, but one of the things I most like about the film is how perceptive a vision of small-town life it is. As dramatized in the cross-cutting lives of the town's aimless high-schoolers (pals Sonny, Duane, and dreamgirl Jacy) and the restlessly dissatisfied elder populace (town father-figure Sam the Lion and neglected housewives Lois and Ruth), nostalgia figures in the narrative chiefly as expressed heartache and regret. Not necessarily a longing for how things used to be, but more a sense of loss related to the illusory dreams of youth. 

In many gently insightful ways, The Last Picture Show actually contrasts the idealized images we hold of '50s life with a realistic look at Americana that proves very effective and surprisingly moving. It amuses me to think I avoided The Last Picture Show for so long because I assumed it sentimentalized the past. The truth is, The Last Picture Show is the absolute antithesis of The Summer of '42's brand of soft-focus wistfulness, and I consider it one of the finest films to come out of the '70s.

The film's moral and mythical core is personified in the paternal figure of Sam the Lion, a dying breed of decency among the ethically-adrift denizens of Anarene, Texas.

PERFORMANCES

I can't say enough about the caliber of performances Peter Bogdanovich elicited from his remarkable ensemble cast. Each player brings such a wealth of genuine depth and feeling to their portrayals that the film's languid look at a year in the life of a sleepy Texas town has a strange, sad poetry about it. Life seems to be moving on without giving even a passing glance to this dusty little burg.

Cybill Shepherd, whom I found to be a near-insufferable presence during the 1970s in everything save for Taxi Driver, gives the performance of her career as the guilelessly destructive, small-town beauty, Jacy Farrow. Far from being the usual one-note misogynist nightmare of unattainable beauty, Sheperd's Jacy is one of the most insightful depictions of quiet desperation in females I've ever seen. Denied access to the avenues of expression made available to the young males of the town, Jacy channels her youthful restlessness into exerting control over the only realm of power afforded women at the time: her physical appeal. Though not always successful in her efforts, Jacy comes to learn that her beauty is her only source of power and the only hope she has to change her life.
The clumsy wielding of this power turns her into a more hurtful being than even she is aware of, but I love that the film seems to understand her and finds no more fault in her shortcomings than it does the equally lost male characters. Looking at the film, I have a hunch that every move, gesture, and intonation was orchestrated by Bogdanovich (as is rumored of Tatum O'Neal's Oscar-winning turn in Paper Moon). But when the result is a performance of such dimension and humor, I don't care. She's marvelous.

Ruth, the lonely wife of the town's high-school coach,
has a transformative affair with high-school senior Sonny

Jeff Bridges, Ellen Burstyn, Eileen Brennan, and especially Cloris Leachman give remarkable, laudable performances. But for me, Timothy Bottoms is the one who really makes The Last Picture Show work. Saddled with the requisite (and reactive) role of the "sensitive youth" in a coming-of-age film, his performance is something of a revelation. How Bottoms manages to so movingly portray a not particularly articulate character...one who is at once searching, naïve, perceptive, and unsure...while never once leaving the intensity of his inner struggle in doubt is pretty miraculous. Especially when one considers that he was just nineteen at the time. I like his performance so much that I assumed and took for granted Bottoms was among the eight Oscar nominations the film garnered. I was shocked to find out he was overlooked, and Bridges (good, but less impressive to me) was nominated instead.

Bill Thurman as Coach Popper, Cloris Leachman's neglectful husband who struggles
with his homosexuality

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

As I'm wont to do when viewing American films made before our current age of cinematic puerility, I find myself somewhat flabbergasted at how "adult" mainstream films were in the '70s. And by adult, I mean grown-up and mature. Although there's a considerable amount of nudity, sex, and profanity in The Last Picture Show (and, banned in Arizona in 1973, it's a movie that had its share of censorship battles), what's most shocking about seeing it today is its total lack of prurience. 

Rich Kid Morality
The casual sexuality of Anarene's moneyed set is highlighted in this comically daring sequence where Jacy and her date Lester Marlow (Randy Quid) are guests at a nude swimming party (the naked backside belongs to Gary Brockette)

There's a welcome bluntness to the way sex is presented and spoken of in the film. A tone I can only assume is intentionally presented in contrast to the film's nostalgia-evoking cinematography. As a film that dares expose the sexual hypocrisy of America's Bible-thumping "Traditional Family Values" set, The Last Picture Show is a winner in my book from the get-go. But Peter Bogdanovich's straightforward, matter-of-fact approach really wins me over with its nonjudgmental (yet subtly moral) point of view. Something that feels truly trail-blazing looking at it today.  

THE STUFF OF DREAMS:

What inspired me to revisit The Last Picture Show was finally reading Larry McMurtry's beautifully written novel (love those used bookstores!). While the book is richer in fleshing out characterization and narrative detail, it's a testament to Bogdanovich's eye how extraordinarily the film succeeds in meeting McMurtry's descriptive prose with equally evocative imagery.

Bogdanovich cast Timothy Bottom's real-life younger brother Sam (in the cap) as Sonny's friend Billy. An orphaned teen with a speech disability who's been unofficially adopted by Sam the Lion

And on the topic of Peter Bogdanovich, I wish someday someone would make a film or write a book about his life. He fascinates me. Footage from the '70s reveals him to be a well-spoken, charming young man with almost intolerable arrogance and self-assuredness. Yet, he can be so engaging and personable when discussing films and directors he admires. And like his idol Orson Welles, Bogdanovich can be fascinating as an actor. Bogdanovich's life is tailor-made for the kind of hubris-haunted, fall-from-grace, true-story Hollywood cautionary tale that plays like cheap fiction. He symbolizes the best and worst of those glorious "New Hollywood" years. 

My Own Private Last Picture Show
This photo of me was taken in 1997 in front of The Sierra Theater in my partner's hometown of Chowchilla, California. The last standing of two of the town's only movie houses, The Sierra was built in 1941 and seated approximately 495 people. My partner's father worked there as a teen in 1he late-'40s. Shuttered since the mid-'70s, The Sierra was ultimately demolished in 2006.

Jan. 6, 2013 Addendum
I loved Larry McMurtry's 1966 novel The Last Picture Show so much that when I found a hardback copy of the 1987 sequel, Texasville, at a used bookstore, I snapped it up. Well, I just finished reading it and can only say that until now, I thought Son of Rosemary, Ira Levin's 1997 sequel to Rosemary's Baby, was the most disheartening example of an author desecrating his own work (maybe it has to do with authors falling in love with the actresses cast as their heroines. (Levin dedicated his sequel to Mia Farrow- McMurtry dedicated his to Cybil Shepherd).
What the hell happened??? Not only did I find it an interminable and self-consciously archness (not to mention repetitive), but its focus is Duane, the character even Peter Bogdanovich said was difficult to cast because he was essentially so unlikeable. All the unpleasant characters are the main focus of the drama, while all the sympathetic ones (like Sonny and Ruth) have been shunted to the sidelines. 

That Bogdanovich made a film from it that I loathed with equal vehemence is perhaps a testament to its faithfulness to the source material. 

Unfortunately, I purchased the third novel in McMurtry's continuing Thalia, Texas opus, Duane's Depressed, at the same time I bought Texasville. I think I'll be donating that book to charity, unread.

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2012

CARNAGE 2011

A hissing cousin of Mike Nichols’ Closer and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in its corrosive dissection of the barely suppressed barbarism behind mannered civility (it also recalls the delightfully vitriolic “The Family” sketches from The Carol Burnett Show); Carnage is, for me, in both content and execution, absolute perfection. Adapted from the play God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, the plot is not a plot so much as a setup: one day in Brooklyn Bridge Park (not Hillside!) 11 year-old Zachary Cowan hits schoolmate Ethan Longstreet with a stick and causes a bruised lip and the loss of two teeth.

Jodie Foster as Penelope Greenstreet

John C. Reilly as Michael Longstreet

Kate Winslet as Nancy Cowan

Christoph Waltz as Alan Cowan

The well-heeled parents of the two children get together one afternoon to “discuss” what to do about it. If the yupster, retro-contemporary names of the children doesn't tip you off, one look at the tastefully decorated apartment of the Longstreets or the affluent, Barneys New York sleek of the Cowans clarify exactly what genus of modern parent we're dealing with here.

The Longstreets and the Cowans make a "superficially fair-minded" attempt to arrive at a civilized solution to their sons' playground savagery

Although I know the box office is currently ruled by caped crusaders of all stripes, a premise like this poses more thrill potential for me than a Dark Knight/Avengers marathon. The cast, Polanski… all were enough to send me into delirious orbit. When the theatrical trailer debuted online a full five months before its Christmas premiere, I could barely contain my anticipation. Happily, I was put out of my misery when a friend got me into a pre-release screening (which just happened to be the very John C. Reilly, Christopher Waltz Q & A included as a bonus feature on the film's  DVD). Had I harbored any fears of the finished film not living up to the promise of the trailer–I hadn't–they were dashed within the first moments of this expert and economic black comedy (the film is only 80 minutes long) when it became apparent that Polanski was going to fold me up into a neat little overexcited bundle and pack me up in his hip pocket. 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
While I'm no fan of pop entertainments that insidiously glorify bad behavior (which pretty much takes in the entirely of reality TV, most sitcoms, and a great many contemporary motion picture comedies); I apparently can’t get enough of films that really stick it to those deserving targets who seek to hide their intolerance and misanthropy behind masks of bourgeois decorum.

"Luckily, some of us still have a sense of community. Right?"

In the days of the Marx Brothers, these types were the high-society matrons and stuffed shirts we longed to see brought down a peg by a custard pie to the face. Today they’re the evolved, socially-concerned yoga mat carriers; the university-educated followers of kabbalah who clutter the weekend Farmer’s Markets; the protectors of property values in yuppie enclaves who tsk-tsk in sympathy at the unrest in the urban jungles they read about on their Kindles while waiting for their iced venti sugar-free mochas at Starbucks.
What's so brilliant about Carnage is the way it recognizes how, in today's world, outside agents of irreverent anarchy like the Marx Brothers are no longer necessary to expose these people's pretensions. No, they're their own worst enemies and perfectly capable of doing it to themselves.

"Morally, you're supposed to overcome your impulses,
but there are times you don't wanna overcome them."

The comedy of Carnage is in how quickly the sophisticated civility of the parents turns to gloves-off savagery when things don't proceed as smoothly as anticipated. Buttons are pushed, boundaries are crossed and before you know it, the playground children begin to look like paragons of self-control in comparison.

PERFORMANCES

As much as I enjoyed Robert Altman’s ensemble pieces, the sheer sweep of his films (1978’s A Wedding featured 48 characters) inevitably led to some actors–often the most fascinating–being given short shrift. The joy of Carnage’s four-character /mixed doubles setup is that it keeps each of Polanski’s heavyhitters together onscreen for the lion’s share of the film with the result being a satisfyingly evenhanded display of some of the most nuanced and electrifying acting pyrotechnics I've seen in a long while. The in-deadly-earnest seriousness with which each actor tackles the material makes Carnage a wildly funny black comedy of consistent laughs born of character and situation. I've often complained that I can't find a contemporary comedy that actually makes me laugh. Carnage made me laugh so loud and long that it brought tears to my eyes.

Eruption
Things start to go wrong in a very big way

Each cast member manages to shine while still maintaining the evenhanded feel of an ensemble piece. As a child of the '70s I can’t help but harbor a personal fondness for Jodie Foster, an actress whose early work I greatly admired, but whose adult output has largely been restricted to restrained performances in substandard movies (I’m one of the few who really didn't care for Silence of the Lambs, although there was no denying Foster gave a compelling performance). 

As the most ideologically invested member of Carnage’s quartet, Foster’s descending spiral from fair-minded conciliator to ragingly moral despot is truly something to behold. I love how she progresses from being one of those false, over-smiling "nice ladies" to an exposed nerve of indignant rage. There's not a moment when she's onscreen when she's not absolutely a delight to watch, and I've never seen such a forceful performance from her (she's also a hoot. She has a comic's timing). For my money, it's the best performance of her career.

There Will be Blood: “Cruelty and splendor. Chaos. Balance.”

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
When I say that Carnage is the best contemporary film I've seen since Black Swan, I make the assertion secure in the knowledge that I'm coming from a place wholly subjective. I derive so much pleasure from Carnage's malevolent satire because I actually know these people. I daresay that I even recognize some of myself in them, but for the most part, I relate to Carnage because these people are familiar. I also like the actors a great deal, making it easier for me to spend 80 minutes with individuals I would otherwise find reprehensible. But once again, I allude to my oft-declared penchant for films of heated emotional conflict bordering on abuse (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Carnal Knowledge;  X, Y and Zee). As much as this film suits me, I seriously can't imagine a George and Martha bicker-fest is going to be everyone's cup of tea.

Although Carnage takes place in Brooklyn, it's a satire of individuals indigenous to any big city. I've lived in Los Angeles most of my adult life. I work in Santa Monica and Pacific Palisades, two outrageously affluent communities full of beauty and a surplus of sunshine. Yet on any given day, take a look at some of the people walking around, and you're not likely to see a more sour, unhappy-looking bunch of people anywhere. These folks walk along some of the cleanest, most pleasant streets in the world and never speak, smile, or even acknowledge one another, lost as they are in their Smartphone worlds (it's a curiosity how the faces of the privileged classes so rarely reflect peace of mind).
Yet these are the same individuals who think of themselves as good people and pride themselves on their liberal sensibilities. This is in spite of maids and nannies being the only people of color around, and the populace's almost frontier sense of alarm at the presence of "outsiders." To be fair, there are many authentic, genuinely decent people populating this social stratum, but I have to say that my partner and I have been the squirmy audience to more than a couple of dinner parties amongst the civilized set that has degenerated into Carnage-like bloodbaths.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

One of my all-time favorite directors, Roman Polanski, at 79, can still do more cinematically with a single set than most filmmakers can accomplish with a wealth of soundstages at their disposal. As a film that confines itself completely to the living quarters of the parents of the injured child, you can add Carnage to Roman Polanski's unofficial "Apartment Trilogy" (Repulsion, Rosemary's Baby, and The Tenant). Although Carnage lacks Polanski's trademark"peephole" shot from those films (a distortion view of a character as viewed through an apartment door's peephole), he does treat us to this pleasing alternative by way of a cameo that's almost as much fun as when he taught Jack Nicholson a nasty lesson in Chinatown:

Roman Polanski makes a cameo appearance as the Longstreet's nosy neighbor.
Minnie Castevet would be proud.

So, if in 2011 (a year bursting at the seams with youth-oriented film fodder) the movie industry saw fit to throw a single bone to that tiny sector of the populace craving something more intellectually engaging than the lights, bells, and whistles distraction of CGI; I'm happy that in Polanski's Carnage, it was at least a bone with a little meat on it.

BONUS FEATURE:
Click the link below to see the Roman Polanski's 4-minute short film for PRADA (honestly, even what is essentially a commercial by Roman Polanski is more entertaining than most of today's films).
Roman Polanski's 2012 Short Film for PRADA - starring Helena Bonhan Carter & Ben Kingsley

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2013

GOODBYE, COLUMBUS 1969

One of the things I liked most about film critic Pauline Kael was how much her passion for film mirrored my own. Even when we didn't see eye-to-eye about certain films and performances, I always enjoyed how she poked fun at her own pseudo-sexual obsession with movies in the titles of her books: I Lost it at the Movies, Going Steady, Reeling. Kael, the late film critic for The New Yorker, was in a class by herself when it came to legitimizing the sensual side of that inter-sensory experience we call moviegoing. 

I'm a huge film fan and it’s easy for me to enjoy a (reasonably) wide spectrum of movies from perspectives academic and analytical. But in order for me to truly fall in love with a movie, it has to hit me on some deeply visceral, highly subjective emotional level. It has to contain what I call “the goosebump moment”; a spontaneous physical/emotional response (it needn't last more than a moment) independent of aesthetic qualifiers. A moment in the film that engages my heart, spirit, or imagination in a way that overrides the cerebral. Such a sensation takes me to a place where I’m experiencing a film more than just watching it.

In Goodbye, Columbus, my goosebump moment occurs less than two minutes into the film. It's when this rapturous vision called an Ali MacGraw dives into a sun-dappled pool of water and becomes, right before my eyes and in dreamy slow-motion, the ethereal vision of what “love at first sight” feels like. This almost Freudian commingling of woman, water, and weightlessness (infinitely enhanced by the very '60s sound of the pop band The Association on the soundtrack) rates right up there with Barbarella’s zero-gravity striptease as one of the most magical and erotically-charged title sequences I've ever seen.

Nymph Errant

Of course, I wasn't the only one who fell in love with Ms. MacGraw that spring of ‘69. My infatuation fell somewhere in line behind Richard Benjamin’s onscreen character, Paramount production head Robert Evans (the two would marry later that same year), and what seemed at the time to be the entire male and female population of North America. Although Goodbye, Columbus represented the film debuts of both Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw, it was former fashion model MacGraw who was given the "Introducing" credit and emerged as the instant superstar of the '70s. Revisiting this film 43 years later, it's still easy to understand why.

Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman

Ali MacGraw as Brenda Patimkin

Jack Klugman as Ben Patimkin

Nan Martin as Mrs. Patimkin

Michael Meyers as Ron Patimkin

Lori Schelle as Julie Patimkin

Goodbye, Columbus (adapted from Phillip Roth’s 1959 bestselling debut novella) is one of the best of the many coming-of-age films released in the wake of The Graduate. It's a seriocomic look at Jewish identity, class conflict, and changing sexual mores as seen through the prism of a heated summer romance between Bronx poor-boy Neil Klugman (Benjamin) and nouveau riche Westchester goddess Brenda Patimkin (MacGraw).

Like the novel, the film release of Goodbye, Columbus was met with controversy related to its frank sexuality (subtle nudity and frank discussion of diaphragms, sex, and the like) and what many perceived to be an offensive depiction of Jewish culture. 

Neil lives in the Bronx with his Uncle Leo (Monroe Arnold) and Aunt Gladys (Sylvie Strause)

The position taken was that Roth's broadly satiric take on the Jewish middle class leaned too heavily toward caricature and stereotyping, resulting in a vision more representative of antisemitic self-loathing than class commentary. As for the film's once-bold sexual content, Goodbye, Columbus today feels really rather restrained and surprisingly gentle-natured. So much so that the R-rated film was eventually re-rated as PG for DVD release with nary a cut to the original print.

Brenda, a student at Radcliffe, spends the summer at the home of her parents,
a shrine to their material success

Goodbye, Columbus was a huge hit in 1969, but over time, it has somewhat faded from the public's memory. Puzzling, because the film is smart, insightful, funny as hell, and contains the best screen performances of several members of its cast.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Arnold Shulman’s deservedly Oscar-nominated screenplay for Goodbye, Columbus is a slavishly faithful adaptation of Philip Roth’s funny novella - a library paperback copy I remember taking to junior high school with the intention of poring over the “dirty parts” with my friends during lunch period. I've seen many films about poor boys falling in love with rich girls, the girls always WASP fantasy figures serving double-duty as totems of the attainable virtues of the American Dream. In having the working-class Jewish boy fall for a Jewish-American princess, Roth not only revitalizes the familiar tropes of the rich girl/poor boy romance but adds an ethnic perspective to the American Dream fantasy. 

Director Larry Peerce (with a screenplay by Funny Lady writer Arnold Schulman) present the contrasts of Neil  Klugman's bohemian Jewish intellectualism with Brenda's materialism in broad strokes sometimes, but the social satire is keen and behind the at-whose-expense? humor is a great deal of emotional poignancy.

In one of my favorite scenes, Jack Klugman (who's really terrific) gives voice to the film's tagline: "Every father's daughter is a virgin" and expresses the elder perspective of the '60s Generation Gap issue.

Neil Klugman and Brenda Patimkin are no Romeo & Juliet, but they’re certainly a young couple who start out on a romance with several strikes against them. I’ve always thought the intense sexual aspect of their relationship figured so prominently in the film because both Neil and Brenda seem to be working off a lot of repressed resentments and rebellious impulses through each other. Bookish Neil, college-educated, intellectual, almost passive-aggressive in his aimlessness, is a stark contrast to the ambitious, go-getter Country Club types Brenda usually dates. Neil’s humble Bronx background (son of Jewish immigrants) may mirror that of Brenda’s crass-but-sweet father (Jack Klugman), but his lack of ambition (i.e. middle-class assimilation/ Jewish-erasure) represents everything her upwardly-mobile family (who've only recently struck it rich through Mr. Patimkin’s plumbing-fixture business) is trying to leave behind.

One look at Brenda's acrimonious relationship with her mother (Nan Martin) is enough to confirm suspicions that perhaps Brenda’s attraction to Neil, a man so obviously unsuitable (ostensibly to her parents, but also, one senses, even to her in the final analysis), feels less like true love than a subconscious act of rebellion against her parents' stifling values.

If Neil represents perhaps a mutinous lark on Brenda's part, beyond a physical attraction to her beauty, it's hard to discern what exactly Neil is looking for in Brenda. Like one of those guys who courts the prettiest, sexiest girl in school only to spend a lifetime berating her for cashing in on her looks; Neil purports to be in love with the rich, spoiled, daddy’s girl, but rarely lets a moment pass where he isn't being critical of what he deems to be her corrupted values and false priorities. Whether it be her nose job, contact lenses, the shallowness of her friends, or the materialism of her parents, there’s a thinly veiled aggression to his jibes that makes you wonder if perhaps he’s not drawn to her out of some barely acknowledged desire to punish American Jews who seek to deny their Jewishness.

Of course, I love that Goodbye, Columbus has a scene where our couple sneaks into a moviehouse playing my all-time favorite film, Rosemary's Baby. At another time in the film, they repeat the ritual at a theater featuring The Odd Couple. No coincidence,  Rosemary's Baby and The Odd Couple are shameless plugs for Paramount films- the producers of Goodbye, Columbus.

The ethnic angle is is why I've always had a thing for Goodbye, Columbus, and why I’m surprised its reputation never remained in step with other seminal films of the '60s. It’s a romantic comedy, yes; a coming-of-age film, certainly. But perhaps its humor did too good a job of masking what I think is a provocative issue related to ethnic heritage, youth, and identity in the culturally rebellious climate of the late-'60s. White American youth was rejecting the materialism and false values of their middle-class parents. But if you were Black, Asian, Jewish, an immigrant, or any member of a historically disenfranchised people, it's likely that your parents, if fortunate, had only recently gained access to the kind of materialistic privileges white youths were finding so distasteful. 

Did assimilation into the American middle-class automatically signal a loss of ethnic identity? Did the progeny of immigrant parents or the ancestors of slaves dishonor their parents if they rejected the fruits of their struggles to attain a piece of the American Dream?  your race? 

There was definitely a Generation and Culture Gap waging in America during the late-'60s, but Goodbye, Columbus was one of the few films to look it through a perspective of the gains and losses of American middle-class assimilation.

The historical exclusion of ethnic groups from country clubs, colleges, and athletics is satirically contrasted with Goodbye, Columbus' wealthy, assimilated Jewish-Americans portrayed as athletics-obsessed members of their own exclusive country clubs and the preppiest of prep school undergrads.

This was certainly an issue for me as an African-American youth. My parents (staunch assimilationists) were realizing the American Dream just at the cusp of the Black Power movement. By the mid-'70s we had moved into a tony, predominantly-white, upper-middle-class suburb and realized all the benefits my grandparents had fought so hard for. Was it my place to confront my parents with arguments about selling out, or accuse them of embracing materialistic values when they had struggled and fought so hard to overcome so much in a racist society that sought to prohibit their access to these very things? And in the pursuit of assimilation into the larger culture, what unique values of character and racial authenticity did we lose or compromise? Goodbye, Columbus has been labeled superficial by many critics, but I have always seen at its core, a terrifically thorny social issue entertainingly addressed.

PERFORMANCES:

In her 1991 memoir Moving Pictures, Ali MacGraw makes no bones about her limitations as an actress, and this is of course true (although she’s extremely good in 1980s Just Tell Me What You Want). But being limited isn't the same as being bad. MacGraw may not have range, but she has presence. Real star-quality. And, under the guidance of a particularly strong director — as she seems to have here with Larry Peerce — she can be very effective. She's beautiful to be sure, but the character of Brenda is supposed to convey a sharp intelligence and sense of self-possession which suggests to Neil that she herself seeks an alternative to the stultified life her parents want for her. MacGraw captures this quality extremely well. Perhaps it’s because she’s playing a typed role, but I like Ali MacGraw’s performance in Goodbye, Columbus more than any other in her career.

As Brenda's gentle-natured, jock brother, Ron (here, with jockstrap in hand, lost in bittersweet reverie listening to a recording of his glory days as star basketball player at Ohio State - the source of the film's title) newcomer Michael Meyers makes a scene-stealing impression. Richard Benjamin, who would build a career playing variations on this character in several films throughout the '70s, is a solid lead and near-flawless master of the deadpan take.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY:

With all my comments about the film's ethnic/cultural subtext, I don’t want to give the impression that Goodbye, Columbus is a deeply serious drama. It’s really an at-times hilarious comedy of manners that offers more than the usual food for thought for the typical '60s Generation Gap film. Some characters may seem a tad broadly drawn, but (more's the pity) I can’t say that there’s a single individual or type in this film that I haven’t actually encountered at some time in my life. Some within my own family!

More befitting appetite suppression than stimulation, this line of reasoning has nevertheless remained popular with American parents for generations.

This wedding scene drew a lot of criticism for being over-the-top and more burlesque than authentic. Well, those critics clearly haven't attended enough weddings. In fact, the behavior displayed here at the wedding buffet table is tragi-comically similar to what I witnessed at the reception following my father's funeral. 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I’m aware that many of the things I’m fondest of in Goodbye, Columbus (the Charles Fox music score, the montages, the class-distinction humor, the appeal of Ali MacGraw) are the very things that don’t resonate very strongly with audiences today. Still, there is much in the uniformly fine performances and witty screenplay that makes me categorize Goodbye, Columbus as something of a neglected classic. If the film has any flaws, perhaps its biggest (and ultimately costliest) is in laying on the ethnic humor so heavily that some of the more thoughtful, perceptive points of Roth's novel are lost or at the very least, blunted.

Neil Klugman, a kind of reverse Gatsby, is ambivalent about his feelings towards wealth and the kind of life Brenda leads. He responds to and identifies with an African-American youth who comes daily to the library to stare at the pictures in a book of prints by Paul Gauguin depicting the colorful dreamscapes of Tahiti. Benjamin and the young actor (Anthony McGowan) share a kind of heartbreaking chemistry in these scenes that brings a tear to my eye every time. 

I've written in earlier essays about how You’re A Big Boy Now and The Graduate stick in my mind as my top favorites of the '60s coming-of-age films. But as much as I enjoy and admire those films, I can't deny that Goodbye, Columbus is the one I regard as both the funniest and most emotionally satisfying overall. If one cares to look beyond the occasionally overstressed humor, it's a movie that really has a lot on its mind and a lot to say. Also, I can't ignore the fact that it's the only film of the three to have given me my “goosebump moment.”

If there's a sequence that strikes me as having not aged particularly well, it's the scene where Neil is shocked that Brenda is so cavalier about not taking birth control. For some reason, it never hit me in the same way in past years, but now, as I watch Neil rant and rave about Brenda's so-called carelessness, I always think "Then wear a condom, Mr. Intellectual!"  

That scene presages the film's conclusion. Filmed almost exclusively in two-shot during their romance, Brenda and Neil's eventual estrangement is dramatized in a scene of mounting tension that denies their sharing of the same frame. The couple, miles apart in their ideologies and principles, realize at last that they are from two different worlds.

Goodbye, Columbus opened Wednesday, April 9, 1969 at the Crest Theater in Westwood

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012