Word: film
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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That one of the patients finally succeeds in committing suicide is stark tragedy. That another has reached the point where he is able to mourn death sounds a call of hope. Who has never heard an inner voice beckoning him to acts of madness? David Sawyer's film pierces the darkness that results when other voices overwhelm the rational mind...
...only comic relief in the whole ghastly affair is created by Ringo-to no one's credit but his own. Director Joseph McGrath apparently intended to exploit the popular Beatle brand of ironic mischief. Instead, Ringo's smirking indifference to his superfluous role neatly mocks the film itself...
...Candy-coated tidbits found in The Magic Christian, a thoroughly unpalatable adaptation of Terry Southern's 1960 novel. The book, an episodic account of a billionaire's lifelong devotion to "making it hot for people," made at least a reasonably funny prep-school primer. The film (whose script Southern helped write) purports to give upper-middle-class shibboleths a jolly beating. Instead, it is just another flagging satire, with ludicrous overtones of homosexual lubricity...
...would never make a film outside Italy," Federico Fellini said recently. "I would be an alien, unable to understand the subtle shadings of character and gesture. I would be like a tree uprooted, unhealthy out of its own soil." It is canny advice that should have been heeded by the maestro's peer and countryman, Michelangelo Antonioni, whose movies seem to deteriorate in direct proportion to the distance they are made from home...
Blow-Up, that slick portrayal of swinging London, was pure frippery compared with such masterpieces as L'Avventura and La Notte. Zabriskie Point, his new film about America, lacks even the superficial vigor of Blow-Up. It is to be hoped that Antonioni never goes on location in Australia...