Word: film
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...film is at its best in evoking the school's atmosphere and the exuberance of the heroes' visions of revolution. If. . . is also very funny and pathetically sad on occasion. The random sloppiness involves the ambiguity of some of the images (notably, a sudden fetus) and the lack of followthrough with some of the characters (a "new boy" who dominates the film's first five minutes, a new and seemingly benevolent headmaster introduced later...
...also one of the few British disillusionment-with-old-England films in recent years that is not heart-on-sleeve-a syndrome that applies to 1969's lamentable Oh, What a Lovely War. And in the film's ability to get us to cheer and revel in its violent dreams of destruction, it is positively startling...
...film's form-it literally bursts at the seams with irrelevancies, obscenities, improvisations and chaotic editing-fits its message: if we dislike systems, we mustn't fight them but ignore them...
...Putney Swope is not for people who hate Stanley Kubrick or for those who believe in common decency and/or logic; some of it is filthy, and the whole film practically disintegrates before your eyes, like Alka-Seltzer. But the commercials-within-the-movie will be cherished...
...unrelenting emotional violence of the dark America the film shows is staggering in impact. In fact, the whole thing is so claustrophobically seedy that one cannot help but hate and love the film at the same time. An unfortunate ending and about five minutes of execrable dialogue about the point-of-it-all mar the work-but the rest of the movie makes it easy to forgive the mistakes. The director is Sydney Pollack. Jane Fonda, hard as nails, and Gig Young, con man par excellence, give devastating performances...