Word: scripted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Where is he? That question, in bold Arabic script, was written across posters displayed on walls throughout the Muslim areas of Lebanon last week. They portrayed Imam Moussa Sadr, 50, the beloved leader of the country's 900,000-strong Shi'ite Muslim community, who inexplicably disappeared in late August. So long as the question of his whereabouts remained unanswered, the mystery of the missing Imam threatened to trouble relations between Lebanon, Libya and Iran-and possibly other nations as well...
Goin' South's script, set just after the Civil War, is essentially an extended two-character sketch. The other role is Julia Tate (Mary Steenburgen), a frigid young spinster whose odd habits include hanging up chairs on wall hooks. Julia weds Moon in a marriage of convenience: she needs someone to work her unsuccessful gold mine, while he needs a respectable wife to shield him from the law. The thin story traces the predictable warming up of their relationship. Pretty soon the film becomes a string of uneven set pieces, the best of which suggest Nichols...
Even so, it's doubtful whether a top-flight comedienne-say Goldie Hawn or Diane Keaton-could have rescued Husband's utterly incredible script. In the first scene, we are asked to believe that a wealthy New York housewife (Fawcett-Majors) would fall instantly in love with a shleppy Macy's salesman (Jeff Bridges) she spots across a crowded store. Minutes later, the heroine decides to abandon her husband for this nearly complete stranger - only to discover that Hubby has just been murdered. Rather than call the police, she and her new boyfriend set out to solve...
Robert Mulligan (Summer of '42) can be a first-rate film maker, but his world here suffers from a bad miscalculations. Trying for what appears to be an expressionistic style, he has directed the movie at a screeching pitch. He matches the script's verbal and physical violence blow for blow with slam-bang editing and ; pounding musical score; he never give the audience a chance to catch its breath. What is intended to be operatic come out overblown and, at times, overacted Goldoni's Mom is so crazed she seems to have stepped out of Exorcist...
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...