Word: wanda
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Happy Birthday Wanda June, Kurt Vonnegut's first film, Abbey...
Happy Birthday Wanda June. Kurt Vonnegut's first film, Abbey...
Happy Birthday Wanda June, Kurt Vonnegut's first film, Abbey...
Happy Birthday, Wanda June is a softcore satire on the trappings and traditions of heroism. The hero, Harold Ryan (Rod Steiger), is part Odysseus, part Hemingway. Returning home after eight years of adventuring, he finds that in his absence his wife Penelope (Susannah York) has acquired a college degree, worldly wisdom and two dreary suitors (George Grizzard and Don Murray...
What comes especially clear in Wanda June is that Vonnegut is an easy kind of satirist. His writing is full of engineered whimsy, empty of rage. He is so eager to ingratiate himself with his audience that he seldom takes on anything more substantial than tentative heroes, canting psychiatrists, fumbling representatives of Mencken's American booboisie. A couple of heavyweight opponents are indeed invoked throughout Wanda June (the war in Viet Nam, the Christian religion). But Vonnegut dances around them like a kid from the Golden Gloves unwilling to risk even...