Leaven reviews
Tuesday, December 1. 1370
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"Diary of a Mad Housewife," Frank
and Eleanor Perry's first effort since
"Last Summer," is a disappointment.
Like "Joe" and a number of other films
in this lean year, "Diary" contains the
seeds of real drama. But it opts for easy
definitions, histrionics, and appeals to the
audience (the night I went there were
hoots for the villain), and invalidates its
dramatic premise. Because it's by the
Perrys it can't be utterly dismissed-and it
has sporadic moments of power.'But the
overall effect is depressingly amateurish
and slick.
'Diary's" main problem is the
unevenness of its dramatic texture. Like a
warped mirror, it does not so much
reflect as distort reality. Scott Langley
recently referred to the "general
artificiality of Mrs. Perry's scripts (which)
has become stylization." The point is that
it has not become stylized, for stylization
requires artistic integrity. It implies that a
film is one or more steps removed from,
but parallel to, reality, and that it keeps it
distance at every point. George Stevens'
1939 "Gunga Din" is stylized. So, too, is
"Medium Cool," though in a more
complex way. In "Diary," however, the
stylization is only partial. Stanley
Kauffman, in a review in The New
Republic, puts his finger on the movie's
main flaw. Specifically, the "mad
housewife" is not mad-and putting her
into a world of stylized evil results in
nothing more than the destruction of
stick figures. Hence, instead of being a
dramatic experience, "Diary" panders to
its audience-supplies them a stylized
villain to hate and a flesh-and-blood
heroine to love and deteriorates into the
kind of simplistic assertiveness which is
meaningless in a complex world.
"Diary" is about Tina, the repressed
woman who is wife-mommy-slave for her
family. She spends most of her time
bearing up patiently under the strain, yet,
when we ask why, the film has no answer.
Kauffman suggests that Tina's endurance
presupposes an audience. This is the crux
of the film, for if Kauffman is right, as I
think he is, "Diary" ceases to be drama
and becomes merely a demonstration of a
thesis. And the thesis itself is unbelievable
when we perceive how contrived the film
is. For if Tina does hot in some way
"deserve" her husband's tyranny-if her
husband is merely a grotesque, and her
marriage a situation which has been
inexplicably imposed upon her, like
' prison or disease then the husband-wife
situation ceases to be creditable. I don't
mean to preclude character development
on Tina's part. But character
development is exactly what we lack; and
it is not, at any event, the same thing as
mythmaking. This particular myth that
of the competent, mature woman who,
for reasons no one can explain and which
never reflect on the insufficiency of her
judgment, lets a puerile, odious husband
domineer over her-this, I think, would
be heady stuff even for a female
liberationist.
Yet this is the dialectic of the film.
The Perrys constantly force the audience
to identify with Tina; the camera
virtually shrugs for her-captures the
utter normality of her boredom as she
faces the inanities of married life -as if
she were to whisper us an aside: 'You see
what nonsense I have to put up with!' If
the Perrys would just let Tina bear some
responsibility for her predicament, or
relent and let the husband be ever so
slightly human, "Diary" might suddenly
burst into drama. Instead, all is black and
white, and we get agitprop.
Given this kind of simplemindedness
as the film's premise, everything else in
"Diary" becomes questionable. Tina has
an affair of course; but a little late and a
little too unimportant. When she and
George finally break up, she calls him a
sadist, and he replies that she's a
masochist, and that she likes being
brutalized. Psychologically, this makes
perfect sense; it explains her marriage.
But dramatically it's false. We don't see
Tina as a masochist; it we did, we
wouldn't identify so sympathetically with
her. The Perrys try to have it both ways,
and only wind up in a contradiction.
Frank Perry's direction is generally
adequate, though flawed by mannerisms I
mentioned earlier, hi addition, it has a
tendency to be too awfully cute. For
instance, he cuts from a scene in which
Tina finally starts to lose her temper with
her husband, as she keeps repeating
sarcastically, "What you say has a certain
ring of truth"-to George's ringing
telephone with, you guessed, Tina calling
to make their first rendezvous.
The acting is mostly satisfactory.
Carrie Snodgrass is attractive and sincere,
but doesn't seem to have much range,
Frank Lagella, as the lover, is also good.
But the main weight of the film,
surprisingly, rests on Richard Benjamin's
performance as the husband, and here the
kind of evaluative problems I mentioned
before come up. Scott Langley criticizes
Benjamin for being 'Very poor...his
inadequacies seriously damage many
scenes." But the point is that there is no
way of knowing if Benjamin is poor. His
is the kind of role that can kill -a career,
because we hate him-or the character he
portrays-without quite separating the
two. If "Diary" were consistently
stylized, or Benjamin's role humanized,
this problem wouldn't arise. But amid the
equivocations of the film, Benjamin gets
caught. It is he, in the opening scenes,
who must abuse Miss Snodgrass's (and the
audience's) common sense with lines like:
"For God's sake, Teen, snap to it...I'm
really worried about you, you don't look
well...You've gotten so bloody skinny,
(and you have to realize that) you're Mrs.
Jonathan Balser, MY WIFE." Later, at
breakfast, to his children: "Your mother
made Phi Beta Kappa at Smith, but she
can't make a four-minute egg." Or, to
Tina, at a party: "God, did you ever see
so many names in one place? Isn't it
marvelous we've developed such an
exciting social life?" What can you do
with such stuff?
If Tina, under this onslaught of
self-parody, starts yawning, is it any
wonder if the audience does, too?
1) V4 L) 0234023
The International Student Center and the Carolina Union are sponsoring a movie
about the role of Cuban youth in the modernization of Cuba. "Companeras and::.
Companeros" will show at 8 p.m. on December 3, Thursday, in 1 1 1 Murphey Hall.S
Twenty-five cents admission will be charged. ?:
$A11 people interested in selling at the International Handicrafts Bazaar, Dec. 4-6 mustg
Income to the General Sales meeting to be held Tuesday night at 7:30, Gerrard Hall. g
:j:j:The Graduate, returning to this area for the first time since 1968, will have angj
exclusive engagement here in Chapel Hill on December 7, 8, and 9. The movie will beg
j$shown at 7:00 and 9:30 P.M. each evening in the Great Hall of the Carolina Union.jg
Tickets which are $.75 will go on sale at the information desk of the Union on-g
Tuesday, December 1st.
OF, BY, AMD R3RTHE Y'fCXIOW US!
763 FA6E5 THE BEST GFTHEr UWDER
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Egypt spurns extension
CAIRO-President Anwar Sadat said Monday Egypt will not accept another
extension of the Middle East cease-fire unless a timetable is worked out for Iaeli
withdrawal from occupied Arab territory -
The Middle East News Agency said Sadat made the statement in a speech to
Egyptian troops stationed on the Suez Canal. ,
"I will not accept an extension of the ceasefire except in one case -v hen we
have a timetable for withdrawal," Sadat said.
"Otherwise I will never agree to another extension because the matter will be
turned into a series of delays and procrastinations which could go on for another 20
years."
Middle East analysts said Sadat's statement indicated a hardening in Egypt's
position.
Army may have 'secret police'
NEW YORK A number of former military intelligence agents have claimed that
the army had built up what amounted to a "secret police" force in recent years to
gather information about the antiwar and civil rights movements and also about
elected public officials.
The former agents, some of whom asked that their identities be concealed, said
the military intelligence operatives conducted detailed spying at the funeral for Dr.
Martin Luther King, the Poor Peoples Campaign, antiwar demonstrations
throughout the country, and protests and demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic
National Convention in Chicago and the inauguration of President Nixon in 1969.
Five former agents made the disclosures on the NBC television program "First
Tuesday," to be broadcast tonight.
Germans meet as Berlin tenses
- BERLIN-West German Christian Democrat members oi Parliament met in
Berlin Monday despite Soviet and East German opposition and Communist
T harassment of Western traffic to the isolated city.
The official East German news agency (ADN) said the Soviet Embassy in East
Berlin had rejected a Western allied protest against interference with Berlin traffic.
It said the Soviets considered the American, British and French notes delivered late
Sunday "unsatisfactory" and inconsistent with the stated Western aim of reducing
tension here.
, ADN repeated the Communist contention that the West German political
- meeting in West Berlin was a "provocation" and violated the status of the divided
city.
The East Germans began Saturday to delay the passage of Berlin traffic through
. their highway checkpoints.
Court asked about bribe case
WASHINGTON The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court Monday to
decide whether a member of Congress can be legally prosecuted for accepting a
bribe without violating his constitutionally protected congressional immunity.
m It appealed an Oct. 8 ruling which dismissed bribery charges against former Sen. , w
Daniel B. Brewster," D-Md.,"for allegedly'accepting $24,500 to influence his vote on
postal legislation. '
Judge George L. Hart Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia
!. held that a member of Congress cannot be prosecuted for any legislative act he
performs even if he has accepted a bribe for the act.
Allan I. Baron, special government prosecutor, said the ruling on a pretrial
motion amounted to "a license to steal" for congressmen.
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