Page Two
THE MICHIGAN DAILY
Tuesday, November 23, 1971
1 - -
Every
By NEAL GABLERa
Those filmgoers closely a t -
tuned to critical opinion know
that Sunday Bloody Sunday is
one of the more lauded movies
of the past few years. Kauff-
man excepted, everybody jus t
loves it. Its scenarist, New York-
er film critic Penelope Gilliatt,
is invariably described as young,
brilliant and English, and her
screenplay is invariably describ-
ed as literate and civilized, all
of which may lead the conspira-
torially minded to believe in an
Eastern clique of backslapping
film-reviewers. Why not say a
few kind words about a fellow
member of the fraternity, espec-
ially when she's hitched her ta-
lents to the wagon of that esti-
mable, or at least popular, direc-
tor, John Schlesinger?
Maybe it's just that my sus-
picions are automatically roused
when everybody likes something,
but quite frankly I can't under-
stand what all the ruckus is
about. Sunday Bloody Sunday is
merely another in a long line of
overly tidy, overly accessible
pictures that the foreigners -
this time the English - bludg-
eon us with, and we Americans
lay down and play dead. How
wonderfully deep! How wonder-
fully clever! True, the screen-
play (which, by the way, Schles-
inger is now claiming credit for)
is every bit as literate and civil-
ized as the reviewers say, but
only if you accept "literate" as
a euphemism for Important
words ala Robert Bolt wrapped
in smooth English accents. In
fact, there are so many stunning
little ripostes that you may have
to steel yourself against the ini-
pulse to shout "Touche!", an im-
pulse which only a very civiliz-
ed work could trigger.
What really staggers Miss Gil-
liatt's screenplay, however, isn't
its high-blown laiguage so much
as its almost total divorce from
action. In Sunday things never
evolve as they do in any really
good picture. Instead, things are
always expressed in words or
symbols, and so we get a sche-
matic of modern detachment ra-
ther than a full-bodied picture of
a relationship's disintegration.
Sunday's geometry, set against
a London backdrop, is a bisexual
love triangle, which may strain
your credulity right off. At one
corner is Alex Greville (Glenda
Jackson), a young, divorced ca-
reer woman. At the other corner
is Daniel Hirsch (Peter Finch),
an aging, unattached, ;ay Jewish
week
has
a
'Sunday'
doctor. And at the apex is Bob
Elkin (Murray Head), a doll-
faced sculptor of mechanical doo-
dads.
These three creak about like
antique furniture,grimace oc-
casionally, spout Miss Gilliatt's
truths, and generally act like
people are supposed to act in an
extremely urbane movie. I don't
mean this as a knock against the
principals. It's just that Sunday
Bloody Sunday is dull, bloody
dull. And if you don't relieve me,
you might be convinced by an
outline of the ten-day period
the film covers:
Friday-Alex meets Bob for a
weekend at the home of some
mutual friends, John and Alva
Hodson.
Saturday-Bob leaves for a tryst
with Daniel. He returns to Alex
that night. ,
Sunday-Bob and Alex take the
Hodson's children for a day. The
Hodson's dog, Kenyatta, is run
over. The couple returns to Lon-
don.
Monday - S k i p p e d (every
damn movie has a Monday).
Tuesday-Alex has dinner with
her parents.
Wednesday - Daniel and Bob
have a spat. Alex goes to bed
with a client.
Thursday-Bob gets a vaccina-
tion. Daniel plans a vacation to
Italy.
Friday-Bob gets sick from
his vaccination.
Saturday-Daniel attends his
nephew's Bar Mitzvah. After-
wards, he and Bob make love.
Sunday-Bob leaves for Amer-
ica.
Though they'd be confusing
content with form, I suppose
Miss Gilliatt's and Mr. Schles-
inger's defense would be that
this is a movie about boredom,
a dramatization of the litany of
suburbia: Nothing happens. Our
lives are unrewarding, insigni-
ficant, overly materialistic, etc.,
etc., etc. Life is so bad and no-
thing seems to work. We reach
out, but no one is there. All of
our days are like bloody (the
,"bloody" here is an epithet)
Sundays, full of uneventfulness,
each interchangeably empty.
Boredom, of course, is only a
symptom. The disease itself is
our atomization, our inability to
make commitments to one ano-
ther for fear we'll get dragged
,down; and Sunday is a catalog
of victims. There is Alex's mo-
ther who has always passively
taken second place to her hus-
band's business. ("There is no
whole thing. You've got to make
it work.") There are the Hod-
sons, friends of Alex, Bob, and
Daniel, who, in the great liberal
academic tradition, have raised
obnoxious, pot-smoking know-it-
alls; this training, no doubt, was
designed to help the toddlers
avoid that most cardinal sin of
our times, hypocrisy.
Finally, there are Bob, Daniel
and Alex. In the film's typology,
which I'm sure you'll all de-
cipher, Bob is morally liberated
(what else can a bisexual )e?),
living by the slogan, "We're free
to do what we want." Now,
while we free spirits are inclined
to see only the positive side of
this pronouncement, taken mor-
ally and not politically, it has
grave consequences. True love
and real commitment are incom-
patible with this kind of freedom.
So Bob's liberty is really a li-
cense to bounce through life
without attachments and without
regard for the people he might
hurtalong the way. Daniel, en
the other hand, is more willing
to take a risk. He stakes claim
to a part of Bob and asks little
more, wryly accepting his fate
as a displaced person. And as he
recounts to us, the audience, an
apocryphal conversation with one
of his patients, he delivers the
film's final line, a summary of
modern life: "I only came about
my cough."'
Placed symbolically between
these two in the middle of the
struggle between detachment
and commitment and at the cen-
ter of the film, is Alex. Having
shared Bob with Daniel, she
knows that liberty comes only at
the cost of some sensitivity. She
barks, "All this fitting in and
making do and shutting up . . .
I don't want to live like this."
Yet, she has few alternatives.
Compatibility being that rarest
of commodities, we are forced to
grab what we can, especially in
a society where disengagement
is so easy we're seldom even giv-
en a chance to work things, out.
(Mailer always warned us that
the birth control pill would make
us take sex and sex partners less
seriously.) Condemned and bit-
ter, Alex can only rail at her
freedom, "I've had this business
where something is better than
nothing. There are times when
nothing has to be better than
something."
I wouldn't say this is the most
profound stuff ever on the
screen, but it did deserve a bet-
ter movie. And I say "movie"
here, rather than screenplay, be-
cause while Miss Gilliatt's sub-
stitution of symbols for'drama
and mouthpieces for characters
starts the film toppling, it's
Schlesinger's direction that fi-
nally brings it to the ground.
Admittedly, I've never been a
big fan of Schlesinger's work. In
Darling, Midnight Cowboy, and
now in Sunday, he seems to be
striving to become the king of
mid-cult, the David Lean of so-
cial realism, biting off huge
chunks of modern culture and
convincing people by the sheer
size of -his chaw that he's say-
ing something significant.
The question is, can social re-
alism survive a David Lean?
And I think the answer is no.
Watching all these patented
Schlesinger closeups of a phono-
graph needle, a refrigerator, an
ashtray, and telephone wires
makes you long for those old
English working-class pictures
by Richardson, Reisz, Anderson,
et al., where society really did
seem an inhospitable place in
which to spend a lifetime. And
the problem is compounded by
Billy Williams' blazing photo-
graph , which can't help but
prettify everything. In short,
Schlesinger has sprayed on too
much gloss. That single title
white on black, those purpose-
less flashbacks, the dominant
metaphor of the telephone (the
mechanization of our relation-
ships), the Cosi Fan Tutte waft-
ing onto the soundtrack as Bob
casts a longing look at Daniel
before love-making - all roar
with the self-conscious intelli-
gence that earmarks pictures of
the semi-intellectual stripe.
All this buffing is especially
devastating for a film about the
newly oppressed - the middle
class. Prole drama was externa-
lized tragedy that sweated con-
viction from its pores; put
against it, suburban drama, with
all its neuroses, usually comes
off like silly farce. You think
you've got problems? That's why
a movie like Sunday needs,
above all else, sincerity and
depth. It can't work any other
way. But amidst all its literacy
and polish, you search in vain
for something real, something
that looks and sounds unorch-
estrated. Conviction, I guess.
You just don't find conviction in
an ostentatious Bar Mitzvah
symbolizing the shallowness of
modern life. And even when
Schlesinger goes for some sor-
didness, showing addicts hanging
around a drugstore likecarrion,
you can see his guiding hand.
Ultimately, then, the picture
comes up empty-handed, soulless,
flabby, slick as grease, the kind
of film Alex, Daniel, Bob, orj
your parents might go to see on
one of their bloody Sundays.
Made for us by one of us.
Its one asset, and a major one
at that, is Glenda Jackson. She
has already proven herself one
of film's most accomplished ac-
tresses, and her performance
here does nothing to discredit
that reputation as a total actress
who really knows how to use
her voice and body. I would say
that her performance is equal to
her ,Oscar-winning job in Wom-
en in Love, but "equal" doesn't
quite give the sense of total
equivalence I'm after,
Home for Thanksgiving?
Help your friends
Help your neighbors
Help your state
Circulate petitions for
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Albert Finney directs, and plays a successful novelist w h o has drifted
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Liza Minnelli plays a highway pick-up, a college English major. Billie
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-4J46a
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