THE MICHIGAN DAILY Thursday, January 28, 1971W i , cinema 'Diary': A study of the phonies By NEAL GABLER If Kafka and Dreiser had col- laborated on a screenplay about Mammon American Style, and if Stanley Kramer had been hired for a rewrite, the final product would probably be something like Diary of a Mad Housewife. Dreiser's contribu- tion would have been the mi- lieu: the circles of New York's on-the-make p s e u d o -society where knowing the right people and the vintage years of wine are all one needs to be really successful. This is the all too familiar world of back-slapping and throat-slitting in the w 11 d clamber to be one of the "in" people. This is the world where humans aren't much more than ornaments of the setting - phonies all, with unctuous smiles and erzatz sophistication. Poor Tina Balser (C a r r i e Snodgrass) has the misfortune to be married to one of these hopeless clods (a graduate from the Harvard Law School, no less), and to be living a shallow, competitive, nerveracking hor- ror in the hopeless upper reach- es of the middle-class. We don't need Women's Lib to tell us that the Phi Beta Kappa from Smith has had it with the house-cleaning and food-cook- ing and mechanical love-mak- ing. "I'm mad," she proclaims, and here's where Kafka would have come in, because Tina isn't just the victim of ordinary household drudgery or of the society her husband pushes her into; Tina is the victim of a kind of upper middle-class sad- ism, Kafkaesque in its crazy in- tensity. Her husband, Johnaton (Richard Benjamen), shoots a continuous string of criticisms and demands. He is vapid, in- sensitive, repulsive - more than enough to drive a woman batty. And her two children, obnox- ious little creatures that bring Swift's Modest Proposal to mind, carry on their father's assault -one verbally, the other by being fat and wearing glasses, which is moviespeak, I guess, for "brat." Tina is being nudged closer and closer to the percipice's edge when she meets pretty George Prager (Frank Lang- ella), a writer. Prager is not just a writer, though, but a writer "so good it doesn't bear thinking about," to use Tina's words. Predictable, since it's part of the mythology about ar- tistic inspiration that the geni- tals are the fount of all creativ- ity (measure a fellow's organ and chances are you'll be able to predict whether he's a Mailer or a Segal), Prager is a good stud and Tina is a willing partner. She steals up to his cold, white, sparsely furnished apartment, escaping her husband's invec- tive, and hopes behind her mask of hard-bitten realism that Prager will bring true romance. At least we think that's what she hopes. But Johnathan be- comes more unbearable and the true romance becomes less pre- dictable, alternating between brute affection and cruel taunts. So enter Kramer, like a deus ex machina, with the psycholo- gical explanation: Tina t a k e s all this crap because she's got a martyr complex. That's right, she likes to be kicked around by lawyers on the make and by writers too good to think about. And her husband is such a creep because John Kennedy was as- sessinated and his idealism lit- erally went up in gunsmoke: "I used to wake up at three o'clock in the morning because it wasn't there anymore." A d Prager? Well, Prager is a quer or jerk or maybe writers are naturally bastards; those long organs do something to their emotions. Anyway, as the picture ends in a Kafkaesque note, Tina is sitting in group therapy suffer- ing the gibes of other patients. She has everything she could possibly want, they say. "I don't understand your problem." So she bites her lip and puffs on her cigarette, and someone shouts, "Get a lawyer." B u t isn't that where it all began? Needless to say, neither Drei- ser nor Kafka nor Kramer lent anything but spiritual guidance to Diary of a Mad Housewife. It is another project by Frank and Eleanor Perry, who are one of the few film-making t e a m s to probe our middle-class in all its gaudy superficiality. F i r s t it was David and Lisa - a film that grows less and less impres- sive in retrospect - about the young mental misfits of the class. Next, The Swimmer about the sterility of suburbia. Then, Last Summer about the class's mixed-up adolescents. And now in Diary, the Perrys have con- cocted a Ben Hur of the genre, toughing every possible base of shallowness and some impossible ones too. I find this rather sad because the Perrys aren't bad film-mak- ers. Most of their pictures have sharp dialogue and Frank Per- ry's eye is keen. But while they may be good technicians, I get the feeling that they are only a half-step removed from the milieu they've spent their ca- reers condemning. As a result, their films aren't bad enough to be schlock (there is that half- step) but aren't good enough to be art. Diary is the case in point. The situation - an intelligent wo- man capitulated to her hus- band's outrages - is certainly relevant and might very well have made a good film about woman's degradation in a man's world. Or the phoniness of her life could have been used to say something new - if there is anything new to say - about how we often get chewed up by our dreams. Sadly, after pre- senting us with the situation, the Perrys give us worn-out stereotypes, dumb psychology and bungled tones. Was Johna- than realy an idealistic good- guy before John Kennedy was murdered? Did Tina really take all of her husband's and lover's crap because she was masochis- tic? I might have been able to find some answers if I could h a v e figured out whether Dreiser, Kafka or Kramer was in charge. If this were a subjective diary. Johnathan's behaviour could be understood as Tina's neuroticj perceptions; his harping and silly smile ("How about a roll in de hay?") could be Tina's vis- ualization of a maddening pre- dicament, instead of overblown boorishness. At times it seems as if Kafka triumphs, and we get a household Trial. But then Kramer intrudes, and we're right back on the dime-store Freudian path. Carrie S n o d- grass copes with the inconsist- encies as best she can, manag- ing to be convincing even when the film isn't; but game as she is, when the film ended my only reaction was empty neutrality and the gnawinng thought that something might have been sal- vaged if only the Perrys had taken another halfstep. The place to meet INTERESTING people Bach Club The Paulus Hofhaimer Ensemble 8-voice choir, 4 recorders 4 crumhorns, mute cornette quitar, percussion PERFORMING RENAISSANCE DANCE MUSIC plus a short election of officers Refreshments (includinq CHILI) afterwards THURS., JAN. 28-8 pm. SO. QUAD, W. LOUNGE EVERYONE WELCOME' Positively no musical knowledge needed ! I Further info: 764-7638 ATTENTION: Look for the story on the Bach Club in the Daily, page 2, sometime this week. Startinq the week after next, Bach Club Daily ads will gener- ally appear only on Thursday. ~h. THURSDAY, FRIDAY, JAN. 28,29 Johnny Guitar, Dir, NICHOLAS RAY (1954) STARRING: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Scott Brady, Mercedes McCambridge, Word Bond, Ernest Borgnine, and John Carradine. Joan Crawford plays Vienna, the saloon owner who sits at the grand piano in a white evening dress, telling old recollections to Mr. Guitar while he waits for the lynching party. "Offbeat western" "Baroque, pure baroque" "Straight sulfuric acid" 7 & 9:05 ARCHITECTURE 662-8871 75c AUDITORIUM The University Players stage an inventive production of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. Unfortunately, Timon is not the most, interesting or complex of Shakespeare's plays. It is the story of good-natured rich man' Timon, who gives his fortune away to an ungrateful bunch of friends. When they let him down - he goes broke - Timon becomes a cynic, hating all men. He becomes incapable of seeing that some men are good, like his own faithful ste- *ward, and dies embittered. Timon is the man of extremes, and in this he loses the human- ity of a Lear or a Hamlet. He is always one thing or the other, and nevet achieves the tragic intensity of a man facing the complex problems of life. Timon - and everyone else - always considers himself a good man. His goodness remains un- questioned; it is the evil of others which overwhelms him. But one of the problems with the play is that Timon never recognizes his own evil, and so remains a shallow, if some- what tragic, character. He achievesno universality; most of us feel no Timon in us. It is a wholly external tragedy. What the Players are at- tempting to do is put Timon But the costuming did not al- ways come off well. There was too much mixture of 1910 eve- ning dress, hippie garb and spectacular futuristic costumes for the household servants. The result was confusing, and often detracted from the action of the play. Another problems was the use of extremely gaudy and exploi- tative costumes on five women who entertain at Timon's par- ty wearing slightly less than a Playboy bunny. They also per- fornied bump and grind dances, which are never seductive and probably not at all in the intent of the play. These costumes suggested that Timon was a playboy athlete type and did not help to estab- lish him as a good character, although his generosity was em- phasized. During the first part of the play Timon even looked like a playboy athlete. Until midpoint the play mov- ed very slowly, with little con- flict developing as Timon dis- covered - as we all knew he COME TO TOWN and COUNTRY RESTAURANT Fine Food Chops, Steaks, & Shrimp Soul Food Home Cooked Open Pit Barbeque --Open- 6 a.m. till 9 p.m.-Mon.-Thurs. 6 a.m. till 3 a.m.-Fri.-Sat. 8 a.m. till 7:30 p.m.-Sunday 730 NORTH MAIN Delivery and Caterinci 769-2330 I theatre emptied after each show .ee e a I GET YOURIMAN WITHA Want Ad The Players made good use of rotating sets. However', at times the production overdid it on props which distracted from the play, as when the elaborate pre- parations for the banquet were brought in. And once again they insisted on using miserable can- ned martial music where a simple drum would have been much more effective. Altogether, the production is an interesting attempt at stag- ing Timon in modern dress, not the best thing the Players have done, nor the worst. 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NEXT TO STATE THEATRE) CINEMA II Walt Disney's Alice in Wonderland Saturday, 1 p.m. and 9 p.m. t- 1--4 G}II!B$BliY I2OUSB Sea ram~m AND -w I }