The Michigan Daily-Thursday, June 1, 1978-Page 11
'AN UNMARRIED WOMAN':
Paul Mazursky's beautiful people

By CHRISTOPHER POTTER
I've thus far enjoyed An Unmarried
Woman enough to have seen it on three
different occasions, which isn't too sur-
prising: one need look no further than
the dim-witted crudities playing next
door at Briarwood, House Calls and The
End, to realize what an unavoidably
euphoric concoction Paul Mazursky's
latest work is by comparison. Just
think, an American film about real life
people dealing with real life joys and
tribulations, with nary a spaceman,
pickup truck or rock band in sight. How
naked! How wonderful!
One is sorely tempted to award,
Mazursky an Oscar merely for attem-
pting to buck and perhaps reverse his
compatriots' galloping trend toward ar-
tistic hara kiri for the sake of economic
paranoia. Beyond that, the fact that
much of An Unmarried Woman works
beautifully'simply for its own sake
makes much more painful the fact that
I've liked the film progressively less
with each successive viewing.
MY EXPANDING discontent with
this picture seems as ideologically
based as it is artistic, a fact rather un-
settling to me. I would hate to bathe a
critique in the conspiratorial aura of a
Michigan Free Press-style review-
turned-propaganda tract (Was Black
Sunday really a neo-fascist polemic in
disguise?" etc., etc.).
As the committed filmgoer doubtless
is aware by now, An Unmarried
Woman depicts the belated emotional
matriculation of Erica (Jill
Clayburgh), a serene Manhattan
housewife suddenly thrust out of her
familiar universe when her stockbroker
husband of 17 years (Michael Murphy)
abruptly runs out on her. Initially
reduced to a state of near-reclusiveness
by the shock of her domestic upheaval,
Erica gradually metamorphoses into a
new state of maturity and independen-
ce. She no-longer has to view herself or
the world in the context of someone
else's philosophy or desire..
THUS WHEN she enters into an af-
fair with a handsome, brainy artist
(Alan Bates), she can resist the tem-
ptation to impulsively commit herself
to it. The film ends withour protagonist
slightly unsure of the specifics of her
future, but solidly confident in her un-
derstanding of herself.
My quarrels with the film as film are
practically nil. Like most of Mazur-
sky's work, An Unmarried Woman
moves at its own pace and has its own
point of view, beholden to no one in-
cluding the censorial rapaciousness of
some far-off studio head. If the film
chooses to linger on a secondary aspect
of a character's outer or inner
workings, it does so unabashedly; and
what aspects of pace and tightness
which might be lost in such indulgences
are made up for by the very basic and
infectious quality of freedom which
permeates this work.
ONE CAN criticize Mazursky's
periodic technical sloppiness (a major
argument-fisticuffs scene between
Bates and Cliff Gorman is subverted by
a dangling mike head poking ob-
trusively down from the top of the
screen.) Yet it's as if the "well-made
film" concept was an incidental
element in Mazursky's universe (as in-
deed it is with Bergman, Bunuel and
others).
Mazurskygafler biggergame, and n,

An Unmarried Woman he captures it
again and again: Erica's impromptu
around-the-apartment ballet to the
strains of Swan Lake; the 'ladies who
lunch" bedroom gathering, with
Erica's troubled friends agonizingly
epitomizing the ongoing war between
human loneliness and the balm of
human companionship. Mazursky and
Clayburgh make us squirm as we feel
the subtle terror of a protagonist sud-
denly and without warning cast alone
into a predatory world. We feel her em-

Possibly it's my Midwestern-Ann Ar-
borish perspective garishly taking over
at this point, yet few things this side of
the CB genre rankle me more swiftly in
a film than a saturation drenching in
East Coast-West Coast upper-upper
middle class trendiness, which in this
case intrudes on Mazursky's charac-
ters like suits of armour.
An Unmarried Woman's mannequin-
perfect trappings might have worked
as a Richard Corey-esque comment on

Lisa Lucas - seems unsettlingly and
unfairly out of place).
WATCH beautiful Erica jog trendily
and prettily despite the absence of her
now-departed hubby; watch her
frequent all the perfect social spots;
watch her let it all hang out with her
trendy beads-and-crossed-legs
psychiatrist; and watch her at last fall
in love with the perfect artist and per-
fect lover at his trendy Soho loft. The
object worship in the film is often so
fierce as to simply smother its
passionately profound underpinnings
beneath two dozen layers of cultural
vinyl. In effect, Mazursky has achieved
an ultimate synthesis of Ibsen and
Hugh Hefner, and the combination
mixes about as well as oil and water.
michigan DAILY
00ar ts
Perhaps it's just the latent
proletarian in me, but I would have
been much more enamoured of an
Erica as a Cleveland housewife with
three kids, caught not in a dilemma
over whether to give up her part-time
art gallery job, but whether to give up
her full-time secretarial job at Man-
power.
This in its own way may sound rather
socio-political trendy as well, but I am
stiflingly weary of the particular
stereotyping Mazursky employs in An
Unmarried Woman, a very surface but
very distracting mea culpa which con-
sistently undermines what otherwise
may be the most mature American film
in years. And in terms of simple
cinematic frustration, half the pie in
this case may be even worse than none
at all.

Jill Clayburgh stars with Alan Bates in "An Unmarried Woman," Paul Mazur-
sky's new film about a happily-married New Yorker whose husband of seven-
teen years suddenly abandons her for a younger woman.

ptiness and desperate longing for some
form of union, counterbalanced by a
rage and hurt which make her want to
turn with revulsion from sex and
maleness in general.
CLAYBURGH, though saddled with
perhaps the flattest, most unlilting
voice in all of film, still delivers the
kind of harrowing, brilliantly multi-
layered performance one always
suspected she had inside her if ever
bequeathed the right part. Latrusted at
last with what is surely the most com-
plex female role in years, she does it
electric justice.

the universalityof suffering, but here
they serve only to subvert the film's
impact at every turn: Watch Erica the
perfectly beautiful wife and her rich,
perfectly beautiful husband trip the
light fantastic in their perfect pen-
thouse. (Encased within such pristine
sublimity, their unbeautiful teen-age
daughter - splendidly played by young

U.S.-Soviet tensions stall
latest SALT negotiations

I don't share the prevalent objections (Continued from Page 1)
to An Unmarried Woman's conclusion, general state of the relationship bet- for completion of the treaty by sum-
in which Erica at least temporarily ween the Soviet Union and the United mer, now admit they were overly op-
rejects her artist-lover's proposal. States" figured in the talks. timistic despite Soviet concessions last
While Mazursky could certainly have Asked to describe U.S.-Soviet month on a key issue - permittingthe
explored his protagonist's motivations relations, the Soviet diplomat replied United States to share advanced
a bit more at this point, I didn't find her quickly: "I would like to see them bet- technology with the NATO allies.
action annoying or out,of kilter. Having ter than they are." "As the situation Before the Vance-Gromyko meeting
conquered the withdrawal pangs of stands today, I regret to say there must Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev,
sudden loneliness, Erica has begun to be more meetings on these questions," speaking in Prague, said his gover-
adjust, not just to the point of tolerating he said. nment was approaching negotiations on
but to some extent enjoying her SEN. GEORGE McGovern (D-S.D.), limiting the arms race "with a
situation: why not explore this new said in an interview earlier that maximum seriousness and honesty."
universe a little longer before commit- President Carter, Vance and chief U.S. Brezhnev told Czechoslovak Com-
ting oneself to a specific future? As arms negotiator Paul Warnke all are munist Party members there was no
such, I found the movie's closing committed to completing the treaty weapon the Soviet Union would not be
sequence, with our heroine lugging her despite differences with the Soviet willing to limit or to ban in an
massive objet d'art to an unsettled Union over Africa. agreement with other nations.
destination, not only irresistably char- However, McGovern told The "WHAT IS important," he said, "is
ming but thematically inspired. Associated Press, "I think we've got a that the wish to stop the arms race be
divided administration on the relative sincere and not only pretended."
THEN WHAT'S wrong with the film? importance of Africa as it relates to Carter told the NATO meeting in
I seem ultimately to find myself at SALT." Washington, meanwhile, that "an at-
exasperated odds not with what's being In Washington,. British Prime tack on Europe will have the full con-
said but rather with who's saying it. An Minister James Callaghan, attending a sequences of an attack on the United
Unmarried Woman's characters may NATO conference, urged that Cuban States."
be questing Everypersons beneath the and Soviet penetration in Africa not be The President pledged anew to use
surface, but above the surface they're permitted to interfere with a new SALT US. Nuclear weapons, if necessary, to
straight and unsettlingly out of agreement. defend European allies against Soviet
Beautifuil Peopleland., . FFI Sw ho earlier . att'a