Lost in the Stars (1974)

          An awkward adaptation of Cry the Beloved Country, Alan Paton’s enduring 1948 novel about South African racial divisions, this production by the American Film Theatre boasts a heartfelt leading performance by the great Brock Peters, as well as strong supporting work by Clifton Davis and Melba Moore. Alas, their performances exist on a plane far above the rest of the movie. Rather than being a straight dramatic rendering of Cry the Beloved Country, this is a filmed version of Lost in the Stars, the 1949 stage musical that Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill based upon Paton’s novel. Beyond the problem of how poorly the musical’s songs have aged, the film is neither a “realistic” musical (with scenarios wherein people would believably sing) nor a sung-through musical. It’s a queasy hybrid, tacking back and forth between dance numbers, straight dramatic scenes, and vocal interludes. Many of the bits work individually, but they don’t cohere.

          Peters stars as Rev. Stephen Kumalo, who leaves his remote village by train and travels to Johannesburg in order to find missing relatives, including his adult son. After reuniting with his brother, John (Raymond St. Jacques), Stephen assumes responsibility for a young relative, Alex (H.B. Barnum III), and the priest also learns that his son, Absalom (Davis), has been in and out of trouble with the law. The story then shifts to Absalom’s perspective. We learn that he’s desperately poor, living in squalor with Irina (Moore), who is pregnant with his child. Together with two accomplices, Absalom attempts a robbery at the home of a wealthy white man, leading to tragedy and more legal trouble. The point of all these narrative machinations is to make a statement about the unfairness of a system that relegates one group of people to poverty simply because of their skin color, and to demonstrate that black individuals are capable of dignity and grace despite being mistreated.

          Lost in the Stars is exactly as heavy-handed and schematic as it sounds. Furthermore, the songs are overwrought and lumbering; the playfulness that Weill brought to his best melodies is completely absent here because of the grim subject matter, and Anderson’s lyrics are full of anguished speechifying and grandiose religious metaphors. Some of the songs, including the title number, resonate somewhat thanks to context and performance, with Peters’ robust baritone a fine instrument for expressing righteous indignation. That said, the score’s occasional “African” flourishes are as bogus as the Oregon locations that the producers used for filming. Ultimately, Lost in the Stars is worthwhile if only for the platform it gives to actors whose visibility in the ’70s was not commensurate with their talent. Nonetheless, pulling this particular show out of mothballs was an odd choice for the sophisticated folks at the American Film Theatre.

Lost in the Stars: FUNKY

A Delicate Balance (1973)

          Fun fact: When screenwriter Ernest Lehman earned an Oscar nomination for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), which was adapted from Edward Albee’s play of the same name, Albee was not amused. He lamented that all Lehman did was “typing” because the film incorporated so much text from the play. Perhaps that’s why Albee wrote the screenplays for the next two film adaptations of his own work, both of which were basically direct transpositions from stage to screen. Following the made-for-TV Zoo Story (1964), Albee helped bring his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama A Delicate Balance to movie theaters. Produced for the American Film Theatre and starring the venerable Katharine Hepburn, A Delicate Balance offers more suburban angst in the mode of Virginia Woolf. From start to finish, the movie is filled with sophisticated people unleashing fusillades of extravagant language to attack each other’s psyches. And while A Delicate Balance lacks the wow factor that Virginia Woolf achieved onscreen, it’s still a ferocious rumination on the anxieties of people whose luxurious lifestyles allow them to wallow in their entitled misery.

          Director Tony Richardson films the piece simply, letting his camera roam through the interiors of a grand house but often simply locking the camera down while masterful actors burn through lengthy exchanges and monologues. Albee’s verbal style is deliberately literary here, for even though he uses false starts and incomplete sentences to great effect, most of the play comprises perfectly crafted grammar tinged with sad poetry. As the character Claire remarks at one point, “We submerge our truths and have our sunsets on troubled waters.” Not exactly casual chit-chat.

          Hepburn and the great British actor Paul Scofield play Agnes and Tobias, wealthy New Englanders in late middle age. As bitter and caustic as they are with each other, Agnes and Tobias descend into outright hostility whenever they engage with their current houseguest, Claire (Kate Reid), Agnes’ alcoholic sister. Things get even worse when the couple’s best friends, neighbors Edna (Betsy Blair) and Harry (Joseph Cotten) show up unexpectedly one evening and announce they’re moving in with Agnes and Tobias because some unidentified fear has made their own home seem terrifying. And then Agnes and Tobias’ 36-year-old daughter, Julia (Lee Remick), arrives following the end of her fourth marriage, adding another set of emotional and psychological problems to the mix.

          A Delicate Balance explores many themes, including alienation, betrayal, detachment from reality, and the façades people create in order to tolerate life’s disappointments and indignities. Heavy drinking plays a role, as well. Characters talk about “silent, sad, disgusted love” and the “plague” that personal problems represent when introduced into new environments. Albee tackles this subject matter on a largely metaphorical level, with characters assaulting not just each other but also the qualities they represent. As Agnes says to Tobias in a particularly shrewish moment, “Rid yourself of the harridan—then you can run your mission, take out sainthood papers.”

          Whether all this gets to be a bit much is a matter of taste, though the quality of the piece is beyond reproach. Hepburn, Reid, and Remick incarnate the paradox of powerful women who make dubious life choices, while Cotten and Scofield portray emasculated men desperately trying to assert themselves. And while watching 133 minutes of humorless vitriol is not precisely fun, Albee’s extraordinary language and his keen insights make the experience rewarding intellectually, if perhaps not viscerally.

A Delicate Balance: GROOVY

Galileo (1974)

          Arguably the least compelling of the many high-minded films produced and/or distributed under the American Film Theatre banner, this dull adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s 1943 play The Life of Galileo bombards the audience with eloquent scientific and theological debates without drawing viewers into the humanity of the story. It’s quite an accomplishment to make a bloodless film about a visionary who was persecuted as a heretic, but problems ranging from excessively arty cinematic flourishes to a overwrought leading performance consign Galileo to the realm of tedium almost from the first frames. Considering the damn thing runs 145 endless minutes, trying to find the redeeming values of Galileo is a chore, though such values do indeed exist. The film’s source material has an impressive history. After Brecht debuted his original German-language version, he collaborated with actor/director Charles Laughton on an English-language adaptation. The revered stage and film veteran Joseph Losey directed the first production of the English-language version, in 1947, and the play was revived in the 1950s before reaching the screen in 1974, again with Losey directing.

          Set in the time of the Inquisition, Galileo tells the real-life story of Galileo Galilei, a mathematician and astronomer who clashed with the Catholic Church by using telescopes to prove Copernicus’ theory that the Earth revolves around the sun, rather than the other way around. Rome persecuted Galileo because of the Catholic Church’s contention that man, made in God’s image, was the center of the universe. As Galileo unfolds, the conflict between the lead character and his religious opponents gets mired with socioeconomic issues, because Galileo needs patronage from the moneyed class in order to continue his endeavors, so the pressure to recant is powerful—even before agents of the Inquisition use torture to impose their will.

          All of this should be fascinating stuff, representing the eternal war between doctrine and logic, but Losey makes one stylistic misstep after another. The casting of Israeli actor Topol is the worst of these errors, because as evidenced in Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Topol’s forte is portraying simple men with powerful emotions. Not only is his accent distracting, considering that nearly every other actor in the film is British, but Topol is too primal a creature to seem believable as one of history’s great intellectuals. The performance isn’t bad, per se, but it’s wrong for the context. Further distancing the viewer from the story is Losey’s use of a Greek Chorus comprising several high-voiced boys, who appear onscreen periodically to sing about the plot. Music becomes even more intrusive later, when the movie stops dead for an extended musical number during which a theatrical company within the story summarizes Galileo’s crisis in song. Several fine actors—including Tom Conti, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Michael Gough, and Michael Lonsdale—enliven supporting roles, and the production is generally quite polished and professional. Nonetheless, the lack of a beating heart at the center of the drama is a nearly fatal flaw.

Galileo: FUNKY

The Maids (1974)

          Another high-minded release from the American Film Theatre, this dark drama was adapted from a successful stage production with the cast and director intact, though the underlying material dates back to 1947, when French scribe Jean Genet premiered his stylized story about a notorious real-life murder that took place in 1930s France. The actual incident involved two sisters who killed the woman who employed them as maids. In Genet’s interpretation, Claire and Solange perceive their mistress as some sort of tormentor, so whenever the mistress is not in residence, the sisters act out elaborate murder fantasies, sometimes with Claire playing the overbearing employer and sometimes with Solange assuming the role. The idea, of course, is that the sisters are so twisted that the mistress (named only “Madame”) has become an unwitting target of their homicidal fixation. (Other cinematic takes on the real-life case have gone even further in terms of imagining pathologies for the murderesses; the elegant 1994 British film Sister My Sister adds the X factor of an incestuous sexual relationship.)

          The Maids stars the celebrated Glenda Jackson and the versatile Susannah York, with Vivien Merchant rounding out the principal cast as Madame. While Jackson unquestionably outguns York in terms of dramatic intensity and verbal dexterity, both leading actresses give strong performances that are filled with acid and angst. Better still, director Christopher Miles wraps the whole production in an aura of menace and paranoia. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe’s camera lingers close on the actresses while their characters describe ways of killing their perceived enemy, so the best parts of the picture have the malice and tension of a Hitchcock picture. Composer Laurie Johnson’s jittery score helps amplify the anxiety. The Maids also pushes boundaries of taste with scenes of Jackson whipping York and of Jackson spitting into the camera. The synthesis of Jackson’s fearlessness and the boldness of the film itself is The Maids’ biggest asset.

          Nonetheless, the unrelentingly artificial quality of the text, which manifests in baroque characterizations and hyper-articulate dialogue, renders the whole endeavor quite chilly and uninvolving. Especially once the storyline enters its weird final act, when director Miles cuts most tethers connecting the picture to recognizable reality, The Maids becomes an arty treatise on insanity rather than a compelling human drama. That said, the movie is made with unmistakable craftsmanship, the real-life story remains morbidly intriguing, and the performances, especially Jackson’s, are relentless.

The Maids: FUNKY

The Homecoming (1973)

          Mysterious, provocative, and vicious, The Homecoming concerns an English household so overrun with male energy that the tenderness normally associated with family units has been replaced with cruelty, intimidation, and manipulation. God help any woman unlucky enough to enter the household. Produced by the American Film Theatre, the picture is a slightly opened-up version of Harold Pinter’s play, adapted for the screen by Pinter and directed by Peter Hall, who served the same function for the play during its 1965 stage premiere in London.

          Taking place almost entirely in the family’s home, the movie begins in the middle of a merciless argument between patriarch Max (Paul Rogers), a widower who elevates bitterness to an art form, and his ineffectual brother, Sam (Cyril Cusack). Then Max’s middle son, Lenny (Ian Holm), enters the mix, and he’s as much of a monster as his father. Cold, hurtful, and vulgar, Lenny delights in prodding the weak spots of other people’s psyches, so it fits that he makes his living as a pimp. Next to enter the picture is Max’s youngest son, the simple brute Joey (Terence Rigby), a struggling boxer whom Max hopes will win enough money by getting his brains bashed in to support the family.

          Later in the story, after the warring relatives have gone to bed for the evening,  a sleepless Lenny ventures downstairs and discovers Ruth (Vivien Merchant) sitting in the living room. It seems that during the night, Max’s oldest son, Teddy (Michael Jayston), came home unexpectedly after a long absence—and that Ruth and Teddy were recently married. The intrusion of a female into this testosterone-riddled household sparks all sorts of psychosexual drama, but Pinter plays everything deadpan. This elevates the material from kitchen-sink melodrama to lofty symbolism. At the story’s most absurd juncture, Ruth ends up making out with Joey on the living-room floor while Teddy calmly observes from a nearby chair, smoking his ever-present pipe, and while the rest of the family provides nonplussed color commentary. (“We’re talking about a woman of quality,” Max beams while Ruth is humping his son.)

          The Homecoming becomes more and more surreal as it winds toward an insane climax, but what keeps the piece on track is Pinter’s meticulous characterization and dialogue. (Not every writer can work the phrase “pox-ridden slut” into a conversation.) Echoing Pinter’s restrained style, Hall keeps the camerawork simple and employs a muted color palette. The performances consistently rise to the level of literary artistry on display. Excepting Cusack and Jayston, the cast was carried over from the original stage production, so the actors wear their roles like second skins. Holm and Rogers are the standouts, since they get the showy roles filled with crude insults and demented monologues, but the straight faces of Jayston and Merchant are crucial to the overall effect.

          Designed to be analyzed, debated, and interpreted—thanks to its singular treatment of class, family, and gender—The Homecoming is both fabulously ambiguous and terrifically specific. It has the force of a nuclear bomb and the precision of a sniper’s bullet.

The Homecoming: GROOVY

In Celebration (1973)

         Very much in the style of the kitchen-sink dramas that pervaded British screens and stages during the ’50s and ’60s, this grim tale of family dysfunction employs the familiar contrivance of a special occasion triggering cataclysmic arguments and painful revelations. Specifically, when an aging English coal miner and his wife welcome home their three adult sons to commemorate the parents’ 40th wedding anniversary, the sons engage in verbal combat that rips back the façade of the seemingly “normal” family. Conceptually, this is quite ordinary stuff, but crisp writing, exceptional performances, and probing explorations of the English class system make In Celebration worthwhile. Produced for the American Film Theatre, the picture was directed by Lindsay Anderson from David Storey’s 1969 play, which Anderson also directed onstage.

          The piece is largely a vehicle for Alan Bates, reprising the leading role he performed during the play’s original run, so Bates’ singular way of infusing dialogue with cruelty, derision, and self-loathing drives the experience. He plays Andy, the family’s ne’er-do-well elder child, who ditched a promising law career to become a painter. Andy is also the keeper of the family’s secrets, and because those secrets chew at him like cancers, he seizes every opportunity to confront his relatives with evidence of their hypocrisy and inadequacy. The family’s middle child, Colin (James Bolan), is a career-minded conformist about to marry a woman even though he’s a closeted homosexual, and the youngest child, Steven (Brian Cox), is a would-be author harboring profound psychological pain even as he wears the mask of a contented husband and father. Meanwhile, the parents (played by Constance Chapman and Bill Owen) have issues of their own—the mother feeds delusions of grandeur by pushing her children toward lofty social positions, and the father deeply regrets spending nearly 50 years working underground just to support a wife he doesn’t understand and sons who seem incapable of happiness.

          In Celebration is all about the ways in which families project their dreams and nightmares onto each other, so past wounds including the death of a fourth son linger over the whole clan like toxic clouds. Exacerbating all of these problems are communication issues stemming from generational differences. The parents were raised to suffer through their problems, but the sons, ironically, gained the ability to articulate every nuance of their feelings because of the educations foisted upon them by their parents. Bleak and harsh from beginning to end, In Celebration works because Storey plays fair—rather than situating one character as the family’s moral center, he demonstrates how each character is incomplete. For instance, Steven lashes out at the domineering Andy by saying, “Attitudes like yours are easily adapted—all you have to do is destroy what’s already there.” As this hyper-literate dialogue suggests, the stage origins of In Celebration are never hidden, but director Anderson uses limited sets to create a sense of claustrophobia that energizes the material. More importantly, the performances are close to perfect, from Bates’ overbearing menace to Cox’s quiet suffering. In Celebration is a rough ride, but it’s a rewarding one.

In Celebration: GROOVY

Luther (1973)

          In addition to starring in some of the darkest and strangest Hollywood films of the ’70s, the extraordinary actor Stacy Keach appeared in a handful of ’70s projects that employed a more classical style, including this cerebral offering from the American Film Theatre. Essentially a filmed (and slightly modified) version of John Osborne’s 1961 play about historical figure Martin Luther, the feature tracks the events that led Luther to break from the Catholic Church at the moment the world was shifting from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. The story takes the title character along a painful journey from being a self-loathing monk to being a morally conflicted revolutionary, so Keach gets to employ his signature intensity as well as his mellifluous speaking voice. The movie is not perfect, simply because it’s so talky that parts of the story go slack, but Keach is deeply impressive.

          Luther begins in 1506, when the Catholic Church is at an apex of sociopolitical influence and unchecked corruption. Young German monk Luther (Keach) wrestles with the strict doctrines of the church, punishing himself for not loving God in the “right” way, and struggling to reconcile his feelings of pride and rebellion with his orders to be humble and subservient. As the years pass, Luther becomes a respected Biblical scholar, but knowledge merely sharpens his disdain for church authorities. Adding to Luther’s indignation is the ubiquity of such theologically dubious practices as the selling of “indulgences,” essentially get-out-of-jail-free cards for wealthy sinners. It all comes to a head in 1517, when Luther issues his scorching Ninety-Five Theses, a methodical explanation of how the church has lost touch with true faith. Showdowns with Catholic authorities ensue, but Luther remains unbowed.

          The historical significance of this story is of course monumental, since Luther was one of the architects of Protestantism, and it would take a more learned person than me to appraise the accuracy of the film’s chronology. Taken solely on dramatic terms, the picture is effectively structured—Luther as the crusading hero, the bloated church as the collective villain—and much of the dialogue is powerful. Additionally, Osborne deserves ample credit for lightness of touch, since the high-minded text is sprinkled with excretory humor, of all things, stemming from the real Luther’s lifelong stomach trouble.

          Still, Luther is slow going, even when Keach locks horns with such formidable scene partners as the urbane Alan Badel, the boisterous Hugh Griffiths, and the menacing Patrick Magee. (Judi Dench, years before her stardom, plays a small role toward the end of the picture as Luther’s wife.) Ultimately, Luther is too fiery to be dismissed as a dry history lesson, and too static to quality as full-blooded cinema. It’s a sophisticated presentation of important subject matter, elevated by an extraordinary leading performance.

Luther: GROOVY

Butley (1974)

          Literature professor Ben Butley (Alan Bates) is a horror show of a human being. Possessed of singular wit that he uses almost exclusively to belittle his acquaintances, he’s at a tenuous place in his life. Although his position at a reputable school in his native England is basically solid, Ben has gotten into the bad habit of alienating colleagues and students with his incessant derision, and his love life is complicated—after his wife, Anne (Susan Engal), left him, Ben became romantically involved with his male assistant, Joey (Richard O’Callaghan). On what might be the worst day of his life, it all comes crashing down. Anne announces her intention to remarry, Joey reveals that he’s left Ben for swaggering Reg (Michael Byrne), and Ben’s elder colleague, Edna (Jessica Tandy), secures a publication deal for the book she’s spent 20 years writing—even though Ben is nowhere near completing his own book. In short, it’s time for karma to kick Ben Butley’s ass. And that’s the simple plot of this production from the American Film Theatre.

          Based on Simon Gray’s 1971 play of the same name, Butley was the first feature film directed by Harold Pinter, the revered British playwright and stage director. Ironically, given Pinter’s reputation as a master of subtext, Butley comprises wall-t0-wall dialogue. Working with master cinematographer Gerry Fisher, Pinter does an excellent job of capturing performances via judicious picture editing, subtle camera moves, and thoughtful compositions, So even though Butley runs a bit long—120 minutes of Bates acting like a shit tests viewers’ patience—the picture, which is set almost entirely in one room, never feels claustrophobic. And while the storyline hits themes of academic competition, alcoholism, professional envy, self-loathing, and writers’ block, Butley isn’t some navel-gazing character study of a drama. Quite to the contrary, it’s meant to be high comedy, in the sense of elevated language and lofty ideas.

          Some viewers may find the title character too cruel to be amusing, and, indeed, nearly all the “jokes” stem from Ben’s suffocating narcissism. For instance, when he learns of Edna’s success, Ben unfurls a rant: “She never did understand her role, which is not to finish an un-publishable book on Byron! Now the center cannot hold—Edna is unleashed upon the world!” Clearly, the source of Ben’s troubles is the same thing that makes him interesting as a dramatic subject, which is his delusion that the world revolves around him. Accordingly, the slow toppling of Ben’s fragile universe is a process of stripping away his overinflated ego. So in the same way that Ben might be a turnoff for some because he’s monstrous, the elimination of companionship and hope and joy from his life isn’t especially pleasurable to watch.

          Butley, therefore, is more a clinical piece of business than a proper entertainment—but that doesn’t mean the film is without its distractions. Bates is terrific, even as he devolves from bickering with his lover to eviscerating a helpless coed, and the supporting cast provides sufficient resistance to make Bates’ attacks seem formidable. Mostly, however, the rewards of Butley are found in Gray’s dexterous wordplay. Other writers exploring similar terrain have created deeper and/or funnier material, but Gray stays balanced on a high wire from start to finish, almost completely avoiding the traps of melodrama, pretentiousness, and superficiality.

Butley: GROOVY

Rhinoceros (1974)

A movie reteaming actors Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel, the stars of Mel Brooks’ The Producers (1967), was not inevitable. Lest we forget, The Producers did poorly during in its original release, although it achieved legendary status later. Nonetheless, it’s disappointing to report that the second Wilder-Mostel picture lacks the madcap magic of their first collaborative venture. Based on the absurdist play by Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros was produced for the American Film Theatre, a short-lived program of stage adaptations exhibited on a subscription basis. The problem with this particular adaptation, alas, is that it can’t decide if it’s a broad farce or a cerebral satire. Ionesco’s original play was set in France and filled with dialogue and images that critics interpreted as lampoons of fascism. Transplanted to modern-day America, the film version loses all of its political bite, transforming into an oh-so-’70s treatise on the dangers of joining the Establishment. And yet if the only thing that the picture did was deliver a clear theme by way of a few laughs, it might have been worthwhile. Instead, the piece retains Ionesco’s central comic premise of a world in which people are becoming rhinoceroses. (Again, the key word is “absurdist.”) Given license to depict rampaging animals, screenwriter Julian Barry and director Tom O’Horgan fill much of the picture with loud scenes of chaos and destruction, interspersed with mannered comedy bits like the scene in which Mostel and Wilder pratfall their way through a grooming regimen. It’s all very artificial and pretentious and tiresome, qualities that are exacerbated by Mostel’s intolerably obnoxious performance. Mugging and screaming like he’s playing to an amphitheater, the actor succumbs to all of his worst tendencies here. Wilder, meanwhile, plays to his strengths, shifting between hysteria and sweetness, though the material fails him at every turn. (Offbeat ’70s screen vixen Karen Black appears in a supporting role, though she seems adrift thanks the inanity of the narrative.) Rhinoceros is praiseworthy on some levels, simply for the commitment with which the cast and filmmakers attack the text, but the way this American version omits the play’s original purpose renders the whole exercise futile. Plus, the fact that O’Horgan never actually shows a rhinoceros runs counter to the stupidly literal nature of the overall enterprise—why chintz on the one thing that could never appear in stage versions?

Rhinoceros: LAME

The Man in the Glass Booth (1975)

          Although best known as an actor, for extensive work on the London stage and for Hollywood endeavors such as his spectacular performance as Captain Quint in Jaws (1975), the late Robert Shaw was also a novelist and playwright. His most famous literary endeavor was the 1967 novel The Man in the Glass Booth, which he adapted into a 1968 play of the same name. Set in modern-day New York, the story concerns Arthur Goldman, a wealthy Holocaust survivor who spends his days haranguing employees with outlandish opinions about Judaism even as he seems to teeter on the brink of a nervous breakdown. One day, Israeli secret agents break into his home and reveal that Goldman is actually a Nazi war criminal living under an assumed identity. Next, Goldman is illicitly extradited to the Middle East for prosecution. (During the court action, he’s placed in the titular glass booth for his own protection.) All through the trial, Goldman proudly wears his SS uniform and outrageously lectures the Israeli audience with justifications murdering Jews. The story ends with a bizarre twist that raises as many questions as it answers.

          Although the play of The Man in the Glass Booth was presented in New York with an acclaimed production directed by Harold Pinter and starring Donald Pleasence, changes were made after the piece was selected for production by the American Film Theatre, a short-lived production company that filmed plays for limited movie-theater exhibition. The project got a new director (Arthur Hiller), a new star (Maximilian Schell), and a new script (by Edward Anhalt). Shaw was sufficiently displeased with the alterations that he removed his name from the film’s credits. Setting aside the matter of fealty to its source material, the movie version of The Man in the Glass Booth is a strange experience. Hiller does an okay job of opening up cinematic potential, using intricate sets to create separate spaces and thereby divide long scenes into smaller sequences; similarly, he also employs close-ups to accentuate the weird rhythms of Goldman’s euphoric monologues.

          And if Hiller’s filming is lively, Schell’s performance is positively supercharged—though not necessarily in a good way. Flamboyant, loud, and sensual, Schell’s interpretation borders on camp. One can make a strong argument that Schell chews scenery in proper proportion to the way his character does, but it gets suffocating after a while to watch the actor cackle and gesticulate and scream. Still, many found his work impressive, since he got Golden Globe and Oscar nominations. The real challenge of The Man in the Glass Booth, however, relates to the story’s ending, which won’t be spoiled here—suffice to say, the denouement is such a surprise, and such a head-scratcher, that it retroactively colors every preceding scene. Nonetheless, The Man in the Glass Booth offers a unique combination of ideology, philosophy, provocation, and wit—so even at its most questionable, the movie is arresting and sophisticated.

The Man in the Glass Booth: GROOVY