Portnoy’s Complaint (1972)

          Success creates demand for repeat performances, hence this Philip Roth adaptation starring Richard Benjamin, a follow-up to the well-received Goodbye, Columbus (1969), which had the same actor/source material combo. Portnoy’s Complaint did not fare well, as represented by the fact that the picture began and ended the directorial career of Ernest Lehman, one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed screenwriters. Whereas Goodbye, Columbus leavened its harshest elements with tenderness, Portnoy’s Complaint is unremittingly loud and vulgar. The film is not without its virtues, thanks partly to the psychosexual preoccupations of the source material and partly to the skill of the actors on display, but the picture is as fake and mean-spirited as Goodbye, Columbus is authentic and humane.

          Benjamin plays Alexander Portnoy, a horny civil servant who becomes involved with uninhibited fashion model Mary Jane Reid (Karen Black). Not only is she a Gentile, fulfilling one of self-hating Jew Alexander’s deepest fantasies, but she’s also nicknamed “Monkey” because of her agility in bed. The nearly illiterate Mary Jane is a plaything for Alexander, who gets to feel superior while lecturing her about culture and virile while driving her wild during sex. Yet the more she pushes for a real relationship, the more he cuts at her self-image with sarcasm. Revealing that Alexander eventually drives Mary Jane to suicide doesn’t spoil Portnoy’s Complaint, because the movie is built around a therapy session during which Alexander explores his guilt over the way he treated Mary Jane. He also works through his relationship with his oppressive mother, Sophie (Lee Grant), as well as his addiction to masturbation.

          One must admire Lehman’s commitment to presenting Alexander so unflinchingly—and since Jack Nicholson got away with playing men like this many times, the no-prisoners approach had precedents. Yet very little in Portnoy’s Complaint works. The movie is fast and slick, but it’s neither erotic nor illuminating. Instead, it comes across like a misguided morality tale wrapped inside a dirty joke. Still, Portnoy’s Complaint features a wild array of acting styles. Black has a few supple moments before slipping into harpy mode; the hopelessly miscast Grant plays for the cheap seats; Jill Clayburgh lends fire to a small part as a woman invulnerable to Alexander’s charms; and Jeannie Berlin, best of all, lends humor and pathos to the role of a bedraggled woman whose encounter with Alexander goes awry.

Portnoy’s Complaint: FUNKY

The Telephone Book (1971)

          Tempting as it is to call The Telephone Book highbrow smut, what with the film’s arty black-and-white cinematography and its peculiar collection of kinky characters, the film has many stretches that are indefensibly sleazy. For instance, an animated sequence features giant tongues probing between women’s legs. Rather than providing a frank look at human sexuality, The Telephone Book is a wannabe sex comedy that peripherally includes both artistry and a small measure of sensitivity. As such, The Telephone Book occupies a strange space between exploitation and legitimacy. Most serious movie fans will find the picture way too lurid and tacky, and chances are The Telephone Book lacks sufficient oomph to satisfy the heavy-breathing audience. As such, this film is best classified as an odd byproduct of the porn-chic period, during which “real” filmmakers engaged carnal themes in graphic (or semi-graphic) detail. The picture’s X-rating is appropriate because of wall-to-wall sexual content, although the rating suggests the film crosses lines that it actually does not.

          The premise blends elements of feminist self-actualization with traces of Penthouse Letters male fantasy. Alice (Sarah Kennedy) receives an obscene phone call so arousing that she falls in love with the voice on the other end of the phone, then demands his name so she can find him. He gives her the dubious-sounding appellation “John Smith.” Alice tracks down every John Smith in the Manhattan phone book, leading to encounters with various men. A fellow calling himself “Har Poon” (Barry Morse) invites Alice to join in a group-grope audition for a porno movie. An unnamed psychoanalyst (Roger C. Carmel) flashes Alice on the subway, then pays her to describe her sexual history. (In a somewhat clever bit, he rubs the money changer on his belt while she talks, spewing dimes all over the floor of a diner.) Eventually, Alice meets the John Smith who called her, and he wears a pig mask while providing, in exhaustive detail, the origin story that led him to find gratification only through aural contact. Interspersed with these encounters are “interviews” with obscene phone callers who explain their habits.

          As a viewing experience, The Telephone Book is disorienting. The visual style of the movie, excepting the animated sequence, is sophisticated, almost to a fault—rather than shooting conventional coverage, writer-director Nelson Lyon films the picture like a series of elegant still photos, all delicate light and meticulous composition. Leading lady Kennedy is so bubbly and warm she seems like Goldie Hawn, which has the effect of making the picture feel less overtly dirty. And several proper actors deliver interesting work in supporting roles, notably Carmel, William Hickey, and Dolph Sweet. (Jill Clayburgh, pre-fame, shows up in a couple of scenes as Alice’s best friend.) Still, how is one to reconcile the arty flourishes with the stag-reel stuff? And what is one to make of the fact that scenes featuring Smith in his pig mask have an almost Kubrickian level of creepiness, given the way moody black-and-white shadows accentuate the monstrous contours of the mask? Although there’s a lot to unpack in The Telephone Book, it’s open to question whether deep-thinking the picture is worth the bother.

The Telephone Book: FREAKY

1980 Week: It's My Turn

          One of the quintessential leading ladies of the ’70s, Jill Clayburgh, fell out of fashion almost as quickly as she achieved star status. Yet over the span of several character-driven films, including this slight romantic comedy, Clayburgh built an important body of work that reflects many of the key issues driving the early women’s movement. The characters Clayburgh portrayed were confused, multidimensional, powerful, and sexy, demanding an equal share of life’s bounty even as they navigated the myriad ways in which changes to traditional gender roles complicated their relationships with men. So even though It’s My Turn is plainly inferior to Starting Over (1978) and An Unmarried Woman (1979), the films are all of a piece.

          Penned by first-time screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein, who later achieved a major success with Dirty Dancing (1987), It’s My Turn opens in Chicago, where Kate (Clayburgh) is a mathematics professor at a prestigious university. She lives with Homer (Charles Grodin), who shuns real emotional commitment because he’s still recovering from a divorce. Therefore, when Kate travels to New York for the second wedding of her father, kindly widower Jacob (Steven Hill), Kate is susceptible to the charms of Ben (Michael Douglas), one of the sons of Jacob's fiancée. A former professional baseball player whose career ended because of an injury, Ben is dashing and handsome and self-deprecating. Alas, he's also married. Nonetheless, Kate dives headlong into a whirlwind romance during the weekend of her father’s wedding, soon deciding that she wants to leave Homer for Ben. Naturally, Ben has something to say about this, hence the slender drama that ensues.

           Long on character and short on story, Bergstein’s intelligent script features dialogue vibrates with the narcissism and neuroticism of the Me Decade: “I really don’t want to live through every moment of another person’s life,” Homer whines at one point. More damningly, much of the film is bereft of genuine dramatic conflict, so things just sort of happen without recognizable consequences. There’s a reason why director Claudia Weill, who earned critical raves for her independently made first feature, Girlfriends (1978), transitioned to helming TV shows after making this, her only studio picture. On the plus side, It’s My Turn showcases Clayburgh and Douglas at the apex of their charisma, and the supporting cast (which also includes Beverly Garland, Charles Kimbrough, Daniel Stern, and Dianne Wiest) is excellent. It’s My Turn may be little more than a cinematic snack, but it has a pleasant flavor.

It’s My Turn: FUNKY

An Unmarried Woman (1978)

          To get a sense of why essayist/novelist Tom Wolfe christened the ’70s “The Me Decade,” look no further than An Unmarried Woman, one of the deepest dives into feminine psychology any mainstream American filmmaker has ever attempted. Although the movie nominally tells the story of a woman trying to find love again after her husband leaves her, the real goal of the picture is to let one individual express her personal angst. And while the issues the heroine articulates are germane to an entire generation of females, since divorce rates skyrocketed in the ’70s, the words “I,” “me,” and “mine” dominate the dialogue. From quiet scenes of the lead character embracing the joys of being alone to leisurely sequences depicting talking-and-listening therapy sessions, this movie takes introspection to a new extreme. On many levels, this approach is rewarding, and it’s safe to assume that male viewers who caught the picture during its original release exited theaters with a deeper understanding of the ladies in their lives. However, it must be offered as a caveat that viewers who don’t groove on pictures in which characters discuss their feelings at copious length will find An Unmarried Woman about as pleasant as a visit to the dentist. Writer-director Paul Mazursky commits, big time.

          Set in New York City, the picture follows the adventures of Erica (Jill Clayburgh), a with-it intellectual. When the story begins, she’s happily married to businessman Martin (Michael Murphy), with whom she’s raising their daughter, bright teenager Patti (Lisa Lucas). One day, Martin announces he’s met someone else, so Erica suddenly realizes how much of her personal identity was subsumed during nearly two decades of marriage. As the movie progresses, Erica commiserates with her girlfriends, re-enters the dating scene, and works through complicated feelings with her shrink, Tanya (played by real-life psychotherapist Penelope Russianoff). Eventually, a love story emerges between Erica and strong-willed abstract artist Saul (Alan Bates), but Erica’s reluctance to repeat the self-sacrificing mistakes of her marriage creates believable complications.

          Virtually every scene in An Unmarried Woman is, to some degree or another, credible and meaningful. Mazursky shoots the picture with a naturalistic style that puts performances first, and one gets the strong sense he gave his actors ample license for improvisation. The major shortcoming of the picture, therefore, is an embarrassment of riches. Running a bloated 124 minutes, An Unmarried Woman contains many scenes that could (and should) have been cut or at least trimmed. A little navel-gazing goes a long way. Yet the strengths of the picture, particularly the key performances, easily outweigh the weaknesses. Clayburgh is wonderfully complicated in the picture, fragile and flawed and funny. Bates and Murphy are both good, too, with Bates offering a ’70s take on the hirsute he-man with an intellectual bent and Murphy effectively portraying a schmuck overwhelmed by the depth of his own feelings.

An Unmarried Woman: GROOVY

Starting Over (1979)

          James L. Brooks was at the apex of his spectacular run as a TV showrunner when he penned his first theatrical feature, Starting Over. Adapted from a novel by Dan Wakefield, the movie is shot through with the same funny/sad humanism Brooks brought to his award-winning TV shows—The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, etc.—so even though Starting Over features a trio of brand-name actors and was helmed by A-lister Alan J. Pakula, the movie is primarily a showcase for Brooks’ sharp observations about human frailty. (Brooks and Pakula co-produced the picture.)

          Stepping way outside his comfort zone and scoring with a charming performance, Burt Reynolds plays Phil Potter, a magazine writer who is abruptly dumped by his wife, Jessica (Candice Bergen), a beautiful narcissist embarking on a new career as a singer-songwriter. Suddenly thrown back into the dating scene, Phil takes solace in the company of his amiable brother, Mickey (Charles Durning), a touchy-feely psychiatrist. Mickey introduces Phil to divorced schoolteacher Marilyn Holmberg (Jill Clayburgh)—this happens during a funny scene involving mistaken identities and foul language—and they become a couple after a few false starts. However, their second-time-around romance is complicated when Jessica decides she wants Phil back.

          Sensitively examining the complexities of relationships during an era of shifting gender roles, Starting Over is smart and touching, with likeable people riding the amusing currents of confusing situations. Brooks’ dialogue is incisive, and his ability to shift the tone of a scene from ominous to promising and back again is spectacular; although Starting Over is one of Brooks’ lightest efforts, essentially just a romantic comedy made with exemplary skill, the movie is filled with insights and wit.

          It’s also filled with great acting. Reynolds ditches his usual macho swagger to play an everyman trying to find his way through life without hurting anyone—thereby ensuring he causes lots of inadvertent damage—while his female counterparts play to their respective strengths. Bergen revels in humiliating herself for the sake of a joke, especially when giving cringe-inducing performances of her character’s songs, and Clayburgh takes neuroticism to a Woody Allen-esque extreme. The women also create distinctly different personas, so it’s easy to see why Phil’s torn. Durning makes a great foil for Reynolds, and supporting players Frances Sternhagen, Mary Kay Place, and Austin Pendelton enliven minor roles.

Starting Over: GROOVY

Gable and Lombard (1976)

          Gable and Lombard, a romantic drama about the illicit love affair and subsequent marriage of real-life Golden Age movie stars Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, is so preposterously fictionalized that it’s a pointless endeavor. Among many other howlers, the movie features a climactic scene in which Lombard (Jill Clayburgh) testifies on behalf of Gable (James Brolin) at a court hearing related to his divorce from the woman to whom he was married when he began keeping company with Lombard. Not only did this testimony never happen, but the filmmakers portray Lombard as such a crude loudmouth that when asked to describe her relationship with Gable, she proclaims, “Me and that big ape over there have been hitting the sack every night, and I’ve got a sore back to prove it!” Yet Gable and Lombard lacks the courage of its convictions—instead of going wholeheartedly down the road of tabloid tawdriness, the movie is meant to be some sort of loving tribute to once-in-a-lifetime passion. Unfortunately, Barry Sandler’s inept screenplay and Sidney J. Furie’s unsophisticated direction makes the leading characters look like sex-crazed buffoons instead of incandescent lovers.

          This tone-deaf portrayal is exacerbated by performances that are, to say the least, uneven. While Clayburgh is grandiose and shrill, it’s possible to discern some of the emotional realities she’s attempting to communicate. However, Brolin is laughable, growling and smirking through a paper-thin impersonation of Gable’s most obvious onscreen tics. When these dissonant performances merge during interminable dialogue scenes—Gable and Lombard runs a deadly 131 minutes—the result is loud, superficial nonsense. It’s also impossible to know whom this movie was meant to please: The picture’s narrative is far too bogus to please diehard Gable-Lombard fans, and far too cliché-ridden to work as a standalone romance. Yes, the movie is handsomely produced, but so what? Even the supposed appeal of re-creating Old Hollywood is wasted, since the only other major character drawn from history is studio chief L.B. Mayer (played unpersuasively by Allen Garfield). As the real Lombard’s onetime secretary told syndicated columnist Dick Kleiner at the time of the Gable and Lombard’s release: “I couldn’t associate a single scene with anything that I’d lived through. Nothing in it is right, not even the clothes.”

Gable and Lombard: LAME

Hustling (1975)

          Based on a nonfiction book by Gail Sheehy, who interviewed and spent time with a group of real New York City hookers, the solidly assembled telefilm Hustling offers a sober look at the world of prostitution. The movie focuses on a Sheehy stand-in, sophisticated journalist Fran Morrison (Lee Remick). Curious why working girls have become ubiquitous in Times Square, and why the police seem incapable of containing the problem, Fran zeroes in on tough-talking pro Wanda (Jill Clayburgh), who is stuck in city jail. Fran pays Wanda’s bail in exchange for information, so Wanda explains her relationships with johns, pimps, and other prostitutes. This leads Fran to discover the network of city officials and slumlords making money off the sex trade, transforming Fran’s article from a color piece about hooking to an exposé about corruption. Understandably, the deeper Fran digs into the prostitution business, the more pressure Wanda feels to stop talking.

          Hustling doesn’t shy away from the dangers of streetwalking—Wanda gets beaten and raped, and another prostitute commits suicide—yet the movie illustrates how some women can survive the business long enough to sock away cash and escape with their souls intact. Directed by reliable TV-movie helmer Joseph Sargent, who also made a handful of noteworthy features, Hustling moves along at a strong pace and boasts a great sense of atmosphere. There’s a documentary-style feel to the way Sargent’s cameras observe characters in dark alleyways, grungy coffee shops, and vile hotel rooms that rent by the hour. Sargent also benefits from vibrant acting.

          Remick seethes with a believable type of rich-liberal indignation, and the supporting cast features a number of ’70s favorites, including Paul Benedict, Melanie Mayron, Dick O’Neill, Alex Rocco, and Burt Young. However, the movie’s best/worst element is Clayburgh’s performance. Spewing a cartoonish Noo Yawk accent and strutting with seen-it-all attitude, Clayburgh is compelling from start to finish even though she’s unable to blend the strong and vulnerable aspects of her role into a believable characterization. However, if the worst shortcoming of a move is an actress investing too much effort, that’s a sign everyone involved is trying to create something worthwhile.

Hustling: GROOVY

Semi-Tough (1977)

          Had the people making this comedy been more judicious about picking their satirical targets, Semi-Tough might have become a semi-classic, because the actors and behind-the-scenes players were all at the height of their considerable powers. Unfortunately, the movie is a muddle because of indecision about whether to focus on the seedy side of pro football or the über-’70s trend of “est” training.

          The picture starts out like gangbusters, introducing unlikely roommates Billy Clyde Puckett (Burt Reynolds), Marvin Tiller (Kris Kristofferson), and Barbara Jane Bookman (Jill Clayburgh). Billy Clyde and Marvin are the star players for a Southern football team, which is owned by Barbara Jane’s wacky daddy, Big Ed Bookman (Robert Preston). Sharing space platonically because they’ve been friends since childhood, Billy Clyde, Marvin, and Barbara Jane are funny, hip, and neurotic, serious about sports but irreverent about everything else. As the story progresses, Marvin and Barbara Jane become a couple, which causes Billy Clyde to realize he’s in love with Barbara Jane.

          The movie also introduces wild characters like an oily PR man (Richard Masur), a psychotic lineman (Brian Dennehy), and a blissed-out Russian field-goal kicker (Ron Silver). On and off the field, the football stuff is great, with debauched parties, philosophical locker-room interviews, and tense practice sessions. However, the movie gets sidetracked when Marvin falls under the spell of Friedrick Bismark (Bert Convy), the smoothie behind “B.E.A.T. therapy,” a campy spin on “est.”

          In real life, Erhard Seminars Training (‘est”) was a therapeutically dubious fad in which patrons paid exorbitant fees to sit in hotel conference rooms for marathon character-building sessions without bathroom breaks. “B.E.A.T.” takes the extremes of “est” even further; Bismark labels all his followers assholes and spews empty psychobabble (“There aren’t any answers because there aren’t any questions”). Convy, a ’70s-TV stalwart best known for hosting game shows, is actually very good in Semi-Tough, revealing the savvy slickster behind the spiritual-guru façade. Like the football material, the “B.E.A.T.” stuff is great, but it belongs in its own movie. Complicating matters even further, the romantic triangle between the protagonists never really connects, since Marvin transforms into such a B.E.A.T.-addicted space case that he’s easily outmatched by down-to-earth Billy Clyde.

          That said, Clayburgh, Kristofferson, and Reynolds are wonderful, as is Preston; the scene in which Preston and Reynolds scamper around Big Ed’s office on their hands and knees because Big Ed is experimenting with “crawling therapy” is terrific. In fact, there’s so much to like in Semi-Tough that it’s dismaying to report how widely the film’s director, the sometimes-great comedy specialist Michael Ritchie, misses his mark. Still, viewers willing to treat the picture like a sampler platter will be amply rewarded: It may not be a proper cinematic meal, but it’s certainly the equivalent to a bunch of tasty snacks.

Semi-Tough: FUNKY

Silver Streak (1976)

          A box-office hit that gave birth to the on-again/off-again screen duo of funnymen Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, Silver Streak is impossible to take seriously for the same reason it’s impossible to dislike: The movie forgoes credibility in order to entertain viewers by any means possible. Essentially a Hitchcock-type thriller played for laughs, the movie follows an unassuming book editor (Wilder) during a cross-country train trip filled with unexpected danger, intrigue, and romance. As the tale grows more and more absurd, George stumbles into a dalliance with a sexy secretary (Jill Clayburgh), gets caught in the crosshairs of an evil conspirator (Patrick McGoohan), befriends a jive-talkin’ thief (Pryor), and survives accidents and near-misses in airplanes, cars, and trains. He gets arrested, chased, framed, shot at, thrown off a moving train, and targeted for murder, and yet he displays great moral character by striving to save his new lover and triumph over the bad guys.

          It’s all very silly, especially with the contrived McGuffin plot device relating to priceless letters written by Rembrant, but everyone involved in Silver Streak approaches their work with the same lighthearted attitude. Director Arthur Hiller keeps things moving briskly, creating comfortable spaces in which his actors can showcase their likeable personalities, and writer-producer Colin Higgins, whose gift for character-driven comedy distinguished ’70s movies like the great Harold and Maude (1971) and the effervescent Foul Play (1978), pumps the movie full of amusing one-liners. So, even though the picture drags on far too long and gets mired in bland action sequences like the elaborate shootout during the climax, Silver Streak is consistently watchable.

          Much of the credit goes to Wilder, who mostly eschews his signature hysterics while playing a straightforward romantic lead; he’s surprisingly believable as a dashing man of the world sharing flirtatious banter with Clayburgh, and his reaction shots whenever things get wild are priceless. Clayburgh is appealing in her mostly decorative role, while Pryor slides into an easy buddy-movie rapport with Wilder. Their obvious shtick, predicated on the differences between a streetwise African-American and an uptight honky, is epitomized in the famous scene of Pryor covering Wilder’s face with shoe polish and teaching Wilder to act like a “brother.” There’s no denying the humor of Wilder emulating urban swagger, but there’s also no denying the way the scene perpetuates demeaning stereotypes. Still, Silver Streak is too milquetoast to seem offensive: The racially insensitive gags are just tools the movie uses to elicit cheap laughs, and it’s hard to get angry at a picture whose only goal is making viewers happy.

Silver Streak: GROOVY

Luna (1979)

          Jill Clayburgh made intriguing choices during her brief run as a box-office attraction, bouncing between commercial fare like Silver Streak (1976) and arty projects like Luna, a provocative drama from Italian auteur Bernardo Bertolucci. It took nerve on Clayburgh’s part to play Caterina, an American opera star who embarks on an incestuous relationship with her heroin-addicted teenaged son, Joe (Matthew Berry), while the duo recovers from the sudden death of Caterina’s husband, Douglas (Fred Gwynne). Clayburgh commits to the role without any reservation, putting all of her considerable dramatic resources into every scene, whether she’s mimicking the grandiose performance style of an opera diva or getting handsy with her onscreen son.
          If only the material was as vibrant as Clayburgh’s performance.

          Co-written by Bertolucci, the story is meandering and pretentious, unfurling across a nearly interminable 140 minutes. Bertolucci’s camera probes every trivial nuance of character interaction, so many scenes feature pointless shots swishing around actors as they contemplate whether to step forward or simply stand in place with angsty expressions on their faces. The movie also includes long visual sequences that add nothing to the story, like montages of characters wandering aimlessly through picturesque Italian neighborhoods. Some of these random visuals have flesh-and-blood intensity simply because the cinematography by frequent Bertolucci collaborator Vittorio Storaro is so magnificent; he creates a palpable sense of heat and texture in almost every frame, lending gravitas to scenes whose actual content is of no real interest.

          The large supporting cast of European actors (including, very briefly, a young Roberto Benigni) gets overshadowed because the picture is obsessively focused on mother and son. Although newcomer Berry is naturalistic as Clayburgh’s petulant offspring/paramour, he is incapable of making his character’s absurd mood swings believable, so his weak performance is yet another one of the picture’s fatal flaws.

          As for the picture’s most lurid aspect, even though Bertolucci eases viewers into the incest material (the duo doesn’t get physical till halfway through the movie), the plot development feels ridiculous because the opera singer’s choices are incomprehensible: Instead of seeking treatment for her addict son, she provides heroin and comforts him with her body. So rather than being daring and memorable, Luna comes across as unfocused, forgettable, and more than a little distasteful.

Luna: LAME