Word: carnalities
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MARRIED. Candice Bergen, 34, actress and photojournalist who has contributed a cool, poised beauty to such films as The Group and Carnal Knowledge; and Louis Malle, 47, New Wave French film director who has ranged from the sensually lyrical (Pretty Baby, Murmur of the Heart) to the politically provocative (Lacombe, Lucien); she for the first time, he for the second; in Lugagnac, France...
Caligula opens with the portentious pounding of a drum, as a Bible passage about gaining everything but losing one's soul (get it?) appears on the screen in blood red. We then see a cheery young Caligula frolicking in carnal bliss with his sister, Drusilla. But soon, with neither reason nor warning, ambition seizes Caligula. He thinks that his grandfather, the Emperor Tiberius, wants him dead, so he has Tiberius killed and assumes his reign. Caligula thinks he's a god; he says so at least half a dozen times in the long, tedious course of the film...
...other allusions in the film are to the creation story, but here the trail is twisted. Certainly it is not carnal knowledge that does in our heroes, or the film would last only 45 minutes. On the other hand, they 'lude out on the red berries, the island's only forbidden fruit. And they celebrate Christmas, so maybe you have to read the New Testament to understand...
...cuts loose with ten songs that are like rounds of some unarmed psychic combat. I Am an Animal is a saw-toothed bit of self-mockery and self-appraisal, Let My Love Open the Door and A Little Is Enough love songs with a spiritual finish and a nice carnal edge, Rough Boys a terrific street anthem, and the title cut an elaborate meditation on musical survivors and musical pretenders. "I've been there and gone there/ I've lived there and bummed there/ I've spilled there, I gave there/" Townshend sings, and there...
...relationships as an unending series of one-upmanships and clashes, a dance of death with each power in turn vowing to return. Here, his sometime partner, presumably aging Playboy centerfold and intercontinental pleasure-kitten Bebe Buell, is merely a "B Movie," "a sob-soap story" devoid of all but carnal interest; this is not two Hitlers, but Hitler and Mussolini. The song climaxes as Elvis taunts her for her shallowness: "You can't feel, you can't feel," his voice echoing in her vacuity, while Bruce Thomas's almost bored bass thrums luridly, watching Elvis pick off ducks...