Word: charm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Night at 7:45 (Sat mat at 4), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie...
...dignity in the name of survival; he will seduce the commandant (Shirley Stoller) in order to eat. In a series of pathetic but comic scenes which show that Pasqualino's mad scheme derives as much from his vanity as from his desperation, he attempts to bring his Neapolitan charm to bear on the ogress, despite the ravages his misfortunes have wreaked on his appearance. Whistling, winking, and blowing kisses as if he were on an Italian street corner, Pasqualino hums a southern love song as he adjusts his striped prisoner's cap to a rakish angle above his sunken cheeks...
...most jarring diplomats ever to inhabit the towering glass menagerie on Manhattan's East Side. A big (6 ft. 5 in.), bouncy, exuberant man with a cherubic Irish face and a floppy lock of prematurely gray hair, Moynihan, 48, has a well-developed ability to both charm and infuriate. Walking down a corridor, he can pick up a retinue with a nonstop monologue of patter, pontification and wisecracks ("If the U.N. didn't exist, it would be impossible to invent...
Wertmuller fashions the film so that even the paradoxes double back on each other. Pasqualino is a murderer and rap ist. But he is a rogue, too, winning be cause of his shabby, transparent charm...
...contribution to the growing number of films about upper-middle-class fears and fantasies, particularly those related to sex and marriage. This film treats some of the same discontents as Scenes from a Marriage or Sunday, Bloody Sunday, but it is closer in conception to something like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, which makes more sense on the psychological than the plot level. Unfortunately, it lacks the fanciful and humorous elements of Discreet Charm, but it has a few ideas of its own to offer...