Word: closeups
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This documentary on teen-age crime, a segment in the "ABC News Closeup" series, may be the most disturbing and dramatic news program ever seen on American commercial television. It is certainly the most explicit. The network recommends "parental discretion" in the opening credits, and as the show unfolds, that cliche takes on new meaning. There is graphic violence, to be sure: bloodied heads; a lone youth being attacked by three others, one of them swinging a baseball bat; an unflinching look at a junkie mainlining. And the street toughs and ghetto dwellers who provide the sole narration converse...
...precious little ever does take place. At the end of the film, Violet is leaving New Orleans to start a normal life; the movie closes with a freeze frame of her face while she waits for a train north. Malle apparently believes this closeup resolves his story: he wants to show that Violet has already started to harden into a dull, defeated adult. But one look at Shields' face and we see that Malle is wrong. The fascinating secrets of this girl's childhood still lurk in her wide blue eyes, waiting to be unlocked. Far from being...
Even the wretched performances - Mark Lester's prissy portrayal of the title roles aside - are fun in their bizarre way. Ernest Borgnine yells out his lines in an un abashed American accent and bulges his eyes in every closeup, proving once again that he is the last word in screen vulgarity. His crass pyrotechnics are almost topped by Charlton Heston, who turns Henry VIII's death scene into a veritable anthology of hammy acting gestures. Raquel Welch, no fool, sees to it that she is more seen than heard...
...zippered greensward of AstroTurf that the locals fondly call Mardi Grass. Also the biggest set of TV tubes: six superscreens, each 22 ft. wide by 26 ft. high, suspended from a 75-ton gondola, which afford the farthest-out viewer in the cheapest, loftiest seat a closeup of a cheerleader or an instant replay of a football fumble...
...face fills the screen, shot in extreme closeup. We see eyes, a nose, a mouth; not enough, for the moment, to decide age or sex. The eyes are wide open, perhaps in wonder, perhaps in horror. Now we see the fingers of a second person palpating the flesh of this face, neither gently nor roughly, folding back the upper lip to examine the teeth; turning the head to inspect the lobe of an ear. The camera draws back, and it is seen that the face is that of a middle-aged woman, naked. The fingers are those of a white...