Word: elliott
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Based on former Footballer Peter Gent's good novel, the film shows this sadomasochistic world through the eyes of Phillip Elliott (Nick Nolte), a pass catcher with good hands and, in the view of the coaches and owners, a bad attitude. Elliott's insouciance springs from a developing conviction that he and his mates are exploited (if well-paid) field hands, risking their lives, or anyway their health, to assuage their owner's ego and their coach's desire to turn them into ciphers...
...Elliott's rebellion usually stops at smart wisecracks, for he is held to both the pain and the surrounding childishness by a hidden hook-that pure and purifying joy he feels when displaying his skills on the field. He needs that high as surely as a performer in the more elevated arts needs it, and North Dallas Forty is shrewd to make this often neglected observation about athletes. Moreover, Nolte is very appealing as a man inescapably infected by the crudity of his team's raucous (and vividly rendered) behavior at work and play; he struggles to give...
...picture breaks down awkwardly when it tries to express directly what it has already said better by implication. This generally occurs in earnest scenes between Elliott and his all too dense girlfriend. Dayle Haddon's inexperienced playing adds nothing even faintly convincing to the badly written love interest, and the rest of the film has to struggle to recover from the resulting dead spots. Still, North Dallas Forty retains enough of the original novel's authenticity to deliver strong, if brutish, entertainment.-Richard Schickel
...Paxton and Ramblin' Jack Elliott. Aug. 9,8 and 10:30 p.m. $5.50 in advance, $6 at door...
...learned of his dismissal only the afternoon before, during a stormy, 2½-hour meeting with Graham and Newsweek President Peter Derow. He was described as shocked, but associates said that he may have missed subtle signals of Graham's displeasure. Under Kosner's predecessor, Osborn Elliott, now dean of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, Newsweek was briefly known on Madison Avenue as a "hot book" because of improved editorial vitality and attendant advertising and circulation gains. (Newsweek's current U.S. circulation is 2.9 million, vs. TIME's 4.25 million.) Yet newsstand sales have...