Word: milius
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...Dillinger (the latest cop-out gangster chronicle), written and directed by John Milius, the viewer learns nothing about John Dillinger himself. Dillinger is not developed either as man or myth (although the movie is loaded with pretentious hints at the greatness of his legend). Instead, we merely see a series of overly bloody shoot-outs and Dillinger's eventual death. But we knew from the start that he would die in the end--what we really wanted to know was what Dillinger was truly like...
Writer-director John Milius claims to be fascinated by men who are legends in their own time. The 29-year-old Californian also wrote the screenplays for Jeremiah Johnson and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. He tries to make criminals cult heros, but we are left with no sense of the history or development of the legend. We don't know why the man is a legend and, indeed, don't believe we are watching his story. We disbelieve for several reasons...
...Milius himself must have had nagging doubts about this point. He can't make up his mind about whose story this really is. Purvis, on the screen as often as Dillinger, appears in many scenes not directly connected with Dillinger's biography. We see Purvis as a more powerful and intriguing figure than Dillinger, although the movie only teases us with glimpses of his real life. A fascinating film could have been made of Purvis' life. (But one can hear Milius ask, "Who would go to a picture called Purvis...
...biography of a man who is still alive (the real Knievel performed in Madison Square Garden a month ago), the hero is portrayed as an egomaniac, a compulsive worrier and a shameless searcher after publicity. Marvin Chomsky's direction is pedestrian, but the script (by Alan Caillou, John Milius and Pat Williams) has some nice moments of quirky comedy, as when a fissure opens in the earth and a rather large automobile disappears without a trace. The film is good-naturedly skeptical and occasionally satiric about Knievel's exploits-in marked and welcome relief to the gushiness...
...view shot is over there at NYU and that they can shoot in subways and make a second story window look like the forty-seventh floor, but the film itself just isn't there over-and-above its elementary expertise. The winning cartoon, Marcello, I'm So Bored (John Milius; University of Southern California) tritely surveys familiar ground (wicked old Southern California) in Disneylike animation, drawings, and for the piece de resistance, a little photographic negative. That it says nothing and means nothing is troubling only because the negative footage looks well cut; one wonders why Milius didn't make...