Word: one
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...with cold command-he is a symbol of Hemingway's maxim in To Have and Have Not: "A man alone ain't got no bloody chance." Willie has even less than no chance. "I'm only an Indian," he tells his girl (Katharine Ross), "and no one cares what Indians...
Polonsky's talents were marked and sharpened by the rhetoric of Depression politics. The result is that, on occasion, his script blows its otherwise immaculate cool-as when a poolroom tough delivers one of those drunken "I'll-tell-you-what-democracy-is" speeches. Although Redford and Clark are both excellent in their roles, Katharine Ross offers a major challenge to credibility as Willie's Indian girl, called Lola in the film. She looks little like an Indian and is obviously too refined to act like one...
What shocks one epoch may fascinate another. And bore a third. Ten years ago, Rock Hudson pursued Doris Day across what seemed to be miles of snowy sheets. Doris retained her maidenhood beyond the final fadeout (and for many pictures thereafter), but the shrewdly timed movie passed for daring and became one of the biggest box-office hits...
...during the New York-based affair. Mary, it turns out, has been grooving with a married politician. John seems the sort of clumping, turtle-nosed customer who could not seduce a girl in a brothel. Such appearances, however, are deceiving; he too is a successful swinger pursued by one bird while he chases another. Not until J. & M. have known each other in the biblical sense do they know each other in the classical one. At the finale, they exchange names for the first time-reason enough, the film implies, to show they have found love...
Director Yates knows how to shape even the sketchiest scenario, and if John and Mary is no deeper than an eggshell, it is every bit as functionally designed. Mia Farrow adds an otherworldliness to her character by reciting her lines as if they were cabala. Hoffman, one of the shrewdest young actors in the business, manages to be at once predator and victim. But when the film tries to make the audience care for the characters, it proves bankrupt. For beneath the Manhattan chatter and the glossy confrontations, John and Mary is as empty as a singles bar on Monday...