Word: pakula
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Alan J. Pakula, W.V.O. Quine, Giscard D'Estaing and Seymour Slive...
...years ago Paul Mazursky presented Jill Clayburgh in An Unmarried Woman, the story of a not-so-gay divorcee who on her own vanquished the neuroses of Manhattan. Enter the flipquel. Alan Pakula flips the sex of the divorce victim, alters the plot a bit, and calls the new film Starting Over. Burt Reynolds stars alongside Clayburgh and Candice Bergen in this film which, unlike its prototype, deserves no more praise than a cute, melodramatic, made-for-T.V., movie...
...Pakula and Brooks hide one serious--and disturbing--social comment in the giggles of Potter's second-engagement bliss. In An Unmarried Woman, the heroine proudly disdained the need for a male companion. It seems, however, that Potter cannot go more than a month without a mate. Are we to infer that men who can't live without women are "lovable" and "sensitive?" Brooks, whose Mary Richards pioneered as television's securely single woman, sells single men short...
Even if this film were consistently funny, it could not avoid ticketing as slick Hollywood escapism. No dumb palooka, Pakula has proven capable--with Klute and All the President's Men--of far worthier cinematic ventures. But given the dearth of screenplays in Hollywood, the flipquel will probably haunt us for years. Watch for Queen Kong...
...Bree Daniels, the call-girl who is the object of a shadowy killer, involves us so totally that the girl-in-the-abandoned-warehouse routine at the end doesn't even appear schematic (well, it does, but we're still scared to death). You gotta credit Alan J. Pakula though, who here, as in All the President's Men and the Parallax View, conveys the someone-is-always-watching-you motif with incomparable creepiness. Donald Sutherland is an intelligent, if pallid detective, but the protagonist is Jane all the way, the frustrated hooker trapped by the emotional and physical perils...