Word: passer
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GEORGE SEGAL, in my estimation, is born to win, but in this movie he's been given a crooked deal. The scriptwriters (David Scott Milton and director Ivan Passer) can't make up their minds between hilarity and a grim social realism. While real life often veers between the tragic and the ridiculous, a movie needs some sort of coherent outlook--either in the choosing of the scenes themselves (as with slices of life in which the slice is carefully cut) or in their treatment...
...this ties in poorly with the other parts of the film, which begins as a sort of underworld Taking Off. (Taking Off is another first American film by a Czech director, also concerned with drugs, but in a middle-class milieu.) Unlike Taking Off, Passer's film switches suddenly from slick comedy to terror and sordidness as JJ's companion mistakenly shoots himself up with rat poison intended for JJ and crumples to his death. JJ drags him to an elevator, then flees in fright. The body lies inert across the doorway, the arms flexing up over the chest...
...Passer--I haven't seen his other feature, a 1965 Czech comedy cum pathos called Intimate Lighting--seems able to get what he wants out of actors and settings, including a new side to George Segal--but he hasn't done enough yet to know what he should want. Where Milos (Taking Off) Forman maintains comedy almost consistently, and John Schlesinger in Midnight Cowboy--another New York film by a non-American--invests even his comedy with mournfulness. Passer switches erratically from the theatrical, wisecracking comedy when Segal performs so well to genuine gutwrenching--to say nothing...
...Passer tries to range too widely between humor and horror without catching the link between them. Similarly, Schlesinger fuses the diverse cultures of London, as when his middle-class doctor hero encounters a pack of freaked-out roller-skaters careening past his car. Nowhere does Passer even suggest any side of New York other than the dank underworld and the faceless corridors roamed by George Segal--except perhaps at the very end when he walks away on a bright city street and disappears, followed by two brisk, unconcerned city slickers. He and his world have vanished without a trace...
...Plunkett, 24, 6 ft. 3 in., 210 lbs., has more than lived up to his Heisman Trophy notices, passing the Pats to upset victories over the Colts and Miami this fall; New Orleans Saints' Archie Manning, 22, 6 ft. 3 in., 212 lbs., the sensational roll-out passer and scrambler from Ole Miss, was so spectacular as a rookie that he had defenses gunning for him all season long; Pittsburgh Steelers' Terry Bradshaw, 23, 6 ft. 3 in., 214 lbs., finding his groove in his sophomore season, sparked the Steelers to their best winning season in five years...