The Talkies / Roseland and Short Eyes
Everitt, David
"The Talkies / Roseland and Short Eyes" Elinor Haggart's friends and family. Nor do I dispute that the events in Zamora's life, including the hours he may have spent glued to the boob tube, had an impact on what he became and therefore on...
...6) Does man's ability to do sums support Aristotle's contention that man is rational because he can do sums...
...So much material...
...The Commission, after much digging, has established a clear relationship between the two...
...The staff of the Commission has not yet completed its sifting of the documents and testimony presented to it...
...It is an offbeat, sensitive movie, a string of three stories that take place in a long-standing dance hall in New York City...
...Zamora's deed, I continue to respect his dignity as a responsible human actor who, like the rest of us, has both the right and duty to accept the consequences of what he does...
...But for all its bite and clamor, the film ultimately seems strangely unaffecting...
...The relevant documents concerning the Commission's deliberations on this sensitive question were lost in a tragic fire...
...Unlike the usual use of this technique, in Roseland it enhances the scene rather than being merely tricky...
...David Everitt is a writer living in New York City...
...However, it is the Commission's unanimous view that the position of Principal Foreign Policy Advisor to the President should never be filled by a philosopher...
...In the opening sequence, Teresa Wright, the leading Hollywood ingenue of the 1940s, gives a glowing performance as a widow who imagines she can see her lost husband dancing with her in a mirror...
...Meanwhile, the staff cannot remember the Commission's conclusions...
...The Roseland dance hall is depicted as a sort of Lonely Hearts Club where widows, widowers, and the like come to lose themselves in the separate world that revolves around social dancing...
...Jews—and Unitarians—show a similar preference for Martin Buber...
...Most of us, I hope, will take care to keep it in mind...
...Arson is suspected...
...hort Eyes features another J enclosed world, the pent-up ferocity of a prison...
...The characters are very ordinary people who, in one way or another, often entertain notions of extraordinariness...
...accordingly, there should also be a National Philosophy Policy...
...The camera work is evocative and unobtrusive, letting the characters speak for themselves...
...Even other white prisoners will have nothing to do with him...
...The play by Miguel Pinero is translated into a movie that is tightly constructed and vivid in almost every respect...
...When Freddie Fender is urged by fellow prisoners to sing, the film comes dangerously close to lapsing into one of the worst Hollywood cliches (terrible visions come to mind of Frankie Avalon pleasing the gang with a song on the beach...
...What makes him additionally pathetic is that Davison is so successful at bringing the viewer close to his obsession (when I saw the picture, many people in the audience giggled nervously as he confessed his sins...
...And people who take from Joseph Coors are yet a third category...
...It adheres to a brand of fatalism that tends to leave one cold rather than aesthetically depressed...
...Mayfield plays an older inmate who tries to maintain some sense of dignity in those around him...
...Director James Ivory's visual style is consistently on target...
...Empiricism is the dominant school, especially in the field of epistemology...
...The scene is a plausible diversion from the main line of the story...
...Short Eyes" is the prison term for child molester...
...It is hard to imagine any possible reason for this full scale production number, other than the fact that Mayfield's voice probably is not substantial enough to match Fender's...
...She can only see this, though, when she dances with a man who is nothing at all like her husband...
...7) As for man's relationship with the other animals, is the difference one of kind or of degree...
...Those who work on a straight commission basis for Nelson Rockefeller are something else again...
...He is a striking contrast to everyone else in the prison—blond-haired, mild mannered, middle class—in other words, completely unprepared to handle the viciousness that lies in store for him...
...In the past Jacobi has proven himself to be a hilarious burlesque-style comic, but in Roseland he shows he is capable of revealing the reverse side of that persona...
...You have defined the National Purpose...
...When another inmate plants a 28 The American Spectator January 1978 knife on him, he is hauled away to solitary, and the process of moral deterioration begins...
...Lou Jacobi plays Wright's mismatch, a rambunctious jokester...
...On the other hand, middle Americans exhibit great regard for Locke and Mill...
...His first novel, Raven Bravo, will be published by Popular Library next spring...
...The desperation of prison life has perhaps never been so graphically realized as in this film, no doubt because the author is an ex-con...
...Instead the picture hits upon an engrossing objectivity that leaves room for a natural irony and empathy...
...But Fender's musical interlude turns out to be one of the more moving scenes in the film...
...The Commission's survey research shows considerable support for the right to Life, much less support for the right to Art...
...You will recall that the authorizing statute charges the Commission with answering certain specific questions...
...A preference for Machiavelli and Croce correlates highly with the insistence, among certain groups, that there is no Mafia...
...The fact that the inevitable happens doesn't seem to be much of a point, and though the climax is rife with emotion, there is no discernible focus to it...
...He is the one kind of criminal that other prisoners can feel morally superior to...
...The scene in which he is "executed" by his fellow convicts is as unnerving a sequence as you would ever want, or not want, to see, due not only to the violence but to Davison's torturous performance...
...John Nollson Interim Report MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT From: Executive Director, Blue Ribbon Commission on National Philosophy Policy Subject: Toward a National Philosophy Policy Ihave the honor to submit the first interim report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on National Philosophy Policy, authorized by Public Law 94-971, with members appointed by your predecessor...
...as the American people themselves...
...He does an impassioned a cappella number that, for a moment, takes the prisoners away from the insane boredom they have to cope with...
...Recently, those who have been getting their money from the Ford Foundation have shown a tendency towards socialist realism...
...As Short Eyes, Bruce Davison is uncomfortably good...
...However, the favorite philosopher of the American people—and by the same consistently wide margin—remains Leo Durocher...
...Definitely...
...In that there already exists a National Endowment for the Arts, the Commission recommends the creation of a National Endowment for Life—or maybe the evolution of a National Endowment for Life...
...Neither are they sentimentalized...
...The evidence is not especially encouraging...
...He is a slum kid who is content to get by on looks and an accomodating superficiality...
...The overcrowding, the brutality, and the hard-edged idiosyncratic language are deftly orchestrated...
...The cast of unknowns is uniformly convincing, playing off each other with a seething intensity...
...Indeed, a certain number of the highest positions should be reserved exclusively for philosophers, with proportional representation for all schools...
...The makeup of the characters who come to the Roseland is a fine balance between vanity and yearning...
...A sensible artist will not bite the hand that feeds him...
...In keeping with now well-established precedent, it should be filled only by a foreign-born linguistic anthropologist...
...This Interim Report summarizes tentative conclusions only...
...The part is small but Mayfield establishes himself well in dramatically key spots...
...1) What is the role of the federal government in establishing a National Philosophy Policy...
...Much depends on the source of the artist's grant...
...Geraldine Chaplin, Helen Gallagher, and Joan Copeland are superb as the competitors...
...What I do dispute is that such things should make a difference in determining how we as a society respond to his murderous act...
...Our survey research shows a marked preference among German-Americans for Kantand Hegel...
...Walken is always intriguing and he somehow manages not to be unlikable...
...The executive branch needs to be reorganized to reflect this preference...
...THE TALKIES by David Everitt Roseland and Short Eyes Roseland was a critical suc- cess at the last New York Film Festival...
...Christopher Walken plays the pivotal character, a pretty boy dancer turned kept man for an older woman...
...The most complex sequence is, the middle one, a subtle love quadrangle involving one man and three women...
...The Commission has made a careful study of experiments which seek to The American Spectator January 1978 29...
...And preserving the theatrical framework appropriately conveys their enforced claustrophobia...
...5) Does Art follow Lift, or does Life follow Art...
...What is so attractive about the film is that it makes something absorbing out of things that could have been trivial...
...When one of these Short Eyes, played by Bruce Davison, is brought into the slam, he becomes a marked man...
...During the middle sequence, for instance, there are many shots using the reflections of mirrors in a dance studio...
...4) Can we learn from History or are we condemned to repeat it...
...In other words, while I have no respect for Mr...
...Lance has not yet replied to the Commission's questionnaire...
...The Commission's headquarters frequently have been picketed by demonstrators chanting, "What you see is what you get...
...Practically all the action occurs inside the dance hall and the atmospheric possibilities of the setting are fully realized...
...The result is explosive naturalism of the highest order, but for no particular reason...
...When popular music stars are included in an otherwise downbeat, realistic film, one cannot help but suspect that the casting choices were influenced by something other than uncompromising verisimilitude—namely, good old-fashioned box office hype...
...This issue is dealt with in a separate appendix...
...It is a credit to the ingenuity of the makers of Short Eyes that these glossy show-biz personalities fit in as well as they do with the decidedly unglossy proceedings...
...Despite its impact, it is difficult not to feel that the movie falls flat when it is all over...
...3) Should philosophers be appointed to high positions in the government...
...As vulnerable as these people are, the movie never sets them up for easy laughs, say, as ugly caricatures...
...The staff of the Commission is at work developing a formula to achieve this...
...We believe that the American people deserve a clear, comprehensive, coordinated—need we add rational?—National Philosophy Policy, as clear, comprehensive, coordinated—need we add rational...
...As with the treatment of the characters, conceivably hackneyed business is made meaningful...
...Zamora is unlikely to appreciate the distinction at this point, if he ever did...
...The favorite philosophers of the American people are as diverse, differential, determined (maybe), and demographic as the American people themselves...
...The Commission is as yet unable to render an opinion...
...Their stories are skillfully entwined, complementing one another with increasing dramatic force...
...There is a 71 percent probability that the mere mention of Ortega y Gasset to a Spanish-surnamed American will cause him to yell, " i Viva la Causa...
...Nor do I dispute that the events in Zamora's life, including the hours he may have spent glued to the boob tube, had an impact on what he became and therefore on what he did...
...It is only a matter of time before the situation explodes and the prisoners carry out their own barbaric justice (there's nothing to stop them because the guards are just as determined to see that the newcomer gets what he deserves...
...The same, however, cannot be said for the follow-up performance by Curtis Mayfield which is accompanied by a full instrumental backup...
...It could fill a library...
...The few exterior shots are perfectly somber wintry compositions, a fitting contrast to the microcosm inside that seems to have its denizens under a spell...
...Two familiar names in the credits are singers Freddie Fender and Curtis Mayfield...
...2) Who are the American people's favorite philosophers...
Vol. 11 • January 1978 • No. 3
