The Talkies/The Great Effeminist

...the soliloquy, rather than the conversation, is this movie's mode of expression...

...It is rife with undistinguished and trite performances, Alda's included-only Carol Burnett comes across at all well...

...These qualities obviously please some parts of the population...

...In fact, as Robert Warshow so brilliantly demonstrated in his essay "The Anatomy of Falsehood," published in 1947, this was the viewpoint of those sexist Hollywood films of the 1940s...

...He is the unthreatening, nice, thoughtful, and emasculated fellow that any Women's Libber would love to meet...

...What a nice and pleasant vision: Women in the audience take comfort in their natural omniscience, men take comfort in the fact that they are told there is no need for them to be strong, in fact, they can be positively passive and succumb to the superiority of Woman...

...he does not think of women in terms of penis envy...

...Every night, his wife will have to put him to bed, and then it will be her hands that must be used in making love...

...therefore he can be passive without guilt...

...Despite the fact that Alda the writer-director perversely makes Alda the actor the villain of the piece (and make no mistake about it...

...Beneath the pathos of the scene . . . one feels a current of excitement, in which the sailor's misfortune becomes a kind of wish-fulfillment, as one might actually dream it: he must be passive...

...He kisses everyone, many times, in friendship in The Four Seasons, which is probably why it is a bigger success than Joe Tynan...

...his lessons are pills sugar-coated by grainy photography and banter that only a worldly-wise eleven year old would very much appreciate...

...Also, Alda parades around a pretty blond girl, often leaving her partly unclad (she is the new wife of one of the men), so that one can ogle while one is getting the message...

...let the Other manage with the world, we await the undressing.it the undressing...

...Still, it is fascinating...

...Three couples take vacations together...

...This assessment of the movie's financial possibilities is understandable, for The Four Seasons is exceedingly soggy-in fact, it fairly reeks with sentimentality, a new sort of sentimentality, in which truths are revealed to the characters every fifteen minutes or so through catharsis and love...

...Its humor strives for sophistication, but the movie gets its biggest laughs from one of the crudest of all comic routines: people overhearing, and reacting to, the sounds of a man and a woman making love passionately within earshot...

...they talk incessantly about food and about one another, and hang on to their friendship for dear life...

...THE TALKIES THE GREAT EFFEMINIST by John Podhoretz Last month, it was widely reported that the results of a People magazine survey listed Alan Alda, the star of the television series "M*A*S*H," as the person "you would most like to have over at your house for dinner.'' Mr...

...Two movies made in the past year and dealing with much the same subject as The Four Seasons-Loving Couples and A Change of Seasons- bombed miserably...

...In discussing The Best Years of Our Lives, considered at the time the finest Hollywood movie ever made, Warshow captured the Hollywood ideal of male-female relations, as shown in the scenes between a young man who has just lost his hands as a sailor in World War II and his patient, understanding wife: For each of the main characters, there is a scene in which the woman he loves undresses him and puts him to bed...

...yet why has everyone in this country gone crazy for Alan Alda (who, incidentally, was presented to the nation as a young movie star fifteen years ago and was not all that well received) ? We can find some part of the answer in Alda's new movie, The Four Seasons, which he also wrote and directed...

...He has won as many Emmy awards for writing and directing as for acting...

...He was the star of the successful Seduction of Joe Tynan, which he wrote as well, and of the movie version of Same Time Next Year...

...The Four Seasons is a smash hit, a surprise for the normally canny trade paper Variety, which had John Podhoretz is film critic of The American Spectator...

...He contributed a favorable blurb to Letty Cottin Po-grebin's Growing Up Free...

...Since everybody loves Carol Burnett, everybody is satisfied...

...As a director, Alda is no less subtle: When he wishes to make his meaning clear, he-generally cuts to a close-up of Carol Burnett's wise, warm countenance, as if to say, Trust this woman...

...Alda is well known as a leading "male feminist," as a recent New York Times story described him...

...Alda is such a success because he is a paradigmatic figure...

...It is a dream of weakness...

...Now, People magazine polls on such subjects should not be taken with any less grains of salt than other, more reputable polls...

...the character Alda plays is Alan Alda, he sounds just like the Alan Alda of interviews and talk shows), still one look at his face brings hordes to a swoon...

...And, finally, during those ubiquitous occasions when the message is being delivered some kind of slapstick routine invariably accompanies it-someone hilariously breaks an ankle, say, or falls into the water while being harangued...

...He is often seen on the "Tonight" show, on Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas...

...Alda beat out President Reagan and Pope John Paul II, among others, to achieve this victory...

...he looked ridiculous when called upon in The Seduction of Joe Tynan to demonstrate sexual passion for Meryl Streep, because Alan Alda kissing anyone except in friendship is unthinkable...

...so why has the public suddenly warmed to the story of the mid-life crisis of tired middle-aged couples ? Part of it must have to do with Alda's style as a writer...

...Along with his weekly portrayal of the jokey, compassionate, and godlike Hawkeye Pierce, Mr...

...What is truly amusing about the whole thing is that Alda is doing nothing new...

...But none of this suffices as explanation...

...It is talky, talky, talky...

...no need for them to be surprised...

...He radiates inoffensiveness and an odd asexuality that makes him at least as attractive to men as to women...

...In fact, Alda seems to be suffering from vagina envy: In a recent interview he said that he felt women to be more "sensitive" that men, and The Four Seasons is his tribute to womankind...

...outlook doubtful...

...what does Mr...

...He is an example to his audience of the perfect new American man...

...It is filled to the brim with shots of leaves falling off trees, boats in the Caribbean, snow in Vermont, accompanied by a popularized arrangement of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" (my advice, by the way, is to head for the exit the next time you hear classical music emanating from the soundtrack of a Hollywood film...

...For example, the character Alda plays constantly says "I think we should get to the bottom of this," which immediately signals to the audience that serious stuff is ahead...

...He has an attractive, handsome face with a prominent nose and a wry, eloquent yet colloquial way of talking...

...The men in it-Alda, Jack Weston, Len Cariou- are all childish boors, while the women-Burnett, Rita Moreno, the intolerable Sandy Dennis, and Bess Armstrong, the pretty blondepossess the wisdom of the ages...

...And . when it is the sailor who is put to bed, the dream becomes almost explicit...

...It is fascinating, isn't it, that the dream of Hollywood Women's Liberation, as expressed by The Four Seasons and by the very person of Alan Alda, is the same dream of Hollywood's Unenlightenment...

...previewed the movie as: "Soggy comedy-drama...

...Alda have that so endears him to America...

...What makes this movie a hit is Alan Alda himself, however ineffective and obvious his performance may be...