THE SCREEN
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
Franklin Roosevelt that any agency be abolished 10 years after it is established, no later. "Roosevelt would always roar with delight at that suggestion," Douglas notes, "and, of course, never...
...The young men wear ties and the women dresses and both talk about Jay Gatsby and East Egg...
...It is a film whose epic length of three and a half hours circumscribes only the most ordinary and lackluster of events, a proposal awkwardly come to by a reluctant young man...
...5.17-74 KNOCK Then knock on any door...
...The only style possible here is that which comes to exist in the characters' own personalities...
...Economists call it "stag-flation" and then concede they don't know what to do...
...In the opening sequences of the film, for instance, he sneaks out of the bed he shares with one woman, borrows a car from another woman, drives off to a third woman, and then, as he is taking his leave from the last of these, strikes up a conversation with a fourth woman in order to ask for her telephone number...
...In her book, Kind and Usual Punishment, Ms...
...But like other French directors in whose footsteps he follows (especially Eric Rohmer, whose My Night at Maud's Eustache's film resembles from its plot to its lighting), Eustache manages to make his rebellion against other people's production values into an art all its own...
...Since this is where we came in, it may not seem that much progress has been made...
...On Theodore Roosevelt Island, in the middle of the Potomac River within sight of the Lincoln Memorial, is a tablet bearing an observation of the man who sought to use the Presidency as a bully-pulpit: "Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die, and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the job of life, and the duty of life...
...Walk through, turn back, keep going...
...He tries to discover his film in loosely directed situations rather than shape it by imposing himself on his characters' relationships...
...Send/or a Trial Subscription . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Issues ~or $3 . . . . . . . . . . . . have known he would be turned down the first time...
...He knows he will be accepted this time as surely as he must Commonweal: 259 This May WHETHER IT BE problems of Watergate and of impeachment, inflation, religious reform, pollution and waste of natural resources, the moral stance of our consumeroriented society, the Third World here and abroad or whatever, Commonweal contributes to the discussion through the outspoken views of writers eminent in their respective fields...
...Somewhere your will is written down and still is binding...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CHAD WALSH For Jew Subseribers Only COMMONWEAL 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...Duty, not dissent, characterizes these students...
...Only the French can make such amusing movies out of such contrary ideas...
...Knock on any door...
...Among such current contributors to our pages you will find: Daniel A. Degnan, Paul Ramsey, Abigail McCarthy, Russell Gibbons, Isidore Silver, Katharine Byrne, Bruce Cook, Philip Berrigan, Gabriel Moran, Jordan Bishop, Michael Novak, Margaret Carlan, Peter Steinfels and Gary MacEoin...
...Thus he runs the gamut in one day from his "mother"--the first woman, Marie (Bernadette Lafont), who gives him room and boardmto his "whore"--the last woman, Veronika (Frangoise Lebrun), who lets him make love to her after one or two casual dates...
...The even locks, the jail's long corridor, St...
...This month we are offering a bonus to new subscribers in addition to their trial subscription: the 50th Anniversary Year issue, which has just been cited by the Catholic Press Association meeting in Denver, Colorado, as the Best Special Issue of 1973...
...17 May 1974:260...
...And some will open, some will not...
...One remembers Jessica Mitford's suggestion in her writing on prisons...
...Since she is the only one he has declared serious intentions towards, there is at least poetic justice in the fact that she turns out to be the only one who wants nothing to do with him...
...A newcomer to the Congress from one of the Southwestern states says the place reminds him of a Spanish gypsy curse: Entre disputados te yeas, or, may you find yourself surrounded by legislators...
...The young men and women applying for summer internships are polite and say "Sir...
...What he can't stand, he says, is indecision...
...Nixon men are mercenaries for men of property, but liberals are often charlatans of emotion...
...And each Leads to another door and one knock more...
...In a film in which people sit in cafes and sparsely furnished rooms and talk--a film that is purposely made as the antithesis of all carefully crafted action films--there is hardly any opportunity for stylized direction...
...Since the subject is the affairs of unexceptional people, Eustache employs an extreme naturalism in portraying them...
...To make him choose between them, Alexandre's mother and his whore have by the conclusion of the film done everything conceivable, including making love to each other...
...You may obtain your copy by utilizing the coupon below...
...But the first time we saw him propose, he acted with such insouciance, such composure...
...The humor runs to quips about how many goldfish can streakers swallow while jammed into a phonebooth...
...The "liberals," he noted (being one himself) are generally a shiftless sanctimonious lot who speak of secular saintliness...
...For that matter, the young woman referred to in the title as the "mother" isn't really a mother either, nor is the "whore" a whore...
...Nevertheless, this Spring, too, Senators and Representatives are in a better humor...
...In addtion Commonweal provides highly readable comment on important current books, by such perceptive reviewers as: Saul Maloff, Richard P. McBrien, Gerald Weales, Anne Fremantle, John Ratt6, Eugene C. Kennedy, Colin Westerbeck, Jr., Elliott Wright, Ronald Christ, Quincy Howe, Mark Taylor, Victor Ferkiss, Louis Dupr6, Arthur A. Cohen, Claire Hahn, Carlos Baker, Kenneth Davis, John Heidenry, Fred Hechinger, Bruce Vawter, Dennis O'Brien, Irving Malin and Margaret Wimsatt...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...The great monuments of Washington do seem to glitter more attractively than ever, but within, as if in reproach to contemporary men, are chiseled into the walls formulations of sterner men living in the days when the Republic they knew, however beset by difficulties, was not a "soft-state...
...Roosevelt would always roar with delight at that suggestion," Douglas notes, "and, of course, never did anything about it...
...Be poised Even to either answer--open and shut are Janus As modes of speech...
...Although one doesn't want to over-clarify so lucid a remark, I might add that this is literally so in a sense...
...Ergo, the Republic is safe again...
...And the other day Walter Heller, acknowledging his bafflement, made a little joke about an economist being a man who marries Elizabeth Taylor for her money...
...now he is in such a state of agitation that he collapses on the floor afterwards...
...Between them, Eustache and his cast easily render these characters appealing enough that we can bear with them for so long a time without ever being bored with them too...
...And yet, even the intentions that seem undeniable in the proposal Aiexandre has made come to seem less and less likely as the film progresses...
...Alexandre claims that he has proposed to Gilberte to make her decide between himself and another young man...
...At last, after innumerable "decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse," he again pops the question...
...But if no door is worth your search and finding, Then close your eyes in darkness...
...In fact, the first thing to be said about The Mother and the Whore is that it's the sort of movie that is what it isn't ---one of those French films where nothing is what it appears to be and everything is really something else...
...SISYPHUS 000 PAIR O' DOXIES 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE SCREEN The central character in Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore is neither the mother nor the whore, but Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Leaud...
...What Alexandre appears to be is a ren~orseless, and relentless, Lothario...
...Forget the flashing faces That briefly flush or bleach...
...You have a destination or had it once...
...The judges commended the issue for its "fine journalistic flair that is typical of this fine magazine...
...But by the time we get to the other end of the film, it is clear that it is Alexandre who is indecisive...
...Certainly Alexandre isn't what he appears to be in the leastwnot for a minute, don't you believe it...
...I said before that The Mother and the Whore is the sort of movie that is what it isn't...
...He fits his style to his subject...
...In its rambling unstructured approach to this non-event, moreover, the film offers us no camera virtuosity...
...The other woman he has made overtures to this day, Gilberte (Isabel Weingarten), becomes just that, the "other woman," even though she is the one he has asked to marry him...
...The emphasis within departments and agencies of the Executive Branch, Douglas appears to be suggesting, becomes henceforth one of technique--substituting efficiency of systems for the experience of men...
...Outside, in the real world, inflation gallops ahead at 11 percent and production falls...
...Within the Congress, matters seem no better at the time, despite the ferment for constructive change within the more unruly, less elegant of the two bodies, the House of Representatives...
...10016 Please send the award-winning 50th Anniversary Year issue and the next 17 issues to: Name Address City, State, Zip [] I prefer a full year, and the Anniversary issue, at $14...
...Paul, Damascus, and a godly, thorough blinding...
...Automobiles are not allowed on the Island...
...Mitford suggests that "liberal" rehabilitation programs and newer prisons may only be sugar-coatings of a poisonous pill...
...One door, one only opened...
...The photography is unadorned and monotonous (that is to say, mono-tone-ous, but not therefore insipid as well), and the editing is functional rather than expressive...
...Time browns but not erases...
...Like so much French filmmaking of the last fifteen years, Eustache's film is a reaction against other kinds of filmmaking...
Vol. 100 • May 1974 • No. 11
