VERSE
Walsh, Chad
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...
...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...
...5.17-74 KNOCK Then knock on any door...
...And some will open, some will not...
...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...
...You have a destination or had it once...
...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...
...Walk through, turn back, keep going...
...Since the subject is the affairs of unexceptional people, Eustache employs an extreme naturalism in portraying them...
...Paul, Damascus, and a godly, thorough blinding...
...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...
...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...
...One door, one only opened...
...You may obtain your copy by utilizing the coupon below...
...But if no door is worth your search and finding, Then close your eyes in darkness...
...Like so much French filmmaking of the last fifteen years, Eustache's film is a reaction against other kinds of filmmaking...
...The only style possible here is that which comes to exist in the characters' own personalities...
...Time browns but not erases...
...Somewhere your will is written down and still is binding...
...I said before that The Mother and the Whore is the sort of movie that is what it isn't...
...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...
...The judges commended the issue for its "fine journalistic flair that is typical of this fine magazine...
...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...
...17 May 1974:260...
...Forget the flashing faces That briefly flush or bleach...
...The even locks, the jail's long corridor, St...
...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...
...Although one doesn't want to over-clarify so lucid a remark, I might add that this is literally so in a sense...
...He fits his style to his subject...
...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...
...Send/or a Trial Subscription . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Issues ~or $3 . . . . . . . . . . . . have known he would be turned down the first time...
...Be poised Even to either answer--open and shut are Janus As modes of speech...
...And each Leads to another door and one knock more...
...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...
...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...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...Knock on any door...
...He tries to discover his film in loosely directed situations rather than shape it by imposing himself on his characters' relationships...
...In its rambling unstructured approach to this non-event, moreover, the film offers us no camera virtuosity...
Vol. 100 • May 1974 • No. 11
