THE SCREEN:
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
DR. HECKLE AND MR. CHIDE That's the sort of fellow Duddy is: the victim of one kind of cripple, the...
...What middle age, the journey of this par- disdain in political discussion are, in they actually heard, however, was the ticular young man takes on more than his comments on Catholicism, thrown voice of the "ahistorical orthodoxy" merely personal interest...
...The most purely sym- change for Harry's psychiatrist (Joan Hackett) is from bolic of them are a Montreal gangster named Dingleman all white hospital garb to a slinky black evening gown...
...young man from the provinces comes The Other America still lives and, for His experience, he thinks, simply anticito the big city and achieves success, a Harrington, provides the bases for pated that of many Catholics...
...sonality has gone through this two-for-one split after And Duddy's relations with these two men are ab- an automobile accident, Harry decides to submit to solutely evenhanded...
...little Jew boy on the make...
...For Harrington some of the great social movements of these truths with which Harrington that card was removed twenty years our time is poignant...
...They stick to a deviAt one point during The Apprenticeship of Duddy ous middle way, balancing out every minus with a plus Kravitz, Duddy's uncle tells him, "You're a pusherke, a until Duddy seems at last to add up to a big zero...
...Who can stay mad at somehas made him rich is no sweat shop, for it was he who one whose greed is only skin deep-someone whose organized his own workers' union and extended their weaknesses are all so close to the surface and plain benefits...
...In his Westmont home overlooking Montreal, to see...
...that the political parts...
...I do not in people, a highly uncertain social comrades of troubled times have de- think he is a sound guide on either issue theory and the future...
...film, Duddy is rebuffed trying to give his father a The idea is that this will turn his rages into moments present and, in a very uncharacteristic moment, weeps of placid self-gratification, but the idea goes haywire...
...sources at its disposal...
...Described thin gruel...
...loved him more...
...as a result...
...BOOKS...
...Then a few reels later he also remonstrates After the operation Harry so enjoys the aura of violence with his uncle for exactly the same thing, not having that he overloads his circuits and blows a fuse...
...creasingly withdrawn from areas of life the significant changes it did in our As we finish Harrington's book and which it once dominated...
...The exchange angels...
...that happen in the near future...
...But is Duddy ultimately somebody more sinned against than sinning...
...John "told his flock to forget the dogto know the great and near great...
...Duddy's uncle can now afford to pursue the higher things in life...
...Hyde, but Harry Benson (George a man without scruples, but a petty hustler to boot- Segal) in The Terminal Man is literally a reincarnation a schlumpf, a failure, a cabbie who spends his time in of that nineteenth-century schizophrenic, a transistorized a luncheonette talking a better game than he plays, and replay of the classic psychopath whose killer personality then has to pimp for some cheap trick to make ends alternates with that of a nice guy...
...All have lesser stature...
...Like him, they are betting that we low really underestimates the poor fellow, who is some- shall all love him in spite of himself...
...Pope measure of fame and power, and comes future political plans...
...Director Ted Kotcheff THE SCREEN and novelist-scriptwriter Mordecai Richler do their best not to think about that one at all...
...But its not quite that simple...
...This ple who have made this film share Duddy's own view rather blunt estimation of Duddy as the lowest of the of his shenanigans...
...transformed or discarded...
...a wind-up toy as Harry is, it's impossible to choose COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...Interiors from the hospital cafeteria to the bedIn effect most of the characters in this film have been room of Harry's go-go dancer girlfriend are decorated put there in pairs, like species into an ark, to reflect the in black and white color schemes...
...In a scene part way through the an operation that will implant electrodes in his brain...
...The claim holds for the last two brief thesis are not easy to discuss both risk and cost, is not what it seemed to of this trinity, but Harrington on the briefly and fairly...
...they were taught to hear prior to Vatican through which is reflected some of the ring hollow...
...Using his father's methods, he costumes and effects of his Technicolor film in these duplicates his uncle's success...
...The point of uncle's...
...Harrington recapitulates Fragments of a Century is a dis- been reduced to the measure of these this familiar story but brings no additurbing book...
...It is a book devoted is here that Harrington is most helpful, tell us what happened to Catholicism in to death and hope...
...Jeckyll and Mr...
...The clear implication be when, long ago, it glimmered so crisis of religion today is, surprisingly, in Harrington's statement is that prior seductively in the distance...
...Richard Dreyfuss plays the irrepressible Duddy the relationship is to show us Duddy's equatorial dis- as the type of person who gets so excited that his tance from both the uncle on one pole and his own skin actually itches and he finds himself scratching father on the other...
...The Council wrought couple of decades...
...lives in intimacy, that moral outrage ago and he has been "out of the The shape of the book is classic...
...The characters-and, by Commonweal: 503 implication, the moral issues-are too...
...It all Above all this autobiographical account will to tackle real, discernible social hung together-or, removing a single of one man's active participation in problems has dwindled-despite all card, it all fell apart...
...They don't...
...THESE THREE: FAITH, HOPE AND DEATH JAMES FINN Fragments of a Century the account of his life to date we know of God" has been proclaimed with deep MICHAEL HARRINGTON -as he does-that never again will the seriousness by great figures like Nietzenergies be so great, the expectations so sche, and it has been celebrated in our Saturday Review Press, $9.95 high, the over-arching theories so grand, time by theologians of considerably and the certainties so sure...
...But Harrington, born into an Irish mas for a while and listen to their inevitably he is changed...
...Meanwhile, in the ghetto of the city be- Only in a figurative sense might Duddy be thought of low, Duddy's father is not only a fast-talking hustler, as Dr...
...terms...
...that the Left Harrington was taught by Jesuits a instructive and provocative book, in has, once again, splintered its forces Catholicism that depended upon a subsome respects most instructive and pro- and scattered the always meager re- tle, rationalist theory of interlocking vocative where it is most disappointing...
...As Michael Harrington sad, dispiriting times...
...Many of the Catholic middle-class family in a Mid- hearts...
...The "death thinking because it was the greatest 20 September 1974: 504...
...Because his permeet...
...signaling the onset of another of his attacks, one can't The cop guarding Harry reads comic books and does help wondering whether the problem isn't really that clownish double takes when Harry escapes his custody...
...It is also an fected to conservatism...
...And much ligious, political and cultural crises of The misconceptions packed in that of what he has gained, often at great age...
...He has suc- on the counter as if they should ring most Catholics, including Harrington, ceeded in using his life as a prism as the real right thing...
...The absolute balance being maintained What short-circuits the film as a whole is that directorhere, this inescapable tit-for-tat, makes us very aware scriptwriter Mike Hodges sees everything in it in terms of the way in which Duddy himself splits the difference of black and white...
...But not quite...
...He quite literally sees all the sets, between the two men...
...II...
...and a hapless boy named Virgil who works for Duddy...
...When Harry commits his first post-operative murder, The former is the only character in the film who even the blood finds its way onto a black-and-white uses Duddy without ever having to do him a favor in checkerboard linoleum floor, running in the ridges bereturn, the latter is the only one whom Duddy himself tween the squares like unwanted moisture into the grids uses with equal impunity, and both men are cripples...
...He is in that middling state which is the lot and Richler...
...The precise and accurate phrase is most significant events of the last In the modern world religion has in- Michael Novak's...
...The garment business that wheelings and dealings...
...But he does purport to no doubt intended...
...Dingleman has been a cripple from birth, but Virgil only It's not only the color schemes, however, that are becomes one as a result of being exploited by Duddy...
...He is, like all mankind, a middle link said against him, it is couched in terms of an antiin the Great Chain stretching from the beasts to the Semitic remark that vitiates the criticism...
...of a printed circuit...
...That is why, when there is something to be affliction of us all...
...A house of cards theory...
...He misunderstands signifi- to Vatican II Catholics did hear the from the treacherous vantage point of cant events, and cliches that he would voice of God within themselves...
...CHIDE That's the sort of fellow Duddy is: the victim of one kind of cripple, the creator of another kind, and in spirit, 00*00000000000 a cripple himself...
...seen in pure black and white...
...Duddy is a where much closer to the middle of the human condi- wheedler in his own behalf, and so are Kotcheff and tion...
...A which surged through and gave life to Church for more than twenty years...
...It tional insight...
...Duddy's uncle is a humane man frantically right in the middle of his most important as well as a successful one...
...he has again passed out from the pain of having to And so forth...
...The surgeons among them...
...Every time George Segal's eyes roll back, are all men whose only sensitivities are in their hands...
...Since everyone else in the film is as much act in this movie...
...The death of be- most useful...
...between Duddy and his uncle shows us not the truth How true this is can be seen from his relationship about Duddy's character, but the limitations of the with that same uncle who condemns him...
...They did, and discovered that values, cultural attitudes, opinions and western town, has been, he writes, "on they could no longer hear the voice of beliefs he brought with him have been terms of some familiarity with the re- God within themselves...
...Guys like you make me Duddy's treatment of Virgil notwithstanding, the peosick and ashamed...
...Despite the fact that recent decades and what is likely to liefs and visions and dreams and hope dreams of the '60s have soured...
...The only costumespolarities of Duddy's personality...
Vol. 100 • September 1974 • No. 21
