THE SCREEN:
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
Granatstein. If the developers mount a strong campaign clairvoyant who insists he has special insight into the against Crombie and the pro-neighborhood Council crime. Although...
...As a director's atti(Cliff Robertson), to solve the girl's murder...
...If the developers mount a strong campaign clairvoyant who insists he has special insight into the against Crombie and the pro-neighborhood Council crime...
...would solve the crime by losing control of himself...
...But is it Wills who is persecuting him...
...Such straddling of modes may result from an fiction film or a documentary he's making...
...his collaborator, Wills...
...We watch him that a character has somehow managed to withhold the doing the leg work that the crime requires...
...It is now Tucker who begins to lose control, first of the investigation, and then of himself THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH when he tries to do without Wills' assistance...
...and the antagonism shifts from that between the policeBut they want to have a say in the process, and there man and the criminal to one between the policeman and must be benefits to the neighborhood, not just problems...
...Wills ment-at-any-price politicians...
...Tucker would solve this crime by sheer concen- work of that man who, painting his kitchen without tration if that's possible...
...Where Tucker tries to take an objective view of succeeded to a remarkable extent in clarifying the basic the evidence, Wills falls into a faint that gives him a issues of planning, growth and development...
...guessed from the beginning that the mystery would ulti- Lee Tucker seems very heavily modeled on Officer mately reside in one of the characters rather than in Dewey in In Cold Blood, especially when Tucker tries to circumstances or events...
...Certainly in murder mysteries, since our mind learn the solution...
...He seems tude toward a character in a fiction film of his own to be in control of the investigation and is clearly the creating, however, this is ridiculous...
...Most com- subjective view of the victim's experience...
...munities," says Alderman Colin Vaughan, "recognize As a result Tucker is usurped, or at least disoriented, that there must be some building in their neighborhoods...
...His Such a return is not expected, for over the past few powers are not those of concentration, but of entranceyears, the citizens' movement and its political allies have ment...
...Commonweal: 85...
...movie for having only a bad ending...
...Mysterious phone calls and threats against his wife (Dorothy Tris000000*0*00*00 tan) drive Tucker to distraction...
...We can't suppose sort of man who is in control of himself...
...After all, documentaries are supposed has been thrust forward all along the way in expectation to stick to the facts no matter what...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...This may have he pores over the police photographer's slides of the been what Perry was aiming at, but it looks like the victim...
...having thought ahead, paints himself into a corner at the But then onto the scene comes Wills, a self-proclaimed end of the job...
...Although he has a no-nonsense manner that seems members in this November's election, a coalition will compatible with Tucker's way of operating, Wills is likely be formed to prevent the return of the develop- really the opposite of the policeman he would help...
...undue influence on Perry by Truman Capote, whose Whatever the outcome might be, we could have Trilogy Perry directed for the screen several years ago...
...We watch the The reason we'll never know-or at least the excuse movie from moment to moment, enjoying (or not enjoy- Frank Perry makes for not telling us-is that the real ing) it as we go along...
...be turned into a character study by him...
...With Wills out of the picture, Tucker becomes a victim almost as helpless, and THE SCREEN panicky, as the girl must have been...
...On the other hand, in Swing were a documentary, this reasoning might wash most movies the ending inevitably does have a retroac- with us, us ticket holders who have been waiting to tive effect...
...Frank Perry's previous credits solve the crime by deciphering those photographs...
...In clairvoyance is concerned and giving the rest a fictional fact he hasn't even settled for sure whether this is a treatment...
...But then, as Frank of a solution, we feel tricked and cheated if the solution Perry well knows, if this were a documentary we isn't forthcoming...
...And does Wills come by his special knowledge of the original crime because he was involved On the one hand it seems unfair to condemn a whole in it too...
...We see how facts from the author who imagined him...
...and though the ending may dis- Connecticut police chief from whose files this case was satisfy us, it is still just one moment among all the others...
...If -David and Lisa, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Play It as we regard the opacity of Perry's ending as a comment It Lays, et al.-suggest that even a mystery plot would on clairvoyance, it has a certain justification, I suppose...
...A real pleasure, however, at the end of his new mystery film, documentary requires a subject inherently interesting Man on a Swing, director Frank Perry remains undecided...
...Wills (Joel Grey), is really clairvoyant or not...
...enough, in and of itself, to attract our attention, and an He can't decide whether his main character, Franklin obscure suburban murder case isn't such a subject...
...Despite the risk of incurring our dis- wouldn't have bought tickets in the first place...
...If Man on a We shouldn't blame them for it...
...taken never found out for sure himself...
...The film begins Perry is just admitting that there are men who know more with the efforts of a small-town police chief, Lee Tucker than the rest of us, himself included...
...We'll never know...
...Nor can Maybe Perry only wants to be about half documentary, he make up his mind whether Wills is implicated in the respecting the facts where the au courant subject of murder of a young girl with which the film opened...
Vol. 100 • March 1974 • No. 4
