On Screen

...From Indignation to Indignity moments with Vanessa Ritchie, a pretty painter assigned to do his portrait and repose in the nude with him by way of planned and supervised recreation...

...Vanessa, as played by the mask of Jean Hampton, is a model of impassivity Her breath seems to be shorter than a Mary Quant skirt, and her words emerge less by articulation than by osmosis This brings me to the depressing fact that all the characters m the film are either evil, or stupid, or, at the very best, pallid somnambulists like the young lovers A world of exploiters and the exploited, nothing else The sisterly genteel chairman of the board of Steven Shorter Enterprises points to the crowd in the street below and explains "They are stunted little creatures with primitive emotions that are potentially dangerous They've got to be harnessed We've seen this done for evil, now it must be done for good a fruitful...

...Agnes Vardar tells me she liked Bonnie and Clyde because "it is violent without being sadistic" I doubt that there is much difference between the two when violence is dwelt on with such clucking solicitude At the utmost one could call such violence unconscious sadism But that may be even more attractive to the asinine audiences who guffaw their way through the film Overt sadism is kinky, whereas this is just rousing shooting the hell out of people As directed by Arthur Penn from a screenplay by Newman and Benton, the well-known shack-magazine writers, the picture is clever trash The formula is hayseed comedy bursting sporadically into pyrotechnical bloodshed and laced with sentimental pop-Freud-lanism...

...Watch??s' film concerns Steve Shorter, the pop singer absolute of the near future, whose cult has become something of a national religion Steve's act is to appear m a cage as a singing prisoner butting against bars and the truncheons of bestial bobbies This releases and channels all the rebelliousness of the audiences, and keeps them ' happy, off the streets, and out of politics" They are now will-lastly silly putty in the hands of their manipulators The pop star is exploited as much as anyone, having no private life except for doled-out...

...But the whole thing stinks in the manner of a carefully made-up, combed and manicured corpse Crime may have its funny side, but here, for long stretches, it has nothing but funny sides To switch then, without warning, from belly laughs to bloodbaths and produce facile shock effects is added dishonesty Between murder as fun and murder as grand googol there is little to choose from The audience is invited to have a lark either way, and responds to the invitation with unappetizing explosions of laughter and applause The acting is good, but slop is slop even served with a silver ladle...

...ON SCREEN By John Simon Peter Watkins Piivilege is the kind of film one feverishly painfully wishes to be good Made by the worthy creator of The Way Game, it argues that there is an unholy coalition of Church, State, Big Finance and Pop Music Industry whose purpose is the lobotomizing and enslavement of the masses Though perhaps a shade over bleak the view commands respect for its very intransigence The further notion that by means of a pop-singer idol one can induce the crowds to relinquish their burgeoning taste for elementary individualism and embrace a glamorized conformity is even more interesting A perceptive inquiry into the conformity of nonconforming would be an invaluable piece of social therapy Unfortunately, Privilege is not it...

...I am skeptical also to the premise that our alert, embattled youth can be reduced to political nullity by such simple-minded diversionary tactics, or that the kind of political blandness Watch??s implies by his coalition Toy-Labor government is tantamount, as he further implies, to Fascism Steve Sorter??s initials, appearing on his retinue's lapels, conveniently spell out SS, and his salute to his thronging worshipers is, too neatly, the Fascist salute...

...That Privilege reuses motifs from A Face m the Crowd and Lonely Boy is undeniable But the problem is not closeness to other films, it is remoteness from credibility I do not believe that any pop singer can become the sole, exclusive idol, especially if he is the cipher Steve Shorter is I strongly doubt that...

...Privilege is not, however, without its incidental virtues An episode here, a shot there, and all the supporting performances have vigor and resourcefulness enough to justify our attention A scene in which a rock 'n' roll group in monkish garb, complete with mock tonsures, performs a hip version of "Onward Christian Soldiers" as a quartet of all too genuine clerics watches with expressions ranging from swinging empathy to livid dismay is unforgettable Beautiful, too, is the final banquet scene I particularly liked the shot of Steve holding his silver statuette, representing a singer in front of a microphone, as he hurls his I-hate-you at the guests It is an angle shot, the tiny microphone on the statuette revolves in the upper left corner of the image, on the soundtrack, a pop record runs down, croaking dismally, off-center to the right is Steve's face, the lips inaudibly mouthing "I hate you'" over and over again It is a nightmare effect created with the soberest and most economical means Watkins is a documentarist at heart, and many of the scenes are bits of staged cinema-volute in answer to an invisible inquiring reporter There is little profile to the story, scant narrative continuity If Watkins could develop fictional fluidity and get rid of his penchant for pachyderm didacticism (whether or not disguised as satire), he might give us story films of true importance This darting yet earnest mind with its intense, visionary concern may well find just expression for its persuasive fears and hopes...

...At this point the Church discovers that it is on the brink of extinction and enlists the help of the Steven Shorter Corporation At a monster rally combining bigotry, jingoism and faith-healing, Steve assumes the new role of one redeemed by love of God and State (who figure in the film as a Janus-headed divinity), and a fanatical young clergyman gets the youthful crowd to roar after him, "We will contain'" But Steve has felt increasingly restless and victimized, with the added libertine nudging of the painterly Vanessa, he shocks the large gathering at an award-giving banquet by turning his acceptance speech into an inarticulate declaration of hatred for manipulates and maniples alike Steve and Vanessa pay for this assertion of independence with ruthless ex-unction from the collective sympathy and memory...

...youth will ever chant "We will conform1"—it can be conned into conformity but not into openly proclaiming it, and there is a crucial difference between the two I do not swallow the audience's reaction to Steve's being beaten on stage Either it would be considered a put-on and elicit snickers rather than purgative tears, or it would be taken as the real thing and cops and auditorium would end up in shreds I do not accept the spectacle of anti-individualist forces functioning in deadly accord Church and State, Evil Old Capital and Absurd Young Pop manage, luckily, to get into one another's hair...

...The technique is artful, though derived from Godard quick little vignettes ending in verbal or visual punch lines following one another at breakneck speed A group of semi-morocco naturals gather around an impotent youth and an infantile girl for an extended crime spree that shifts from the absurd and mildly funny to the childishly cruel and murderous The explanations implied befit a primer of abnormal psychology for junior high schools, and that the whole romp is based on a true story does not bring it more than an inch closer to truth It is outfitted with considerable authenticity of period and place, however, and photographed calmly m sometimes striking, sometimes slick color...

...conformity " The point Watch??s is after is well worth making A fruitful conformity, whatever that may be, is only a little better than the bitterest totalitarianism, and William Job plays the Machiavellian magnate with chilling suavity But the scene, like most of the movie, emerges as heavy-handed shadow-boxing for lack of flesh-and-blood characters, sustained credibility, and, as the above quotations should convey, freshness of dialogue...

...There are even graver troubles Steve Shorter, as played by Paul Jones, is an absolute zero, had the title not been used before, the film might well have been called Story of O Watkins and his script-writer, Norman Bonner, are, of course, greatly responsible heir One can see the temptation How pointed to make Shorter, with "the largest following m the history of show business," a certified vacuum It's like MacLeish's Fall of the City, where the inexpugnable conqueror proves to be an empty suit of armor But the conceit does not work The small gilded fly that lechers in my sight has more charisma than Steve Shorter in bed with Vanessa, and Steve squeezing out words is as nothing to those rascal Beatles that won't hold their bloody mouths When Vanessa tells Steve, "Do you know this is the first time I've seen you smile," he answers, "Yeah well I'm human," adding four parts silence to every one part utterance and so improving on the previous record-holder, Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks (3% 1) I clocked the statement "Is that why that's why that's why they brought you m " at 13 seconds, but without a luminous dial on my watch I cannot be positive it didn't last longer...