Examiner par EdgarST

After so many years I have at last watched "Move" again, and my first impression that it is a weird funny comedy has not changed. Released on DVD (although not in its original wide-screen format) in 2015, the package includes its trailer and it is quite obvious that in 1970 20th Century Fox did not know how to promote it. Far from the 1960s romantic comedy formula, Fox did not come up with an original campaign to handle the eccentricity and strangeness of many of the scenes and images the plot describes. "Move" is an absurdist comedy that makes irreverent jokes on social stratification, authorities and married life. Though a crazy product of its times (from the company that brought that same year "Myra Breckinridge" and "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls") it is not a harsh confrontational story, but a gentle tale, treating its points in a light and comic way. Based on a tight script that never loses its cohesion, the plot follows New York writer Hiram Jaffe (Elliott Gould) through situations as he tries to move from one apartment to another, an action that also can be interpreted as his attempt at moving up a level, pressured by his wife Dolly (Paula Prentiss). He has to face his creative crisis, his sex life and his paranoia. He is about to leave behind his old quarter and most probably his usual activities, as walking out other people's dogs to make ends meet, and he is definitely afraid of "moving", imagining (or not) all kinds of difficulties and obstacles. The production had an inspired casting, pairing Gould and Prentiss, an ideal couple for the 1970s that surely would have developed into a fine act in other comedies: there's good chemistry between them, they handle the comedy aspects very well, and Prentiss even adds a touch of humor in her single dramatic moment, that fits the whole concept of absurdity by novelist-scriptwriter Joel Lieber. If I have any complaint (apart from Prentiss' excessive make-up) it is Stuart Rosenberg's direction, who maybe was not the best choice to film a screenplay that easily changes from slapstick to verbal comedy, from Brechtian estrangement to a chase on horseback. Although I sometimes felt a too heavy handling of a few scenes (as Prentiss' dramatic monologue), Rosenberg was a professional and did a good job.