Piccoli omicidi

Jules Feiffer's paean to NYC paranoia written in the same tone as his comic strips. Completely over-the-top and hilarious. Alan Arkin's bit is priceless. This movie puts the "funk" back in dysfunctional. This is proto-"Seinfeld" stuff, folks. Climb into the darkest fantasy of every red-blooded Gothamite.

It doesn't get any darker than this, folks. Jules Feiffer shows off his penchant for absurdity and his mastery of the monologue (Lou Jacobi, Donald Sutherland and director Alan Arkin each get one powerhouse scene where it's basically all them with the other characters reacting). The cast is excellent and their handling of Feiffer's language is amazing. Elliot Gould's performance is particularly effective, and Vincent Gardenia as his father-in-law is hysterical.

I saw this film and then read the play it was based on, and both give off the same claustrophobic air of desperation while still being side-splittingly funny. It is definitely worth hunting down. In the words of Father Dupas, it is "all right."

"Little Murders" is another of the obscure films I saw at base/post theaters during my military days. It was certainly better than average and many of the images (especially the wedding scene with Donald Sutherland) have stayed with me through the years.

While I found it less funny during a recent viewing than I remembered, the message was still disturbing and contemporary. It is certainly satire and black comedy, but you often lose yourself in the story. It is a very individual film, different people will laugh at different times and at different things. During a theater viewing it seemed to isolate audience members from each other.

Jules Feiffer's screenplay is about Alfred (Elliot Gould), a NYC photographer and self- described "apathist", sort of an unengaged existentialist. He is completely disillusioned and has deadened himself to the cries, smells, sights and pains of violent city living; in a Big Apple even more adversarial than that of "The Out-Of-Towners".

Alfred can't feel much anymore but he takes an interest in Patsy (Marcia Rodd), a controlling interior decorator optimist, who wants to change him. Patsy has been able to stay upbeat and involved despite daily encounters with muggers, snipers, obscene callers, and a family that leaves a lot to be desired.

The film seems to be saying that harsh urban life cuts its people off from gentler human emotion. As an interior decorator Patsy's life is largely defined by her ability to control her possessions and the attitudes of those around her.

Patsy's father, mother and younger brother are living a painful parody of "family life," and Alfred's weirdness eventually allows him to fit right in. The dinner scene where he first meets her family is one of the funniest in film history.

The film illustrates that neither apathy nor constructive engagement are successful mechanisms for coping with the modern world. It seems to be saying that the only rational response to living in an insane environment is to vigorously participate in the insanity.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Patsy Newquist (Marcia Rodd) is an interior decorator in New York City who rescues a man (Elliott Gould as Alfred Chamberlain) from a prolonged beating that she hears going on outside of her apartment. When she does intervene the group of hooligans turns on her and Alfred does nothing but walk away. After she escapes them, she confronts Alfred about this, who does not apologize. In fact he says nothing. Patsy is instantly smitten by this self acclaimed "apathist", and sets out to make him see life is good and get him trying again - at anything. He is her project, yet she sees this as love.

The backdrop is an increasingly violent NYC in which property is randomly vandalized more than robbed, people are at first attacked - the way that Alfred was - and then random shootings/murders by unnamed snipers begin. Patsy's family of origin are like an educated version of The Bunkers on All In the Family. Eventually they have steel panels installed on their windows so that the snipers will not shoot into their apartment.

Alan Arkin plays a cop driven mad by all of the homicides in which the victims come from every walk, age, and ethnicity and none of them apparently knew their assailants.

Donald Sutherland has a small but memorable role as pastor of the First Existential Church who is able to grant Alfred and Patsy's request that the name of the deity not be mentioned in their wedding ceremony. His sermon - and he airs everybody's dirty linen at this time, apparently not believing in the confidentiality of the clergy - during that service starts a free-for-all fist fight.

The film has a very tie-dyed feel about it that is distinctively early 70s, yet how it deals with all of the random violence, particulary the frightening origin of the random killings in the final scene, seems all too "ripped from the headlines".

I asked the clerk at my local video store to suggest a comedy from the 70's on VHS as my DVD player was broken. He recommended Little Murders and got a glazed over look in his eye and an idiots smile on his face, obviously reminiscing over a scene in the film. That was enough for me to want to rent it, and I'm glad I did. The acting in this film is outstanding, the highlight for me was Alan Arkin playing a Dr. Strangelove esquire police officer and of course the scene with Donald Sutherland as the minister. The film holds up remarkably well for having been filmed over 35 years ago, it must have been ahead of it's time when it came out. Aside from a few slang terms that were definitely from a by gone era, the film could easily take place today. All in all worth the effort if for nothing else than an outstanding cast of Arkin, Sutherland and Gould. Did it get any better than that acting wise in the 1970?