O Mundo de Henry Orient

A few points. Elmer Bernstein's musical score is as whimsical as the young girls themselves. George Roy Hill, the director, was sensitive to the musical moods of his films. He had originally intended to be a musician and had a bachelor's in music from Yale. The photographer, Boris Kaufman, has done a splendid job of capturing New York City in the late fall and in mid winter. (He was equally perceptive in getting wintry Hoboken on film in "On the Waterfront.")

The acting is fine, surprisingly, from all the principles. The pavonine Peter Sellers usually steals every scene he's in. When he's trying to seduce Paula Prentiss his voice has an accent that sounds somewhere between Italian and Slovenian. He throws in Italian clichés but sometimes gets mixed up -- "Garcon! Due martinis, per favore." One of his funniest moments is when he's performing a terrible piano concerto. He's skipped the last two rehearsals so he's a bit lost. At one point he rolls dramatically into the upper registers (while the rest of the orchestra play checkers) and ends on a trill. He glances at the conductor who slowly shakes his head in disgust. The wrong key. Unperturbed Sellers starts the roll over again and looks to the conductor, who shakes his head again. After the third failure to find the right key, the conductor shakes his head and mouths -- very clearly and silently -- "B Flat." Satisfied, Sellers plunges ahead.

Paula Prentiss doesn't have a very large role but she's delicious both in looks and in her performance. She's so nervous, so flattered by the attention of Seller's phony pianist that she gulps and staggers slightly from time to time. When Sellers finally gets her to his apartment and begins to woo her with a paean to her "burnished shoulders" and "twin poems," she wavers while sitting on the couch and caresses her body parts as he lauds them. She never appears less than half gassed.

Angela Lansbury is in her bitchy mode here, along the lines of her mother in "The Manchurian Candidate." She never seems to go wrong, regardless of the part. Her husband, Tom Bosley, is kind of a good-natured schlub. Phyllis Thaxter looks just fine, considering that she first appeared in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" more than twenty years earlier. Her sweetness might be cloying except that it seems ingrained in her real personality.

The most surprising thing in the performances are the two 14-year-old girls, neither of whom went on to a respectable movie career. They're plain charming, both goofy and funny, but smart and perceptive as well. "Gilbert" (Spaeth) comes from a warm middle-class family. We can tell because on Christmas we see them preparing a turkey and having friends over for dinner. Spaeth went on in real life to become a strong George W. Bush supporter and helped torpedo John Kerry with the Swiftboat Ads in 2004, for what it's worth.

"Valerie Campbell Boyd" (Walker) is a neurotic genius from a dysfunctional rich family. (That name is a great WASP cognomen, by the way). They're two cute kids, believe it or not, especially Tippy Walker who brings a molestable element to her role. Hill seems to recognize this and gives the PREverts in the audience a couple of slow-motion upskirt shots as the two jump over fire hydrants and dance on park benches. But it's all pretty unstressed and one would be hard put to think of a better image for two pleasant and happy kids living in a world of fantasy than to have them laughing and leaping in the air. Where do they find kids who can act so well? Walker has a way of flipping her hair back and gawkily hunching her shoulders that spells Preppiness.

The film has its serious moments but most of it is low-key humorous. I saw it in a drive-in in Riverhead, Long Island. You probably won't regret watching it.

If you go into this film expecting to see a lot of Peter Sellers, you will be disappointed. Make no mistake, he's in there and he's very funny but this film is not about his character, a mediocre pianist with a penchant for married women. Rather, it's about two 14-year old girls who are making the awkward transition from childhood to adulthood. One of the girls has an incredible crush on Orient and her friend is helping her worship him from afar. Henry Orient is the catalyst for their transformation when they learn a little too much about his "world".

The acting is uniformly fine. Sellers' character is a rat but he's so clumsy and foolish you find him endearing. Angela Lansbury, as the coldly selfish mother of one of the girls, is extremely hissable. It's hard to believe that she's the same actress playing the warm, friendly Jessica Fletcher so many years later. Paula Prentiss is very amusing as Orient's exceedingly nervous married girlfriend. Tom Bosley plays Lansbury's kind-hearted husband. One of the final scenes in the film is between him and Lansbury and their daughter and it's a great one. There's a great deal of superficial dialogue but the subtext is unmistakable and it becomes the climax of the film. The best part is the two young actresses playing the girls. I have a fourteen year old daughter and she acts just like they do (almost anyway, she doesn't jump over fire hydrants). Their portrayal of giddy women/children is what the film is really all about.

Highly recommended.

A truly lovely and engaging film, with surprisingly real and complex characters anchored in the perceptive viewpoints of adolescents -- their joys, confusions and hurts, paving the way for future joys, confusions and hurts. This is a remarkable film with countless moments to cherish--the adults with all their foibles, inconsistencies, concerns real or selfish--and those two girls exploring the world with wonderment and imagination born of exuberant discovery and painful denial. The feelings are so complex--it is often playful fun, but with a tinge of bittersweet wisdom that pervades practically every frame of the film. And New York. For those that love New York City, this film is a must. Filmed over 40 years ago--it is a joy to see all the familiar, beloved landmarks as they looked before. Only Woody Allen has filmed NYC with as much loving detail. From the opening scene on the East River where the girls first meet, to their first romp through the glories of Central Park (The Bow Bridge never has looked more elegant and graceful--and the Rambles never more wild and rustic), Park Avenue in the snow with the Christmas tree lights all glowing (truly capturing the magic of NYC at holiday time)--to surprising scenes of Carnegie Hall, and the wonderful Greenwich Village neighborhoods with their charming mews and meandering streets. How appropriate that the girls' discoveries should take place in this beautiful, complex city. One final comment--Elmer Bernstein's film score is a sheer delight-befitting this delicate, but profound story--bathing the film in a musical glow as beautiful as New York City.

I loved this hilarious movie as a teenager and own the video of it

as an adult. The story of two young girls who sweetly stalk a

concert pianist, played with insane panache by Peter Sellars, is

one of the nicest coming-of-age movies of that era. Set in New

York, her is a surprisingly sophisticated and gentle comedy you'll

enjoy over and over again.

Sellars's clueless, womanizing virtuoso never strikes a false

comic note. He's wildly inventive, never more so than in his

scenes with the gorgeous Paula Prentiss as the way-too-nervous

object of his lust. Playing a married woman who is flattered by his

attentions, Prentiss manages to look glamorous and on the verse

of a nervous breakdown all at once. Why this spectacularly gifted

comic actress didn't make it to the top is a mystery to me.

Angela Lansbury's socialite bitch of a mother is another one of her

classic nasty lady roles. Nobody can look down her nose with the

authority of Lansbury. Yes she got found acceptance and respect

on Broadway and on television, but she was a first-rate character

actress on screen too.

Tom Bosley is sympathetic as Tippy Walker's father and Phyllis

Thaxter exudes motherly warmth as Mary Spaeth's divorced Mom.

The Walker and Spaeth should have had futures as screen

actors. Alas, it was not to be. But they are delightful as the young

girls on the verse of womanhood, with a terrific crush on an

undeserving idol.

Nora and Nunnelly Johnson's script (he of course, a Hollywood

legend) wrote a sharp, funny and observant screenplay that is

respectful of teenagers and the adults. George Roy Hill is not a

great director, but when given good material, he rises to the

occasion as he does here. A real gem.

Peter Sellers may be the bait, but two girls supply the hook that keeps this coming-of-age comedy in people's minds 40 years on.

Sellers has the title role as Henry Orient, a pianist more interested in practicing his lines than his scales, but the film's focus is on a lonely young Manhattanite named Gil (Merrie Spaeth) and her new pal Val (Elizabeth "Tippy" Walker), two adolescents who decide to make Val's crush on Orient into the secret center of an adventure-filled friendship.

"Henry Orient" is a film of two parts co-existing uneasily at times. Val and Gil's bond occupies the realm of real life, with Walker and Spaeth giving spot-on performances that seem spontaneous and alive to every moment. The best scene in the movie by far, very much in line with the "Can't Buy Me Love" sequence in the same year's "Hard Day's Night," shows the pair running along a city block, "splitzing" over fire hydrants and tryke-riding boys, their eyes alight with joy as they literally rise over their city surroundings. It's a captivating exercise in what scholars would call "pure cinema." If the rest of the film doesn't rise to that level, it never entirely disappoints, either.

Sellers' sequences are weaker. He's actually quite enjoyable to watch, doing one of his best voice performances as a Brooklynite who affects a French-Italian accent to charm the ladies (listen carefully and you will hear his Brooklyn undertone throughout) but he and Paula Prentiss as the married object of his desires seem to be in a completely different movie, playing a broad farce at odds with the real, sometimes gut-wrenching tone of the rest of the film.

This could be a bigger problem but for Elmer Bernstein's lilting yet driving score, featuring one of the most arresting themes I've heard in film, which seems to carry Val and Gil from one delirious moment to the next with complete abandon while allowing room for darker, contemplative passages. Director George Roy Hill had a gift for employing music at the right moment (see "The Sting"), and the score of "Henry Orient" is a secret strength as it skates over the thinner plot elements.

More obviously a strength is the script by Nora and Nunnelly Johnson, which really captures a sense of how young people talk, goofily, quickly and all-at-once, skipping over the stuff that doesn't matter, like when Val and Gil first meet at their ritzy school. Val asks Gil if she likes being there.

Gil tries to be diplomatic: "They say it's the finest girls' school in the country." "I don't, either," says Val.

Or the priceless exchange they have when taking out a cigarette butt they cadged off of Orient's table during a midday stalk. "No filter!" "He's not scared." One wishes the film found more to draw Orient and his youthful admirers together, though the detour into the state of Val's parental relations has merits of its own, especially with Angela Lansbury doing another of her classic nasty-Mommy turns.

While it didn't set the world on fire in 1964 and, like its young stars, slipped off the radar screen too soon after its premiere, "Henry Orient" remains an engaging glimpse at American youth post-Salinger but pre-Beatles. Sidewalk placards still advertise color TV, while a rich girl's idea of rebellious fashion sense involves wearing a plaid skirt with a mink coat. Trends come and go, but feelings of the kind celebrated in "The World Of Henry Orient" live on.