Page Four John Cassevettes (the director) has a penchant for making long movies. "A Woman Under the Influence" runs two hours, thirty five minutes. It is not that Mr. Cassevettes has so much to say, but that he has mistaken indiscriminate editing for cinema verite. What takes Mr. Cassevettes a scene to express might take a more sensitive director only a shot. Because the writer-director does not have that much to say does not mean he has nothing to contribute. Sometimes, the ultra extended close-ups and abstruse camera angles are effective; they produce in us that feeling we have when we are in a room where an embarrassing incident has just occurred, over which we had no control, and about which we can do nothing. We are drawn into the morass of emotions that bathe the principal characters. Sometimes, Cassevettes' techniques are not effective; indeed, they seem senseless, and we must suffer many over extended close-ups and awkward camera angles. Succinctly, that is what is wrong with this movie; we cannot be sure what is meaningful, and cannot even be sure if the director Himself knows. `•A Woman Under the Influence," which is a patch-work of three previously written plays by Cassevettes, deals with the horrors of married life (a favorite theme of the director), the despair of a woman living in a male dominated society, and the struggle for life of a sane in dividual in an insane world. The movie begins as Mabel Longhetti (Lena Rowlands) awaits the return of her husband from work. She aimlessly floats around the house with a cigarette in her mouth a la Helmond° and a transistor radio hanging from her wrist, ironically playing a dramatic opera. Her husband, Nick (Peter Falk), calls to say he'll be detained. Mabel is trapped in the house. The camera looks at her through the prison bars of the latticed dining room doors. She goes to a bar where she picks up Carson Cross (who, incidentally, reappears among the crowd gathered to receive Mabel upon her return from the mental hospital) and takes him home. In the morning, she calls him Nick, whether to identify her husband as a stranger or simply to betray the position of her mind. When her husband arrives, Carson is gone, as if he were never there, as if he were only a flight of Mabel's fancy. The in terplay of fantasy and reality is Good Earth 10 E. 10th Pipes Papers Recycled Jeans Tops Incense Water Beds Oriental Rugs Eastway Bowling Lanes 4110 Buffalo Road Open Bowling Mon. Thru Fri. '10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Tues. evening 9:00p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Ph. 899-9855 Current Cin reminiscent of Bunuel Nick brings a grimy work crew home with him. They are in truders; Mabel chases one of them out of her kitchen for dirting it. She prepares a spaghetti breakfast for them anti attempts to entertain them in the way she believes will please her husband, the way Carrie Snodgrass at tempts to please Richard Ben jamin at his party in "Diary of a Mad Housewife," but she fails. Later, the tenor of their marriage is exposed as Mabel and Nick speak to each other from opposite ends of the dining table. (Thank you, Orson Welles). In another scene, a friend of Nick's alludes to Mabel's unusualness, delicacy . . . craziness. "She makes beds, does wash. What's crazy?" Nick retorts. The line that brings to a crescendo the sense of Nick's insensitivity to and abandonment of Mabel as a person is his lost sigh, "I don't know who you are." Perhaps, Mabel Longhetti is a feminist conception, but she is more. She is somehow different from you or me. (How different is evident, of course, by our in dividual judgements of her ac tions.) When her family, in cluding her own mother (Katherine Cassevettes), forms a circle on the bed, Mabel is left without it. During the spaghetti breakfast, she sits at table framed by a sign on the bathroom door that reads PRIVATE. The scene most of evocative of this theme is that in which Mr. Jensen conies by to drop off his children. Mabel urges Mr. Jensen to stay for a while; she accuses him of being uncomfortable; and, later, when they are in the garden and Mabel's übiquitious tran- Needed to sell Brand Name Stereo Components to Students at lowest prices. Hi Commission, NO Investment required. Serious Inquiries ONLY ! FAD COMPONENTS; INC., 20 Passaic Avenue, Fairfield, New Jersey 07006_ Bedspreads Jewelry By Robert Curtiss College Campus Representative Jerry Diamond 201-227-6814 MONDAY' 4 ' 4/21 TUESDAY 4/22 WEDNESDAY 4 THURSDAY 4 FRIDAY 4 SATURDAY 4/26 =le iii....._ M sistor radio begins to play "Swan Lake" she encourages the children and Mr. Jensen to dance. The children dance. Mr. Jensen refuses. "Die for him. Die for him," she entreats. Children, the symbol of purity and in nocence, must die like Christ to absolve the gin of living death that Mr. Jensen has committed, that Mabel endeavors not to commit. Mabel implements spontaneity and honesty of emotion to achieve this goal. It is this that makes her unacceptable to society. Her request that everyone leave so that she and Nick can go to bed together and her observation that her sister-in-law has a "fat ass" are met with grumbles and en treaties that she not say such things before the children. The hysterical behavior of Nick's mother (Lady Rowlands) the evening that Mabel is committed makes us question their respective states of mind. In the final scene, after all the guests have left, Mabel begins to dance on the couch. Nick orders her down. The children run to protect her. Nick slaps her down. Frustrated by the insufficiency of his marriage, unable to recognize his wife's aspirations to in dividuality and fearful of her 'clear vision in a world of ostriches, he cries, "I'll kill ya!" This is followed by a few moments of exemplary domesticity and equanimity. Mabel remarks "I really am crazy." Is she crazy for having ultimately given in to the insane world, or is she reaffirming her vision in that world? The camera withdraws. Our- last glimpse _of the Longhetti's home is through the latticed, dining room doors. EVENT First Aid Cour4e Tennis: Behrend vs. Edinboro Golf: .Behrend vs. Mercyhurst Faculty Senate Meeting Faculty Divisional Meeting (Natural Science & Engineering) 10:50 a.m. Biology Club Meeting Placement Testing (New Students) Faculty Divisional Meeting (Arts & Humanistic Studies) Baseball: Behrend vs. Alliance Golf: Behrend vs. Gannon Tennis: Behrend vs. Alliance 3rd Annual History Colloquium 9:00 Baseball: Behrend vs. Grove City 1:00 Tennis: Behrend vs. Geneva 2:00 Home Rule Workshop (Cont. Ed.) 8:00 Behrend Collegian Behrend College Activities April 21 - April 26 Picturesque students in buff By Jim Martin Executive Editor The generations of students before our present wave at tending colleges all have had their oddities. Everybody is familiar with the very old "gold fish" swallowing a gold fish. There was the "stuf fing" as many people as possible into the campus "phone booth." The many and , continuing "panty raids" and of course, the "streaking" escapades. A few spirited Behrendites, (males), with pride have taken these and other campus pranks. These oddities are too numerous to continue labeling here. But a most recent action on the college campus life is the "very typical" student situations as viewed by the now former editor of the Vassar College Yearbook staff in Poughkeepie, NY. Terry Gruber (Editor), stated four nude yearbook photographs are showing "a typical day of a Vassar student," adding he would be remiss in his duties as Editor if he did not include the nude Can't you spare a bite to save a life? The threat of severe malnutrition or even starvation faces about 400 to 500 million - children living in the poorest countries of the world. The situation is so grave that the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, has declared a World Child Emergency and must find an additional $BO million to help meet it in the next 15 months. Individual contnimtions, no matter hoii? small, are the children's main hope for survival. A contribution of $l.OO, the average cost of a hamburger, french fries and soda, can buy a year's supply of multi-vitamins for a child in a crisis country. $l5 can bring supplementary food and health services to five children for a month. Can't you spare a bite ... to save a life? Please send your contribution today. Mail to UNICEF World Child Emergency, 331 East 38th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016. 7:30 - 10:30 p.m. 2:00 p.m. 2:00 p.m. 7:30 p.m. 10:50 8:00 10:50 2:00 2:00 2:00 a.m. p.m p.m. p.m. a.m. p.m. p.m. a.m. students activities. The SGA took the stand against the nude photographs, stating they were "clearly obscene by any standards." This is a case of student censoring students" an SGA member said. Now, .of course, Behrend College students are well behaved and surely indulge in no such extracurricular activities!! Such being the case, the Behrend SGA can continue whatever it is doing without this worry. EXECUTIVE EDITORS NOTE: I tried to acquire these pictures so the Behrend students could be exposed to such "clearly ob scene" photographs. I could not. Nominations for the Spring Arts Festival, King and Queen will end 6th period April 25. Nominations are taken by the RUB Desk UNICEF Oh PLACE Behrend 101 Edinboro Away Memorial Room Behrend 123 12:05 p.m. Nick 8 Reed Lecture 'Room 12:05 p.m. 3:30 p.m. Behrend 123 Home Home Home 12:05 p.m. 4:00 p.m. Behrend 110 Grove City Home Behreild 123-124 12:00 p.m. April 17, 1 , 975
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