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
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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-
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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