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The outlaw's journey, a Hollywood education. Staccato montage introduces the heroine (Barbara Hershey) as a barefoot tomboy scratching her thigh as she watches her crop-dusting daddy go down in flames, rhythmic dissolves later find her napping on a haystack, freshly deflowered by a "notorious Bolshevik" (David Carradine). The prole agitator is joined in jail by the Yankee cardsharp (Barry Primus) and the harmonica-playing gentle giant (Bernie Casey), the lass breaks them out and they casually become a gang of thieves when the getaway car breaks down and a freight train chugs along. "Just grabbin' somethin' good when it comes by." Martin Scorsese at the Corman school, a tight schedule in Arkansas and a profusion of cinematic ideas. His Depression-era South is a cinephile's view, basically a 1933 Wellman barnstormer where Oakie camps, barrel houses and chain gangs are hand-picked for genre iconography and storyboarded mayhem. The camera seeks out the pulse of every moment: A deck of cards flicked into the air becomes a flurry of rapid shots, a track-dolly is attached to a shotgun blast to the chest, a tour of the brothel suddenly stumbles upon Vivre Sa Vie. (Milius' Dillinger the following year benefits from the discoveries.) The would-be Bonnie Parker is a time-traveling Flower Child, but the reformist turned desperado might speak for Scorsese the film school-grad turned exploitation hired-gun. "I'm just not meant for this kind of life!" Modernist inquiry is held at a society party holdup that positions Carradine face to face with his father John (New Wave restlessness versus The Grapes of Wrath classicism), the finale envisions Paradise only to have a Calvary brought about by a malevolent Laurel & Hardy pair. With Victor Argo, David Osterhout, and Harry Northup.
--- Fernando F. Croce |