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"Somehow insanity seems a lot less sinister to watch in a man than in a woman," Robert Rossen sets out to figure out why with a tremulously inquisitive camera. The blonde succubus in the plush mental asylum leaving "the mark of her desire on every creature in the world," Jean Seberg's schizophrenic painter. She wills enchantment our of her padded cell and kisses her reflection on a placid pond, the wounded soldier turned orderly (Warren Beatty) has plenty of instability of his own, something about her obsesses him. "Rapture! That's a very good word for it." The "normal" world is embodied by the boy's claustrophobic room (with Freudian portrait on nightstand) and his visit to the former flame (Jessica Walter) worn from marriage to a boor (Gene Hackman). In Lilith's private realm he becomes a medieval knight, his jealousy over her other conquests soon has him drowning her favorite doll in an aquarium. A moment suspended between the doctor's (Kim Hunter) opening query ("Can I help you?") and the GI's plea at the close ("Help me"), a blur of madness and creativity to encompass Sandburg's deathly hands and Baudelaire's monster-child. Sunshine and rain at the picnic, a glistening river superimposed like fireworks over a frolic on the grass, the lyrical and the hard-edged delicately mixed by Eugen Schüfftan's lap dissolves. "That crooked look," an asymmetrical spider's web in response to the touchy-feelies of David and Lisa, "rather nightmarish." The nervousness of the characters is also that of a macho auteur feeling his way around feminized poetry and heavy symbolism—a fascinating crossroads of New and Old Hollywood, and a new beginning cut short by Rossen's death. With Peter Fonda, Anne Meacham, James Patterson, and René Auberjonois. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |