|
Mendelssohn score, Fragonard view, long studies of Renoir from A Day in the Country to Picnic on the Grass. The professor (José Ferrer) stands for pedantic civilization, with little patience for the "pathetic delusions we frightened humans cling to." The doctor (Tony Roberts) is a dedicated satyr struck by romance, the inventor (Woody Allen) funnels his marital frustrations into flying contraptions. Bride (Mia Farrow), nurse (Julie Hagerty) and wife (Mary Steenburgen) join them for a weekend at the pastoral summer house, wandering infatuations ensue. "Sex alleviates tension, love causes it." The models calm down the auteur's camera admirably, allowing characters to cross the screen in a continuous staging. Roberts at the clinic ushers a buxom patient out the door, notices an off-screen Hagerty and continues the conversation behind frosted glass, one take. "Conceptual pragmatism" versus natural sensuality, a stroll in the woods held long enough for keen sunlight to play a supporting role. The frigid dilemma from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask revisited as Steenburgen inflamed by wine pounces on Allen on the kitchen table: "We cannot have intercourse where we eat oatmeal!" A high-angled crane gives the view from the pedal-propelled helicopter as an advancement on Sleeper, an outdoors montage includes a choice composition of women with parasols enjoying a smoke amid tall grass. The silent-iris of a telescope is answered by the projections of Bergman's magic lantern, thus from "the unseen world" a glimpse of a missed chance, or is it a past indiscretion? "There are no ghosts except in Shakespeare." It's all happily resolved with Tennyson's gleam plus The Katzenjammer Kids. Cinematography by Gordon Willis.
--- Fernando F. Croce |