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Tragedy of a failed life of crime, comedy of a documentary study, or vice versa: "The hours are good, you know, and you're your own boss..." Childhood is running with your hand stuck in a gumball machine, adolescence is scrambling to play cello in a marching band, out of this emerges Woody Allen the lawbreaking putz. Toughness doesn't come naturally (the West Side Story switchblade snaps off in his hand), lyricism alongside the comely laundress (Janet Margolin) is a slushy stroll peppered with wisecracks ("After fifteen minutes I wanted to marry her, and after half an hour I completely gave up the idea of stealing her purse"). The prison grind out of White Heat, one breakout has Dillinger's carved pistol turning to foam under rainwater and another has the postponed scheme that leaves a lone fugitive in the yard. "I'll bake you a cake, but I won't put a gun in." "Then I'd like a dozen chocolate-chip cookies with a bullet in each." An advancement on What's Up, Tiger Lily? (verbal jokes deflating dramatic environments, visual slapstick jousting against stentorian narration) and a premonition of Zelig (the sum of a man's life via interviewees, some of whom don Groucho disguises), Allen the modernist jester fast out of the gate. The rabbinical side-effect, the misspelled stick-up note, the ventriloquism dummies in the visiting room. He steps behind the screen during the I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang whipping to see how it's done, and brushes against You Only Live Once with the old con eager to wield the auteur's riding crop: "Fritz, this is a bank robbery, not a movie." The ultimate Allen scenario at the close, the terror of an eight-century sentence and the hope that good behavior can cut it in half. With Marcel Hillaire, Jacquelyn Hyde, Lonny Chapman, Jan Merlin, James Anderson, Howard Storm and Louise Lasser.
--- Fernando F. Croce |