8
Friday, Sept. 25, 1970
University Daily Kansan
Movies: Continuing Search
BY MELISSA BERG Kansan Reviewer
"Adam at 6 A.M." is a contemporary potpourri with an "Easy Rider" theme, urban and rural stereotypes and today's so-called "generation gaps."
Elinor Karpf blends these components throughout the movie and successfully expresses a sociological tenet: People can be found living in nice, narrow worlds anywhere, whether it be Los Angeles or Cameron. Mo
However, one glaring inconsistency and acute stereotyping mar the total effectiveness of the film.
The plot revolves around Adam Gaines, a young west coast college professor with looks, money and a brand new Ph.d. in semantics.
Dissatisfied with the typical stereotyped social life of the west coast, the meaningless chatter at parties and the easy and empty sex, he impulsively sets out one morning for the Midwest. Like the cycling twosome of "Easy Rider," he seems bent on finding a meaningful life style.
He drives to Cameron, Mo. to
attend an aunt's funeral, where he is enthusiastically welcomed, especially by Jerri Jo Hopper, a pretty, recent high school graduate whose immediate infatuation with him is readily apparent.
Adam becomes enchanted with the people of the town, although he is obviously in an intellectual class all by himself, and takes a job with the power and light company.
He appears at first to be merely
arts & reviews
amused by Jerri's affectionate manner and childish questions, but repeated meetings on weekends home from the road crew nurtures a deeper relationship and ultimately each expresses love for the other.
This development of affections does not seem very believable. Jerri Jo's girlish charm doesn't appear sufficient to captivate suave, intellectual Adam.
Movies: Big Bore
By CHIP CREWS Kansan Reviewer
Very few human expressions make us feel so downright good inside as empathy. It's such a fine feeling to try to understand another person, to identify with his problems. And one of the easiest places to do this is a darkened theater. There is no attachment or obligation. We can go, empathize, leave and go home.
Perhaps it is because Otto Preminger so relentlessly plays upon this human tendency in his latest film, "Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon," that the picture doesn't work at all. "Junie Moon" is a big, unfailing bore.
For those unfamiliar with its story, it concerns three physically disabled young people who set out to make a life together.
The three all feel rejected. Warren is a paraplegic homosexual, Arthur, the victim of severe psychotic seizures. And the title character, Junie Moon, has an acid-scarred face which looks something like a relief map.
Their arrangement was predestined to fail by scriptwriter Marjorie Kellogg, Junie, Arthur and Warren settle down in Bigot City, U.S.A., and learn that people will not accept them.
Next door to them lives an ignorant peeping tom who vehemently dislikes the handicapped. His constant spying harasses them, his anonymous phone call to Arthur's employer causes the boy to lose his job.
Time passes slowly, and after Junie and Arthur spend one night of happiness and love together, the story winds down to its inevitable unhappy conclusion.
“Junie Moon” ambitiously tries to prove a couple of major truths, but fails at both.
The first is that people will not accept those who are different. Though hardly an original thought, it's something that needs to be said today. But the characters and situations employed to make that point are such tired clichés that we remain unaffected. The best way to present an old theme in a movie is to do it in an unusual manner. Last year, "Easy Rider" dealt with the acceptance theme far more successfully. Beside its techniques, "Junie Moon's" utilization of Evil Incarnate peeping through the fence is unbearably corny and far outdated.
Also, Preminger's film relies heavily upon the flashback. There is a sequence in which Arthur relives childhood horrors. The whole thing is cheap, gaudy and offensive, reaching a crescendo when his parents appear, chanting some nonsense and decked out in whiteface.
Probably the most famous part of the picture is the infamous nude scene in the graveyard. This caused quite a little ruckus in the state of Massachusetts, where it was filmed, and made a lot of headlines. Undoubtedly, the free publicity was worth it to the wily Preminger.
The funny thing about that particular scene is that it doesn't need to happen in a graveyard. It didn't in the book. I have nothing much against either nude females or graveyards or even a combination of the two, but in this case, it added absolutely nothing to the picture. A scene done merely for sensationalism usually becomes cheap; this piece of sado-masochism transcends that. It is garbage.
The second truth attempted is that these people, haudicapped as they are, can still find love. How nice for them. Preminger never pretends to involve us in Junie and Arthur's lives or their love. The story of two people who overcome together the bitterness of their lives should be moving. It isn't.
In the title role, we have our own very favorite hard times girl, Liza Minnelli. Her splendid performance in "The Sterile Cuckoo" proved that she is an enormously gifted actress, and every once in a while, she really connects with a scene in this picture. Those are the only times that "Junie Moon" even begins to work. In a difficult role, Miss Minnelli at least leaves no doubt that hers is the best brave smile in the business.
The acting is generally adequate. All the principal players can suffer most adeptly, which is kind of fun to watch for a while. Robert Moore meets the demands of playing Warren well enough. The character maintains a pompous dignity far removed from life itself, yet again there is a snag. That might have been a point from which to build a character, but Warren's homosexuality is so overdone throughout most of the script that he becomes little more than a caricature of a common misconception.
Adam thinks he has found his new life style and he and Jerri decide to marry. However he has dreams of traveling around the world which don't quite coincide with Jerri's picture of the stationary hearth. His freedom is curtailed as soon as the engagement ring is on Jerri's finger.
Ken Howard gives Arthur a tenderness that is sometimes appealing, but the character remains ambiguous and contradictory.
That "Junie Moon" is so garish can be largely attributed to its director's low regard for human emotion, both in audiences and on the screen. Mr. Preminger is already the master of the expensive cheap movie. Evidently he thinks that to be mawkish is to be moving, that a couple of shock techniques will bring audiences running, that a major truth can be created from a mound of cliches. He's got another think coming.
Adam describes Jerri's world as "neat, clear and pretty," but he doesn't like things that come in packages. After being sent to the grocery store for more vanilla ice cream for the engagement party guests, Adam realizes that marriage is not the new life style he is seeking and instead of returning from the store he roars out of town and pitches the ice cream carton to the pavement.
Writer Karpf, who has lived both in Kansas City and Los Angeles typescasts the small town Midwesterners just as she does west coast urbanites. Perhaps this is necessary to prove her point that conventionalism exists everywhere. Nevertheless, the stereotyping is excessive. Most of the Cameron residents are plastic characters, so much so, that one can predict the next nite word or narrow outlook they will express. Only Harvey, a more intelligent member of the power and light crew and Adam's friend, assumes any depth as a character.
Certainly the movie succeeds in arousing strong emotional identification with Adam, especially from recent college graduates.
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Books: Good Image
COP1', by L. H. Whittemore (Crest, 95 cents)—To write this nonfictional account, L. H. Whittemore followed policemen on their beats in Harlem, Chicago, and San Francisco. It is
a highly personal and generally friendly account, written in a time when the image of the policeman is scarcely high. The grim details of being a policeman in a big city are carefully depicted.
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