Mazursky's Hapless St Rivers

who represent Mazursky himself at two discrete stages of his life. I doubt that Mazursky could ever concoct a movie around someone he didn’t ut- terly love. Yet infatuation being the myopic thing it is, this director’s gener- ous feelings are sometimes squan- dered on some pretty shallow objects. And usually the most piddling of these Tempest, directed by Paul Mazursky. inhabit those very Mazursky films that hh.directed bv Rainer Werner Fassbinder. need all the spine they can get-the ones that pay tongue-tied homage to some European high-culture land- Mazursky‘s hapless mark. So you have the laid-back poseur Alex at Malibu making sand- castle replicas of Fellini’s Cinecitd, or st rivers Willie and Phil playing at Jules and Jim when, actually, they’d scarcely be up to understudying Neil Simon’s Os- car and Felix. What Mazursky lacks compared with the auteurs he so ad- ~~~~ ~ mires is not so much a breadth of vi- STEPHEN HARVEY Life, while America is just that bland place you have to get through once sion as the willingness to be a little New York palls and L.A. beckons. tough on the characters he creates. 8Yz N EIGHT MOVIES MADE Eventually, they all come to realize and Jules and Jim are comic tragedies over a dozen years, the world ac- cording to Paul Mazursky is about as consistent a vision as you’re likely to find on the American screen. Apart from the occasional shiksa girlfriend, everyone in it is Jewish, or maybe Greek or Italian (which, after all, amounts to pretty much the same thing). Mazursky men are thwarted romantics with self-absorbed souls, and talk to distraction about big stuff like love and joy and fulfillment, none of which they’ve got. His women may seem dithery at first, but they’re able to connect with life’s basics in an in- stinctive, practical way that bewilders their husbands and lovers. People in Mazurskyland always want to be art- ists, but rarely get farther than the media crafts. They go to shallow, zeitgeisty parties where everyone gets giddy and no one has a good time. They haunt the offices of sphinxlike shrinks whose batty serenity is a re- proach to their own hyperventilating TEMPEST selves. Young (Next Stop Greenwich El- lage, Mllie and Phil) and old (Harry and that you’re stuck with yourself and about people trapped by their human Tonto) alike must trudge through a rug- might just as well enjoy it, especially if limitations. Alex in Wonderland and ged odyssey toward the Self, but for you can join hands in a ring-around- Mllie and Phil are romantic comedies most of Mazursky’s offspring, the mid- the-rosy with that thorny but irresist- about guys whose plodding menschi- dle years are the worst-one pro- ible supporting cast in your life. ness makes them heroic. tracted anxiety attack. They often set Bob, Carol, Willie, Phil, enraptured Tempest, his newest, finds Mazursky out on journeys to shed their malaises Blume, and unmarried Erika-all once more pirouetting on a tightrope and find themselves, only to discover foolish but sincere, dumped-on yet op- between daring and hubris. As the title that Europe and the rest ofAbroad are timistic, and always redeemed, in implies, this time he’s paying fealty to awfully romantic but scarcely Real Mazursky’s eyes, by their hunger to the Bard, and the attempt to renovate grow and experience. So he indulges these motley raiments into a supple STEPHENHARVEY is INQUIRY%J$hreuiewer and the their foibles one and all, not least those pair ofdesignerjeans does justice to no coordinator ofthejlrn study program at the Museum of of the male protagonists ofAlex in Won- one. Structurally, this movie is made Modern Art in New York CiQ. derland and Next Stop Greenwich Ellage more chaotic by his attempt to observe 43 LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG INQUIRY ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED TEMPEFI the classical unity of having this story complaint would have seemed rather the overbuilt isle of Manhattan. Yet take place within a single day; commonplace when the righteous this aimless distraction from Cas- Mazursky is left with all this exposi- dropout ethic was more B la mode; as it savetes’s knitted brow and knotty cares tory material to explain how his bour- happens, the times have tripped up turns out to be comic relief in the full- geois Manhattanites got to this Mazursky, who is usually so attuned to est sense of the term. inaccessible Greek isle and what the temperature of the moment. In fact, this Tempest is at its most they’re doing there, and no place to Amidst the rigors of the eightirs, our audacious whenever Mazursky man- put it all; so it’s just crammed in, seem- architect’s mopey disillusionment ages to forget about The Tempest en- ingly at random, in huge chunks of seems positively quaint. tirely. His men may be dim con- flashback. He’s dazzled by the play’s Mazursky’s purposefully comic up- temporary Xeroxes of the Elizabethan mystical grandeur, but his would-be datings of Shakespeare’s creations originals, but Tempest’s principal Prosper0 is a drip out of daytime may be tinged with archness, but women are entrancing and original, drama. This character, played by John they’re a lot more resourceful. Alon- partly because Mazursky had to im- Cassavetes, is a soured architect zo’s farcical retinue comprises a provise where they were concerned. named Philip; he implores the powers frenzied physician (Anthony Holland) Rowlands’s Antonia has no equivalent above to “Show me the magic,” the with a taste for Greek sailors, and a in the play, but she’s a resplendent props department obliges with a surge Las Vegas jester (Jackie Gayle) who exemplar of a very New York type- of lightning and waterworks, and the spits out grungy one-liners like slugs the tough-chic achiever who may be only awe you feel is at Mazursky’s ner- from a slot machine. Mazursky’s Cal- bruised but can’t be fazed, no matter viness, and Cassavetes’s straight-faced iban, here yclept Kalibanos, is a kind what she has to deal with. Antonia is a composure while lobbing such cutesy of Zorba the Goat, eyes and lips kind of upscale variation on Row- portents at us. filming avidly at the sight of the mam- lands’s last stellar role in Gloria. She’d No wonder this guy Philip flees to mary “melones” adorning the Ameri- like to be the glamorous dame with Greece with his sullen teen daughter can females who have invaded his class she remembers from the Loew’s Miranda (Molly Ringwald) in tow- rocky eyrie. There’s nothing dan- Paradise reveries of her youth; mean- he sure does have a lot to contend with. gerous or disturbing about this crea- while, in the real world, love before He has to labor for lucrative sums as ture; in typical fashion, Mazursky has breakfast is all very well but first she master builder to Alonzo (Vittorio turned him into an impotent sweetie. has to go pee. Gassman), the casino magnate. He Still, it’s refreshing to see Raul Julia, a Rowlands is earth to Susan Saran- has to spend his leisure time staring at rather bombastic performer in the the- don’s pure ozone. Mercifully, Mazur- the same white walls of his confining ater, unleashing his overweening gusto sky didn’t strain to resuscitate Ariel West Village duplex, relieved only for acting in Hellenic pratfalls and intact, fairies not having the same when the heavens show him some malapropisms for a change. His most symbolic clout they did in the Bard’s more magic through the skylight. He triumphant moment finds him leading day. Instead, Aretha (so named by her has to endure the boredom of his long- his caprine flock in a prancing, leaping democratic mother after a favorite do- term marriage with Antonia. (Life chorus line to the tune of the Liza mestic) is the kind of blithe backpack- with Gena Rowlands boring? Intim- Minelli rendition of “New York, New ing expatriate who can be found on idating maybe, but it sure would have York.” This has almost as little rele- any beach on the Mediterranean. its compensations.) Tempest treats vance to the action of Tempest as it does When Philip first meets her, she’s em- these dilemmas with the utmost so- to Shakespeare-apart from under- ployed at a Greek taverna, singing briety, as does Cassavetes, the best scoring Mazursky’s notion that dis- “Hava Nagila” in a purple toga to an 44 brooder of his generation. Philip’s tance can lend enchantment evcn to audience consisting of holidaying LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG NOVEMBER 1982 ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED Arabs and Nipponese. Previously wed it all in. Sarandon is a born comedi- & Ted & Alice and Blume in Love) segue- to an Israeli swimming instructor who enne whose skills grow more supple ing into a Manhattan rhapsody at couldn’t make a living because ‘‘Jews with each movie she makes, and she dawn, may be a slightly cloying con- don’t think they can float,” and an treats this Tempest as if it were her own ceit, but at least it’s indisputably Athenian shrink (ditto, since Greeks hard-earned, all-expense-paid frolic in Mazursky’s own, and not someone don’t believe in neurosis), if anyone the sun. else’s epic verse transposed downward can cope with Philip’s dour If only Mazursky had flung his into the vernacular.

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