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Armor of misanthropy, temps d'un retour. Sol from Leipzig (Rod Steiger) in Spanish Harlem, all business at the pawnshop, everybody's uncle. Heirloom candlesticks and trophies and baby shoes get one dollar or two, the elderly gent "hungry for talk" (Juano Hernández) gets nothing. "I'm not particularly concerned with the future," the past is another matter, time at Auschwitz is kept at bay via a cultivated numbness. (A barking dog or a subway ride are enough to trigger jabbing glimpses.) An existence of grilled doors and windows, the company of awful Long Island relatives or the occasional poke with the dead friend's wife (Marketa Kimbrell). Trying to chip at the wall are the widowed social worker (Geraldine Fitzgerald) and the young assistant (Jaime Sánchez), "un buen muchacho." The survivor's mark: "Is that a secret society or something?" "Yeah." "Well, what do I do to join?" "You learn to walk on water." Resnais flickers plus Clarke's location shooting (The Cool World), Sidney Lumet leaves no shock effect unturned. (Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm is an overlooked forerunner, and Steiger's makeup also evokes Sjöström in Wild Strawberries.) The folly of detachment—the protagonist lords over clients but sooner or later Mr. Big (Brock Peters) reveals his role in the "big whorehouse right in the bosom of the world." Camera on the floor for stolen merchandise, then high above buildings for the the Antonioni stroll at dawn. The hardened Jew amid jittery juveniles, a most dreaded memory laid bare by the desperate hooker (Thelma Oliver), stigmata at closing time. "The normal state of affairs for most people," loneliness. The silent scream is promptly filled by Quincy Jones' score, the painful rejoining of the crowd is just one more stagger in the New York panorama. Cinematography by Boris Kaufman. With Raymond St. Jacques, Baruch Lumet, Linda Geiser, Nancy R. Pollock, and Warren Finnerty. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |