REUBEN, REUBEN
Directed by Robert Ellis Miller
Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein
Why are so few substantial novels made into movies these days? Perhaps because the printed page is a dominatrix of the imagination, demanding that the reader conjure up worlds from words, that he become a hard-working co-conspirator in the creative experience. Celluloid, by comparison, is a laissez-faire baby sitter. It asks only that the viewer believe what he sees, that he go with the flow of seductive images and return to intellectual infancy as a passive, pacified fun sucker. The young audience...