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A PATRIOT FOR ME. When John Osborne steps into the spotlight and throws a nightlong temper tantrum, the dramatic results are explosively and corrosively alive. But when he goes rummaging through history for his theme, he is far less successful. A Patriot for Me tells the story of Alfred Redl. a homosexual officer in the army of the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire who was blackmailed by the Russians into turning traitor. Osborne's characters are not immersed in history; they merely wear it like a costume supplied by the wardrobe mistress. Maximilian Schell as Redl is as frostily remote as his monocle.
FORTY CARATS. Julie Harris stars in this frothy French farce that pleads for a single standard of judgment on age disparity in marriage.
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM. Woody Allen plays Woody Allen in his comedy about a neurotic young man who is rejected even by the girls of his fantasies.
Off Broadway
A WHISTLE IN THE DARK has the raw, roiling energy of life observed with an exactitude that defies disbelief. The Carneys are a pride of Irish gutter lions, bred to the tooth and claw, who move into the home of the only brother who attempts to flee their world of lacerating animal instinct. The performances are all labors of skill and love, and Arvin Brown's deft direction is full of silent music.
ADAPTATION-NEXT. Elaine May directs both her own play, Adaptation, and Terrence McNally's Next in an evening of perceptive and richly comic one-acters.
NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBODY. Charles Gordone's story of black-white and black-black relations is flawed by melodrama; yet the play ticks with menace and is unexpectedly and explosively funny.
OH! CALCUTTA! For a good part of the evening this revue is diverting and civilized, though it scarcely provides the elegant erotica that Kenneth Tynan promised.
TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK is a moving tribute to the late playwright Lorraine Hansberry, made up of readings and dramatizations from her writings.
DAMES AT SEA is a delightful parody of the movie musicals of the 1930s, complete with all the frenetic dance routines and a classic cliche: the naive young girl who survives the Broadway jungle to tap her way to stardom.
CINEMA
MEDIUM COOL. Writer-Director Haskell Wexler takes a fictitious plot, places it against an authentic backdrop (the Chicago convention) and explodes a film that is both social and cinematic dynamite.
MIDNIGHT COWBOY. Jon Voight is a strutting phallus, good for nothin' but lovin'; Dustin Hoffman is a septic crippled thief. Together, they create one of the most moving and poignant performances in the history of American film. Though
Director John Schlesinger has decorated the story with stylistic tics, the film stands as a moving study of the lonely and the loveless.
THE WILD BUNCH. "Killing is no fun. I was trying to show what the hell it's like to get shot," says Director Sam Peckinpah about this film that follows a ragtag bunch of bandits as it scrounges through the Southwest. While traveling with the bunch, Peckinpah gives long looks at scenes of uncontrolled frenzy in which the feeling of chaotic violence is overwhelming.