The Cavalier daily :: Friday, January 12, 1973 :: University of Virginia Library

Cashing in on the craze for
nostalgia that everyone's
talking about, this is a movie
about two roommates in
college during World War II.
We know it's WWII because
every now and then one
character walks up to another,
nudges him on the arm, winks,
and says, "Pearl Harbor."

The roommates are Finny
(John Heyl) and Gene (Parker
Stevenson). Finny is the
athletic type, and Gene is the
studious type.

The film is poorly handled
from the word go. Gene as an
old man comes back to the
college and starts to reminisce.
We are never told exactly why
he came back to the school,
which would be useful only as
odd information, but the
trouble is that nothing else is
explained either.

The incident around which
the whole movie is based, in
fact, is remarkable because it is
unexplained, but the story is so
muddy that one can't tell if
that's a fault of the movie or
the point.

Helping in no way to clear
up this mess is the acting. Or
maybe those shallow, wooden
stereotypes are caused by the
script. Aside from the two
main characters there's the
snotty prep school type, the
"Kid with the glasses" type,
and the "stuffy professor"
type, Also, there is "Leper",
who turns out to be insane
(and I thought it was just a
good performance).

Heyl and Stevenson stand
out only because we see so
much of them, and I do mean
much. Time after time their
faces, one "The Athlete" and
the other "The Sensitive
Boy-Man", fill the screen with
close-up after deadly serious,
deadly boring close-up.

One scene sums up the tone
of A Separate Peace rather
nicely. The boys from the

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