University of Virginia Library

Multiple Screen Works Well

'Strangler' Fails In Social Comment

By Jere Real

Mr. Real, a graduate student
who begins reviewing films for The
Cavalier Daily in this issue, writes
frequently on films and the theater.
His most recent articles include
"Noel Coward Revisited" in National
Review, "The Movies As an
Art Form in Modern Age." and an
upcoming article on Eugene
O'Neill, "The Brothel in O'Neill's
Mansions" in Modern Drama. He
was Schubert Playwright at U.Va.
last year. - Ed.

For the past decade, actor Tony
Curtis has attempted to outlive his
early film acting career as a Universal
Studios' "pretty boy," a sort
of early Troy Donahue. To do so,
he has elected to choose scripts of
films that were - if not always
promising - at least controversial.
The result has been his interesting
portrayals in such films as Stanley
Kramer's "The Defiant Ones," his
excellent interpretation of the
whining hack press agent in the
Hecht-Hill-Lancaster production of
"Sweet Smell of Success," and even
his comic drag-acting in Billy
Wilder's, "Some Like It Hot."

Such performances tend to make
the viewing public forget his lesser
efforts, little things like "The
Vikings," and "Trapeze." One almost
can suppress the memory of
the foot-flagellation sequence in
"The Prince Who Was a Thief"
where Tony, lying helpless in some
Arabian market place, is beaten
while a very young Piper Laurie
looks on.

And then along comes a Curtis
film like "The Boston Strangler"
loaded to the brim with pseudo relevant
social comment and pretentious
sociological consequence.
It's almost enough to make one
long to be back in that Arabian
marketplace in the late '40's.

Based on the notorious series of
murders in the Boston area, the
film traces the pursuit of the strangler
in a format similar to that of the
TV series, "Arrest and Trial;" that
is, the first hour of the film is spent
showing the strangler at work while
police chase him, the second hour
catalogues the attempt to make the
captured strangler confess. Needless
to say, the second half of the film
lags in pace.

The first half, however, does
contain some effective usage of the
split-screen technique already seen
in such films as "Grand Prix" and,
more recently, "The Thomas
Crown Affair."

The multiple screens work well
in creating audience suspense and
anxiety in such scenes as where the
next victim of the strangler blithely
irons clothes in an apartment on
one screen while the murderer casually
forces a downstairs door and
scans the mailboxes for a victim's
name on another panel of the
screen. Such visual counterpoint
skillfully used by a brilliant director
may yet become as meaningful a
development to film art as the
advent of sound.

In recent Hollywood films, the
introduction of a lesbian and/or
homosexual scene seemingly has
become obligatory: "The Boston
Strangler" seeking to go current
films one better - offers both. It
was Otto Preminger. I believe, who
initiated (in "Advise and Consent")
the visit to a "gay" bar as one of his
more sensational contributions to
film art. Now, such side excursions
by film characters are regular parts
of plot (in "The Detective," for
example) and are as traditional a
motif in these times as trips to the
"underworld" were in classical literature.

One interesting aspect of Henry
Fonda's jaunt to that perverse
world in this film is that the
character he meets there in a brief
- and completely unnecessary -
sequence is played by Hurd
Hatfield, the actor who portrayed
Dorian Gray in the mid-Forties
film of Oscar Wilde's work. One
only can add that Mr. Hatfield,
unlike Dorian, hasn't been ageless.

Fonda's role, as the director of
the special commission set up to
coordinate the search for the
Strangler, is his usual: that of a
slightly myopic, well-intentioned
main of liberal bent bearing a
slightly silly smile and a harassed
air. If Mr. Fonda really is acting, it
is a role he has played repeatedly
and which has varied not at all since
he played Pierre in "War and
Peace" or the President in "Fail-Safe."

Held into its second week at the
Barracks Road, "The Boston
Strangler" is really never a good
film and is capable of maintaining
interest only in its first half. It uses
extraneous sex and fetishism to
titillate a viewer but to little other
purpose. And its attempt - at the
very close of the film - to gain
some passing mark as social comment
by a note saying violence in
our society should be studied is as
blatantly hypocritical and tasteless
as the film itself tends to be.