LITTLE MURDERS
US, 1971, 108 minutes, Colour.
Elliot Gould, Marcia Rodd, Alan Arkin, Donald Sutherland, Lou Jacobi, Vincent Gardenia, Elizabeth Wilson.
Directed by Alan Arkin.
Little Murders is a bizarre, satirical film that will not appeal to a wide range of audiences, but provides plenty of openings for discussions for those who see it. Jules Feiffer, author of the play on which the film is based, is a well-known cartoonist with an anti-establishment political bent. Here he dissects contemporary U.S. mores without putting much together again. As a black satirist, he is more effective than most. The film is something of a series of clever episodes and some excellently acted monologues. Elliot Gould resumes his role of the American male 1970 (Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, M*A*S*H, Move, Getting Straight, I Love my Wife) and effectively repeats it in rather low-key. Marcia Rodd is introduced as his loving, dominating and eventually-murdered wife. There are fine cameos by Lou Jacobi and by Alan Arkin as a neurotic detective investigating six month's worth (over 360) of little unsolved murders. But the best cameo is Donald Sutherland's minister (straight out of Alex in wonderland). He does an excellent takeoff of an amiable, absolutely free-thinking minister who tolerates no conventional hypocrisies. The film is Alan Arkin's debut as director, although he is well-known as an excellent actor (The Russians are coming, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Popi, Catch 22). For better appreciation of the points being made, the film needs to be seen more than once.
1. What is the point behind the satire of America 1970?
2. How typical is the hero of the average American male? How heroic is he meant to be? How stupid? Note his indifference to Patricia's being beaten, his apathy, his unwillingness to fight back. his love of photography. his alienation from his parents, his atheism. his final succumbing to neurosis.
3. How typical is the heroine - concerned to save others, to mould others, loving yet dominating her husband, as a product of her family, persecuted by the breather, being indiscriminately shot?
4. How satirically was the heroine's family presented? chatter, pride, overbearing bonhomie, paying for God to be inserted at the wedding, their son being murdered, the other a homosexual, daughter murdered?
5. How satirically were the hero's parents presented - a catalogue of psychological disorders and an index of names, but no memory of the reality of their son's childhood and unable to communicate with him?
6. What was the place of madness in the film? How 'mad' was it in order to teach some 'sane' truths about human society? If so, what truths?
7. What was the place of love in the film? Did the hero and heroine ever really love each other? What was Harry's reaction to Pat's murder?
8. What was the role of violence in the film? How did it reflect what is wrong with U.S. society - the park muggings, quarrels, the murders, especially Pat's, Harry's blood-covered trip in the indifferent subway, the final spree of shootings?
9. Why are the unsolved murders, 'little murders'?
10. What was the importance and point of the cameo of the judge and his outburst on prejudice and left and right?
11. What was the importance of the speech of the minister with its opening up of conventional hypocrisies and yet its satire on those who try amiably to say that everything the individual does sincerely has to be right and good? How was the 'permissive' side of society ridiculed here?
12. What was being satirised in the portrayal of the neurotic detective (his outburst about cheese and crackers) and the overwhelming number of murders to be solved?
13. Was the structure of the film effective for what it was setting out to do? (or was it made up of too many loosely connected but excellent pieces?)
14. Was the film meant to be merely a distorted mirror of our society or was it meant to be didactic?
15. Why did the characters go berserk with violence at the end? Does this indicate 'where it's at' with present-day U.S. society? Is the film absolute in its pessimism?
