I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS

US, 1968, 93 Minutes, Colour.
Peter Sellers, Jo Van Fleet, Joyce Van Patten, Leigh Taylor- Young.
Directed by Hy Averback.

This is a film that seems to be stuck in the late 60s, the time of Flower Power, the frequent use of marijuana and the drug culture. The reference in the title is to Gertrude’s Stein’s friend Alice B. Toklas who is alleged to have invented the brownie, the cake laced with pot.

Peter Sellers, not very funny in this film, is a middle-aged man who falls in love with a free-spirited young woman and has to make a decision whether he wants to follow her way of life or not. The comedy is intended to be in the middle-aged man trying out the freedoms, especially sexual freedom, of the period. Leigh Taylor Young, who had a short career at the time, is the leading lady – though she has had something of a comeback in character roles in later decades.

The screenplay was written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker, the writing team responsible for such films as Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. Mazursky was to have quite an extensive career as a director and also appeared in a number of films. The director of this film is Hy Averback who directed some light comedies at the time including Where Were You When The Lights Went Out, The Great Bank Robbery and Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came. However, after this he didn't make any feature films but had an extensive career in television in the 1970s and the 1980s.

1. Did the film indicate the meaning of the title? What did it mean? What did it add to the meaning of the film? The song and the drugs?

2. Entertaining? A good comedy? An observation of American society? Why was it made?

3. Does the film now seem dated? Is it too particularised on a period of American history, and a past hippy movement? Why?

4. Was the film a good satire? What were the principal objects of the satire? How did the ending of the film fit into its satirical style?

5. How was the conventional world satirised - in Harold and his work, in Mrs Fine and her society style and mannerisms, in Joyce and her work and ambitions, in Mrs Foley at the funeral etc?

6. How effective was the satire on the hippies? On Herb and his way of dressing, his manners? On Nancy and her sense of freedom and her behaviour? On the hippie pad at the end when Harold joined the hippies? On the bad trips?

7. What good was seen in both of the worlds - in the ordinariness of having a job and ambitions? In the hippy world of the refrain about the flower and the meaning of life? Was much good seen in, both worlds?

8. How did the film revolve around Harold as the central figure? The importance and meaning of his work, his friends,, Joyce, Harold as a figure of the 1960s, Harold's dropping out? Why did Harold drop out? Wan it merely a fad? The of the drugged brownies for Harold's dropping out? Harold sincere when a hippie? Why did he return?

9. How was the satire on Joyce a satire on the average American woman? Was Joyce attractive or repellent? Joyce at the weddings?

10. What did Mrs Fine represent - her control of her children and her husband? Her pushy style? Her affluence and arrogance?

11. What did Herb represent - was he a genuine hippie?

12. Was Nancy an attractive character? What were her main attractive features? How did she contrast with the conventions of the average American ? Was she free? Was she sincere? Did she love Harold? Or was her response to him artificial? Why did she fade out of Harold's life?

13. Comment on the visual exaggeration in the film and its effect on the audience and for the meaning of the film: Mrs Fine and her manner of acting, the funeral, the strikes at the funeral, the chasing the funeral, the American highways, Harold's wedding, hippie clothes, the car, the way of dropping out, the invasion of the friends, the brownies etc?

14. The significance of Harold's bad trip - with everybody invading his privacy, with his family being mixed up, in the trip? What effect did this have on him?

15. Why did Harold not go through with the wedding at the end? Was this too inconclusive an ending? Or did it fit into the whole tone, style and meaning of the film?