GETTING STRAIGHT
US, 1969, 123 minutes, Colour.
Elliot Gould, Candice Bergen, Robert F. Lyons.
Directed by Richard Rush.
Getting Straight is one of those campus revolution films of 1969-70 that were severely rubbished by the critics as being phoney and commercial exploitation of serious social situations, (The Strawberry Statement, R.P.M.). Getting Straight is certainly well made, even if the techniques are slick. The students here are not the freshers of The Strawberry Statement, but older students. In fact, the hero has been at University, served in Vietnam and returned to further his studies for a teaching career. The level of protest, therefore, is older and potentially more telling. However, Elliot Gould is not entirely sympathetic as the hero and the proceedings turn to farce during his oral examination of Scott Fitzgerald. The language and behaviour of the students are particularly frank in this film and the scenes of campus violence particularly strong, showing the provocation on both sides. The film was quite popular when released. It is a film for older audiences both in tone and in sympathy with the (comparatively) older hero and his interests.
1. This film was severely attacked by critics for being shallow, slick and exploiting and commercialising campus unrest. Do you agree with these charges?
2. Would the impact of the film have been different had it had for its hero a 20 year old (like The Strawberry Statement) instead of a man who had been to University, to Vietnam and had grown a bit older and wiser before his return to campus?
3. What impression of the American university life did the opening scenes of crowds, hustle and mechanisation make?
4. Was Harry a revolutionary? What did he want to make of his life?
5. Was Harry a likeable hero - a mixture of Groucho Marx (and Elliot Gould in other films) and a student, promiscuous, selfish, abrupt, cheating, trying to be 'honest'? He wants to get teacher credentials.
6. Was Jan a likeable heroine - intelligent, 'ruined', searching, intense, conventional, loving, 'bitchy', not wanting to be a servant, wanting a normal life?
7. How typical was Nick - 'high’, odd, clever, clown, his act to avoid the draft. his haircut and change to the marines ' who want people who are mad to kill, not just mad'?
8. How typical was Bill - doctor, patronising, as amoral as the next man, but conventional?
9. What picture of university life did the film give - study. crowded, earthy, amoral, crude; demonstrations and rioting; intensity; black and white Americans? Yet Harry says it is isolated - he was at Selma; the comments on Vietnam -'The graves come to the surface during the floods'.
10. Did the film take sides during the riot scenes or did it film them impartially (student stirring and provocation as well as police brutality)? There are senseless bashing on both sides. What sense did the violence make?
11. How responsible was Harry in his interview with the Dean? How responsible was the Dean?
12. How much compromise has to be? - the liberals don't want the universities run by kids; the administrations are unreal and twenty years too late in their offering of responsibility - like inviting some hundreds of peasants to a ball to stave off the French Revolution.
13. How much freedom to make mistakes should be allowed? Why does the suppression of choice make revolutionaries of protestors?
14. Does Harry find himself? He ridicules Jan for her conventionality and then wants to make himself and be a teacher.
15. Was the caricature on University academics and the exam too heavy-handed? What was the purpose of emphasising Scott Fitzgerald and homosexuality by the fanatic professor?
16. Harry wants to teach authentically. How right is he in saying that university degrees are 'publicly-endorsed crap'?
17. What does the end of the film mean? Is the real world so completely stupid that oneself and love are the only authenticity?
18, Why was this film made? What effect would it have on 'campus radicals'? on parents and teachers?
