SOME KIND OF A NUT
US, 1969, 90 minutes,
Dick van Dyke, Angie Dickenson, Rosemary Forsyth, Zohra Lampert.
Directed by Garson Kanin.
An an attempt to make a topical comedy about anti-Establishment attitudes in the late sixties. A similar but more successful comedy was George Seaton's What's So Bad About Feeling Good?. It was about the anti-Establishment attitudes of the middle-aged.
Dick van Dyke is at home in this kind of comedy situation and does his best although many of the comic terms are forced. Angie Dickinson is quite attractive as his wife. The surprise is that the film was written and directed by Garson Kanin, who had written and directed films in the late thirties and early forties, like They Knew What They Wanted and Bachelor Mother. With his wife Ruth Gordon he had written many screen plays like Adam's Rib and Pat and Mike for Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. This screenplay seems a very slight effort and quite strained. However, it does reflect in some ways America in the late sixties.
1. The film received very bad revievs on its first release. Why? How well did it reflect America at the time, the middle-aged and their reactions to conformity and the possibility of some kind of revolt? How does it seem now?
2. The title and its American tone? The particularly American atmosphere of the film? Its stars?
3. The importance of technical style, split screen, the various distorted lens shots, the presentation of Fred's trip, the psychedelia, the alternation of Pamela and Rachael in Fred's imagination, the farcical aspects and the way they were presented? Adding to the film, distracting from it?
4. A glance at the United States in 1969 - fads, anti?Establishment tones? The symbol of the beard? How does this seem now?
5. The credits and the long opening sequence? What did it establish? The relationship of Fred and Pamela? Rachael’s presence? Marriage, sex, the behaviour of the police and their spying? Public offences? A situation for the growing of the beard? The success of the farcical aspects of comedy?
6. The contrast with the sobriety of the bank, Pamela and Fred seen at work? The contrast with Rachael? Fred's plans for divorce and re-marriage? The growing of the beard and the issue at the bank? The gallery of bank people as seen in their reaction?
7. The focus of the film on the beard - and Fred looking in the mirror, at the restaurant with Pamela imagining all kinds of beards? The ordinariness of it and the extraordinariness of the reactions? The reaction of the bank manager, the owner of the bank and all the interpretation of left-wing approaches? Rachael and her appreciation of Fred's self-assertion?
8. The trip and Pamela’s reaction, friends and their disgust? Their coming together and their attempting to shave him?
9. The advice that Fred took to cope with the situation, exercise, the Maharishi, the fads? The taxi driver?
10. The parody of demonstrations with the bank people demonstrating about the board and not using the bank?
11. The character of Rachael, Fred's swim with her after his crisis, the bond between them? Her driving a truck, giving him support, the future since he had changed so much?
12. The long chase sequence throughout the house - humorous, forced? The hospital sequence and Fred's release?
13. A happy ending? How successful a middleclass attempt at criticizing fads, Establishment primness, presuppositions?
