There’s a perfect little throwaway scene in Alan Arkin’s Little Murders in which Elliot Gould finds himself soaked with blood and riding the New York subway. His shocking appearance leads to a few looks and whispers, but as he heads up towards the city-streets, he passes another man, soaked with blood, whose appearance is more remarkable than his own. It’s a tiny moment, but one that lays out a firm route for Jules Feiffer’s script. This is a dog eat dog world, and what’s happening to you, however bad it may seem, is already happening to someone else.
That downbeat feel inhabits every frame of Little Murders, adapted by Feiffer from his own Broadway play. Rolling power blackouts cut the lights mid-scene, with characters barely acknowledging being thrust into darkness. Gangs roam the street, picking on the innocent and vulnerable. Into this beleaguered world, Patsy Newquist (Marcia Rodd) attempts to win the heart of disillusioned advertising man and photographer Alfred Chamberlain (Elliot Gould), but Alfred is already locked into a negative cycle of self-abasement. When Patsy meets Alfred, he’s allowing himself to be beaten up by a gang; the nihilism of Fight Club has roots in this kind of counter-cultural shrug. Patsy takes Alfred to meet her parents (Vincent Gardenia and Elizabeth Wilson), but it takes a senseless, violent act to snap him out of his alienated dwam…
With many of the cast reprising their stage-roles, there’s more than a touch of the theatrical here, but Feiffer’s play is still spry and admirably anti-authority in outlook. Arkin has a wild cameo as a detective who has completely lost the plot, and he also calls in a big name cameo from Donald Sutherland as a wacky minister. Reuniting Sutherland and Gould the year after Robert Altman’s MASH is something of a coup, and both men excel here, delivering crazy, true monologues that reflect Feiffer’s vision of a world gone mad.
Feiffer once drew a cartoon of a huge crowd surrounding a tiny podium, with the caption to the effect; ‘how will we tell them that the microphone isn’t working?’ How to use a mass-medium to deliver his messages was an issue that seemed to preoccupy Feiffer, and yet Little Murders, something of an obscure film, absolutely nails the author’s social commentary. With the leads all alive at the time of writing this assessement, Little Murders would be well-worth a feature-length documentary to explore the themes caught here; it’s something of a neglected classic, and would be a great subject for a streaming revival. Just £55 for a DVD these days.
This sounds like my kind of thing! Love the cast, and it’s a hell of a premise. £55 sounds a bit much, but don’t worry – I know a guy…
Nothing to a man of your means.
Not sure why this has faded away, it was certainly a cult hit at the time, Jules Feiffer actually the big attraction as far as I remember with Gould just beginning to find his way through a series of iconic characters. Certainly well worth a look.
Late night bbc Friday movie of my youth, looking better today, although £55 for a dvd is a bit much. Half that on blu-ray, if you can accept superior picture quality.
That is some price for a DVD.
Well that looks suitably bonkers, as is the price so a nope I’m afraid.
£55 is nothing to the likes of us…
Umm….
Spend that on condiments…
Well they say a fool and his money is soon parted, but I’d expect better from a Scotsman!
Should have that on my gravestone…
Haha, have you been profligating ol’chap?
First thing I do when I get up in the morning…
They didn’t cover that in Men In Kilts.
There’s nothing worn under the kilt, it’s all brand new!
That doesn’t make any sense, I am pondering, what is a brand new nothing worn under a kilt?
It’s a play on the word ‘worn’
Jupiters cock I’m dim sometimes. 🙄
It’s the way I tell ‘em.
Might have worked better in sound speech instead of thought speech.
Worked for Spike Milligan when he told it to me.
You are such a name-dropper!
Sounds like my kind of movie!
Can’t believe I’ve just now heard of it
There’s plenty of bad movies from this period, but this one is as good as the cast suggests.
Just like John Wick. He let himself get beat up too. So they are obviously the same film, just from different times. Brutha’s from different Muthah’s as it were.
Carry on.
I shall continue to look around on the internet to see the next interesting thing….