Jack's back in the rat race

With Save the Tiger ("AA", Oscar 1 and 2), Jack Lemmon is back in command of a comedy which has all the savage and sardonic bite we lately missed from "Avanti".
His Harry Stoner is another fhce of ' the materialistic American businessman Lemmon first made us take a close look at in "The Apartment". Harry is a decade or so older and further down the road to corruption along which he and his partner (Jack Gifford) are driven by the ferocity of the rat race to conduct their business.
From petty commercial trickery to arson, Stoner is a reluctant crook dreaming nostalgically of the war days when he and his kind were heroes and could afford morals. Bitter as well as sery, very funny. the film is a salutary cautionary tale for the times, nicely directed by John Avildsen.
Fred Zinttemann Is the classicist among film directors. Despite apparent differences in genre between the sensitive idealism of "The Search", "The Member of the Wedding" or "A Man for All Seasons", the romanticism of "High Noon" and the sheer technical accomplishment of "The Nun's Story," the Zinnemann stamp is upon them all contemporary tragedy, childhood remembered, religious history or Western, all in his impeccable classical style.
So the latest Zinnemann film. The Day of the Jackal ("AA", Paramount and Universal) is an immaculate political thriller from a bestselling novel by Frederick Forsyth. Action centres around, or rather is built up to an attempt to assassinate General de Gaulle by the illegal O.A.S.
Our awareness from the outset that no such attempt succeeded makes it a real exercise In suspense. It also makes the early stages of the recruitment of a suitable cold-blooded professional killer, with experience from the Congo and Latin America, seem on the slow side.
Once the cool young Englishman (Edward Fox) has been hired and code-named "The Jackal", details of his preparations are absorbing enough, if still slow.
They are enlivened by a beautiful Hitchcockian cameo from Cyril Cusack as the expert who makes him his gun, and other such familiar assets as -Ronald Pickup (to forge the documents), Alan Badel (Minister in charge of French security ), Terence Alexander (for the British Embassy), Tony Britton (for the British police.) Only with the appearance of the French police commissioner Lebel (Michel Lonsdale), dives. the whole thing spring to life. This relatively un familiar Anglo-French actor. reminiscent of ihe greatest French actors in his relaxed, weary manner which covers unsleeping intelligence, electrifies the whole affair, including the Jackal's motor-chase through Europe and chilling elimination of a charming companion (nelphine Seyrie As we near liberation Day, 1963, Paris and the target (we see the bullet miss General de Gaulle's shining, bowed head) Zinnemann gathers up his film for a climax so satisfactorily exciting, it is hard to recall some of the /ones/cum that had gone before.
Slither ("AA", Empire 2) is a not inappropriate title for a film which slid into the West End with the most
elusive pull that ever confronted me,
to turn into the funniest film for many %seeks.
The adventures of a freed convict (James ('aen). an ex-embezzler and night club comic (Peter Boyle) the lattcr's wife (amusing Louise Lasser) and that engaging, slap happy glamour _girl Sally Kellerman across California in pursuit of hidden treasure and to escape gunfire suggest a mixture of "Nfidnight Cowboy": ,"Easy Rider" (same cameraman, Laszlo Kovacs) and "The Long Long Trailer". In its more relaxed manner it is /is acute a comment as "Save the Tiger" on an aspect of American life. Congratulations to director Howard
Zieff his transfer from commercial television.
Paul Newman and his actress-wife Joanne Woodward are justly acclaimed. But after their success with "Rachel, Rachel" their latest teamwork, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds ("AA", Bloomsbury Theatre) is a distozoointment. Perhaps producer-director Newman was ill-advised to choose a stage play, even if it did win a Pulitzer prize, as a film vehicle for his wife.
Corruption and pollution are in the air, and some of the hideous consequences of pollution and poverty foreseen for the 21st century in Soylent Green ("AA". Empire) may not be unthinkable, however horrible.
But not all the passionate sincerity of Charlton Heston as a cop who refuses to cover up the appalling truth or the elderly nostalgia of the late Edward G. Robinson, who prefers death in deep freeze to facing the truth of our future nourishment, when people are scooped up like garbage, could persuade me of the logic which arrives there.
FredaBruce Lockhart