After two years, studios begin to roll out their counterculture attacks on the Powers-That-Be, starting with twin campus riot movies, "Getting Straight" and "The Strawberry Statement", both hitting the market place in early summer......not long after the Kent State massacre in which National Guardsmen, sent to quell campus unrest, opened fire on students, killing four of them.
"Strawberry Statement" was instantly disposable, a puffball negligible artsy-fartsy nothing, directed with a 'hey-look-at-me' visual slickness by a non-entity promoted from making TV commercials....
"Getting Straight", however, proved a different animal altogether......a riotous, take no prisoners, in your face comedy that laid out all the festering, societal open wounds in one massive violent and funny spectacle......racism, sexism, Vietnam, the clash of generations turned into open warfare.....all of it presented in scenes that rarely dipped below fever pitch.....
This three ring circus of a torn apart country had its perfect ringmaster in Elliot Gould, who ruled the films of the early 70's playing the staunchly defiant humanist railing against the idiocy, bigotry and madness of Authority.....(too many of these 'rage-against-the-Man' movies in too short a time eventually burned out Gould, he began to look shell-shocked, but he was still in top form for "Getting Straight")
Gould is Harry Bailey, flat broke graduate student pursuing a high school teaching certificate and a Masters degree in Literature. The harried Harry, a world weary Vietnam vet and survivor of the brutal 1960's civil rights protests, views both sides of the raging political/cultural wars with jaundiced disillusionment.........even as they all curry his favor, the the passionate, newly revolutionized students and the clueless, insensitive, obdurate bureaucrats who run the sprawling state university serving as the film's backdrop.
Harry's futile efforts to remain apart from the chaos swirling around him invariably provoke him into the film's highpoints.....his long, scenery-chewing comic tirades, resembling Lenny Bruce standup routines. Some of his most cutting, cruelest attacks get leveled on his sweet, adorable girlfriend Jan (Candice Bergen), a former prom-queen airhead whom Harry takes entitled pride in having rescued from a life of middle class suburban mediocrity.......and never lets her forget it.
Ultimately the deep flaws in Harry's character leave him undone.......as much as we're invited to admire his compassion, liberalism and lethal wit..... we cringe watching Harry's dreams shattered by his unstable moral compass, not much better than that of a Nixon White House aide. A grievous error of judgement (and one whose results you can see coming from 50 miles away) leaves Harry at the mercy of his nemesis, the head of the school's education department Dr. Willhunt (Jeff Corey).....who sees the rebellious Harry as nothing more than a preening elitist who envisions mentoring the next Salinger while ignoring most of his other, less gifted students. (We know Harry would never do that, which makes his comeuppance even more wrenching.)
Besides Gould, we wouldn't dare not mention the movie's other MVP, director Richard Rush who propulsively pushes this film into both melodramatic and comedic hysteria with every scene. The movie's never at rest, and neither is Rush's camera......constantly going in and out of focus from actor to actor. As for the politics, you couldn't pin Rush down on what side he falls on.....he lays out the generational battles like he's a cold promoter of gladiatorial spectacle....for him, it's all violent grist for the mill, the stuff of exploitation. The students are largely depicted as naive dopes,waiting to get their heads bashed (you can see in them the dawn of the heavy handed political correctness on today's campuses)......the film's 'grown-ups' are cardboard asses, mostly pop-up targets for Harry's withering asides.
Rush arrived at this film from directing action-packed biker movies and with the help of his able stunt director Chuck Bail, he brilliantly stages "Getting Straight"s centerpiece sequence.....a near apocalyptic campus riot, complete with billowing clouds of tear gas, stunt-students tumbling off concrete balconies, and vicious cops slamming nightsticks across the heads of bleeding college girls. It's a snapshot of l970 America imagined as a movie action sequence, exhilarating and disturbing at the same time. (Rush constantly betrays his exploitation roots throughout the film, never missing a chance to have the camera mimic Harry's girl ogling point of view.....and few years later, he and Chuck Bail will wreak vehicular havoc on San Francisco in "Freebie And The Bean",Rush's equally ragged deconstruction of the cop-buddy genre....covered in a previous post)....
By the time "Getting Straight" reaches its Armageddon-it-on conclusion, with the campus now occupied by more troops than we have in Afghanistan, Harry Bailey, having self-destructed his own future, smiles at the sight of the rampaging students, "Whoopee," he mutters. It has taken him till the very end of the movie to embrace the chaos that Richard Rush has been cheering on since the opening credits.....why not enjoy the abyss, Rush seems to be telling us.....and he makes it look like all American violent fun....and sexy as hell.
A one of a kind moment in time......as seen by a filmmaker who may not hold any discernible point of view......but knows how to pump life into his movie....we'll grade 3 stars (***).....don't forget chapters 4,8,9,and 10 for tomorrow.....
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