Wild & Woolly

Something Wild (Prometheus; United Artists) is somewhat woolly. Director Jack Garfein and Novelist Alex Karmel are listed as the men who wrote the movie, but it plays as though the script had been done by three other people.

Like Tennessee Williams, for one. The picture begins with a casual case of rape. The victim is a college girl (Carroll Baker, in private life Mrs. Garfein) who goes skipping through a New York City park alone after dark. When she comes to, she tidies her clothes, staggers home, sneaks upstairs past her prudish parent (Mildred Dunnock). In a meticulous ritual of hysteria, she cuts up her torn clothes, flushes them down the drain, pops into bed as if nothing had happened, as if out of sight were really out of mind.

Freud is not mocked. Next morning, on the subway, the smell and pressure of flesh make her sick with disgust. Dread like suppuration oozes from the deep, unmedicated wound in her mind. She sinks into fevered apathy, and one day in a daze almost jumps off--does it always have to be a bridge? Anyway, a big dumb slob of a grease monkey (Ralph Meeker) grabs her just in time and--

Exit Tennessee Williams. Enter Samuel Beckett, for about 40 minutes of motionless movie. The mechanic locks the heroine in his dingy little basement apartment. Why? "You're my last chance." he mumbles cryptically. "Let me out!" she screams. He shakes his head. "Let me out!" she screams. He shakes his head. They eat. They sleep. He gets stoned. They eat. They sleep. He gets stoned.

Exit Beckett. Enter Fannie Hurst, at her gurgliest, to provide a happy ending: the slob, who is really Prince Charming in disguise, wakes the spellbound heroine with the magic of his love, and they live happily ever after--in that dingy little basement apartment.

Cameraman Eugen Shuftan, a cunning old (65) craftsman well-known (Port of Shadows, Metropolis) in Europe, sometimes shows a young man's infatuation with technique. Pigeons, for instance, have no importance in this picture, so why in Hell's Kitchen have they been blown up till they look like taxicabs with wings? But in general he contrives with careful empathy to see the city as the heroine sees it, to suggest the horror in the eye of the beholder. What's more, Composer Aaron Copland has written some graceful background music, and the three principals do as well as anybody could with the script in hand. As to the script, Actress Dunnock has the last word in the last scene of the film. "What," she inquires in a blank confusion that her audience will wholly share, "what has happened?"

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