A Backward Look

Psyche 59, starring Patricia Neal as a young London matron with problems has practically everything it takes to Keep a 1963 Oscar winner (for Hud) from parlaying her solitary statuette into a nifty pair of bookends. The handicaps include:

>Dark glasses. Allegedly suffering from hysterical blindness," Pat hides her wonderfully luminous eyes behind specs, the better not to see the hankypanky between her husband (Curt Jurgens) and her sister (Samantha Eggar) a wayward divorcee. > Dark dialogue. "My trouble's in the head," says Pat. "My brain won't transmit the images . . . there's a hole in my memory." The hole was sunk, she recalls later, one memorable night when she caught Curt in Samantha's room tumbled down the stairs, and had a baby. In that order. > Dark camera work. Many long shots from odd angles, huge but meaningless closeups of eyes and mouths--and shooting through leaves at ground level. All accompanied by dark music. In Diector Alexander Singer's version of an art film, people can't just mope around listening to the grass grow. > Dark symbolism. Knocked down by a horse, Pat blinks, regains her sight, sees the worst, soon bolts up to her room and begins to eye a bottle of phenobarbital tablets, then inexplicably spells out her initials with them. There's a clue there somewhere. But Psyche's knots hardly seem worth unraveling. By the time Actress Neal emerges into the sunshine, trouble-free, her broad, vulnerable smile illuminating far horizons it is perfectly clear that what she has really been looking for is another Hud.

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