Way-Out in Chicago

Goldstein. From Lake Michigan's murkiest depths, a scruffy, bearded old tramp (Lou Gilbert) wades ashore wearing dirty long underwear. He pushes an obese violinist through the streets of Chicago in a wheelchair. He is pursued through the phallic phantasmagoria of a sausage factory by a uniformed guard until a junk sculptor (Thomas Erhart) darts to his rescue. The sculptor defeats the guard, who is ground into lunch meat.

The tramp Goldstein may be the elusive prophet Elijah, or perhaps Godot, or God, or the junk sculptor's father. He disappears, and the sculptor searches the city, but fails to find Goldstein, or even to get a fix on his own identity. Instead, the sculptor falls in with Novelist Nelson Algren, who is interviewed at home among portraits of relatives, nudes and famous boxers. To raise everyone's low spirits, a pair of Manhattan abortionists (Severn Darden and Anthony Holland) are flown in to minister to the sculptor's girl friend. In a campy comedy sequence played for somewhat more than it is worth, they debate the merits of Leonardo da Vinci while performing their grisly chore, then depart for Kansas City. "One of the most serene of cities," Darden coos. "The Benares of the Middle West," Holland concurs.

Goldstein was written, produced and directed by two bright University of Chicago graduates, Philip Kaufman and Benjamin Manaster, who claim on slender evidence to have drawn inspiration from Israeli Philosopher Martin Buber's gentle, anecdotal Tales of the Hasidim. Blessed with strikingly good photography and the witty commentary of Meyer Kupferman's musical score, the movie was hailed by enraptured critics at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival as a wildly satirical fable. Actually, Goldstein is merely the sort of cinematic cliche in which a young hero says yes to life by running from scene to scene at top speed. The technique is unquestionably serviceable, since many an art film forerunner has said no to life in precisely the same way.

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