Inadmissible Evidence

William Maitland is a 39-year-old London solicitor who has gazed into the broken mirror of his life and gleaned the terrifying knowledge that he is "irredeemably mediocre." With an irascible wit and a fanged tongue, he spews out tirades of paranoia. A self-pitying child of rage and fear, he drowns his panic in alcohol. He courts oblivion in lust--the bed is his womb and his coffin. He wakes with jittery remorse to smell death's bad breath at dawn. On the self-accusing charge of having made his existence an obscenity, this anti-hero sits in a prisoner's dock watching his life pass like a funeral cortege.

Based on the play by John Osborne, Inadmissible Evidence has made a triumphant transition to the screen, with all of its claustrophobic intensity, venom and quinine-bitter laughter intact. In his scenario for the film, Osborne has speeded the tempo by slimming the monologues; Director Anthony Page has gained added power by close-ups that pore over a human face desolate in its frustrations. As on the London and New York stage, the demanding role of Maitland is enacted by Nicol Williamson, a player of explosive passion. Williamson does not merely perform; he lays his life on the line. His eyes are wells of mocking, melancholy torment that seem to see and sear every filmgoer in the house.

Inadmissible Evidence progresses through what James Joyce called "epiphanies": episodes of cumulative revelation. The witnesses called up for Maitland's defense damn him. They are the reproofs of his decay, shadowy chroniclers of loss, rejection, betrayal and defeat. His upbraided, put-upon clerks are walking legal briefs, drawn up against Maitland's corrosive contempt for his work. His wife (Eleanor Fazan) attests Maitland's bankrupt marriage. He resorts to his sage and patient mistress (Jill Bennett), not to exchange the gift of self but to flee from self. His casual office couchmates simply represent a frantic release of tension in the friction of flesh. Maitland propositions girls with brusque self-regard: "Do you like it, do you want it? Those are the only questions I have ever thought worthwhile going into."

None of this makes Maitland either admirable or appealing. The fascination of his character rests in the fact that Osborne has made him incontestably and hypnotically real and the symbol and substance of buffeted humanity in the complex 20th century. His fears are shocks of recognition for the audience. Where man was originally created in the image of God, Maitland is disturbed and resentful of his being remade in the image of the computer. He is outraged that the soothsayers of scientific progress seem to be sundering the old blood ties that linked man to man. Maitland envies the young their guilt-free grace and cool; yet he lashes out against a generation--including his own icily indifferent daughter--that may have self-protectively guarded itself from feeling any emotion in depth.

Inadmissible Evidence is also a feast of literacy. At his best, John Osborne can make words spit, sing, keen and dance. In this film, he has something to say and knows how to say it. Nicol Williamson does the rest with abrasive splendor; one crease in his troubled brow is an abyss of anguish.

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