ESPeculiarities

Composers and lyricists are constantly asked: What came first, the words or the music? In the film version of On one Clear Day You Can See Forever, what came first was Barbra Streisand. Every other member of the cast is pallid or imitative; the color is in seven flavors of JellO, and the score is eight songs, audience nothing.

Barbra plays Daisy Gamble, a latter-day Brid?y Murphy whose soul shuttles from 18th century England to contemporary New York. Arnold Scaasi designed her knockout New York wardrobe; Cecil Beaton did her up for the London sequences. What more could a girl want, except maybe a movie? Instead, she has Scenarist-Lyricist Alan Jay Lerner's drab romance of Daisy and Doctor Marc Chabot (Yves Montand). The girl's especuliarities drive Chabot mad--do you hear?--mad, mad, mad! But ultimately he learns that scientists must leave the infinite alone, and Daisy goes back to her star-playing lover Tad Pringle (Jack Nicholson).

The male principals perform in one consistent style: sheepish. Montand croons his numbers with the air of a man who wishes that he, too, were back in some earlier incarnation. Nicholson's part is at once minuscule and a giant trip backward from Easy Rider.

Director Vincente Minelli once set trends in Hollywood musicals (The Band Wagon, An American in Paris). For On A Clear Day, he puts his star through all that is passe. As an Englishwoman falling on her London derriere, Barbra is camp Joan Greenwood. As the clumsy American who washed her brain and can't do a thing with it, she is Jerry Lewis in drag. During the songs, she slips comfortably into recording-studio Streisand, belting and purring Burton Lane's monotonies as if they were melodies. Funny Girl, her first and best film, seemed written for Barbra. In Hello Dolly she played a part created for a woman 25 years older. In A Clear Day she essays a role that was created for Barbara Harris. Streisand ought to get back to playing Streisand. It is clear by now that she cannot be anyone else.

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