July Pork Bellies

FOR PETE'S SAKE Directed by PETER YATES Screenplay by STANLEY SHAPIRO and MAURICE RICHLIN

The screwball comedy stubbornly refuses to be reborn. It flourished in the '30s and into the '40s, urged on by the talents of such as Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday) and Preston Sturges (Sullivan's Travels, The Lady Eve) and considerably abetted by the general delirium of the times. The format flourished under Sturges all during World War II but died out soon after the war ended.

Now that film makers are paying scrupulous attention to the old genres, and such formulas as the police thriller, the horror flick and the private-eye caper have been dusted off with success, screwball comedy was hardly likely to escape. All in the name of homage, Peter Bogdanovich ripped off Bringing Up Baby, called it What's Up Doc? and made himself a hit. Doc also represented Barbra Streisand's initiation into the realm of frenetic comedy.

If eye-popping, mouth contortion and shredding of the vocal cords were qualifications for a comedienne, then Streisand would be the new Carole Lombard. But she has none of Lombard's ease of spirit, her giddy eccentricity or quick, akimbo intelligence. Streisand is only aggressive. She scrounges for laughs like a bargain-basement shopper.

Here she plays a Brooklyn housewife named Henrietta, whose cab-driver husband Pete (Michael Sarrazin) is 32 years old and still trying to pull himself through college. One early summer's day, Pete's dispatcher down at the garage passes along a hot commodities-market tip: a trade deal with the Russians will make the price of pork bellies go through the roof come July. All Pete needs is $3,000 capital. He is without much enterprise (let it not be forgotten that Michael Sarrazin is not the star of this movie), so Henrietta goes out to get the grubstake. This initially involves doing business with a loan shark. The pork-belly deal is delayed, so the shark sells her contract to a madam, who sells it to a couple of Mafia killers, who sell it to some cattle rustlers. As each new situation becomes increasingly preposterous, laughter is supposed to rise in proportion.

The movie, however, is like a case of aggravated assault, so eager, so desperate is it to be funny. Director Peter Yates (Bullitt) manages action briskly enough, but the script remains intractable. It was written by the authors of Pillow Talk and offers the same sort of antique situation comedy: a virtuous woman flirts with immorality and emerges unsullied and, indeed, victorious. Achieving this happy result requires some odd fancy-stepping. Pete, knowing that his wife had tried to be a whore (but not knowing, as the audience does, that she had been unsuccessful at it), forgives her by giving her a ring and proclaiming his pride that she loved him enough to "sell herself."

That the writers obviously mean Pete to believe this, and intend for audiences to accept it as well, is one of the few genuinely amusing things in the movie. Written right and played right, Pete's testimonial could have been the sort of denouement that was a Preston Sturges specialty, an inadvertent confession of blindness and stupidity. It could have had a well-honed double edge of irony, but such style should not really be expected from film makers who prefer a bludgeon to a blade. "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.