The Road of Good Intentions Sweet Liberty

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

"I pray you, sir, do not make me blush as it ill becomes me." There she stands in colonial costume, eyes modestly downcast, softly speaking in the formal rhythms of the 18th century--the incarnation of the Revolutionary War heroine whose story Professor Michael Burgess has won the Pulitzer Prize for retelling. So smitten is he with the idea of meeting her in the flesh that he forgets he is actually encountering an actress named Faith Healy (Michelle Pfeiffer), leading lady of the Hollywood company that is turning his college town into a location for a distressingly free adaptation of his book.

Imagine his surprise when he arrives at her room for a more intimate encounter and finds her on the angry prowl, telephone in one hand, cigarette in the other, barking brisk, not to say obscene, instructions to her agent. Why, says Michael, you're two people. "If all I could be is two different people, I'd be out of business," she snaps back.

Welcome to show biz, Michael. You're going to write a lot of ibids under this scene. For among the other aliens from Hollywood's outer space are a terminally insecure screenwriter hilariously impersonated by that perfectly assured actor Bob Hoskins; a leading man (Michael Caine) who comes alive only when he puts himself at risk, either by seducing other men's wives or by driving dangerously; a director (Saul Rubinek) whose perfect tastelessness is matched by his impenetrable egocentricity. Obviously Writer-Director Alda has not spent his spare time on television and movie sets on the phone with his agent. He has tuned in to the lunacies of his profession, and when Sweet Liberty is minding its own business--the movie business--it is on high comic ground.

It is ordinary life that gives it trouble. In writing Burgess for himself, Alda has imbued the character with his own well-known and entirely admirable traits. He is intelligent and well spoken. He is kind and decent. He is a man of reason. He is also something of a bore. Alda lacks the air of dangerousness that movie stardom requires. That is why his great success as a performer has been on television, where week in, week out, agreeableness makes a star. In his last feature, The Four Seasons, however, he was successful because he integrated himself into an ensemble of amusing busybodies. Here he is more an observer, and a certain smugness steals over his character.

Alda's rather dry and distant directorial style does not help. And as a writer he has not provided for himself as generously as he has for others. His romance with a teacher played by Lise Hilboldt, an actress whose plainness of manner amounts to a kind of self-cancellation, is dully conventional. And a subplot that involves them in an endlessly unfunny attempt to soothe the troubled spirit of Burgess's mad old mom is irrelevant and near to tasteless. She is played by Lillian Gish, and the movies' oldest pro clearly understands that she is trapped in Sweet Liberty's dreariest neighborhood. She does her brash best to break loose, but her efforts are more brave than successful. Doubtless her first auteur, D.W. Griffith, warned her there would be roles like this. And movies like this, signaling good intentions at every turn, but never quite achieving them.