Little Murders

Alfred is a photographer living in New York. He no longer photographs people; he photographs dog dirt. He is beaten in the street and does not fight back; he thinks not fighting back is safer. Patsy sees him being beaten and takes an interest. The two get together. She tries to change him; she introduces him to her family and persuades him to marry. In the background of the city something is always happening: the phone rings and nobody speaks, the power goes, shots come through windows. Nobody finds it out of the ordinary. Alan Arkin directs; it is his first film as director. Elliott Gould plays Alfred and Marcia Rodd plays Patsy; Vincent Gardenia, Elizabeth Wilson and Donald Sutherland are in the cast. The source is Jules Feiffer's play and he wrote the screenplay himself. Feiffer was a cartoonist and the play is among his best known works. Its form is black humour; the violence never leaves the background and the characters have grown used to it. The wedding scene is its most cited section; the minister played by Donald Sutherland makes a long speech. The matter it treats is indifference; the film shows urban violence not as an event but like the weather. It drew little interest on release and its standing rose later. Its last section changes the register entirely and the comedy arrives somewhere. Its limit is form; the stage structure is kept, the pace flat and the humour cold. Who it is for: viewers who like American black humour and independent cinema of the seventies. Who it is not for: it is cold, bleak, and the ending uncomfortable.