January 17th: LITTLE MURDERS (Alan Arkin, 1971)

NOTE: This film is out of print and is no longer available on DVD.



A misanthropic photographer is practically bullied into a relationship with an unflappable optimist who makes it her mission to help him enjoy life.



Little Murders is the brainchild of Jules Feiffer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, author and playwright. First staged as a play in both New York and London, it was translated to the screen with several of its actors reprising their roles, including lead character Elliot Gould (his typical laconic style taken to its utmost extreme), who also produced. The story reflects the tumultuous nature of the social upheavals in the late 60's/early 70's, with a healthy dose of paranoia specific to New York City at the time.



Director Alan Arkin is a veteran actor known best to modern audiences for his Oscar-winning performance as the grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine, but has appeared in many noteworthy films since the 1960's, such as Catch-22, Edward Scissorhands, Slums of Beverly Hills, and Glengarry Glen Ross. With this, his debut feature as a director, he crafted a film that stylistically seems inspired at times by The Graduate (made four years earlier), and in turn its portrait of a neurotic romance was likely an influence on the peak Woody Allen period from the late 1970's, specifically Annie Hall. Fused with this New York style of humor is an absurdist bent that recalls Monty Python and the films of surrealist Luis Buñuel, as well as a satirist viewpoint akin to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange.



Gould (who also produced) is joined by Donald Sutherland (who presides over what may be the strangest wedding ceremony in cinema history), Marcia Rodd, Vincent Gardenia, Lou Jacobi, Doris Roberts (of Everybody Loves Raymond fame), and Arkin himself as an unhinged police detective. The film was photographed by Gordon Willis, who would go on to shoot all three installments of the Godfather saga, and a handful of Woody Allen's features (including the one mentioned above).



Released to little fanfare and success aside from some good reviews, the film received perhaps its highest praise from legendary French director Jean Renoir, who said "This film will never be forgotten".



Running time is approx. 110 minutes.