Move

1970

There are films that endure the test of time and place and seem to reach the heart and head in any country or decade because they zip along with some combination of witty dialogue, interesting characters, lofty ideas, poignant moments and cleverly constructed plots.

Move is not one of those films.

It was made in 1970, and there it stayed, along with go-go dancers, Laugh-In, and its star, Eliot Gould. He seemed to be in just about every 1970 movie. Thanks to Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, as well as Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, Gould inexplicably became the hottest property in Hollywood, although he was not an especially attractive man nor a very versatile performer. His entire schtick seemed to consist of leering and mumbling sardonically, skills which were tailor-made for Altman's universe, but which traveled outside that realm with difficulty. A little of that went a long way. It just didn't work here.

Gould plays Hiram Jaffe, a 30-something New Yorker who aspires to be a legitimate playwright. In the meantime, he walks dogs and writes soft-core romance novels to play the bills. In his frustration over  his lagging career and the ennui of his domestic life, he turns to fantasies. This presents a major problem for the film. The distinction between his fantasy life and reality may have been clear in the mind of the scriptwriter, but it certainly isn't clear to the viewer, which makes the film difficult to follow, and continually prompts a reaction of "Did that happen, or did he imagine that?"

The entire film takes place during a couple of days in Hiram's life, during which he is trying to move from one apartment to another. The mover is a mysterious man whose telephone conversations indicate that he seems to know every detail of Hiram's life, although the two have never met. Hiram's attempt to meet with the man and/or get him to commit to a specific moving time is the driving force of the alleged plot. In the course of the film, that mover makes those mysterious all-knowing phone calls to Hiram, visits Hiram's wife, and ultimately steals all of Hiram's furniture. Or does he? Does any of that actually happen? Does some of it happen? Or is it all in Hiram's head? Just who is this mysterious mover, and what is he supposed to symbolize? Similarly, Hiram may or may not have an amatory adventure with a strange woman he meets in the park (played by Genevieve Waite, the mother of Bijou Phillips) , may or may not foil a burglary with the assistance of his faithful St. Bernard, and may or may not have a series of adventures with a persnickety mounted policeman.

The viewer neither knows nor cares. Although the film runs an economical 90 minutes, the pace is so languid, the nature of reality is so blurry, and Gould is so laid-back, that the film seems as long and static as that Andy Warhol film which is just eight hours of a stationery camera trained on the Empire State Building. (How did Andy know when that film was finished? I'm guessing he just ran out of film.) Gould's character comes across as a whiny, white-privileged jerk who has every component necessary for happiness, but has trouble dealing with petty annoyances (ooh, I'm so bored with married life and I need a bigger apartment). His concerns, and the movie's themes, seemed banal and unimportant in an era when most people were concerned with serious global issues like Vietnam, Civil Rights, Charles Manson, and the generation gap inspired by the new counter-culture.

Plus the movie is supposed to be a comedy, but just isn't funny.

Move bombed at the box office, despite the alleged draw of Gould's star power. Nothing fails worse than a confusing, unfunny comedy. While the film was merely tedious, the aftermath of the film bordered on, then reached the level of tragedy.

• Gould swore never to work with director Stuart Rosenberg again, characterizing him as a nice man and a competent professional who just didn't "get" comedy. (A pretty fair appraisal, in my estimation.) Rosenberg did not need to grasp humor in order to be successful. He was able to direct some successful, acclaimed and laughless films. He had already directed Cool Hand Luke before Move, and would later achieve some box office success with The Amityville Horror, and some critical love with The Pope of Greenwich Village.

• Joel Lieber, the author of the screenplay and the eponymous novel upon which Move was based, was not so fortunate. He also abandoned comedy and wrote a depressing novel, Two Way Traffic, which was a thinly disguised version of his own unhappy life. Shortly after completing that novel, and within a year after the film version of Move was released, Joel Lieber jumped out of his high-rise Manhattan apartment. As his friends and family told the story, his girlfriend and her mother were sipping coffee on the terrace when Joel walked past them wordlessly, simply stepped into the air, and plunged to the sidewalk below. Like the Eliot Gould character in this movie, he seemed to have a great life spoiled by self-pity and "white people problems."
  

Paula Prentiss,



Genevieve Waite



and Garrie Bean (Who? Nobody seems to know).

Paula Prentiss also posed topless in a bathtub with Gould for a promo picture (the bathtub scene is in the film, but no naughty body parts are exposed).

And Genevieve Waite exposed the top of her butt for another promo still.

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