What's New, Pussycat?

What's New, Pussycat? reaches out for a world about to come, a world where all repression will be abolished and where abnormality will disappear. It reaches with humor, for laughter may be the best way to shrug off the puritanical past. Those who do not believe in such an enhanced conception of human liberty may find the film shocking and worthless. But those in the vanguard in the war against inhibition are sure to respond to this new and freer conception of humor.

Pussycat is about as organized as a "happening." The loose plot concerns a young rake who is perplexed at his Don Juan complex and seeks the aid of a sex-starved pyschoanalyst. The analyst, played by Peter Sellers, believes in "group therapy," which means orgies. The final orgy, held at a small chateau just outside Paris, includes everything from timebombs to Ursella Andress.

Film buffs will recognize Pussycat as a distant cousin of such sophisticated international comedies as A Shot in the Dark or The Pink Panther, which are inevitably set in Paris and inevitably include Peter Sellers. These jet-set films have been getting increasingly wild; just think of how far they have come since Charade. In fact, Pussycat even pays homage to its pedigree and allows Cary Grant a walk-on part. Audrey Hepburn apparently was too modest to appear at this melee.

Pussycat, unlike its predecessors, contains symbols and images which are woven throughout the film. Many sequences are meant as parodies of classic scenes from other movies. The dream sequence from "8 1/2" where the hero is confronted by all his former women finds very fitting application here. The poolroom fight from Irma La Douce is transferred to a library where it unfortunately becomes less effective. Best of all, there is a classic Keystone Cops parody using go-carts instead of jalopies. These parodies permit the script to jump out of reality without invoking our disbelief.

The conventionally trivial becomes terribly important in the bizarre world of Pussycat. The music, which comes alternately from harpsichords and electric organs, at times keeps rythym with the action so that the actors or cars almost seem to dance. Strange things occur in the background, such as the appearance of a group of Impressionist painters sitting with a bandaged-eared Van Gogh at a cafe. At one point the reformed hero delivers a paean to marriage and the words "Author's Message" in roccoco script shoot across the screen.

Pussycat, in true Freudian tradition, has been aimed at the subconscious, and the audience often finds itself laughing in spite of itself. Events move so quickly that control becomes impossible. Halfway through you will either be so thoroughly reconditioned that anything, 'no matter how perverted, will seem funny, or you will find the film a horrid bore. But the very fact that new kinds of responses are required to fully enjoy Pussycat, ranging from vicarious indulgence to an informed recognition of the parodies, indicates that Pussycat is a new breed of film.

The clue comes when a shaggy midget makes his appearance during the cafe scene. Toulouse Latrec was not selected randomly, but rather takes his place as the true spiritual father of Pussycat. The artist who painted the cabarets and brothe's of turn-of-the century Paris, and who accepted ugliness with humor and poetry fits nicely into the symbolism of the movie. And, just as the works of Latrec are considered tame today, perhaps Pussycat will seem demure in that coming age of untold license.