Morgan

The side entrance to the Cinema in Kenmore Square opens into an alley whose sole illumination is from a giant neon sign which sits on top of a building across the street. The light from the sign changes in color and intensity, sometimes filling the alley with paradesial brightness and sometimes abandoning it to a sullen purple gloom.

Inside the theatre these days is Morgan, a brilliant meditation and now and then a brilliant motion picture. Like the sign, the movie swoops from extreme to extreme: the first half induces rib-cracking laughter; the second, sadness sometimes savage and sometimes whimsical.

Morgan, you see, is a man who "acts out his fantasies," and his main fantasy is that he, Morgan, is an ape. This is a wonderful idea for a gag, and someday, perhaps, a very funny, light picture will be made out of it. David Warner, who plays Morgan in Morgan, should definitely star in that picture too, since his big-boned--affine, dammit--face and nimble movements are a perfect abstraction of apeness.

But Morgan--and this is what makes it intellectually much more than a one and one half hour gag--explores all sides to the illusion, holds it up to the lens and shows how flinty it is and how eaily cracked when someone doesn't believe in it.

In the first half of the movie, when the focus is on Morgan trying to manipulate society, the exploration is riotous. There is something of Jerry Lewis's congenital incompetence in Morgan's attempts to threaten and bully. Something childlike, but not quite. A kid picking wings off a fly can ease into adulthood, but Morgan doesn't have the potential to be even a human baby. He's apart and that's that.

He sometimes gets his way in the opening scenes. He manages to seduce his ex-wife with a display of chest-pounding that would hypnotize a flower. Vanessa Redgrave, who plays the ex-wife and won the Best Actress award at Cannes for the performance, is, incidentally, transfixing in her own right. She is puckish and bitter-sweet in everything she does. Kissing her would probably be like taking a swallow of ice-cold grapefruit juice. If you don't want to bother with the symbolism, you can watch Miss Redgrave and have a fine time.

In the second half of the picture the mood changes from tangy to sour. The fun's over, even though the director won't admit it. Society begins to marinate Morgan. People stop oogling the cute little animal and get worried he'll make on the living room rug.

Morgan has visions of fleeing animals, the movie gallops toward terror and despair--and still the slapstick, only mildly successful in the begining, drags on. The last scenes are unabashed surrealism, as the whole second half of the show should have been. There are teasing ideas, of beauty and the beast and rebirth, among other things, that are the most delicate and satisfying form of symbolism. But there is too much of an attempt at humor, at slapstick tragedy.

Ah well, someday someone will make a great novel out of it.