At the Paris Cinema: The People Next Door

DAVID GREENE has made a movie about the middle class's fantasies about their children. As a portrayal of these fantasies it is probably accurate. As a film, it is very, very bad:

It might be possible to make a good movie about youth culture if the director adheres to the basic criteria for any work of art-to portray a character and his situation honestly, without pretension, without sensationalism; and from that portrayal to present a vision of a time, a place, and a culture. Arthur Penn made Alice's Restaurant that way, and came up with a great movie. David Green decided to accept society's view of what the freak scene should be like, and produced a clinker.

Drug users in the world of The People Next Door are invariably insane, violence-prone, or, in the case of the dealers, motivated by nothing more than a desire for the bread that will enable them to buy a new coat at Saks Fifth Avenue, Parents, on the other hand, try hard to give their children love, only to have their children reject that love for cheap thrills and sex. Adults have faults, of course, but these faults are the result of middle class idealism. It is perhaps time that someone start to have sympathy for the suburbs, but in attempting to remedy the balance The People Next Door falls flat. Greene's view of the value of success is uncritical, and what he creates to justify that view errs on the side of respectability as much as Easy Rider erred on the side of sensationalism.

The story is uncomplicated by subtlety. Maxie the daughter of an appliance dealer and his cigarette-smoking wife, is an ungrateful child. She is a Goneril who poisons herself rather than her father, although the latter alternative is never far from her mind. She sleeps around, she drops acid in the very bedroom in which her parents conceived her (oh horrible irony) and finally, even after a session with a helpful and understanding psychiatrist, she has a monumental bummer. Only the shock treatment of her mother, who reminds her of all the sacrifices she has made for poor little Maxie, is able to bring the girl back to some contact with reality (for reality read a pragmatic acceptance of the values of Westchester County).

THE TROUBLE with all this is that Greene has attempted to make a realistic film out of fantasy, and that is an impossible task, even with the fine cast he has assembled. Eli Walach as the father is a man with some heart who reacts very humbly to what he views as his daughter's failure. The fact that this character's view is sold as truth by the director is too bad, for Wallach is a good enough actor that he might have scored a triumph in a more balanced and honest film. Nehemiah Persoff as a kindly psyhciatrist with some sympathy for Maxie also does well. Again, it is a shame he has such a small part. He is given some good lines, some good scenes, but they are a minor part of a flawed whole.

The worst thing about the film was Hal Holbrook. As Maxie's high school principal he speaks for the director, and he speaks a series of banal platitudes that only the Needham P. T. A. could find palatable. Lines like "Some of these kids just want to turn the world upside down, others just want to retreat from it." He looks so sincere and self-righteous, as if he were God himself speaking from the rostrum of the high school auditorium. Later, when he finds out his son is dealing, he pats him on the cheek, and then climbs down the stairs to call the police. The son gets off. Illegal search and seizure. That is supposed to be a tragedy. It may be the only hopeful note in a depressingly bad portrait of the young, not as they are, but as their enraged parents would like them to be.