SCORING HEARTS

To the Editors of The Crimson:

It was chicken-counting, and I was one of the chickens, and so I find it hard to understand why The Crimson devoted so much coverage to the sale of the 200,000th or whatever ticket (How long--O Lord?) to "The King of Hearts." A thoughtful re-review would have been more in order. Is it too much to ask of a Harvard paper--too much, a critical analysis exposing the utter mindlessness of a film experience like that, ready to spread, to be sure, down the East Coast, on the wings of your vaunting its Cambridge reputation?

I have already described--too temperately, I fear now--my attitude to this film in a letter to that other bedazzled Harvard news organ, the Independent (Feb. 8-14). I find this film effusive, school-girlish, bathetic, and jejune. How can we be taken in by a mocking, if unwitting, hoax about madness, how can we think that schizophrenics act like simple, charming enthusiasts at a fancy dress ball? And its humor is saccharine; its thought, meretricious.

There are far more interesting phenomena that are happening in Cambridge 200,000 times. One thinks of Julia Child's 200,000th crepe suzette, or John Finlev's 200,000th letter of recommendation, or Harry Parker' 200,000th ce-cold morning on the river, or B and G's 200,000th lost man-hour, or ex-Dean Dunlop's 200,000th committee meeting--each must be nearing the mark about now. Far more interesting. John Paul Russo   Assistant Professor of English