The late David Lodge‘s 1975 novel Changing Places mildly satirizes college professors, the two in this book being exchange academics, Morris and Philip, from America and Great Britain respectively. They “change places” for a long while, leaving their relatives back home. Both are English professors. Morris never starts his ambitious project of analyzing Jane Austen’s novels, but instead drifts into the attempted seduction of Philip’s wife. There is much erotic misbehavior from the reserved Philip, and, yes, it likewise involves Morris’s wife. In part, the novel has to do with Letting Go—at the university—but where does this leave education or anything else?

CP is fairly short and a bit avant garde. Not as funny or memorable a novel about academic life as Lucky Jim, it is nevertheless buoyant and clever and nicely character-driven. I think it’s almost a patch on Lodge’s novel, Therapy.

I find Sydney Sweeney a delightfully fine actress—un-showy and versatile—in the sensationalistic Euphoria show and The Handmaid. I prefer her to the conventional Zendaya and Alexa Demie, Rue and Maddy respectively on Euphoria. In the future, I want to see her working out of a role and not that of an AI figure. With AI there is nothing to praise. Legislators may need to protect the acting profession (that is, acting per se) from Anthropic, etc. And, after all, successful pro actors generally contribute a lot to the government’s revenue fund.

Dean Martin and Ann-Margret.

Together they are very winning, albeit Ann-Margret on her own is winning enough. In Murderers’ Row (1966) she does all she can with a cardboard part (which is a lot) and has never looked more drop-dead gorgeous. But of course Martin is handsome, and he gets all the funny one-liners in this seriocomic secret-agent pic which practically drops the “serio” for the comic. Also, unlike in The Wrecking Crew, he does okay as Matt Helm.

An example of the humor: In Cote d’Azur, Helm pleads with French police not to shoot at his moving car because an innocent girl passenger (Ann-Margret) is riding with him. After the police shoot anyway, Helm murmurs, “That’s the French for you. They don’t think any girl is innocent.”

Directed by Henry Levin, the movie is dopey but also pleasurable. Before she appeared in Downhill Racer, beautiful Camilla Sparv was in Row, but has pronouncedly little to do. Karl Malden is an intriguing villain. To sum it up, it’s nice to have Martin at the Helm here as well as all the other beguiling performers.

(All the reviews are by Earl Dean)

The 1977 Russian film The Ascent opens with some remarkable snowy weather images, provided by female director Larisa Shepitko, before advancing its war story. A while later, there is a stunning scene wherein one soldier, Rybak, crawls and pushes along in the snow another soldier, the wounded Sotnikov, until the latter begins to resemble a veritable snowman. Shepitko, who died in 1979 at age 41, was a gifted cinematic artist. With Yuri Klepikov she wrote the movie’s script and filmed it wisely and resoundingly. Through medium-long shots, she shows from behind a group of individuals plodding up a hill in cold, dry weather before they espy five hanging nooses: German soldiers intend to execute Russians.

The Ascent‘s themes include sacrifice, Christ-like, on the one hand, diminishment on the other. Indeed, Sotnikov is a Christ who is not a Christ while Rybak is a Judas who is not a Judas. Another theme is a mother’s anguish when death looms, for the mother. It is a grave achievement that really works on the emotions, one of the notable artistic movies of the Seventies.

(In Russian with English subtitles)