The Moviegoer They Shoot Horses, Don't They?

at the Cheri

ON NEW YEAR'S EVE, a friend of mine, tripped out on mescaline, ran into a girl be used to know at a party. The girl was upset, more than a little drunk, and ready to tell the whole world what was bugging her. My friend listened to her story, sympathized with it, but felt powerless to do anything. Finally he said. "I don't know what to say,-. There are only two things I can do-and I'll do them if you want. I can go to bed with you or I can kill you. That's all." The girl smiled, said thanks, and walked away.

What else could my friend say? Despair can reach the point where the only alternatives for salvation are death or a good fuck. And, of course, there is even a level of despair where a denunciation of life is the only way out. They Shoot Horses. Don't They?, one of the most painful and best American movies of the past year, is set in that, the lowest, depth of depression.

The film is based on Horace McCoy's 1935 novel of the same title, a book which achieved an underground reputation (particularly in Paris) as one of the best of the first existential works of American fiction. It tells the story of a group of down-and-out Depression refugees who participate in a dance marathon, hoping against hope to cop the contest's $1500 prize.

The dance marathon a craze largely unknown to the post-war generation, is one of the saddest cultural artifacts of the Great Depression. These widely publicized exercises in masochism, in which couples would compete to see who could stay on a dance floor the longest (sometimes two and three months), were actually the cruelest of promotional gimmicks. The businessmen who ran them charged admission to the sadistic audiences who watched, solicited business "sponsors" for the couples-and cleaned up in the process. Even the grand prize offered to the winners would be a phony: the marathon's "bills" would suddenly be subtracted from the prize amount at the contest's end.

In the movie, director Sydney Pollack has kept the action almost entirely within the seedy California beach-side dance hall where the novel's marathon takes place. The film covers 60-odd days of the spectacle in two hours-and, after it's over, all sixty days are real to you. The color is sickly; the machinations of the contest are unbelievably brutal; the physical and emotional crack-ups of the participants are staggering and sometimes all but impossible to watch.

THE HEART of this film's impact lies in the honest delineation of the major characters. At the top of this heap of down-and-outers, of course, is Jane Fonda's Gloria-a cynical, unsmiling bitch, who has given up on breaking into the movies, on taking care of her body, on wanting to understand the human race. Miss Fonda's performance is perfect-there is no other word for it. Her acceptance of the lechery and cruelty around her as the only reality is entirely convincing. Whether she is taunting another contestant or ridiculing kindnesses of her partner or even lighting a cigarette (with all the calm of a speed freak), Fonda hits us hard with the indisputable rightness of her behavior. It is one of the best existential anti-hero roles of all time, and she never falters in her handling of it.

It is hard to share the screen with a performance like this, and it is not surprising that most reviewers have talked about Jane Fonda to the exclusion of everything and everyone else in They Shoot Horses. Yet, the rest of the cast, in far less meaty roles, cannot be faulted. Michael Sarrazin, as Gloria's partner, and Susannah York, as a peroxide blonde, silk-gowned contestant hoping to be discovered by film directors, are relentlessly pathetic in their non-aggressive acceptance of their fate. So are Red Buttons, as a war veteran who hasn't found an inroad back to society in the 14 years since armistice, and Bonnie Bedilia, as a pregnant contestant hoping to win even at the cost of sacrificing her child.

One of the amazing things about all these characters-in the writing, the acting, and the direction-is the nearly consistent way in which they are presented in existential terms. These people have no past, no future. They are defined only in terms of the game at hand.

And the game is something. The marathon is a handy metaphor for just about everything that's wrong with America: capitalistic manipulation and dehumanization: the physical and spiritual bankruptcy of the California frontier; the war mentality of the competitive nature of American life. Much of this is brought home (sometimes too explicitly) by the frighteningly familiar em???, played by Gig Young.

JIMMY BRESLIN has already said that this is the best movie to date about Vietnam and-while others have said the same thing about such pictures as Alice's Restaurant. The Wild Bunch, and Tell Them Willie. Boy Is Here -I think Breslin may be right. The marathon-with its dark violence, applauding spectators, POW-camp-like barracks, and lack of sane causality-may just be the best medium yet for showing the apocalyptic insanity the war has brought to this country.

One reason why the marathon works so well as a context for American sickness is the ferocity with which director Pollack has depicted it. Some shots-the faces of the tortured contestants as they run two "derby" races during the marathon, a juxtaposition of Sarrazin and a trashcan with a surreal beachscape, the reflection of Susannah York's delirious face in a shower head-knock you over with sheer force. The depression-era detail (posters for Grand Hotel and band music like "The Best Things in Life are Free") and the editing (often utilizing sound cues such as sirens and gunshots) also augment the film's attack on the audience's psyche.

Perhaps the most surprising outcome of the aesthetic success of They Shoot Horses is its enormous box-office success all around the country. When I saw the film for the first time two months ago in New York. I figured that a picture like this-having no love interest, a strong and unsubtle anti-American point of view, and no humor of any kind-would be death at the box office outside of the two coasts' metropolitan areas. That has proven not to be the case, for the public, it turns out, is ready to buy popular culture about suicide. Isn't it encouraging that the malaise we all think exists only in Cambridge may be a truly national phenomenon after all?