Boys in Blue

By J.C.

LAW AND DISORDER

Directed by IVAN PASSER

Screenplay by IVAN PASSER, WILLIAM RICHERT and KENNETH HARRIS FISHMAN

The shrink will not stand up. Here he is, at a tenants' meeting of Co-Op Village, which he has agreed to address on the psychology of rape. He just sits on the rostrum, arms folded, waiting for his check. Only when one of the tenants breathlessly delivers his fee does he start in--and what a start. He leaps up, shoots a blank pistol out into the audience, frightens the women, describes instead the physiology of rape in such heated detail that tremblings because of the shots are replaced with giggles. He asks for a volunteer from the audience and proceeds to use her as what might be called a rape object. He is rather a madman.

This role is wonderfully defined by Alan Arbus, a resourceful comic actor Lest hopes be raised too high, however, let it quickly be added that Arbus is a supporting player in Law and Disorder, and that this scene is remarkable in a film that is otherwise filled with hollow horse-laughs about the hard lot of life in Manhattan. The two stars of the movie are Carroll O'Connor and Ernest Borgnine, who appear as a couple of working stiffs fighting back against the indignities of existence in a big city their children are molested, flashers approach their wives, their apartments are forever being burglarized. So they and their neighbors band together to form an auxiliary police force. The uniforms and the cop paraphernalia make guys whom politicians have called "the little man" all their lives feel a little bit bigger Law and Disorder lets Carroll O'Connor step only slightly out of his All in the Family role. O'Connor's cab driver has the same inflection and bitterness as Archie Bunker Given a good scene, however--such as the sequence in which he tells his wife about his disappointments and dreams --O'Connor proves that he is still a dexterous and poignant actor

Law and Disorder is the work of Ivan Passer, whose Intimate Lighting was one of the highlights of that brief burst of films from Czechoslovakia that also included Loves of a Blonde and Closely Watched Trains. This is his second American feature and it betrays an addled, even desperate sensibility. Passer's talents have received scant nourishment on American soil.

J.C.

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