{Film Review II [continued(6)]}[24th February 1973]

[Redbook1:283-290][19730224:1735e]{Film Review II [continued(6)]}[24th February 1973]

(Saturday) 197302241735

[continued]

            It is tempting to continue my ‘spiel’ of frustration with a discourse on the evils of exploitation of children in films.  But I have done this before, I think; and in a way it is rather pointless.  After all, Mark Lester’s parents presumably know what they are doing; I’m not thinking so much of academic education as of general growing up, too fast or too slow, or in pieces.  I’m sure that if I had been photographed in the bath with no clothes on and in bed with Britt Ekland at the age of fourteen(?), in the context of that film and its hypocrisy, it would have marked or twisted me.  But there it is: his parents may have seen to it that he has been to bed with more girls in two years than I have in the whole of my life.  If they have, then I think that must be ‘exploitation’.  If they have not, he must have been puzzled, at the least.

            In that case I hope he never sees the film (unrealistic, I suppose).

            But I can’t help wondering what’s coming next.

            The film makers really have one by the short hairs (I’ve always wondered where the short hairs were….). One goes expecting to feel lust for the girl and love for the child.  But the message of the film is clear.  I reckon if I sat through it more than a few times I’d feel love for the girl and lust for the child.

            But the film is psychologically sordid (It may be sexually sordid too, but I won’t comment on that directly).  What kind of an ending is that for that film?*

*(I have a vague idea that Ekland ends up in bed with the boy after they have got rid of the feller – is this correct? <8709>)

[continues]

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