A wail begins as a moan. The sensual anguish of Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint can be traced back to a fictive lament written when he was 26. The film version of Goodbye, Columbus is wise enough to preserve his undeniable assets: the sexual candor, the sour salt of Jewish skepticism, the ear that has overheard everything and forgiven nothing. The movie goes astray occasionally, not because it is too faithful to Roth’s text, but because it imitates other films, notably The Graduate. A pity. Goodbye, Columbus is stronger on dialogue and longer on humanity.
On a steamy morning, a young librarian named Neil Klugman (Richard Benjamin) meets vacationing Cliffie Brenda Patimkin (Ali MacGraw). Neil is a wry, unfocused dropout, from both college and society. Sleek and chic, Brenda has had not only her nose fixed but her psyche as well. Her mother (Nan Martin) is a fashionably haggard parvenu who objects to Neil’s background, his manners and, most important, his drab occupation. Brenda’s father (Jack Klugman) commits a more serious sin—he trusts his daughter and lets her know it.
As Brenda’s parents sleep in another part of their lavish Westchester home, the couple gambol in the percales, certain that they are in an endless summer. But a chill of guilt becomes pervasive when she returns to Radcliffe. The parents discover the diaphragm she has “forgotten” to hide, and the assault of letters and threats begins. To Neil, the affair suddenly becomes serious but not desperate; to Brenda, it is desperate but not serious. The lovers collect their severance pay—Brenda the suffocating devotion of her parents, Neil an ineradicable bitterness.
In the genuinely intimate love scenes, in the comic portrait of Brenda’s super-athletic, subhuman brother (Michael Meyers), in the feline mother-daughter skirmishes, Director Larry Peerce (One Potato, Two Potato) has produced some rare moments of high social criticism. But he has an uncertain grasp of his vehicle, and periodically it lurches out of control. At times, Benjamin seems to be playing Dustin Hoffman’s gawky second cousin rather than the acrimonious Neil of Roth’s story. The film’s observations of the nouveau riche Patimkins are subtle enough—until a parody of a Jewish wedding that looks as if Beelzebub had personally catered the affair. Too many of the camera’s juxtapositions are vulgar or obvious or both: the hollow of a navel introduces a swimming pool, an embracing couple becomes a side of roast beef, the jock is shown carefully laundering his athletic supporter.
Like Mike Nichols, Peerce seems to have trouble distinguishing between comedy and caricature. But the two directors also share an asset: the debut of a promising ingénue. Wellesley-educated Ali MacGraw is one of the few models who have successfully managed to switch from magazines to movies without being a hollow-cheeked embarrassment—but at a price. At 30, she has made a late start in the business. Her subdued, ivy-league beauty has, however, retained its freshness. And her performance, which swings with intricate calibration from poignance to petulance, happily compensates for a lot of lost time.
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