Little Murders (1971)

dir. Alan Arkin
writ. Jules Feiffer (screenplay and play)
feat. Elliot Gould, Marcia Rodd, Vincent Gardenia, Jon Korkes, John Randolph, Doris Roberts, Lou Jacobi, Donald Sutherland, Alan Arkin

Someone should have sat Jules Feiffer down and forced him to give up the point of Little Murders, a mishmash of a film where the vignettes an't muster enough substance to form a valid whole. Maybe it's the cartoonist background and expertise of Feiffer that prevails, producing a number of effective and highly entertaining moments, bursts of inspiration that stand as satisfying moments that can't rally around a common cause.

And it's unfortunate since at times, Murders hints at an alternate universe both mundane and ridiculous, cultural caricatures colliding in a New York City made vaguely more threatening than usual (random shootings occurring around the city both at the time of writing and in the story). This world might even be bound by the extremes explored in Judge Stern's (Jacobi) diatribe about the persecuted immigrants and Reverend Dupas' (Sutherland) aggressively subversive version of a wedding ceremony, with the Newqists' ideas of family life and Alfred's (Gould) apathy holding the center. But too many extraneous (and often irritating - Rodd is no female Woody Allen) elements compete for screen time, tearing apart the little glue that is squeezed into the picture.

And while the finale brings a delightful lift to the film in its suggestion of a joyfully escapist descent into savagery as the only recourse in troubled times, it lacks the backing for such a conclusion to work, much less resonate.