This 1966 black-and-white oddity boasts a distinguished director (Delbert Mann, celebrated for Marty) and a group of excellent actresses (Jean Simmons, Katherine Ross, Angela Lansbury and Suzanne Pleshette). It's ambitious and sometimes imaginative. But frankly, even more than your run-of-the-mill amnesia movie, it's a mess.
The amnesiac in this case is a young and puzzled James Garner, who comes to consciousness in Central Park (there are good historical shots of 1960s NYC throughout) and takes the nom d'oubli Sam Buddwing. We're not told how he found his way to a park bench but movie amnesia is so commonplace and so flexible that the audience has no difficulty going along for the ride. The rest of the film tracks Buddwing through various encounters until he recovers his memory with no more fuss than he lost it.
Amnesia is merely a plot device and not the film's true focus. The theme seems to be "identity," which, if I remember, was a subject much in vogue in the 1960s. Buddwing says, more than once, "I don't know who I am." But so did all of us say the same thing, in those ancient days, even without the provocation of amnesia. Buddwing's specific problem, as it gradually reveals itself, is that he has made a series of "inauthentic" (as we used to say) choices. He should have composed the octet rather than have gone for the commercial money. He shouldn't have encouraged his wife to abort the baby. And he certainly should have prevented both himself and Grace (note signficant moniker!!) from drifting into infidelity and alcohol.
More "don'ts." The writer and director shouldn't have tried to imitate Ingmar Bergman (the excrescent scene with the beggar who thinks he's God is embarrassingly derivative). And they shouldn't have indulged all the Bergman-derived religiosity. When a prayer "O God, let her live" is followed immediately by a resurrection, it's not a film -- it's propaganda. Come to think of it, the creative team should also have put some distance between themselves and the Kafkaeque surreal. Moreover, they should not have allowed the film to slide into an easy, superficial allegorizing. Buddwing may say "I'm not everyman" -- but the film desperately hopes that he will be taken as such.
Amnesia, it would appear, has the power to soften the brain of both writer and director.
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