John and Mary (1969)

The Worst Film Ever

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's bad enough Mia Farrow was snubbed by the Academy for Rosemary's Baby, but she should have won an Oscar for her performance in this. Dustin Hoffman is in full "Graduate" and "Midnight Cowboy" form but this is clearly Mia's movie. This film is an absolute gem! Peter Yates pulled off another great film and one which would never be made today - it's too character driven and nuanced - not enough happens - for Hollywood today. But oh, so much happens between the lines. There are voice-overs of Dustin and Mia's character's thoughts - which totally work - but because of the quality of the their performances, could easily have been eliminated.

Dustin Hoffman was one role post his Oscar nominated Midnight Cowboy and Mia Farrow was one role away from her groundbreaking Rosemary's Baby when they were teamed for John And Mary. It's a film typical of the times, hook up first and then get to know each other. Mia's already got an involvement with a public official played by Michael Tolan who takes off on surreptitious rendezvous only to pack her off when word of the wife or any and all of his 6 kids are around. As for Hoffman he's got a cornucopia of issues most of them centering around his mother played here by Olympia Dukakis.John And Mary is chronicling the Sixties sexual revolution and at least what we see of Hoffman and Farrow's characters they would certainly be recognized by today's audience. Of course there weren't a lot of sexually transmitted diseases then, when they burst on the scene that made a lot of people act more prudently than John And Mary seem to.I never really got into the characters in this film. Still it's a good time snapshot of New York on the cusp of the Seventies.

There are movies where people feel that they are underrated. Many of the comments that have been written suspect this for "John and Mary". Moreover, when a movie is built on dialectical experiments, thus focusing communicative structures, very easily the impression rises that the plot is thin or the story more or less absent. Neither of that is the case in "John and Mary".John and Mary meet one night in a New Yorker Bar. They are attracted to one another. The next scene shows them already in the morning in John's apartment. He is still lying in bed, pretending to be asleep, in reality watching Mary sniffling around his photos, drawers and other personal belongings. The director did without the usual "bridge"-scene, where He asks Her if she wants to come for a drink up to him, and so on. Why tell? We see it in all other movies where such scenes happen.Then the scene changes to breakfast. John is explaining to Mary that he buys organic farmer's eggs - it be worth the extra-trip. She thinks: Aha, a health-guru! The specialty is now that we hear what she thinks. She quietly comments everything he says and does. This goes so far that one time he really assumes that she sad something. She denies. How did he come to such an idea? Because he, too, is commenting what she is doing. However, he does it differently. She listens basically to what he is saying. He looks basically how she is behaving (according to a quip by Oscar Wilde). And so, what we see as voyeurs and not so much as audience (audire = "to hear, listen"), is an extremely complex network of flashbacks and flash-forwards, of what did happen in the past of John and Mary and of what may or may not happen in their common or not common future. Guessing a situation for the present means to extrapolate it into the future by using a strange mixture of logic and everyday's experience.The most amazing situations in the movies are there, where one person who makes a flash, is called back in "reality" by inference of the other person. One has the impression that the face of this person fits still to what she was thinking and not to the real situation on which she did not participate. So, there is an "imaginary rest" on the face of the called person, and this imaginary rest can influence enormously the whole ongoing situation by influencing the reaction of the calling person.This is, very broadly drawn, the content of this extraordinary movie, played by two of America's most gifted actors. In the end, we know: Only then, when real and imaginary dialog would coincide, one would be able to change the world by words. This means, John and Mary could reach by communication the desired status of relationship. But the two forms of communication never coincide, and so we use the imaginary dialog in order to govern the real dialog and make it controllable. However, communication is feedback, and strangely enough, from feedbacks alone new things can arise.

and one night stands in NYC. Not the most original, or flattering, either. Which is perhaps where the film and theme deserves credit.Farrow is understated, Dustin Hoffmman his usual self (think Kramer vs Kramer) However for the subject matter, the film does succeed on several levels.Farrow remembers her pointless affair with a politician (Michael Tolan) who often played these roles. Hoffman was in a previous relationship with Sunny Griffin (a has-been model) who takes him for granted.Overalll a time piece which shows some shallowness, awkwardness, and the hopes of those, still attempting relationships. The human factor is what redeems the story. 8/10.