![]() ![]() The credit sequence is a long series of suave tracking shots of Tomlin’s Trish gliding down Rodeo Drive on a shopping expedition, followed by another series of Travolta’s Strip striding through Los Angeles streets with a strut and a bounce in his arm-swinging step, exactly as at the beginning of “Saturday Night Fever,” until the two converge by chance, at the counter of Schwab’s Pharmacy. From the start, “Moment by Moment” displays a distinctive, original, and enthralling style and tone, an intense and graceful physicality that also winks at its own provenance. “Moment by Moment” tells the story of the unlikely bond between Trish (Tomlin), a well-to-do Los Angeles woman nearing forty who’s going through a bitter split from her philandering husband, and Strip (Travolta), a good-humored and eagerly earnest drifter, nearing twenty, in search of an anchor. ![]() It’s a superb romantic melodrama that should have propelled Wagner into the front ranks of Hollywood directors and advanced its stars’ careers, as well. The film is nonetheless available in an imperfect but adequate transfer online, and, despite all suggestions to the contrary, it is well worth seeing. ![]() An upcoming series at Lincoln Center, “ Two Free Women,” celebrating the work of Tomlin and Wagner, partners in life and frequent artistic collaborators, isn’t screening it. Jane Wagner, who wrote and directed it, has never made another movie. ( The New Yorker simply ignored it.) It is widely considered a catastrophe of film history, and has been blamed for nearly sinking the movie careers of both Tomlin and Travolta. At the time of its release, the film received negative, even derisive reviews from a range of critics, including Vincent Canby, of the Times. So it is with “Moment by Moment,” the 1978 romantic melodrama starring Lily Tomlin and John Travolta. Criticism can be a lonely endeavor, in part because the enthusiasms and revulsions of other critics are sometimes unfathomably bewildering. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |