BLACK MOON Movie Review

Okay, go on, call me a shameless apologist, rationalizer, toady or sycophant. The fact remains that the late and dearly missed Louis Malle made so many magnificent films during his all-too-brief but indispensable career that he was thoroughly entitled to an occasional, ill-conceived howler on the order of Black Moon. That being said, I'm reminded of Joseph Cotten as Jed Leland ambling into Charles Foster Kane's office in the early days of The Inquirer, holding up a rather pathetic drawing and saying “I'm no good as a cartoonist.” Louis Malle, gifted and brilliant in so many ways, was no good as a surrealist. We've got the proof, and it's in the form of this ghastly Alice in Wonderland—inspired vision of a futuristic land in which men and women are officially in a state of war. (So what else is new?) Black Moon is set in a mysterious country house where an old woman (Theresa Giehse), a twin sister and brother (Alexandra Stewart and the comatose Andy Warhol/Paul Morrisey discovery Joe Dallesandro), and a young girl (Cathryn Harrison) engage in mind games of a puzzling, dreamlike, and intensely uninteresting nature. These are the only four cast members, unless you count the talking unicorn and the armadillo that gets squashed in the movie's opening shot. The movie's surrealist pedigree—it must have been hoped—was provided by co-writer Joyce Buñuel (daughter of Luis). She didn't help. Nor did the cinematography of Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist. Nothing helped. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that Black Moon followed Malle's Lacombe, Lucien. Lacombe, Lucien is a masterpiece. Black Moon is just a very bad movie. Louis Malle, a great filmmaker who made his bones many times over, was entitled.

NEXT STOP … Dreamchild, Diva, The Milky Way

1975 100m/C FR Cathryn Harrison, Joe Dallesandro, Alexandra Stewart, Therese Giehse; D: Louis Malle; W: Louis Malle, Joyce Bunuel, Ghislain Uhry; C: Sven Nykvist; M: Diego Masson. VHS NYR