When Paramount launched “Goodbye, Columbus” within the spring of 1969, the film was a smash hit, incomes greater than 10 occasions its funds and turning into one of many yr’s highest-grossing movies. It additionally scored an Oscar nomination for Arnold Schulman’s screenplay, which the author tailored from Philip Roth’s Nationwide E book Award-winning novel. But in contrast to different 1969 touchstones like “Midnight Cowboy,” “Simple Rider,” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Child,” “Goodbye, Columbus” drifted into obscurity within the many years that adopted, which makes its new bodily media launch from Enjoyable Metropolis Editions a trigger for celebration.
Enjoyable Metropolis’s Blu-ray was taken from a brand new 4K grasp scanned from the movie‘s unique unfavourable, and it affords a possibility to find or reappraise “Goodbye, Columbus” in a type much more trustworthy to cinematographer Gerald Hirschfield’s unique intentions than the sludgy DVD and streaming transfers which have plagued the film in recent times. Hirschfield was additionally the director of pictures on classics like “Fail Protected,” “Younger Frankenstein,” and “Coma,” and whereas “Goodbye, Columbus” doesn’t obtain the perfection of these movies, it’s however a key film of the New Hollywood that must be higher recognized and extra broadly mentioned.
In 1969, Schulman, director Larry Peerceand the remainder of the group behind “Goodbye, Columbus” benefited from serendipitous timing that made their movie precisely what the moviegoing public was in search of. Roth’s novella concerning the summer time romance between working-class Newark librarian Neil Klugman and nouveau riche Brief Hills Radcliffe pupil Brenda Patimkin was justly lauded when it got here out in 1959, however it didn’t make Roth a family title. That will occur a number of months earlier than Peerce’s film got here out, when “Portnoy’s Criticism” was revealed and made Roth a literary celebrity.
Roth’s sexually express confessional by “a lust-ridden, mother-addicted younger Jewish bachelor” was a large bestseller, which was excellent news for the makers of “Goodbye, Columbus” however a combined blessing for Roth, who had all the time positioned himself in opposition to what he noticed because the dumbing-down of American tradition. That dumbing-down, in his eyes, was represented by issues just like the bestseller listing and Hollywood motion pictures just like the one primarily based on his first e-book, which was about to hit theaters as “Portnoy” exploded throughout the nation. Although Roth would later say “Goodbye, Columbus” was the very best film constructed from certainly one of his books, this was faint reward given each the commonly abysmal high quality of Roth variations and his personal low regard for cinema as an artwork type.
Though Roth labored as a movie critic for The New Republic for a couple of yr simply earlier than “Goodbye, Columbus” was revealed, he was by no means any sort of cinephile, and he by no means purchased into the auteur concept that positioned filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks on the identical inventive aircraft as nice novelists and painters. (In truth, in line with Leo Robson’s New Yorker piece “Philip Roth Versus the Motion pictures,” Roth solely talked about the title of the director as soon as throughout his complete run as a reviewer.) He was completely satisfied to simply accept $25,000 from Hollywood to adapt his novella into a movie, however his expectations for any inventive satisfaction had been low.
Mockingly, the very stress Roth felt between inventive integrity and promoting out or dumbing down was a key theme of “Goodbye, Columbus” and one of many causes audiences flocked to the film in 1969. Within the film, Neil (Richard Benjamin in his characteristic movie debut) opposes the aggressive, consumerist values fervently practiced by Brenda’s household. The depiction of a younger man pushing towards conformity is paying homage to Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate,” a smash hit in 1967 that doubtless paved the best way for “Goodbye, Columbus” getting a inexperienced mild from Paramount; its affect is actually apparent, from the persistent water imagery to the machine of getting a preferred music group compose songs for the film.
Sadly, The Affiliation’s tunes for “Goodbye, Columbus” are nowhere close to as memorable because the Simon and Garfunkel compositions in “The Graduate,” certainly one of a number of explanation why Peerce’s film didn’t have the long-lasting cultural impression of Nichols’. Another excuse is presumably that Neil is a bit too particular; Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin in “The Graduate” is a little bit of a cipher, much less totally realized on the web page than Neil Klugman however for that purpose extra of an empty vessel for the viewers to learn into — it’s simpler for subsequent generations of filmgoers to see themselves in Benjamin Braddock than Neil Klugman, as a result of he’s whoever you need him to be. Klugman has extra clearly outlined beliefs and pursuits and prejudices — one thing that, oddly, works towards the movie’s ongoing mass enchantment.
That “Goodbye, Columbus” was a mass enchantment film in its time speaks to each Roth’s recognition and Peerce’s then-fashionable sense of cinematic type — as was widespread within the late Nineteen Sixties, he will get loads of mileage out of the zoom lens (a bit too a lot by modern requirements), and there are loads of lyrical makes use of of gradual movement and different methods that place “Goodbye, Columbus” firmly in its period and make it really feel like extra of a hazy reminiscence piece than Roth’s e-book (despite the fact that the e-book’s first-person narration ought to theoretically make it really feel like extra of a reminiscence).
Seen in the present day, “Goodbye, Columbus” performs like a bridge between two much more well-known movies: “The Graduate” and director Arthur Hiller and author Erich Segal’s 1970 tearjerker “Love Story.” That movie’s doomed feminine lead was performed by Ali MacGraw, who turned a star as Brenda in “Goodbye, Columbus,” and to a sure diploma, “Love Story” is a gender-reversed repeat of the sooner movie’s class dynamics. Peerce was initially connected to direct “Love Story” however in the end bailed on the film, calling it “dreck” and handing Hiller one of many largest hits of the early Seventies. Mockingly, when Peerce went on to direct his personal tearjerker, “The Different Facet of the Mountain,” a number of years later, Common marketed it with the tag line, “Not since ‘Love Story.’”
“Goodbye, Columbus” lacks the easily engineered manipulative tendencies of “Love Story” and the massive laughs of “The Graduate,” however by itself modest phrases it stays an involving piece of labor, thanks largely to the excellent performances by Benjamin and MacGraw because the younger lovers and Schulman and Peerce’s capacity to search out, if not a visible corollary for Roth’s language, at the least a satisfying substitute for it. Their sense of satire is broader and blunter than Roth’s, however their sensitivity towards their characters is, in some methods, extra open and empathetic — a late scene between MacGraw and Jack Klugman as Brenda’s father that doesn’t exist within the novel is so stunning and heartbreaking that even Roth needed to admit it was good when he noticed the movie on its preliminary launch.
The brand new Blu-ray of “Goodbye, Columbus” is crucial viewing not only for the movie itself, however for the superb particular options Enjoyable Metropolis has curated to accompany the characteristic presentation. The very best of those is an in-depth audio commentary by movie historian Invoice Ackerman, whose thorough exploration of the film’s manufacturing is as participating as it’s informative. Additional insights are offered by a brand new interview with composer Charles Fox, and a video of a implausible 2016 panel dialogue on the movie that includes Benjamin, MacGraw, Peerce, Schulman, and others. Though Peerce hasn’t directed a characteristic movie in over 30 years, he’s nonetheless with us — 95 years younger! — and it’s nice to see certainly one of his greatest motion pictures getting the sort of therapy it has all the time deserved.
“Goodbye, Columbus” is now accessible on Blu-ray from Enjoyable Metropolis Editions.