#548: JAGLOM, Henry: A Safe Place (1971)
AMERICA LOST AND FOUND: THE BBS STORY [1968-72] OOP
JAGLAM, Henry (United States)
JAGLAM, Henry (United States)
A Safe Place [1971]
Spine #548
DVD
DVD
The two most overlooked films of the BBS era, Drive, He Said and A Safe Place are daring, personal character studies, and the directorial debuts of, respectively, Jack Nicholson and Henry Jaglom. Nicholson's feverish snapshot of the early seventies concerns a disaffected college basketball player and his increasingly radical roommate. In Jaglom's delicate, fantasy-laced drama, Tuesday Weld stars as a fragile young woman in New York unable to reconcile her ambiguous past with her unmoored present; Orson Welles also appears (and disappears), as a Central Park magician.
92 minutes
Color
Color
Monaural
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2010
Director/Writer
Henry Jaglom was 33 when he wrote and directed A Safe Place.
The Film
The Film
Philip Proctor with The Firesign Theatre's Don't Crush
That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers in the background
That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers in the background
Noah/Susan (Tuesday Weld) has three men in her life -- two lovers: Fred (Proctor) and Mitch (Jack Nicholson), and an older magician (Orson Welles), who seems to be in tune with her latent personality; perhaps he’s a father figure.
A decade before MTV videos made jump cuts a normative feature in cinema, Jaglom edited 50 hours of film into this 92-minute debut feature. It was a complete and utter failure at the box office — but time has a way of being kind to weird films like this.
Despite some clever, avant-garde filmmaking, a magnificent soundtrack (Jaglom attaches great importance to the use of La Mer [1945]), and a jarring and confusing screenplay, the results remain mixed.
Film Rating (0-60):
51
The ExtrasThe Booklet
116-page booklet featuring essays by critics Chuck Stephens, Matt Zoller Seitz, Kent Jones, Graham Fuller, Mark Le Fanu, and J. Hoberman.
Hoberman:
“The Weld character spends time in Jaglom’s childhood apartment, a treasure trove of postimpressionist paintings on Central Park West. Rather than countercultural rock anthems, A Safe Place reiterates a series of pop standards (‘I’m Old-Fashioned,’ ‘As Time Goes By,’ ‘La mer,’ ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’). A witchy, possibly schizophrenic, hippie kook, Weld first appears to be channeling Jean Serberg in Lilith. ‘When I was a little girl, I flew,’ she insists throughout. Her hapless suitor (Proctor, a longtime member of the Firesign Theatre) describes her as ‘pretty, sad, and weirder than hell.’”
Commentary
Featuring director Jaglom.
The DP (Dick Kratina) kept nagging Jaglom that the scenes “wouldn’t cut.” Jaglom told this to Welles, who gave him some advice … “just tell them that it’s a ‘dream sequence.’” They stopped hassling him after that.
Henry Jaglom Finds “A Safe Place”
Henry Jaglom Finds “A Safe Place”
A 2009 video piece featuring the director.
Notes on the New York Film Festival
Notes on the New York Film Festival
A 1971 video interview with Jaglom and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich.
Moderated by Molly Haskell. Clips from this film and Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show (Spine #549) …
Outtakes and screen tests
Theatrical trailer
Extras Rating (0-40):
Outtakes and screen tests
Theatrical trailer
Extras Rating (0-40):
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