Cinema: Dirty Old Men

Experience teaches us never to trust anyone who is overdirty; he is probably trying to hide something. In the case of Candy, the film makers are trying to hide a number of things: lack of talent, wit, coherence. In its smirking promotion Candy promotes itself as a piece of underground pornography that has miraculously reached the surface. It should have stayed under.

Candy is based on the Terry Southern-Mason Hoffenberg satirical novel in much the same way that an elephant might be based on a mouse. All that is left is a smear. Candy (Ewa Aulin), a teeny-bopper who seems to be mentally retarded, is molested by a series of dirty old men in odd clothing. They include a Mexican gardener (Ringo Starr), a poet (Richard Burton), a guru (Marlon Brando), a Minuteman general (Walter Matthau), a surgeon (James Coburn), and Candy’s uncle and father—both played by John Astin. The attacks take place on a pool table and in a moving truck, a paratroop plane, a grand piano, a men’s room, a police car, an Oriental temple, a Mercedes-Benz and a hospital room. In all cases, sex is represented by a lot of thrashing around under things like sheets, feathers, snow and water. When Candy does appear unclothed, she is coyly draped by her own tresses, a la Lady Godiva.

Having failed at titillation, the movie tries an onslaught of vulgarity. As if he had personally discovered the phallic symbol, Director Christian Marquand presents a parade of hydrants, fingers, pointers and thermometers. Then-he backs Candy up against a urinal, down on a toilet seat and up above a blood-soaked operating amphitheater. Yet with all his excesses, Marquand is a figure of refinement compared with Scenarist Buck Henry (The Graduate), whose idea of humor is an aside to the heroine: “Why don’t you put a meter on it and we’ll all get rich?”

In its contempt for its audience, the film cannot be bothered with such nice ties as acting. Men like Brando and Burton are never entirely inept, but of all the performers, only Ewa Aulin in the title role comes off unstained—and that is because she is only called upon to look up, lie down and writhe her thighs. “Good Grief, it’s Candy,” says the ad for the film. The film itself says, Good Candy, it’s Grief.