Watch Little Murders For Free

I wanted to but couldn't!

Fresh and Exciting

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Little Murders is a film about the 'little deaths' we all live - in order to survive.I love this move for so many reasons - including it's terrific cast - of many great character actors, the script/screenplay by Jules Pfeiffer is top-notch, and it takes place in somewhere near and dear to me - 'my' NYC - and my neighborhood; the upper west side.Back then, it wasn't yuppies, sky-high prices, it was young families, - middle-class, primarily, and older families as well. This film was made just a few years before the infamous 'Ford to NYC: Drop Dead' cover of the Daily News, as the city was dying, our finances were a shambles, chaos was everywhere,e but, we all tried to lead some semblance of normalcy amid the chaos.So many people when they found out I was from NYC, they'd say; it's it as dangerous as they say,' and I was a kid, and I wasn't scared, nor were the many others - kids, families - it was our home, and it pulsed its a life, which is now - so, so sadly - almost gone - replaced by vacuous big-box chains, hollow-eyed people from 'elsewhere,' who - well, they're not like we were. We all died little deaths back then.As this film is a black ConEdy (uproariously so - Lou JacobI's ('endless) speech about how hard it was for his parents and family, back at the turn of the century (in which every fact, including the number of relatives, rooms in the apartment, and street where it was) change with each telling, but, amidst the changes, facts don't; people came here, and it was hard But, they persevere in order to make a better life for their families.Another standout is Donald Sutherland as Rev. Dupas, who's wedding sermon is so funny, so biting, but, 'that's okay,' as, wed just about ended the 'Summer of Love' era, and were moving into the 'me decade,' - the 'do your own thing'-era.Alfred Chamberlain (Elliot Gould - in the ONLY film I can tolerate him, and, the ONLY role - I think, aside from MASH - he's perfect in) says he's a nihilist, but, I think the reality is, he's more emotionally dead, because, it's easier to not feel. Feeling things is much harder. It leaves one open to - yes, love, but, also hurt, pain, but, if one doesn't feel, doesn't allow this bad and good to happen, they become static, unchanging.Marcia Rodd - so wonderful, and so, so underrated is Patsy - the woman who's going to change Alfred from the unfeeling man he is, into the vision manhood she wants him to be.Many of the other reviews here will tell you much more in depth about this marvelous film than I want to. I want you to watch it, oh, most definitely, but, what I want you to take from this little entrée is to try and peel a little bit away the surface, and try to feel for yourself what it is Alfred so desperately doesn't want to.

Yet another 'I should probably see again' film (sigh). Sometimes very funny, occasionally disturbing super-black comedy about the absurdity of modern urban life. On first viewing, while some of the performances were wonderful (Donald Sutherland), some were merely OK (Elliott Gould in the lead) and some are over the top and annoying (Lou Jacobi, and, surprisingly, the great Alan Arkin who also directed, perhaps trying to do too much at once). Too often the cast feel like actors are in different movies, with different styles and levels of reality. This is a very brave and odd film, with some unforgettable moments, but others that feel awkward and trite. Most reviews were stronger than my reaction, and I could definitely imagine this being one of those films where the strengths would seems stronger, and the weaknesses less annoying on repeated viewings. Nice cinematography by Gordon Willis.

"Little Murders" is another of the obscure films I saw at base/post theaters during my military days. It was certainly better than average and many of the images (especially the wedding scene with Donald Sutherland) have stayed with me through the years. While I found it less funny during a recent viewing than I remembered, the message was still disturbing and contemporary. It is certainly satire and black comedy, but you often lose yourself in the story. It is a very individual film, different people will laugh at different times and at different things. During a theater viewing it seemed to isolate audience members from each other. Jules Feiffer's screenplay is about Alfred (Elliot Gould), a NYC photographer and self- described "apathist", sort of an unengaged existentialist. He is completely disillusioned and has deadened himself to the cries, smells, sights and pains of violent city living; in a Big Apple even more adversarial than that of "The Out-Of-Towners". Alfred can't feel much anymore but he takes an interest in Patsy (Marcia Rodd), a controlling interior decorator optimist, who wants to change him. Patsy has been able to stay upbeat and involved despite daily encounters with muggers, snipers, obscene callers, and a family that leaves a lot to be desired. The film seems to be saying that harsh urban life cuts its people off from gentler human emotion. As an interior decorator Patsy's life is largely defined by her ability to control her possessions and the attitudes of those around her. Patsy's father, mother and younger brother are living a painful parody of "family life," and Alfred's weirdness eventually allows him to fit right in. The dinner scene where he first meets her family is one of the funniest in film history. The film illustrates that neither apathy nor constructive engagement are successful mechanisms for coping with the modern world. It seems to be saying that the only rational response to living in an insane environment is to vigorously participate in the insanity. Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Sort of like a manic cross between a pointless and overrated Harold Pinter play, Ken Russell (minus the sexual stuff), and farce. LM starts off rather badly, with the quasi-beating up of Gould by a group of punks (he should have had all of his bones broken by the time the "cavalry" arrived). Rodd comes down to his aid, but he just walks away, uninterested in helping her when they attack her. That absurd scene set the tone for the following 30 minutes which aren't that great, especially Gould's first encounter with Rodd's parents: that was embarrassing to watch, with rather bad overacting by most involved. Gould's character makes very little to no sense; even if this is meant to be a comedy, there has to be an underlying reality in the characterization for it to be funny/poignant/whatever, but there is barely any in his case. While the other characters are exaggerated, at least it is clear who and what they are meant to represent. This is not the case with Gould's character.Still, as mostly unfunny and absurd as the movie is, there are some highlights, such as Sutherland's wedding monologue, and then, later, Arkin's. The rest of the movie is an uneasy and mostly unsuccessful mix of comedy and drama (the toughest mix to achieve). The problem with the comedy aspect is that barely anything was funny. Some smile-worthy moments, but that's all. Not a good sign in a comedy. Semi-clever one-liners just aren't enough. Additionally, the movie was directed in such a heavy-handed manner that it can barely elicit any laughs or smiles. Arkin's direction is good, stylish even, but not appropriate for a comedy, not even for a heavy satire. Actors constantly shouting out their lines does not make the script any funnier. "Manic, loud humour" is old-fashioned and dull. The transition from farcical dialogue to the overly dramatic scenes of Rodd's murder and the scenes after it, simply does not work. Feiffer, the writer of this muddled script/play, was obviously highly dissatisfied with American society (as any self-respecting Left-winger has to be, the disappointment basically stemming from the fact that Marxism didn't prevail), and on the DVD commentary he says that in LM he was trying to show where America was going, and he concluded that America had now reached that point. Feiffer, the self-proclaimed Nostradamus! He also added that the movie wasn't just about New York and its violence (and other ills) but the country as a whole. There are, of course, HUGE problems with these statements/opinions.First of all, New York was as violent as it was back in the 60s and 70s mainly due to Feiffer's liberal friends, with their soft policies on crime and punishment. Feiffer is from New York, or so he says, but I find it hard to believe that he ever set foot there. After all, the DVD was released after Mayor Giullliani - a Repubican - had cleaned up NY, so what was this nonsense about America "getting there". New York is safer than it's been in many decades - no thanks to Feiffer's Leftist ways of dealing with crime (a slap on the hand for every hard criminal). Feiffer even comments that Gould and the misfit son (and even Gardenia) are victims of this awful, awful American society, hence that their lashing out by killing pedestrians, at the end of the movie, is "self-defence". No kidding, that's what Feiffer called it! That sounds just like the kind of idiotic drivel other leftists say when they try to justify terrorists as "freedom fighters".Secondly, how can anyone use New York - of all places - to portray the "state of the nation"?? New York is very atypical for most of the rest of the country, hence the film's message was doomed from the moment Feiffer decided to place the setting in NY. Perhaps Feiffer wasn't lying about having been born and having spent all his life in NY. And I mean, ALL HIS LIFE. Perhaps he never visited other parts of the States, hence so very naively thought NY was how it was in all of the 50 states. The moral of the story rings hollow. This seems to be yet another in a long line of scripts written by dissatisfied, neurotic liberals who could never get over the fact that America chose Capitalism over Socialism. Such people/writers have nitpicked through EVERY pore of American society, looking for the tiniest (and less tiny, more obvious) faults, while raising their hypocritical hands and shouting "see?? see?! I told you it was no good!". However, Capitalist America is still thriving so I have no idea what Feiffer is talking about. Sure, every society has its ills, but if someone is seeking for a perfect society then he'd be best served by taking heavy drugs and day-dreaming about Utopia, a non-existent place.Overall, a message (or messages) that holds no water in the real world, in a mostly unfunny comedy. Nevertheless, the movie is quite watchable. It is unpredictable and fairly interesting (aside from the first third).This movie is based on a play that flopped on Broadway. But LM is critical of U.S. society so obviously it was irresistible for Hollywood's producers and other "intelligentsia"...