July 24, 1970          MOVIES

Screen: 'Cowards' Gives War Views at the Carnegie

By VINCENT CANBY

July 24, 1970

Simon Nuchtern's "Cowards," at the Carnegie Hall Cinema, is not so much a youth movie, as youth movies look and sound these days, as it is a kind of high-principled draft-resistance soap opera. It is also living proof, and proof is needed, that lacking much else, good intentions, good will, and very basic good sense may sometimes be enough to carry the day in the arts. I don't really know how else to explain why I liked "Cowards," which I must admit is one of the squarest, most unashamedly flat-footed films of the year.

The cowards are youths who hate the Vietnam war, fear and despise the draft, and either enter the Army under duress, escape to Canada, or choose to stay and fight the system whatever the consequences. Young Philip Haller (John Ross), whom we pick up at his pre-induction physical and stick with until after he receives his orders to report for duty, faces all the dismal options — plus a couple of parents (Alexander Gellman and Edith Briden), a super-patriot Yahoo (Thomas Murphy) and his victimized soldier son (Will Patent), an activist priest (Phillip Hall) and a lovely coffee-house waitress (Susan Sparling) with whom he falls gently and immediately in love.

Everybody has a point of view, or at least a sad story, or at the very least a Machiavellian ulterior motive. ("What we need now is martyrs, symbols!" says one radical provocateur to another at a party, while in the distance, framed between them, draftbait Philip and his girl appear.) "Cowards' is the kind of movie that half the time makes you wish that film technique had never been invented, and the other half the time almost convinces you it never has been. Everybody gets a chance to express his point of view, tell his story, or disclose his motive.

Except for maybe five minutes in the life of the young lovers—when they make love—express, tell, and disclose is all anybody does in "Cowards," which despite its many concessions to dramatic urgency and local color (maybe a fifth of the movie, the wrong fifth, takes place under the Bernard Rosenthal revolving sculpture in Cooper Square) really lives for the exchange of attitudes. Most of this takes place at high intensity, and usually with the aid of a few suggestive props (for example, Mr. and Mrs. Haller rarely appear except in the plain-for-all-to-see presence of some over-30, alcohol-generation Scotch, vermouth, or gin) but rarely, and only, I think, by mistake, does an image get in the way of an idea.

Ultimately, the film's pervasive didacticism amounts to a dramatic context of its own—and a context that, despite its predictability, is not without honor and startlingly old-fashioned (circa 1963) general compassion. In "Cowards" you end up feeling sorry for everybody and hating nobody.

Most of the cast, who act as if they were the family next door, rather than just playing them, manfully support the film's best impulses. I should especially single out Alexander Gellman, in whose blood pressure, if not his characterization as Mr. Haller, I have complete faith. But John Ross and Susan Sparling are genuinely impressive—tentative, reticent, sensitive and beautifully in touch with each other with a quiet rectitude that says more for a viable quality of life than can most of the hip protest movies now showing in New York put together.
COWARDS, written, directed and produced by Simon Nuchtern; director of photography, Robert T. Megginson; music by Stephen Lerner; released by Jaylo International Films. At the Carnegie Hall Cinema, Seventh Avenue and 56th Street. Running time: 89 minutes.

The Cast
Philip Haller . . . . . John Ross
Joan Boyd . . . . . Susan Sparling
Peter Yates . . . . . Will Patent
Howard Yates . . . . . Thomas Murphy
Father Reis . . . . . Philip B. Hall
Gregory Haller . . . . . Alexander Gellman
Nancy Haller . . . . . Edith Briden
Radical ...............Spalding Gray