Verdict
Summary
Director Larry Peerce’s film here is a time capsule of a time of transition for the family dynamic and the freedoms of the sexual revolution that changed everything in America during the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Fun City Editions releases Goodbye, Columbus on Blu-ray for the first time, and I’ve got to say that I’m really enjoying FCE as a boutique label with their hand-picked titles and loving treatment for each disc. This one has been remastered from a 4K scan, and it comes with a commentary, a reunion Q & A with the cast and crew (from 10 years ago), and an image gallery.
Plot:
Two young Jewish lovers navigate their relationship in a sexually repressed era.
Review:
Neil (Richard Benjamin) is from a lower-middle class part of the Bronx, but he’s smart, charming, and has a job one might consider a little less than ambitious: He’s a librarian at the pubic library. When he lays eyes on Brenda (Ali MacGraw), a beautiful and carefree young woman who comes from an upper class family and has the whole world at her feet, it’s love and lust at first sight. He charms her into a date, and in the blink of an eye they’re spending the summer together as lovers, going to parties and just relishing the other’s company. He’s in over his head with this girl, though, and they both know it, and when he manages to convince her family to let him spend the night over the course of two weeks in a bedroom down the hall from hers, her family (Jack Klugman plays her father) overlooks the fact that they’re obviously sleeping together, most likely because the chaos of the two weeks leading up to Brenda’s brother ‘s wedding masks the fact that Neil and Brenda are breaking all the rules every night for midnight nookie. The big wedding is a revelation to Neil as he realizes that if he and Brenda keep going together they’ll surely be “next,” and a crucial oversight by Brenda sabotages their relationship, which might be a blessing in disguise.
Based on a short novel by Philip Roth, Goodbye, Columbus is a mostly genteel and sweet romantic drama with an outdated sensibility on sex, but for its time it may have been a banger. The performances are all solid, but Benjamin is definitely an acquired taste with his gangly look and sarcastic humor, and I never found him to be appealing in any way. MacGraw, however, looked and sounded like a star, and it’s no wonder that Robert Evans and Steve McQueen went after her. Director Larry Peerce’s film here is a time capsule of a time of transition for the family dynamic and the freedoms of the sexual revolution that changed everything in America during the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Fun City Editions releases Goodbye, Columbus on Blu-ray for the first time, and I’ve got to say that I’m really enjoying FCE as a boutique label with their hand-picked titles and loving treatment for each disc. This one has been remastered from a 4K scan, and it comes with a commentary, a reunion Q & A with the cast and crew (from 10 years ago), and an image gallery.
