David and Lisa
Directed by Frank Perry (1962)
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
Now largely forgotten, Frank Perry’s film about two teenagers in a residential school for mentally disturbed children was hearalded by Time magazine as “the best U.S. movie released in 1962.” It has also been celebrated as an early “independent film” – featuring a first time director, writer, leading actress, and produced without studio backing. Does it hold up? Not exactly, but it does have its interesting moments.
David is an angry, sarcastic young man, played by Keir Dullea (2001: A Space Odssey, Bunny Lake is Missing) with his trademark strange unblinking eyes and hyper-neat hair. Lisa is played by Janet Margolin, with messy-mentally-ill-hair (the genre still lives on: see Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted, 1999). Both
David and Lisa shut out the world by refusing to communicate with others. Aside from a fear of being touched, David is sullen and taciturn towards the psychiatrist, his fellow student-patients and his parents; Lisa limits her communication by speaking only in rhymes. The climax of the film comes when, after hesitatingly expressing an interest in each other, they finally break out of their neurotic routines, and communicate with each other – he is ready to touch, she can speak without rhyme.
The black and white photography is mostly straightforward, though there are some stylistic attempts: tree branches in several scenes (representing at once a Northeastern setting as well as the divided and tangled emotions of the lead characters), and more interestingly, David’s surreal clock-beheading nightmares.
When the student-patients are in a train station en route to the museum, Lisa tries to be friendly with a child, but the child's parents are disturbed by her bizarre speech and she is met with anger: “She’s nuts!” barks the father, and he gathers up the wife and child to go outside the station. Turning, he shouts contemptuously to all of them: “Bunch of screwballs, spoiling a town!” A film as much about misunderstood youth as it is about mental illness, when they shout back repeatedly “Bunch of screwballs spoiling a town!” they recall both the scrappy gang of West Side Story (1961) as well as the hurt, sensitive rebels of Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
A scene with David’s parents points to the origins of his psychological problems. Like much of the film it is a bit too obvious – David is very vocal about not wanting to be touched; Lisa’s rhyming seems more stagy than genuinely psychotic – and here we have angry, cold parents fighting at the dinner table. Later, when the father comes into David’s room, speaking to an unresponsive David – the communication gap is pathetically real: “Do you remember when you were little, all the toys you had in your bedroom? Do you remember a fire helmet I bought for you? When you were little, you know, you thought I was just about it.”
Though David’s background is shown in this scene, there is nothing about Lisa’s. Not here, nor in the book on which the film was based, Lisa and David by Theodore Isaac Rubin, (nor in his first book, Jordi). Jordi is about an eight year-old “schizophrenic.” He ends up at the psychiatric school, and Lisa, a secondary character, is there, again speaking in rhymes. Rubin’s novels and self-help books (the local library has a number of them, including two well-thumbed copies of The Angry Book, and a seemingly untouched copy of Real Love: What It Is, and How To Find It) are aimed at the general audience. His books attempt to make characters with mental problems sympathetic, and Rubin offers explanations for social interactions and emotional problems in a simple manner.
Like the movie, the books are very much from another era – the mixture of novel with “intake note/prognosis/recommendation” comments at the end (both in Jordi and Lisa and David) is meant to underline the author’s “M.D.” credentials (and therefore meant to bestow credibility to the novel) would not only not be tried today, but indicates the relative newness of mental illness as a subject for a mass audience. More strikingly, the overall sentimental approach to the subject is certainly absent today. Accounts today are raw and cruel in their unsparing detail. Further, it is no longer a hidden subject - when mixed with crime – madness its ugliest forms, is a subject on every night, on every channel. Society now is no longer curious, and the policy now is to dump people on the street. (Rubin updated his depictions to a degree in his 1986 Miracle at Bellevue – they are now street people, however he still regards them as quite special – the main characters refer to them as Jesus and Mary – and they teach the shrinks and society a few things).
The film David and Lisa is interesting in that it gives insights into how a certain era viewed the subject of mental illness. It is also interesting in the history of independent films. A Time magazine article in 1963 detailed their fundraising efforts: “One man said he would come through with about $100,000 if the Perrys would add a rape and a seduction to the script. Another fellow handed them a worthless cheque for $50,000.”1 When they said they wanted to stay small with their next picuture, rather than taking the $4,000,000 film budget offered, the agent said: “What are you? A couple of beatniks?”2
1 “The Hard Way,” Time, January 25, 1963, p.56
2 Ibid., p.57