Friday, Aug. 19, 1966
Mother's Boy
The Idol will be remembered, if at all, as the movie that gave a second-stage lift to the career of Michael Parks. As Adam in John Huston's movie version of The Bible, Parks wears little more than foliage. In this befuddled study of London's dashing young set, he vigorously fleshes out an even barer role as a beatnik U.S. artist.
Parks preaches rebellion against Momism to the best friend (John Leyton) who idolizes him. He persuades Leyton to pay half the rent on a seedy flat, uses it to enjoy Leyton's girl friend (Jennifer Hilary) and finally seduces Leyton's divorced mother (Jennifer Jones). Shortly afterward, The Idol explodes with the kind of gut-clutching Greek passion that seems altogether alien to the cool contemporary scene set forth in the rest of the picture.
Leyton's thunderstruck discovery that Mom is a woman capable of physical desire looks a bit forced since Actress Jones plays her from the start as a very turned-on lady. Jennifer, now 47, even goes at her gardening with a provocative air, tugging at her blouse front while she breathlessly inquires of her son's pal: "Ever been to Corsica? The sun beats on you like a hammer . . . delicious, frightening." Her ultimate surrender proceeds, posture by posture, through moments of squeamish abandon on a dance floor to a New Year's eve when she sweeps downstairs in a feathery ball dress to find the narrow-hipped ne'er-do-well listening to Vivaldi. Somehow, he senses that she has never felt like a real woman.
Director Daniel Petrie sponges up London's local color, but The Idol tantalizes chiefly by concentrating on Parks, whose passing resemblance to Laurence Harvey offers no insurmountable obstacle. Intense, slow-burning and confidently virile, he has a star actor's natural instinct for arousing curiosity about what he will do next. Parks pulls attention to himself like a vagrant, possibly savage tomcat whose animal responses need not be understood to be interesting. And he makes most of moviedom's clean-jawed young swains look about as dangerous as campfire boys.
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