The best gloss on
this variation of Blake on the Book of Job is probably Harold Pinter’s
play The Homecoming (or Molière’s Tartuffe, why not?).
Robert Frank’s cinematography is really ideal, it’s the best of his
photography put to use recording a three-act play by Jack Kerouac condensed by
editing into a silent film, narrated then by the author and accompanied by
David Amram’s music.
Gregory Corso and
Allen Ginsberg lend their spirited “East Side Kids” performances to
this, helped by Amram’s on-the-spot improvisations. Frank pans around
(with the occasional tilt) on Alfred Leslie’s apartment, where Shelley’s
Witch of Atlas meets a representative of religious hierarchy, with fruitful
results for Kerouac’s fine improvisational style, which animates the film
with high flights of poetic acumen and a comical delivery that’s quite
familiar to fans of Lenny Bruce.