Looking for Mr. Goodbar 4K 1977 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Teresa, a young teacher who is raising deaf children and dissatisfied with her boring ordinary life, goes on a thrill-seeking spree. In her search for the "perfect man," whom she calls "Mr. Goodbar," Theresa begins to lose control of her own life. A quiet teacher by day, by night she becomes a liberated bar patron who changes men like a glove. Tony, one of her new friends, tormented by jealousy, threatens her life. Teresa's suicidal behavior brings her closer and closer to a horrible end.

Review 4K Movie

I must say that for the first half of the movie, I was haunted by the feeling that, although the director and the screenwriter are the same person, as good as the direction is, the script is just as inarticulate. To be exact, not even the script (everything that relates to the production - the rhythm and sequence of scenes, many dialogues - is also quite successful), but the plot. So, the focus of our attention is Terry, Teresa, a smart and pretty girl from a Catholic family on the verge of graduating from college. She seduces her professor, yet he emphasizes that he has no intention of leaving his wife and generally acts deliberately rough with her the entire time he's not fucking her. Then she graduates from college and he moves away, at which point their relationship ends. Terry, now that she's lost her innocence in every sense, begins, shyly, to join in her sister's 'pot', swinging, and other seventies-era activities. Soon she moves out of her parents' house and starts working at a school for hearing-impaired children. By day she is a caring and sweet teacher with an appropriately modest image, and by night she spends her nights in bars and with random men. This is not a split personality, not even a pretense - Terry clearly sees this as something quite normal and feels natural in both images and flowing from one to the other. Nevertheless, quite predictable problems accumulate because of this kind of lifestyle...

This is a good time to talk about Terri's men - not a lot of random ones, but several that occupy notable screen time. Her teacher caused me genuine bewilderment. As infantile as Teresa is, he acts like a pre-schooler. He's always talking about how right he is, but he can't resist when Terri pulls up her skirt - and then he's terribly angry at her for her behavior, yet he's not ashamed of anything he does. Teri seems to have fallen in love with him just because 'it's time'. Tony, who seems to have been taken to Vietnam right out of high school, also seems quite infantile - irresponsible, thinking with his balls, fond of not-so-safe jokes and with mood swings. Terry needs him because you can be a bad boy with a bad girl and still sort of feel no guilt. James, a Catholic with a respectable job, seems to have attracted her with his 'properness', you could play with him as if he were her father's world, and it's so easy to play with this shy guy.... This continues until Terry realizes (a little too late) that his facade is so fortified because the inside is rotten and empty, in short, that James is a typical 'man in a box' with the potential to be a dangerous psychopath, and she has done much to realize that potential. Knowing that Terry will be killed (however, since the movie is based on real events, the very first viewers knew it), it is very interesting to wonder who will do it - the mad bully Tony or the quiet James, the screws in his head are creaking louder and louder. And so the ending turns out to be both unexpected and logical. The moral is as simple as it is undeniable - there's a lot of shit among your acquaintances, but if you have a lot of strangers in your life, you'll get into shit at the most unexpected moment.

Terry herself is also interesting. She's really almost a child - at the beginning of the movie she often has waking dreams of 'I'm going to die and everyone's going to cry', and such fantasies by the time she graduates from college are clearly infantilism bordering on mental retardation. Tormented by her too-correct family (knowing how Daddy's favorite daughter flies to Puerto Rico to have abortions), so correct that they deny even the existence of hereditary diseases, Terry eventually, in search of some revitalization in her soul and in her life, acts according to the principle put in the title of the review. Essentially good, she forbids herself nothing because her father would forbid it, and seeks emotional intimacy only with drunken, nameless strangers because her first crush showed her that the only form of love is sex. It's hard to judge her and hard to sympathize with her, so natural and whole she seems in her chosen life rhythm. But one should not be surprised at the outcome of this life.

Young Diane Keaton is incredibly cute in the role of Terry, and she turns out to be very charming. The very young Richard Gere looks funny, and Tony in his performance is not frightening - you can see at once that he is essentially a child, even if with a knife. As I said, the movie is wonderfully staged. The soundtrack is disguised as a working radio - its volume may seem too high or too low, the tracks start and stop half a word and often change abruptly - all this creates an interesting atmosphere. The final scene with the strobe light may be underwhelming, but I can't imagine how else to film it without falling into vulgarity.

Overall, 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar' is a story about Little Red Riding Hood in the seventies, beautiful and touching.