kwindrum Review of Puzzle of a Downfall Child

Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970)

Pretentious yet exemplary of its period

[4/10 · 16 March 2006]

Obviously, this would never be financed by Universal Pictures today as it partakes in the usual artiness and experimentation typical of its period. Faye Dunaway-who has never looked better-plays an ex-fashion model ruminating over her career and tragedies. Her psychology is trite-likes older men, perhaps frigid or a nympho or something, rape victim and all this explains why her modeling and beauty render her unhappy. Rather slow, full of rack focus pulling, telephoto lensing, deliberate compositions (the director, Jerry Schatzberg, had been a fashion photographer. Ultimately pretentious but worth seeing once. Odd casting of a young Roy Scheider as some form of a rake (he never played that part again unless one counts All that Jazz).