One might be tempted to call Henry Jaglom's directing debut "A Safe Place", which he also wrote (based on material he originally presented on stage in New York), self-indulgent; however, the indulgence here really belongs to the editor, Pieter Bergema. This is a movie 'made' in its editing stages, and either Bergema had too much film to work with or not enough (this might explain the endless close-ups of crying or howling faces, several of them repeated). Tuesday Weld plays a commune-living hippie chick in New York City, on a tightrope between being a woman and wanting to remain a child, who begins a relationship with a drop-out from high society before she has resolved her feelings for former boyfriend Jack Nicholson, who apparently left her for another woman. Jaglom encourages his cast to wing it, and so we're left with lots of rambling, pseudo-introspective monologues about illusion and reality. It's wise not to try and dissect "A Safe Place"--that would be like analyzing a snowflake. There's just not enough real substance here--nor enough real acting--to spark a debate on the film. Orson Welles as a magician (or perhaps Weld's guardian angel) looks like a cross between Jackie Gleason and Oliver Hardy; he has fun doing magic tricks in Central Park, but is mostly used as a shoulder for Weld to lean on. Weld herself is a lovely presence (although this little-girl-lost number was just about played out), and cinematographer Dick Kratina gets some gorgeous shots of her all around the city, but the only genuine acting in the film comes from newcomer Gwen Welles as another hippie who is mesmerized by the non-meaning of her dreams. ** from ****

The title of my review is no exaggeration. The only saving grace to watching this movie is that it's only about an hour and a half in length, even though it seems at least twice that long to view. The screenplay (assuming there really was a screenplay to begin with, because the dialogue feels totally improvised...not because it sounds "real", but because it's strained and ludicrous) is annoying to the nth degree, unless you like hearing profound voice-over comments such as "I love you from New York to Rome..from Rome to Madrid, etc. etc. etc. over and over and over again. If I was on a deserted island with a DVD player and this was the only DVD I had with me, I'd break it in a hundred pieces with a coconut because, otherwise, I'd end up searching for a shark to eat me as soon as possible. If I had a choice between being water-boarded and being forced to watch this movie repeatedly, I'd have a VERY tough decision to make. But, other than that, the movie was great.

I didn't think BBS could have a stinker in the bunch. But this is the one bad apple for sure. It's so dislocated and uneventful, it truly hurts to see such great talents go to waste. Whatever it thought it was, it wasn't. Whatever it was trying to be, it couldn't. Whatever fulfilling moral it thought it possessed, it doesn't. It's useless magic that baffles the viewer into innocently believing for a mere moment, and then is ashamed for having bought into it. That sentiment can be said of so many flaky relationships with supposed 'magical beauty' that 90% of the viewers have already experienced, or will experience. This movie does absolutely nothing to justify or caution the naive lustful immaturity of the whole ordeal. If anything, it exploits Noah for being an overly attractive airhead that men put up with in order for sex. And as long as they do, she will eventually put out for them. I found this more distasteful of any Russ Myers or Roger Corman-esque 'Grindhouse Sexploitation' movie I've ever come across. And believe me, I like those movies A LOT! Like the fishing lines used in Welles childish tricks through out the film, and carrying the camera off on a balloon to simulate 'flight' - DO NOT BUY INTO THIS FOR ONE MOMENT! You'll be such an easy lay if you do.

The son of Simon Jaglom, a wealthy Russian-Jewish financier from London who emigrated to New York just before World War II, Henry Jaglom has always possessed the means and confidence to pursue his own, sometimes highly idiosyncratic visions. His first film as a writer/director, 'A Safe Place', had its first incarnation in the mid-Sixties as a short-run Off Broadway play written by Jaglom and starring a then-unknown Tuesday Weld. Offered a film project by Columbia—through the auspices of 'Easy Rider' cohorts Bert Schneider and Dennis Hopper—Jaglom opted to turn his play into a film. Jaglom quite naturally signed Tuesday Weld to reprise the lead role of Susan/Noah, a young woman caught between two lovers and constantly retreating into her imagination (supposedly a "safe place"), which only seems to produce troubling memories of childhood that ultimately result in her ego dissolution and/or suicide. To complement what would turn out to be a magnetic performance by Weld—who drew on her own tumultuous youth for inspiration—Jaglom secured the services of other talented friends: Jack Nicholson (who plays one of Weld's lovers) and the legendary Orson Welles (who plays a street magician and Weld's titular father figure). Though he had his own play script to provide a blueprint for the film, Jaglom insisted on endless experimentation and improvisation. His cinematographer, Dick Kratina (who helped shoot 'Midnight Cowboy'), eventually shot some fifty hours of raw footage that Pieter Bergema edited down to 94 minutes (a shooting ratio of 32 to 1). In the end, though, 'A Safe Place' would achieve notoriety not for its acting, gritty New York City vistas, its strange soundtrack (combining Gershwin, Edith Piaf, Charles Trenet, and mid-century Tin Pan Alley tunes), or even a hilarious soliloquy by Gwen Welles on New York City mashers but for its copious use of jump cuts between past, present, and future events—a risky editing technique deemed brilliant by some critics and derided as nonsensical and confusing by others. Indeed, when 'A Safe Place' premiered at the 9th Annual New York Film Festival (Oct. 15, 1971), audience members broke into a passionate shouting match over its merits that nearly escalated into a donnybrook. Though it bombed in the United States, 'A Safe Place' predictably fared better in France; a theater in Paris is reputed to have shown it continuously over a seven-year period.