Goodbye, Columbus

A wonderfully beady-eyed adaptation of Philip Roth's novella satirising the Jewish nouveau riche and/or the American Dream, with Benjamin as the impoverished graduate courting a Radcliffe girl (MacGraw), and discovering what he's got into only when she invites him (to the exasperation of her socially ambitious mother) to stay as a house guest. Self-effacingly directed by Peerce, the film stakes everything on minute observation of detail: the ghastly gusto of mealtimes in the parvenu dining-room; the loose-limbed insolence in every movement made by the scion of the family; the worship of appearances rather than accomplishments in everything that is said or done. With Philip Roth's barbed dialogue retained intact, and faultlessly delivered by an admirable cast, the film is funnier than The Graduate (made a couple of years earlier) and much less pretentious.