>
>Peter Falk was in a film about professional roller skaters, but
>the title escapes me.  Nor have I seen the film; thus, I won't
>guarantee that it addresses your interest.
>
 
I assume you're referring to Robert Aldrich's _All the Marbles_ which is
about women professional wrestlers.
 
Let me take this opportunity to plug this film, since I think I'm the only
person in the universe who thinks this is a profound movie.  It's an MGM
production that makes fun of MGM and the apparatus of the Hollywood cinema
itself.  It foregrounds how shamelessly easy it is to engage our audience
sensationalistic interest by showing how Falk (the manager) creates a spectacle
combining the two pivotal subjects of American cinema: sex and violence.
While the film shows how seedy and trumped up the creation of a sex/violence
spectacle is, it simultaneously offers some fabulous action sequences (Aldrich's
specialty), which makes you experience the very pleasures it's defamiliarizing.
A fabulously cynical film about the cinema by a director who has grown
disenchanted with the subject matter of his own Hollywood films.
Highly recommended, though my friends tell me I like it just because of the
subject matter.
 
Greg M. Smith
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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