User Reviews

The first time I came across "Goodbye, Columbus" was in an advert for a local movie theater in a saved newspaper covering the moon landing in 1969. Years later, while at Ohio State, I read the novella by Philip Roth instead of the story I was suppose to read in English Lit class. So when I saw it available through Netflix I decided to give it a complete and adult look at a film that I had been interested in seeing.

Neil Klugman, played by Richard Benjamin, sees Brenda Patimkin, played by Ali MacGraw, while on a visit to a Westchester country club one hot summer day and he is intent on meeting her. Brenda is beautiful and rebellious college co-ed. Neil is smitten immediately even though her impetuousness drives him crazy.

Meeting Brenda also requires him to meet her family. There is the protective Dad, played by Jack Klugman, overbearing mother, played by Nan Martin, the lunkhead brother, played by Michael Meyers, and bratty younger sister, played by Lori Shelle. Mr. Patimkin owns a successful plumbing supply company and dotes on his children giving them anything they want. Mrs. Patimkin is interested in making sure Brenda marries into a "good" family - which means the same social class as them so she hates Neil from the beginning.

The Patimkin children, Brenda included, have had so much given to them that they have no idea what it means to work and struggle for a living. In one scene Mrs. Patimkin has an argument with Brenda where she points out Brenda has no idea what it means to work for a living. She says Brenda has never washed a dish in the house. Brenda cries "We have Carlotta!" referring to the family's domestic. The scene foreshadows how dependent Brenda is on her parents and that she has no identity outside of her family.

Neil is far more practical even if he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. He does know he doesn't want to have a family yet when he pressures Brenda to use birth control when they have sex. Thinking that her family will bail her out at anytime, Brenda is less concerned than Neil about using birth control.

In the end Brenda's dependence on her parents and the superficial relationship she has with Neil dooms the lovers.

I really enjoyed the movie even with the late 60's cultural corniness. The conflict between classes of the same group is apparent and you hope the love would overcome it.

I did have a hard time believing that Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw could be lovers because he is far less attractive than she is and usually in Hollywood movies the pretty people get together. It does add a bit of realism to the story but is walking a fine line especially in the opening scenes when Benjamin has his swim trunks pulled way up his waist.

Ali MacGraw was a perfect fit for the role of Brenda as she has always had an air of impetuousness about her as well as an upper class demeanor. She plays almost the same character in her next film - Love Story - but there she is more independent than in this film.

The filmmakers did a good job of transferring the novella to the screen and gives one a good snapshot a particular ethnic experience.

Towards the end of the movie Neil and Brenda meet at an inn where she tearfully informs him that the cleaning lady discovered her diaphragm in her bedroom chest. Neil acts mildly annoyed at first then gives Brenda the third degree for failing to take the thing along with her back to Radcliffe. Her explanations are totally flaky and insufficient; she says to Neil he's always expressed dissatisfaction with her "beauty improvements", etc. Slowly he puts his coat on and leaves the room, where the movie ends with him outside waiting for the bus back to NYC.

My take is that she engaged in this relationship halfheartedly, as a sort of late adolescent rebellion against her class-obsessed mother. But the rebellion was also halfhearted, and she eventually decided to remain the Jewish American Princess she really never stopped being.

But instead of being direct, she "sabotaged" the relationship in a passive aggressive way by "accidentally on purpose" forgetting to take the diaphragm with her. Neil ultimately suspects this, but Brenda never admits it outright. After all, this was 1969 (but the social mentality was more like 1964), and psychological self-analysis and reflection had not become widespread yet.

It was a bittersweet experience for me to watch this movie about a world that, by then in my life, I had one foot in and one foot out of.

"Goodbye, Columbus" is a very enjoyable movie that shows movie making transition from large films that are somewhat formulaic in their approach to telling a story, to a small, quasi-independent film that started tackling issues like the sexual revolution.

Possible Spoilers******

It also showed the protagonist (Benjamin)as someone who had been out of the army, hadn't gone to college, and was still trying to find out what he wanted to do. It's also one of the few "romantic comedies" where the boy does not get the girl in the end.

All of these elements make this an interesting and humorous film. While the ending is somewhat clumsy, I appreciate the fact that they were willing to show that not everyone ends up happy.

Good acting all around, too.

7 out of 10

"To be made a slave is to be stripped of any possible honour. But honour is, by definition, something that exists in the eyes of others. To be able to recover it, then, one must adopt the rules and standards of the society that deprived him of his honour in the first place." - David Graeber

Released in 1969, and directed by Larry Peerce, "Goodbye, Columbus" was based on a novel by Philip Roth. It stars Richard Benjamin as Neil Klugman, an army veteran who now works as a library clerk. Neil falls in love with Brenda Patimkin (Ali MacGraw), a wealthy college student. Their relationship is frowned upon by Brenda's fussy family.

Better than the similarly themed "The Graduate", "Goodbye, Columbus" crackles with a brand of energy typical of the 1960s. Peerce's film is sceptical of post-war capitalism, its attached aspirations and values, and portrays Neil as a cynical type who deems the Patimkin family to be vapid and materialistic. Unlike anyone else in the film, Neil is also is intimately aware of social class. He compares himself to servants, comes out of the Army refusing to be used by anyone again, sympathises with black kids and is wary of being assimilated into the lives of the nouveau riche.

But Peerce's film complicates familiar poor-boy-meets-rich-girl narratives. Brenda's father, hardworking and from humble backgrounds, is sympathetically portrayed. Neil, meanwhile, is pretentious, aloof and unconsciously a bit of a social-climber. Brenda herself is ultimately only interested in Neil as a means of infuriating her class-obsessed mother.

It is thus unsurprising that Neil and Brenda's relationship ultimately breaks down. Unlike the climax to "The Graduate", where a jaded graduate runs off with the daughter of a lawyer, Neil and Brenda do their best to sabotage their own relationship. Neil taunts Brenda, makes fun of her plastic surgery, shallow friends and wealth, whilst she in turn cannot fathom life with a man determined to exist outside of her social circles. A vein of aggression thus exists beneath the couple's games of seduction; Neil the non-conformist who unconsciously desires conformity, forever passively aggressive toward Brenda, the conformist who fancies herself a rebel.

In the 1960s, cinema reflected churning anti-establishment attitudes. Even in the mainstream, films like "In the Heat of the Night", "Cool Hand Luke" and so forth were garnering major awards, whilst books like David Brion Davis' "The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture" were picking up Pulitzers left, right and centre. "Goodbye, Columbus'" themes can also be found in the countless similar films released around about this time ("Easy Rider", "The Paper Chase", "The Graduate", "You're a Big Boy Now", "They Might be Giants", "The King of Marvin Gardens", "Smile", "The Swimmer", "Hair", "Get to Know Your Rabbit", "A Thousand Clowns, "Some Came Running", "The Sandpiper" etc), most of which dealt with generation gaps, issues of assimilation and featured young men – often model sons and exemplary students – who rejected mid-20th century white and blue collar conformity.

"Goodbye, Columbus" itself ends with rejection. Here Neil and Brenda split and return to their separate worlds, he to a life of books and bohemianism, she to a life of money and materialism. But both Neil and Brenda never stop wishing for validation from what are essentially ideologies they oppose; Neil still measures success in Brenda's terms, and vice versa.

"Goodbye, Columbus'" title alludes to young men and women who leave behind the protective havens of university halls, lose their innocence, "come of age" and experience the pitfalls of the "real world". As it was made in the 1960s, these pitfalls include everything from premarital sex to unwanted pregnancies to envious mothers to class-conflicts to issues of Jewish identity. Throw in casual nudity, wacky slow motion sequences, a serio-comic tone, and goofy close ups of breasts, bikinis and swaying buttocks, and you have a film that is overflowing with an almost sensationalistic need to break free of 1960s codes and conventions. That such a busy film works is thanks largely to Roth, whose source-material is sensitive and at times even wise.

"Goodbye, Columbus" was essentially Ali MacGraw's film debut. She had previously played a bit part in 1968's "A Lovely Way to Die", but "Columbus" finds her thrust into a starring role. A rapturous vision, she spins her way through Peerce's film, a princess whom the geeky Neil simultaneously despises and adores.

8.5/10 – Underrated. See "They Might be Giants".

What I don't get is, Neil is over 21, he's been in the army, and he's never ever heard of...condoms? Every ex-squaddie is used to the idea of taking precautions, they all get the lectures where the MO tells them, "Always use a rubber, you dont want your short-arm looking like this", and then he either shows you the slides or one of those VD films; so why did he leave it to Brenda to take precautions? Phikip Roth wrote the thing in the 50s, when the Pill didn't even exist! And another thing; walking out on her like that at the end, makes Neil the biggest asshole in films EVER! And, if the book this film is based on is, like much of Roth's work, semi-autobigraphical, then so is Philip Roth! And as for what "Portnoy's Complaint" says about him...