"Two People" is a Robert Wise film which begins so promisingly that you want to stick around in spite of the dull tide.



The scene; Marrakech, the market place called Djemaa-el-f'na, swirling with Moroccan life, with cobras weaving back and forth to music, with flame eaters, Berber dancers, the clink of bargains, the human pyramid of acrobats stacked on one another like apples. It begins with
a Hitchcock-like sense of mystery (where is that trained pigeon going as he soars out over the
market?). But a few minutes later we meet one of the "two people" and the mystery, although still
unexplained, fizzles.



His name is Evan Bonner (no relation ot Junior Bonner" of the film by the same name) and he is an American being sent back to the U. S. under wraps. We soon learn that he has deserted from the Army in Vietnam, has volunteered to go back to New York on the honor system to turn himself in for a court martial and prison term. The question of amnesty is certainly a topical one, although several pretruce-statements date the film badly. And there are lots of indications
that the filmmakers have done their darnedest to make it a Now film, with hip clothes, hip
language, hip grass, and hip promiscuousness. But there is a curiously World War II feeling about
this film; it is a more explicit version of one of those love-on-a-48-hour pass series, like "The
Clock."



The second of the two people in the title is an alleged Vogue model who shares the pass with him.
Her name is Deirdre McCluskey and she is played by Lindsay Wagner, a name most New Yorkers
connect with mayors. She is on photo location for a Moroccan fashion layout with a magazine
editor and a cameraman named Ron who is also her ex-lover and the father of her small son.
Richard de Roy has unfortunately written a banal script for the picture, but every once in a
while he gets off a good line, as he does in Deirdre's description of Ron — "Ron never hurries —
you lose grace that way."



Peter Fonda, the supercharged antihero of "Easy Rider" and "Wild Angels" seems to be having
trouble with his own image in this picture. The slow grin and bowed lope are still there, but
his performance as Evan is tired, tepid, and unconvincing. Lindsay Wagner, in her first film, brings a certain ferociousness to their relationship and good looks to the role of the model. But her acting ability is minimal here. A real pro, Estelle Parsons, juices up the scenes she's in although her role as a shrill and silly fashion editor doesn't give her much to work with.



Robert Wise is a distinguished director who's had a varied career -- from "I Want To Live" to "The Sound of Music." He has done such a good job on the film's ambience — exotic Morocco and
rapturous Paris handsomely photographed by Henri Decae — that it's a pity the romance of those Two People didn't take. Toward the end of the picture, Evan and Deirdre return to her place in New York, where the trees in front of her apartment are the pale, puffy green of early spring; later that same afternoon they say good-bye in Central Park, and the trees are the full spinach green of summer. It's a small technical error in editing, but it rather sums up "Two People;" it's not believable.