The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean

Finally managed to see this elusive early U. S. independent feature, which is not the Warholian camp fest you might expect from the title. Instead, it's a rather twee parable about innocence vs. Greed/corruption (as such endeavors usually tended to be in that era) about a very blonde girl and boy from the hills who somehow get a giant plastic dome (more like a tent, really), then erect it with the help of the rock 'n' roll trio who miraculously appear to join them. (Sam Waterston, in his movie debut, is the drummer--though he pretty clearly doesn't actually know how to drum, so they just show his face when he's "playing.") The blond boy joins the band, but their act alone (and the OK songs they ostensibly perform) isn't enough to draw crowds, and bills must be paid. So they decide to use the girl as the main attraction, since fortunately she seems to be a seer--she can guess secret things about people and predict the immediate future. But of course putting her gift to commercial use is a corruption that literally makes her ill, and leads to eventual tragedy. Despite that plastic dome, there is nothing pop art about the movie. (If you want to see a very pop art 60s feature about a dome, see "The Touchables.") And while there's a proto-music-video, post-"Hard Day's Night" energy of camera angles and editing to the band's performance sequences, the majority of the movie is a rather simple and uninspired morality tale. It's not enchanting enough in atmosphere or style to pull that off, in the mode of something like, I dunno, the same era's "The King of Hearts." So it ends up being a reasonably well-made, enterprising but not particularly successful mix of 60s youth pic and rather old-fashioned modern-dress fable of innocence lost. I was glad to finally cross it off the list. But it's more interesting as a cinematic-historical footnote than as a work of art, or even entertainment.

source: The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean

Moviecut—The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean

The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean