CAIN '67

This is one of Simmel's Gott-in-Himmel-what-will-happen-next staggering entertainments -- on the order of Richard Condon's -- moving with a ne plus ultrasonic speed back and forth in time (the '40's to the '60's), from Frankfurt and Hamburg to Cairo, and from Pelion to Ossa. One goes along willingly for the ride. In this case it's the story of two brothers, Werner and Richard Mark, both writers, only as it emerges, Werner had volunteered to script Richard's successes and then blackmailed him in return. And their love for Lillian, beautiful Lillian who had once been on the receiving end of some poisoned armagnac, who had married Werner while professing to love only Richard, who had taken other lovers in between, and who now may or may not go with Richard in his escape to South America. Jewish concentration camp and Nazi residuals crop up like weeds in between and, with a clear head, one could pursue the recurrent parallels. You would do better to take it for what it is -- extravagant adventure with all the clatter and wild unpredictability of a pinball machine.