Doing Justice to Mazursky, Long Bypassed

By ELVIS MITCHELL

Often, the truest indicator of great pop culture is its timeliness. Some of it is so date sensitive that when you take it in years after its creation, you're slightly embarrassed because the piece so acutely summed up its time that you see a reflection of yourself as you were when you first beheld it. This could be why, in an era when almost every director to step behind a camera in the 1970's is lionized, one of the most talented and subtle has been ignored: Paul Mazursky, whose comedies had a luscious sensuality, has yet to receive tribute.

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Mr. Mazursky ... was a cultural anthropologist, tagging love and following the damage left in the name of amorous misadventure. There was probably no writer and director more in love with love and its power to heal and disrupt since the heyday of the screwball comedy.

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Echoes of Ms. Ringwald's luminosity [in "Tempest"] could be found in Claire Danes's performance in "My So-Called Life," and there probably wouldn't have been a "Life" or a "Thirtysomething" or a "Once and Again" without the self-reflection on midlife crises that Mazursky characters lived on screen. (Despite the fairy-tale name of their production company, Bedford Falls, the executive producers of these television shows, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, owe more to Mr. Mazursky than to Frank Capra.) It's hard to imagine much of the hourlong balances of comedy-drama without Mr. Mazursky's influence; "Felicity" could be the daughter of "An Unmarried Woman," and "The Sopranos" follows his lead.

Mr. Mazursky gave these television creators the freedom to follow in his wake by satirizing Americans' guilt over indulging their appetites; Tony Soprano's panic attacks could be a Mazursky grace note. (And both "Once and Again" and "The Sopranos" have paid tribute to Mr. Mazursky by hiring him as an actor. Grateful offspring saluting a proud daddy.) [rest snipped] __Nytimes.com (August 30, 2001)