Whether you interpret the plot line as a vehicle for allegory or an ultimately flawed exercise in suspense, the highly successful photography, editing and musical scoring in "Mister Buddwing" deserves an audience. It is difficult to imagine a more urgent, dread-tinged, unsettling adrenaline rush as that brought on by the Jean Simmons sequence culminating in the Harlem craps game, even if the climax following is a bit of a pedestrian let-down. Sam Buddwing's grown-up Holden Caufield-like exile in urban wilderness - a bleak mid-1960s Manhattan where he encounters memorable, goodish Samaritans tainted by their own agendas(Jack Gilford as a cafeteria owner preoccupied with Judaism and Angela Lansbury in one of her trampish roles, but distinguishable from, say, "The World of Henry Orient" by her lower social class) and a park vagrant claiming to be God make for a very rich cinematic experience, and the final camera shots, essentially the opening ones in reverse, provide a strikingly satisfying coda.
Notable for its time are a couple of overt homosexual references which don't seem to be significant to the plot, but contribute a degree of realism probably intended to be grittily alienating. In the most poorly-handled scene in the film, where Buddwing is accosted by a beat cop and a crowd, unlikely in its sheer numbers, quickly forms around them, an out gay man makes an appearance which is pretty significant considering the pre-Stonewall setting.
Notable for its time are a couple of overt homosexual references which don't seem to be significant to the plot, but contribute a degree of realism probably intended to be grittily alienating. In the most poorly-handled scene in the film, where Buddwing is accosted by a beat cop and a crowd, unlikely in its sheer numbers, quickly forms around them, an out gay man makes an appearance which is pretty significant considering the pre-Stonewall setting.