NAZAGAN

ACİN 1,5

Chris Sarandon makes his motion picture debut in the role of Leon, a homosexual, in "Dog Day Afternoon,"

I had never thought of it that way. I don't remember reading that anyone had ever asked the author of the picture, Stanley Kramer, about it.

So much homosexuality is depicted on screen now, and so casually, that much can be made of it when an anticipated homosexual turns out to be heterosexual to a marked degree.

This idea is at the center of "Shampoo." The male hairdresser has been so instilled into folklore as a homosexual that the husband and fatherplayed by Jack Warden feels perfectly safe in letting the hairdresser played by Warren Beatty roam freely around his wife and daughter.

This is like the shepherd introducing the sheep to the wolves. The hairdresser rides a motorcycle from house to house on his rounds only because he gets so tired he can't walk.

The screen has changed its ways. From a time when it couldn't do more than suggest that there was such a thing as homosexuality, ordinarily making the suggestion in a supposedly humorous context, it has evolved into what seems to amount to a nagging preoccupation with homosexuality.

A great many movies that are not founded on it, pay their respects in passing: "The Valley of the Dolls," "Reflections in a Golden Eye,” “Once Is Not Enough" and "Emmanuelle," and it is central to "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Midnight Cowboy." to say nothing of "Cabaret."

It is becoming entirely possible that the everage moviegoer is in danger of being inundated with more about it than suits him.

Movies have a tendency to do everything to extremes, so next we may find them ignoring homosexuality. And about time, too. Recent movies that have used it have dragged it in by the heels, by and large, until it has become more tiresome than the flouncing of Franklin Pangborn and Eric Blore.

They at least had charm going for them.