Safe Place, A (1971)

Tuesday Weld plays a vulnerable woman – sometimes called Susan and occasionally Noah – who appears to be in a lunatic asylum because she is surrounded by women who talk to themselves, ride hobby horses and stare into space. In fragmented scenes, she seems to operate simultaneously on several levels of time and space.

She has a beau, a nice rich boy played by Philip Proctor, who is in love with her.

Susan/Noah leaves her booby-hatch to move around in a Central Park of her mind where she talks to an old Talmudic magician (Orson Welles) who utters parochial aphorisms in a pish-posh accent, and on a roof where she is endlessly circled by Jack Nicholson, who is either an old boyfriend or an ex-husband or the Spirit of Christmas Past. He’s the one who calls her Noah.

It’s a fantasy which is wildly incoherent or poetically experimental, depending on your tastes, but it gives the impression of having been a labour of love.

There’s a low-budget feel to proceedings, and indeed director Henry Jaglom’s first release was filmed at his parent’s flat, with the cast largely made up of his pals.

Susan/Noah
Tuesday Weld
Magician
Orson Welles
Mitch
Jack Nicholson
Fred
Philip Proctor
Bari
Gwen Welles
Dov
Dov Lawrence
Maid
Fanny Birkenmaier
Little girl in rowboat
Rhonda Alfaro

Director
Henry Jaglom