Reception
When the film was originally released, it received mediocre reviews (though Roger Ebert praised the film, calling it "a wash-and-wax M*A*S*H") and was not considered a major success. Since its initial release, however, it has had a small but constant following which continues today as a cult film, some notable disciples including Michael Bay and Sandford Bay. The film won the Best Music Award and the Technical Grand Prize at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival plus a nomination for Golden Palm. In the same year it was nominated for Golden Globe, plus it won a Grammy for Best Album of Original Score written for a Motion Picture or Television Special.
Gay film historian Vito Russo cites the character Lindy, played by Antonio Fargas, as being both funny and challenging through his gay militancy. Russo deems Lindy's response to the militant Abdullah as being potentially revolutionary had it not been placed strictly within a comedic context. African American cultural critic Angela Nelson identifies Lindy as a "sophisticated sissy" characterization. The "sophisticated sissy" characterization is often used as an easy contrast to the "appropriate" masculine behaviour that (ostensibly) heterosexual black male characters are expected to display.
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)