Bartelby - 1970

This is actually the movie that got me on my current Robin fascination…the one that got me started on wanting to see ALL his movies. Purely by chance, I had rented this from Netlflix, and was taken aback when I saw his familiar face in it! I then sent it back, but when I decided to do this blog a few months later I refreshed myself re-watching it using Netflix’s “Play it now” feature, which allowed it to come through surprisingly smoothly. I’d never tried streaming their stuff before! But it’s not available for everything.

It’s a weird but interesting movie. About an introverted sort of guy that gets hired in an office but starts telling his boss that he “prefers not” to do the work. The boss is dumbfounded and doesn’t know what to do. He knows he needs to save face by getting rid of the guy, but also is intrigued by him and wonders about his background and why he acts like this. Robin has a small part as an office worker. I just love that suit-and-tie-but-with-long-hair look on a guy. He has a few good scenes of being sarcastic with the guy, and cheeky with the secretary.

So…the boss, instead of forcing the guy out, he decides to avoid conflict altogether and moves his whole office to another building. Bartleby then keeps coming back to the abandoned office, which gets the other workers in the building upset. The original boss finally comes back and makes arrangements for him to be carted off to a mental institution.

Check out the super creepy anorexic girl near the end of the movie, one of the patients at the institution. Now, I’ve always been super-skinny myself, so I hate it when skinny people get accused of being anorexic. But the true anorexic look is scarier than anything you’ll see in a horror movie, and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone this skinny before outside a concentration camp documentary! Who is this girl? Did she die soon after? She has a small speaking part and seems like she’s in a daze. So sad!