[Between the Lines] is meant to be a tale of deradicalization, of how a group of bright, undisciplined but idealistic kids who during the sixties put out a paper with some genuine bite to it … decline into slackness, indifference, jadedness, selling out. To make any sense, the action should be situated some eight years back, which is where, as I understand, the original scenario placed it. Updated to 1977, the movie taunts us with an unfillable lacuna: What kept these kids going till this day? Why is...

Joan Micklin Silver's Between the Lines is far more than a 1970s gang-spirit picture. A worthy successor to her Hester Street, it is the best film we have had so far on what happened to the college radicals of the 1960s…. What makes Between the Lines so telling and unexpected is [a] kind of neat generational contrast [that] is precisely what Silver and screenwriter Fred Barron … allow for and then destroy by carefully avoiding a morality play in which the tough business world administer...

Between the Lines is more interesting for what it is than for what it is about, which is to say that it is a pleasant showcase for half a dozen talented performers rather than an overwhelming overview of the underground press or a compelling study of '70s disenchantment in '60s radicals. In his interestingly reminiscent piece [see excerpt above], my esteemed colleague Clark Whelton indicated that he found the characters odious, but the point of the picture convincing. My reaction is exactly th...

["Between the Lines"] is one of those rarities—a best-seller that focuses on musicianship. Though not without its flaws, "Between the Lines" has substance and depth, qualities absent from Ian's adolescent career and her hit song of those years, "Society's Child," a bristling tirade against adult injustice. This precocious hit was followed by "Janey's Blues," "Honey Do Ya Think?" and "New Christ Cardiac H...

There's a song on ["Between the Lines"] about a spotty-faced 17-year-old who never gets the Valentines or dates, the lyrics of which work fairly well until we remember that it is hardly autobiographical…. [Janis Ian] was closer to the beauty queens in her song, who marry young and then retire, than to the abandoned and unrequited heroines of it…. I realised that, once again, Janis Ian was failing to say anything particularly noteworthy about one of her chosen subjects. She...

Although Between the Lines is loaded down with silly dialogue, a poorly developed plot line, and fatuous characters who deserve everything negative that happens to them, the film some-how ends up as a convincing demonstration of why "underground" publications can't—or won't—defend themselves against overground money. Silver shows amateur journalists in a state of mutually destructive hostility. The moral is clear: People who are too disorganized to handle personal p...

The elusive Janis Ian "Queen of the melodic bittersweet" has again emerged into the public eye as a major artist. Her introspective, self-evaluation type lyrics have finally found their time and audience…. [Her] images of love are both full-blown and cautiously sultry. Her images touch on areas that in one way or another exist in all of us. Her love songs are a full indication of this maturation. The songs in Between The Lines are all strong, and total good taste is to be found in every...

Melancholic self-pity and petulant revenge would appear to be the two main colors in Janis Ian's rather precious, nearly monochromatic rainbow. At her infrequent best, this chronically forlorn artist is sometimes able to elevate the former hue into genuinely moving introspection and the latter into valid social criticism, but too often she seems strangely content to tell us how fashionably miserable she is and that it is all our fault. Ian does not lack talent—"At Seventeen" and ...

In her soft-spoken way, Society's Child, Janis Ian, deserves mention for all her credible tunes on Between the Lines. Alternating between eerie nostalgia and low-key hysteria, her violin pathos is straight out of a Max Ophuls melodrama, and that's not half bad. Janis plays the ugly duckling, the hardheaded waif with the heart of gold. She plays with her pain, is a perfect candidate for Janov's primal scream therapy, but instead sublimates the hurt into mellow, melodic sighs. Between the...