of his home , just as Zeke leaves home work in the mornings like H. M. Pul- complacent sentimentalities to which only to return . Its interiority may seem ham . . . . Our scenario is doubtless a evasive or challenging , conformist or figment of the critical imagination, but it MGM would cling long past the time when profound , by comparison with , say , Kuro- would move conveniently on to the point sawa 's IKIRU . where the repudiation of misgivings , in every other stud io knew its day was done. a feature about a man like Pulham , leads Although Vidor 's autobiography to the strenuously affirmative project of After what he considered to be the muti- makes a point of his enthusiasm for the AN AMERICAN ROMANCE (whose very title subject, one would , without that, have is a riposte to Dreiser's An American lation of AN AMERICAN ROMANCE , Vidor quit assumed it to be spiritually an MGM proj- Tragedy) . And that film is amputated : ect in which Vidor 's touch can consis- maybe through the malfunctionings of the MGM for David O. Selznick, another tently be recognized , and which occa- studio system ; or maybe , if rumor is to sionally becomes a Vidor film . Did purely be believed , because Louis B. Mayer Mayer renegade , to make DUEL IN THE physical matters like production sched- wanted Vidor to have a big , big failure , ules somehow clip his wings, or inhibit and cut him down to size-to destroy him, SUN , a film noir in all the Technicolors his making contact, through the images however expensively, just as MGM had or the actors, with the strength of invol- destroyed Lillian Gish and Buster Keaton of the spectrum-and in the key-s ignature untary and unconscious spiritual resis- and the other pioneers whose spirit might tance to circumstance and con- have kept Hollywood 's roots in America of blood red. 11111111 sciousness? PULHAM doesn 't bring out the al ive . hysteria underlying the rigid defenses (END OF PART I) wh ich blind their victim to the everyday . Preston Sturges wrote a similar story Nor does it quite achieve that turnaround called SULLIVAN 'S TRAVELS , and the ques- KING VIDOR FILMOGRAPHY which asserts the wife's discreet patience tion is worth reviving . Contemporary crit- as a period of suffering and strength , at ics were rightly severe about the spiritual (1894- ) once anguished and magic. Unlike KANE , rigidities of the studio system, which at its egoistic perspective overwhelms its length proved suicidal; but they were KEY: Archive Prints for Research Only: critical angles, and the film remains a real often too severe on men like Vidor who but minor challenge , divested as it is of had more to say about America, and said GEH George Eastman House ; LaC li- its transcendentalist ironies, and made it more clearly, than (for a variety of too much in its hero 's image . reasons) the critical consensus was able brary of Congress; MaMA Museum of to appreciate. If auteur theory corrected It's intriguing to toy with the specula- many injustices, it was driven by its own Modern Art Film Library . Rental Prints: tion that H. M. PULHAM , ESQ. is , in a sense, logic to minimize the influence of the an attempt by Vidor to vindicate an studio system on individual creators, and AUD Macmillan Aud io Brandon Films; aspect of his own career-the turn it had to accept any run-of-the-mill assemblage been taking at MGM . It's a vindication of of cliches as a crystallization of individual COU Cousino Visual Education Service ; impersonality, a vindication honest experience and hard-earned, first-hand , enough to reveal the main lines of a personal philosophy. More sweeping a FCE Film Classic Exchange ; FNC Films subjacent criticism . As THE CROWD makes devaluation of art would be hard to find . quite clear, Vidor never postulated world- However inevitable Hollywood's stan- Incorporated ; IDE Ideal Pictures ; JAN ly success, or some nonconformist pos- dardization was (given its commercial ture , or some superhuman effort in an aims), the degree of its hegemony over Janus Films; MMA Museum of Modern organic community. Still less would one the American cinema was a cultural di- expect the transcendentalist Vidor, how- saster, and its systematic aggression Art; NCS National Cinema Service; SGS ever substantial his Puritanical streak, to against other national cinemas was an consider America so hopelessly corrupt even greater one. Some directors be- Samuel Goldwyn / 16mm; TWF Trans- that a profound and strenuous acquies- came so used to the studio cocoon that cence in its ordinary aspects would be they found it hard to think outside it. World Films; TWY Twyman Films; UAS a moral surrender. Furthermore , PULHAM Nonetheless, a few film pundits, with a is a film of its time, which no doubt nostalgia for tyrants, have regretted the United Artists 16; UNI Universal 16; WHO influenced its director too ; and its disintegration of the system. affirmation complements, without contra- Wholesome Film Center; WIL Wil- dicting , the affirmations of NORTHWEST Vidor's forays into independent pro- PASSAGE and AN AMERICAN ROMANCE. The duction-first at Vidor Village, then for loughby-Peerless. transcendentalist. of necessity, contains OUR DAILY BREAD , then out to Poverty Row multitudes. His father's house has many for RUBY GENTRY-Smack more of pre- and 1918 The Turn in the Road ; 1919 Better mansions; and, no doubt, as many en- post-Hollywood production procedures trances-and exits. For it's an easy slide than of Hollywood's Detroit-like assembly Times ; The Other Half; Poor Relations; from maintaining , despite everything, an lines. Vidor's attitude toward this is plain optimistic heroism throughout the De- enough , both in his autobiography and 1920 The Jack-Knife Man FCE , NCS , pression , to an acquiescence which is in his observation that any movie project also quiescence. which didn 't please one of five studio GEH , MaMA; The Family Honor; 1921 chiefs was unlikely to get made. The Taking SHOW PEOPLE as a model , one worst period was undoubtedly the one The Sky Pilot FCE , GEH , LaC ; Love could mock up a scenario about a film between 1933-when the secret clauses director who , in the looser production behind the Hays Code insured the impo- Never Dies MaMA; Conquering the days of THE BIG PARADE , was lionized at sition of an exceptionally narrow spiritual MGM ; who was bold and bloody-minded monopoly, a kind of screen theocracy- Woman MaMA; Woman , Wake-Up; 1922 enough to quit the studios when the spirit and system 's long overdue disintegration moved him to make OUR DAILY BREAD ; but throughout the Sixties. The Real Adventure ; Dusk to Dawn ; Alice who now, in the more tightly knit Forties under Louis B. Mayer (no one's favorite Vidor 's affirmations in his last pre-war Adams; Peg 0 ' My Heart MaMA; 1923 movie mogul), found himself going to films harmonized well enough with the The Woman of Bronze; Three Wise Fools MaMA; Wild Oranges; 1924 Happiness GEH ; Wine of Youth GEH ; His Hour MaMA; Wife of the Centaur; 1925 Proud Flesh GEH ; The Big Parade FNC , GEH , MaMA; La Boheme FNC , GEH ; 1926 Bar- delys the Magnificent; 1928 The Crowd FNC , GEH ; The Patsy GEH , LaC ; Show People FNC , GEH; 1929 Hallelujah! FNC , GEH , MaMA; 1930 Not So Dumb FNC ; Billy The Kid GEH ; 1931 Street Scene ; The Champ FNC ; 1932 Bird of Paradise MaMA; Cynara SGS; 1933 The Strang- er's Return ; 1934 Our Daily Bread JAN , MaMA; The Wedding Night SGS ; 1935 So Red The Rose UNI ; 1936 The Texas Rangers MMA, UNI , MaMA; 1937 Stella Dallas SGS , MaMA; 1938 The Citadel FNC ; 1939 Northwest Passage FNC ; 1940 Conrad X;,1941 H.M. Pulham , Esquire FNC ; 1944 An American Romance LaC ; 1946 Duel in the Sun AUD , IDE, TWF, TWY , WIL , LaC ; 1947 On Our Merry Way; 1949 The Fountainhead FNC , UAS , WHO, WIL ; Beyond the Forest UAS; 1951 Lightning Strikes Twice; 1952 Japanese War Bride LaC ; Ruby Gentry; 1955 Man Without a Star COU , UN I, LaC ; 1956 War and Peace FNC, LaC ; 1959 Solomon and Sheba UAS, LaC; 1964 Truth and illu- sion . FILM COMMENT 49
FllmFA II~I es point, and explore its themes and concerns outward from there. Robin Wood on Ringtoon is a relic of the past: the last stage driver on \" the last mail line in the territory \"; soon the TheTollT railroad will make even him redundant. Civilization is developing , the frontier and the feel and quality Perhaps the two greatest exponents of the famil- of life that went with it have disappeared . Ringtoon iar type of the \" Old Westerner\" are Arthur Hunni- is one of the most completely likable characters in cutt-who plays Ringtoon , the stage driver, in THE the film , and he is killed about a third of the way TALL T-and Walter Brennan. (Interestingly, the two through . alternate in the four Westerns of Howard Hawks, Walter Brennan appearing in RED RIVER and RIO If my opposition between the Old West and Civili- BRAVO, Hunnicutt in THE BIG SKY and EL DORADO). zation (admittedly a simplification) can be accepted , The personae the two have developed through nu- one can ask a further question . If Ringtoon is the merous Westerns under different directors have purest product and relic of the Old West, which of obvious pOints in common but are quite distinct. the characters is the purest product of Civilization? Walter Brennan is always much the more vulnerable . The answer must surely be Willard Mimms, the He usually needs someone-James Stewart or John character to whom the least sympathy seems to be Wayne-to be dependent on or to devote himself extended by Boetticher. (The psychopathic Chink- to . He is traditionally saddled with some actual killer of seven people , including a child , by the end weakness or handicap-lameness, toothlessness, of the film-does far more harm but is never treated compulsive garrulity, alcoholism (in TO HAVE AND with the contempt reserved by the director for HAVE NOT, not a Western , but closely related to RIO Mimms.) Ringtoon dismisses Mimms as a \" book- BRAVO) . It already tells us something about the series keeper \"; he is presented as craven , shifty , self-im- of Westerns directed by Budd Boetticher, written portant, ineffectual , utterly selfish , quite ready to sell by Burt Kennedy, and starring Randolph Scott, that or abandon his newly wedded wife Doretta if it will it is impossible to imagine Walter Brennan in one. save his own skin . One assumes he is from \" out Scott is conSistently presented as an isolated figure , East\"; he seems completely out of keeping with the with only intermittent or incidental contacts, often environment depicted, and difficult to account for an embittered man searching for a lost wife (co- in terms of it. MANCHE STATION) or seeking revenge for her death (SEVEN MEN FROM NOW, RIDE LONESOME ; the last would But as soon as one moves inward from these be a fitting title for any of these films , or for THE relatively peripheral characters to consider the cen- TALL T) . tral figures , one realizes that the film is built not on the simple opposition so far suggested but on Arthur Hunnicutt is far more independent and quite complex tensions . If Ringtoon is a relic of the self-reliant, a good friend to those he respects but Old West, so are the gang . Billy-Jack (Skip Homeier) able to be completely solitary. His role in THE TALL and Chink (Henry Silva), whom their leader Frank T may at first seem marginal , a decoration to give describes as \" animals ,\" are the product of environ- the early sequences of exposition and preparation ments where civilized standards don't yet exist; they a bit of color . People who talk about the film seldom belong as surely to the 'frontier ' feeling as Ringtoon mention his short but magnificent monologue near does. Frank (Richard Boone) tells Brennan (Ran- the beginning about the advance of the railroad and dolph Scott) that no one can do anything for them, the passing of the Old West; it seems at first a and Brennan retorts, \" Nobody tries.\" colorful irrelevance. But if a work of art is a satisfying organic whole , we should be able to enter it at any As a point against Civilization to put beside the despicable Mimms, there is the enforced and insipid gentility of Doretta, maintaining her civilized stan- dards in her father 's mining camp by making herself resolutely unattractive, resigning herself to spinster- dom , then deluding herself (as she admits to Bren- nan) into the absurd belief that Mimms disinter- estedly loves her. Yet , as in Ford-and it is about the only point of contact between these two utterly opposed makers of Westerns-the woman is the touchstone in the film for civilized standards of rather more validity. They appear throughout in Brennan's treatment of her, and at one point in Frank 's treatment of her: the scene where he carries in her steak and coffee. By extension , they pervade the whole film. A recurrent motif is the need ex- pressed for stability, marriage, family, the security of a home. It emerges very plainly at the outset in the conversation at the swing station . Hank , the station man , was happy enough at his post while his wife was alive; now he only looks forward to 50 JULY 1973
the coming retirement that will allow him to move ( It says much for the freshness and integ rity of left : into town where there are \" people-lots of people .\" Boetticher's art that one never for a moment attri- Maureen Brennan has bought land of his own and is trying butes Frank's decision to the simple narrative ne- O'Sullivan to settle down ; it is repeatedly suggested ( by Hank , cessity of keeping the hero al ive) . and by Ringtoon , by Frank) that he should find a wife . Rando lph Later, Frank expresses a yearning for exactly the Since the film extends considerable sympathy to Scott. things Brennan seems about to achieve: a place of Frank , it is worth pondering the values that deter- his own , stability, peace. mine Fran k's decision to spare Brennan while al- right : lowing (or ordering?) Ch ink to murder Hank and the Rand olph Brennan emerges as almost ideally combining the boy . He is clearly attracted by Brennan 's manl iness Sc ott. best qualities of both sides , the Old West and the and independence, which associate with what I have ph o tos : civilized ; yet he can also be seen as caught between called the Old West and which Frank sees as a Museum of the two . His attempt to ride ( in order to own ) the reflection of himself, or of himself-as-he-would-like- Modern Art / seed bull on his ex-employer's ranch may seem at to-be . One could describe Frank as a fallen Brennan . Film Stills first another extraneous incident brought in to enliv- He has become almost completely brutalized on the Archive. en the narrative, but it takes on a special sign ificance surface, but beneath it there is a longing for human in this connection . Brennan comes to buy the bull- salvation . With subtlety and delicacy-more sugges- to transact business , that is , according to the stan- tion than statement-Boetticher shows the emer- dards and methods of a civilized way of life. He is gence of Frank 's humanity during the middle needled by the ramrod who has replaced him (and stretches of the film . A complex of factors ma kes who clearly lacks confidence in the security of his that emergence possible: contact with Brennan and position) into accepting the ranch owner's wager the sense of affinities between them; contact with of the bull against Brennan 's horse if Brennan c an the woman , and the sense of Brennan 's physical ride the bull to a standstill ; the decisive remark proximity to her (Frank makes them sleep in the seems to be the ramrod 's \"Y ou 've gone gentle, same small derelict shed ; it is supposed to be the Brennan .\" Brennan fails , ending ignom iniously in first night of Doretta's honeymoon); reaction against a water trough , and has to walk home over the Chink. Frank's development can be charted by prairie , carrying his saddle . He should have had means of his changing attitude to Doretta (Maureen either the strength of mind to follow the civilized O 'Sullivan). As they leave the station , he allows side of himself and insist on straightforward pur- Chink to push the woman roughly and humiliatingly chase, or the ability to cope with the bull. onto a horse; the first night, he laughs callously when she burns her fingers on the coffee pot. It As Jim Kitses suggests in the section on Boet- is Chink 's remark (as if trying to remember , and with ticher in Horizons West (the most important work slight surprise at the discovery) that \" I ain 't never on the Western in English so far), the film 's most shot me a woman before, have I, Frank?\" which interesting and complex moral tensions develop out produces Frank's first positive reaction to the of the relationship between Brennan and Frank. In woman 's presence: he tells Chin k to shut up and some respects the men seem almost mirror images eat. The next morning he talks to Brennan about of each other; they certainly reveal deep affin ities. Mrs. Mimms-she's \" the plainest female ever \" but Both are caught between the two sets of values; she \" could do something about herself\" -and this both are essentially loners with a yearning to settle leads him , by a natural process of association , to down . Frank is instinctively drawn to Brennan at ask Brennan if he has a woman on his place (\" It their first encounter, and for no logical reason ain 't right for a man to be alone \" ). This in turn leads resists all Chink's entreaties to let him kill Brennan him to talk about Chink and Billy-Jack and how sick on the spot and dispose of him down the well that their constant talk of womanizing makes him. \" A already holds the bod ies of Hank and the boy Jeff. FILM COMMENT 51
man should have something that belongs to him- sacking that covers the entrance to the shed. The something to be proud of.\" The words , one feels , could be Brennan 's, and Fran k speaks them as if treatment of Mimms's death contrasts strikingly with he felt this, almost as if he were trying to ingratiate himself with the other man . (One can only quote these : we see it only in remote long-shot. No em- dialogue-one keeps wanting to quote images too. Richard Boone's performance is beautifully judged pathy is encouraged ; on the contrary, if we are led throughout the film .) When Frank orders Chink to shoot Mimms (that unforgettable \" Bust him, to feel anything it is a certain brutal satisfaction . Chink \" ), one feels that part of his motivation is a desire to rid Doretta of such a husband : almost his It is surely significant that Boetticher leaves Frank first words after the killing are, \" Hey, lady, don 't you know what you just got out ofT The moment- with the last word in the dialogue that follows the the most touching in the film-where Fran k takes Doretta the steak, bread , and coffee, and pulls her shooting of Mimms. Brennan agrees with Frank blan ket up round her, is again directly provoked by Frank's reaction to Chink , who has been carrying about Mimms's contemptibility, but asks if what on about Sonora Town , where there are eight women to one man and where he pulled a leg Frank has just done is any better. \" If you can't see muscle. By his action Frank identifies himself with Brennan , taking over his role and his attitude the difference,\" Frank says , \" I can 't explain it to towards the woman . The poignance of Frank's situ- ation arises from our growing sense of his need for you .\" Brennan is left without an answer: one has a wife and his need for close friendship with an equal , and the way the possible satisfaction of these the feeling that Boetticher can 't answer Frank either, needs is suggested yet withheld . The end of the film , where Brennan shoots Frank, makes so strong or doesn 't want to. In fact , even Chink is presented an effect partly because of our awareness that the two men could-should-have been close friends . as morally superior to Mimms: Boetticher uses him Just as Frank is about to ride away and Brennan thinks he may have to shoot him down , Brennan at several points (more through the way h,e looks calls him by his Christian name for the first and only time: \" Don 't do it, Frank!\" The point is made with at the other man than through anything he says) that natural unobtrusive delicacy characteristic of the Boetticher-Kennedy westerns . Frank 's last des- to express a moral condemnation of Mimms which perate ride back , charging Brennan open ly, when he could have circled round the rocks and picked we are clearly meant to accept. Mimms, for Boet- him off, may recall Brennan 's attempt and failure to ride the bull: Frank is showing allegiance to the ticher, seems the end product of civilization , of Old West tradition of not shooting people in the back . One also feels something suicidal about it. \" settling down ,\" of \" going gentle.\" Brennan 's ver- I have dwelt so much on Frank because he seems sion of \" settling down \" obviously won 't be in a to me not only the most interesting character in the film , but also the one presented with the most town-he 's going to be a rancher , not a bookkeep- sympathy by Boetticher (Scott is not so much a character as an \" axiom \" ). But it is very strik ing that er-but Boetticher shows very little positive interest we are encouraged to feel some sympathy for ev- erybody except Mimms, the bookkeeper. Chink's in it. It is the outcast adventurer Frank who attracts and Billy-Jack 's viciousness is partly mitigated by the fact that they are ignorant children , by Frank's him most, for whom \" settling down\" must remain brief narration of their past histories , by Brennan 's remark that \" Nobody tries\" to do anything for them. a powerful but unrealizable yearn ing . The deaths of all three gang members are made particularly disturbing not only because we have The bleakness of Boetticher's Westerns isn 't a come to feel varying degrees of compassion for them but because the deaths are so messy and superficial or purely visual quality; it is inseparable painful. In all three cases Boetticher uses the char- acters' faces to convey pain with great intensity, to from their morality, peculiarly tough , rigorous, and make us feel empathy by arousing awareness of particularly sensitive or vulnerable areas: Billy-Jack astringent yet curiously perverse, because lacking virtually has his face blown off, Chink dies convul- sively with blood pouring from his mouth , Frank any firm positive center that would make complete gets his eyes shot out and staggers blindly around screaming , getting twisted up in the bit of decayed sense of the implicit moral judgments and valua- tions. At the end of THE TALL ' T, Brennan , having annihilated the gang, leads Doretta away, comfort- ing her with a laconic \" It's gonna be a nice day.\" The line invariably provokes laughter, but the laugh is on the spectator if he imagines that Boetticher is being merely na'lve or glib . The irony may be partly directed at the audience who want, or think they are getting , a happy ending , but it is also the ex- pression of a sense of futility or absurdity we can see, retrospectively , to be pervasive in the film . The black, savage nihilism of the Boetticher-Audie Murphy A TIME FOR DYING , though ten years away in time , is spiritually not so far off. 11111111 The Tall T 1957, Columbia, 78 minutes. Director Budd Boetticher; producer HarryJoe Brown, author Elmore Leonard; screenplay Burt Kennedy ; cinematographer Charles Lawton , Jr .; editor AI Clark . CAST Randolph Scott Pat Brennan Richard Boone Usher Maureen O'Sullivan Doretta Mimms Arthur Hunnicutt Ed Ringtoon Sk ip Homeier Billy Jack Henry Silva Chink John Hubbard Willard Mimms Robert Burton Tenvoorde Robert Anderson Jace Fred E. Sherman Hank Parker Chris Olsen Jeff 52 JULY 1973
sFllllm FAVOII~II is JUDGE PRIEST, and that remake , THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT, is his favorite film) , he replied with the JOJeph mc~(ide feigned indifference he exhibits whenever he feels he' s being trapped into a candid declaration of on feeling: \" I don 't know what you mean by 'person- al ,''' he snorted . \" MGM owned the story, and they Three GodfOiheu asked me to make the picture , so I went out and did it. \" Who are you going to believe, Ford or me? In John Ford's best work, spiritual qualities are expressed through , and not in opposition to , the In THREE GODFATHERS , three bank thieves , fleeing physical world . THE FUGITIVE (1947) , a film he across the Mojave Desert, find a woman about to described as his \" Passion Play,\" is so heavily alle- give birth . When she dies, they sacrifice their chance gorical that it ascends (or descends) into a realm of escape to save the child. After a journey on foot of abstraction which drains all the human values across the desert, the last surviving outlaw, near from the religious faith it attempts to express . The collapse, miraculously encounters a donkey laden censors forbade Ford to retain the elements of with water (one of those moments) and manages alcoholism and lechery in the character of the priest to deliver the baby to a saloon in New Jerusalem as written by Graham Greene (in The Power and on Christmas Eve . Before adopting the child , he the Glory) , and the compromises devitalize whatever must first spend a year in prison for the robbery. Ford might have made of the drama, leaving us with The townspeople gather at the train station to see a hero James Agee aptly described as a \" creeping him off. Jesus\" sleepwalking through a series of arty, overwrought compositions. On the other hand, Ford dedicates the film to Harry Carey, the hero THREE GODFATHERS , a little-known Western made in of MARKED MEN, who had died in 1947. Silhouetted the following year , is almost entirely convincing as against a deep sunset, to the strains of \" Leaving a religious allegory because Ford (but for a few Cheyenne,\" a cowboy on horseback pauses on a moments of gaucherie) lets the story tell itself as hillside, removes his hat, and wipes his brow. A title simply and organically as a New Testament parable . is superimposed : \" To the Memory of Harry Carey- The slow torture of the desert crossing , the harsh Bright Star of the Early Western Sky.\" In one of beauty of the scorched color landscapes, and the his most felicitous traditional gestures, Ford then constant threat of death from thirst keep the spiritual introduces Carey's own child Harry Jr. to the screen undercurrents of THREE GODFATHERS firmly rooted as the youngest of the three outlaws (the other two in the physical. are John Wayne and Pedro Armendariz) . The film was shot with the technical simplicity and improvi- Based on a short story by Peter B. Kyne, THREE sational air of a silent Western. When a torrential GODFATHERS is one of the most familiar Western sandstorm arose, Ford and his camerman Winton tales. It had been filmed several times before, once C. Hoch incorporated it into the story, obtaining by Ford himself (the 1919 MARKED MEN , a lost film footage which amazed studio technicians-and which was his favorite among his silent work) , and fooled a particularly insensate reviewer who said it Western historian William K. Everson credits the first was \" one of the biggest sandstorms ever whipped version , G . M. Anderson 's BRONCO BILLY AND THE up by Hollywood 's wind machines. \" In Ford 's films BABY (1909) , as being the film which established the desert, like the sea, is a metaphor for the danger Anderson as the first Western star. Ford filmed a and uncertainty of human existence. It is a place similar story even before MARKED MEN , THE SECRET where death waits ready to strike capriciously, as MAN (1917) , and echoed the plot in the superb THREE in THE LOST PATROL; but it is also a place where the BAD MEN (1926) , his last silent Western . pilgrim may discover fellow pilgrims, as in WAGON- MASTER . As an aside to demonstrate the pitfalls of film scholarship, particularly when dealing with a can- Yet whatever test awaits the pilgrim in the desert, tankerous old buzzard like John Ford : when I told the outcome of the pilgrimage follows logically from Ford in the course of an interview that the story its causes . Catholics believe that a man is morally of THREE GODFATHERS seemed very personal to him , accountable for every action he takes, since he has since he chose to remake it after such a long interval free will , and nothing that happens to him, however (the only other film of his own that he has remade accidental it may seem , is outside his sphere of responsibility. A Catholic can enjoy this system, despite its severity, because it makes what other men perceive as mere chaos seem harmonious and eminently just. Here, as in THE FUGITIVE, Ford nar- rows down his usual wealth of minor characters to concentrate more on the individual conscience than on society at large. The three bandits are isolated from society and thrown at the mercy of the sun, the sand, and the wind . The parallel The Abilene Kid (Carey) draws between themselves and the Three Wise Men does not really have much to do with the movie , which functions superbly on its own as a paean to human willpower and human survival. FILM COMMENT 53
Welcome , Arizona-the little town whose bank the them good day, nonchalantly pins on his badge; bandits rob at the onset-is not so much a real town startled not only because they 've been fooled , but as the idea of a town , a preternaturally placid oasis also because he is such a nice guy to be a marshal. of civilization . The one home we see is that of Ward Law is pictured in the New Testament sense , as a Bond 's Marshal B. Sweet (sic) , who shares a friendly wholly benevolent influence. chat and some of his wife's cocoa with the outlaws ju st before they rob the bank. His wife (Mae Marsh) Like the police lieutenant in THE FUGITIVE , the even conceives maternal longings for The Abilene marshal functions as the conscience of the hero Kid . The outlaws are startled when B. Sweet, wishing (in this case Wayne's character, Robert Hightower) -as the Hound of Heaven, dogging the hero's trail Jane Darwell , Mae Marsh , John Wayne and Han k Worden in the final sequen ce . 54 JULY 1973
through the desert and keeping him on the run by been given only a token sentence because of his blocking all the water stations. But unlike the fanati- heroism in saving the child . cal lieutenant, he is a true conscience, non-coercive and a simple reminder of free will , rather than an Strangely, for a movie called THREE GODFATHERS, enforc ing agent . He shoots a hole in Hightower's there is no scene of baptism . But there is no need water bag instead of in the outlaw, explaining , \" They for an orthodox ritual , since the way Hightower gives ain 't paying me to kill folks. \" Bond's role compares water to the baby-squeezing it from a piece of intriguingly to his role in THE FUGITIVE , in which he cactus drop by drop into its mouth-is a natural form plays the \" good thief\" who sacrifices his life to save of baptism . The sun makes the drops luminous as the priest; in both cases he succeeds in \" reforming \" the man passes on life to the child . The most the hero, making him face his social and moral powerful yoking of spiritual and physical in THREE responsibilities , even though he himself is irreli- GODFATHERS , however, is the scene of the dying gious. Ford distrusts organized religion , often mother (Mildred Natwick) entrusting her child to the depicting priests and ministers (though not those outlaws in the wind-swept wagon . Haunting in its played by Bond) as fanatical charlatans . Still , he arbitrarity, the discovery of the wagon is a brutal shares with James Joyce what Anthony Burgess shock to the men , and the weight of their responsi- described as \" a very Catholic desire for the certitude bility is physically felt in John Wayne's slow, mea- of an organic system ... cognate with a priestly love sured description of how the woman 's husband of mysteries.\" carelessly destroyed their water supply and then left to search for water in the desert. Barely controlling The corollary to Ford 's belief in an \" organic his anger and fear, he adds, \" But still that ain 't the system \" is an insistence on social responsibility . worst of it. No sir, not by a long shot. She's gonna When the outlaws reply to their welcome by robbing have a baby. She's gonna have it now.\" Pedro bows the bank and shooting up the streets, they have his head and slowly beats his breast. defined their crime as ingratitude. The birth of the child , a natural miracle, is what makes their redemp- When the three men enter the wagon, darkness tion possible, by urging them out of their selfish is swiftly descending outside, and the wind , the isolation. But still the test remains . They could , in traditional symbol of the presence of God, extin- fact , save the baby and their own lives by surrender- guishes the lantern in the wagon when she dies. ing to the marshal at a water station , but they willfully Her last words to the men and her farewell kiss to elect to cross the desert instead. It is their reckless the child have the feeling (which Ford so excels code of self-sufficiency which, paradoxically, finally at creating) of a moment whose echoes will be felt gives them the courage to sacrifice their chance far into the future. Robert William Pedro Hightower of escape (and, in two cases , their lives) to save stirs thoughtlessly as she says , \" When he 's a fine the baby, who represents the future of society. big brave man like his godfathers, tell him about his mother, who so wanted to live ... for him . . .\" And in a further paradox , it is the least religious The sense of loss is almost unbearable, and the of the outlaws, Hightower, who finishes the pilgrim- harsh images of her funeral in the cold, howling age. The Abilene Kid , who has a childlike trust in darkness are as terrifying as a glimpse into Hell. 11111111 religion , is fittingly the most vulnerable , dying of a gunshot wound from the robbery; and Pedro Roca THREE GODFATHERS Fuerte, who is superstitious, absurdly breaks his leg in a fall and then shoots himself (a doubly spooky 1948, Argosy Pictures-MGM, 106 minutes. moment when you know that Armendariz eventually shot himself). Leaving Pedro behind, Hightower bids Distributed in 16mm by Films, Inc. Director John him a fond adieu, saying, \" I'm sorry I called you a chili-dipping horse thief,\" and then walks off into Ford ; producers John Ford , Merian C. Cooper; the desert, in long-shot, with the baby in his arms. The pistol shot is heard off-camera, and Hightower screenplay Laurence Stallings, Frank S. Nugent, halts, his back to the camera. Almost any other director would cut to a close-up of Hightower's from the story by Peter B. Kyne; photography (in anguished face. But Ford , always subordinating the individual's feelings to the larger order of nature, Technicolor) Winton C. Hoch ; music Richard Hage- holds on the long-shot as Hightower, after a pause, resumes walking . Ford 's emotional discretion and man ; set director Joe Kish ; editor Jack Murray. stylistic subtlety give the scene a terrific intensity. CAST When Hightower deposits the child on the bar of the New Jerusalem watering hole, his haggard John Wayne Robert Marmaduke features are bathed in a seraphic smile, for its survival also marks his own rebirth . The gloriously Sangster Hightower implausible final sequence-with the citizenry sing- ing \" Shall We Gather at the River?\" and \"Bringing Pedro Armendariz Pedro Roca Fuerte in the Sheaves\" ( \" Sowing in the morning ,! Sowing seeds of kindness \") as Hightower boards the train Harry Carey Jr. William Kearney for jail-marks his acquiescence to society's laws and society's benevolent acceptance of him : he has (\"The Abilene Kid\") Ward Bond Marshal Perley \" Buck \" Sweet Mildred Natwick The Mother Mae Marsh Mrs. Sweet Charles Halton Latham Jane Darwell Miss Florie Guy Kibbee Judge Dorothy Ford Ruby Latham Ben Johnson Member of the Posse Hank Worden Deputy Francis Ford Drunk FILM COMMENT 55
BOOKS simply knew-as the power-hungry Stern lists of words, body parts, and moral knows-what would harm other individu- injunctions. Farber reproduces one for THE MOVIE RATING GAME als, be they children or adults. The lack THE PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK and quotes BY STEPHEN FARBER of solid evidence about the effects of liberally from many others , including an Public Affairs Press, cinematic sex and violence has never especially moronic missive about WILD Washington , D. C., 1972; hardcover slowed them down. And , as always, cen- ROVERS. The screenings yield more idio- $4.50; 128 pages, appendices. sors remain magically immune to the cy . Squinting at the screen in their tiny viruses against which they presume to projection room and scribbling on yellow REVIEWED BY CHIP ROSSEN innoculate the rest of humanity . In legal pads, the raters literally count sketching the histories of its predeces- breasts, pubic hairs, swear words, and Here is almost everything that you sors, the Hays, Breen , and Shurlock sex scenes with movement in them. The need to know about the movie code rating offices (Geoffrey Shurlock still serves context-this cannot be overempha- board , whether or not you realize it. In today), Farber places the rating board at sized-they always ignore. 1970 Stephen Farber spent six months the end of this tawdry line . Founded in on the board as a \" youth intern.\" Two 1968, ostensibly to ward off federal or Blithely certain that creative works can others, Estelle Changas (who served a state classification , the board , under its easily be classified at all, the board re- full year and suffered much abuse from first director Eugene Dougherty, immedi- sents any effort to make careful distinc- the members) and Evelyn Renold (who ately plunged into the repressive prac- tions . Following Stern's \" guidelines ,\" it after three months in 1971 was forced to tices that Stern has pushed much further. will rate a film R if \" fuck \" is used in it resign by the board 's leader, Dr. Aaron once or if a woman 's nipple is exposed . Stern , for not voting as he instructed), When RYAN ' S DAUGHTER , after open (MARJOE was cut for the first reason ; THE have added their testimony to his. The pressure from MGM, successfully ap- EMIGRANTS , in part, for the second .) Ac- results are sobering. Concisely, plainly, pealed its R, cynics assumed that the cording to the same rules, explicit love- and without stooping to spite , The Movie board was just a tool of the studios, which making-which the board calls \" hump- Rating Game documents a record of stu- support it financially . Farber clears up ing\"-automatically earns a script or a pidity, hypocrisy, and self-aggrandize- this misconception. Paramount, he points film an X. Yet violence is nearly always ment that is not dated. Fresh documents out, vainly exerted similar pressure to get treated leniently. Farber describes the from the board 's files have appeared the rating of PAINT YOUR WAGON changed ; raters ' handling of horror films and spa- since the book was written; they confirm so did Fox with its back-to-back X' s, MYRA ghetti westerns, revealing how casually and extend everyone of its revelations. BRECKINRIDGE and BEYOND THE VALLEY OF they deSignate most mayhem as \"stan- THE DOLLS . \"Obviously ,\" he writes , \"the dard\" or \" fantasy. \" This gruesome spec- Stern and his sycophants are censors. companies have a measure of power over tacle-pedants and bureaucrats who re- Daily they threaten studios and film- the board , but what is more interesting strict sex and flesh while giving virtually makers with undesirable ratings (usually and disturbing is the extent of the board 's free rein to death and blood-virtually X or R) in order to force cuts-sometimes continuing power over the industry.\" This defines our culture 's central contra- niggling , sometimes major-in both leverage derives mainly from the in- diction. finished films and unfilmed screenplays. dustry 's perennial cowardice. Stern is To justify this activity, Stern offers pious forever painting doom-laden pictures of As the book makes plain, Stern has alibis: protecting the industry, fulfilling its what would ensue from Washington or no right to be doing any of this. His demands, saving us from other censors, the states should he disappear from the guidelines are utterly arbitrary, and his preserving the audience 's \" right of scene. The industry quails before this board has no business reading scripts, choice\" (as if it didn 't already exist), specter, which Nixon's assaults on the suggesting cuts or changes, doing any- gauging \"potential public reaction \" to First Amendment only heighten . This syn- thing but classification-regardless of extreme films (as if he has a private drome gives the board another weapon: what the studios want. Farber sensibly pipeline to Middle America 's thoughts). the X, which the studios fear and will do advocates these reforms , plus abolition Farber calmly explodes these arguments almost anything to avoid, since thou- of the X, a lower cut-off age for the R, by naming names, describing the board 's sands of theaters will book no X-rated and the dissemination of much more in- inner workings, and citing chapter and films and many newspapers will accept formation about the films . But don 't hold verse on numerous examples of its med- no ads for them. As a result, the board your breath waiting for them . People with dling . He backs his statements with irre- can brandish the X at scripts and films power rarely surrender it gracefully. futable evidence: eyewitness reporting , to enforce compliance with its dictates. letters , ballots , the raters' often Even the R cuts the number of bookings The new documents strip Stern naked. hilariously obtuse comments, and the available to all but the most successful They also prompt many questions; here public rhetoric of the loquacious Dr. R-rated films (like THE GODFATHER or THE are just a few. Stern brags about the Stern, who whitewashes ruthlessness FRENCH CONNECTION) . This gives the \"Iiberal\" PG ' s of THE HOSPITAL and CABA- with psychological jargon . board still greater muscle, which Stern , RET; maybe he can explain why both had even more than Dougherty, has been to be cut to get that rating . And why Prideful moralizers have always infest- quick to exploit. CABARET was tampered with before and ed the American film industry, generally after shooting, so that its \" decadence\" with its connivance . The old Code, the Scripts and films flow into the board 's amounts to little besides Liza Minnelli's Legion of Decency, Joe McCarthy and offices constantly. Each script goes to green nailpolish. How about the removal many others stood ready to rescue other one member, who itemizes all details- of a childbirth scene from Z.P .G. to save people from moral contamination . They especially sexual matter or four-letter it from X? How did PORTNOY' S COMPLAINT words, always taken out of context-that come to be rated R uncut when five out must come out to avoid X, R, or even PG . of six raters voted it X? (Not that they were How such judgments can be made from right, but they were the majority.) Why scripts alone is something we're not sup- did Stern threaten DELIVERANCE with an posed to ask. Unlike Dougherty, Stern X and force the removal of a three-foot never writes any script letters himself. But shot when his board rated it R by a 3-2 he is responsible for them all , since not vote? And how can a two-second cut one leaves the building without first land- make an R of an X anyway? Why was ing on his desk. In one sense, it is terribly the script of SAVAGE MESSIAH threatened funny to read these dim, literal-minded with an X for two lines of dialogue con- taining the word \"cock\" ? Why was A 56 JULY 1973
CLOCKWORK ORANGE re-rated R with only Rogers and Astaire falls into neither cate- rings of trenchant, unhackneyed meta- gory; and to those who have followed her phor, in places where most dance critics two bits of se x removed when the board 's writing on dance and film and literature still rely on the endless shuffling and and culture over the years, the excep- reshuffling of a few vague superlatives original screening yielded several pages tional status of her newest work comes and their opposites . Yet, in her descrip- as anything but a surprise . The Fred tions of the Astaire-Rogers team in mo- of \" X elements\" ? And what about films Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book fairly tion , the ingenious literary reconstruc- swarms with the unique, almost unattain- tions of graphic and choreographic harshly rated because of their political able form of intelligence and writing skill effects have become so much a part of required by the successful analysis of the texture of her prose that, after a while , views? (Farber mentions DEALING ; the new genre filmmaking. A la Richard Bu rton , you 're hopelessly inclined to forget that whatever special talent it is that Miss not everyone can write like this- material tells about F.T.A.) Croce possesses, she possesses it in abundance . .... .and the re he [Astaire] does his Among recent and forthcoming mov- longest and most absorbing solo of the Most probably, the phenomenon that series so far, full of stork-legged steps ies with Stern 's sticky fingerprints all over explains the paucity of good writers on on toe , wheeling pirouettes in which he film who have been tempted-as Arlene seems to be winding one leg around the them are THE NAKED APE , KING QUEEN Croce has-to try their luck with lengthy other, and those ratcheting tap clusters exegeses of Hollywood classics is the that fall like loose change from his pock- KNAVE , NO PLACE TO BE SOMEBOD Y, PRIME fact that genre films-and especially ets .\" genre films like the films of Ginger Rogers CUT , 0 LUC KY MAN , LAD Y SINGS THE BLUES , and Fred Astaire-don't dramatize a Or like this- brace of serious, paraphrasable ideas . \" Brazil , with its racially mi xed popula- THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE , MELINDA , Traditionally, of course, the matrix of tion , was a natural subject for the [black- thoughtful criticism of the narrative arts and-white] picture-makers of 1933. And ACROSS 11 OTH STREET , TO DIE OF LOVE , THE has been formed by the detection and to give it all heat [in FLYING DOWN TO RIO] , examination of complex moral and psy- there's Dolores del Rio with her piano key RULING CLASS , LOLLY-MADONNA XXX , BLUME chological insights. And though , as any smile and black eye shadow, being number of reviewers have repeatedly crushed in the arms of white-blonde IN LOVE , ACE ELI AND ROGER OF THE SKIES , shown, it's quite possible to build a col- Gene Raymond in his silk aviator's scarf. \" Or like this- DU CK, YOU SUCKER , THE POSSESSION OF umn around the discussion of movies \" Later on in the film [ROBERTA] , there 's a dance reprise, the first formal romantic JOEL DELANE Y, THE LAST OF SHIELA , DIRTY whose strengths lie outside the territory adagio to be created for himself [Astaire] of conventional intellectual interest, it's and Rogers-and for the beautiful supple LITTLE BILLY, TRAVELS WITH M Y AUNT .. . the another matter entirely to try to build a back that let her arch from his arms like whole essay around them , let alone a a black lily.\" list continues much further than space whole book . The trouble is that so little As a result, by the time you hit the of the critical vocabulary is adjusted to remarkable passage dealing with the dra- permits. Stern everi has three new interns the uncovering of the virtues of the genre matic shape of TOP HAT, you 're so used film-virtues which are inarguably more to the nimble verbal parodies, you barely -Beedy Jones (a black), Dick Wirth , and functions of emotion and sensibility and even stop to notice that now the author sensory impact than of ratiocination . is busy painting word pictures of the films ' Charlene Brill iande-helping him chop . Consequently, the peculiarly draining non-visual formal properties- task of the sophisticated advocate of \" Seeing TOP HAT for the first time in With them has come a new gimmick: popular film is to care about the countless indistinct. ineffable ways in which such the early Fifties was like seeing a film non-specific script letters that replace movies work on a viewer-to isolate those made in ancient Egypt ... The plot and ways and force them into focus. Miss settings and manners and clothes estab- precise details with words like \" treatment Croce does all this elegantly . She fastens lished one level of artifice, and balanced her descriptive judgments together as on top of that were perfect cut-glass of sex\" or \" treatment of violence.\" But this suavely as if they were the text of a flowerings of dance and song that rose supernaturally articulate monologue. to infinite heights. \" is no innovation . When they receive the What the accomplishment of The Fred Miss Croce 's sensibility magnetizes all letters, the studios simply phone the Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book boils the subtle shreds that make these films down to most significantly is a flair for art; the filings that accumulate are by no board for the exact changes and cuts . characterization , for converting the vis- means restricted to optical glories. Her ceral into the verbal. The ramifications of portraits of the personalities of the two This way nothing incriminating gets into Arlene Croce 's ability stretch out in so stars-distributed more or less evenly many directions that it's hard to pin down through the discussions of their ten films print. anyone aspect and label it the key. But -practically index the complicated reso- if there is anyone particular skill at the nances that watching great screen actors The film community must wake up to center of her writing , then , most likely, of the pa9t can touch off. The things that it's the ease with which she masters visu- are said about the idiosyncracies and the these outrages. Film critics must stop al experience , the resources she mar- extraordinary allure of Ginger Rogers and shals when she sets out to reproduce the Fred Astaire as people immediately stim- being squeamish about defending the sights her subjects leave reverberating in ulate consideration of a series of issues, the mind's eye. Unlike most critics who making one-sided approaches to the hacks on 42nd Street as well as the gods struggle with the power of the movie team ' s appeal unthinkable. America as it image, she duplicates the force of what once was or liked to think it was , the in their pantheons . The cutting is not she sees, rather than merely document- intoxi catingly rich potential of human ing it. In her recent ballet criticism , Miss personality, the kinds of actors neces- voluntary; no artist wants to cut his film. Croce very noticeably has been coining sary to populate a certain sort of enter- Will Stern be called to account for his abuses , or is freedom of the screen just another empty abstraction? The choice is that simple . 11111111 THE FRED ASTAIRE AND GINGER ROGERS BOOK BY ARLENE CROCE Outerbridge and Lazard , New York, 1972; hardcover, $9.95 ; 191 pages , illustrations , index. REVIEWED BY ELLIOTT SIRKIN Without being unduly harsh, I think it's quite fair to say that full-length stUdies of American popular film normally divide themselves into two comparably unsa- vory categories . They 're either a) witless- ly emaciated resumes of what Bosley Crowther said about Garbo 's last picture and what 's unclear in THE BIG SLEEP , interrupted by the standard stills from dozens of pictorial histories of the mov- ies . Or else b) they 're ponderous , self-ig- norantly deranged flights of mock-erudite ecstasy, launched by lumpen philosophy and English majors who sincerely believe in the affinities between Thomas Hobbes and Robert Aldrich and the relevance of G. W . F. Hegel to D. W. Griffith . Arlene Croce's surpassingly gifted study of FILM COMMENT 57
tainment, the nature of the traits we ad- ments when the movies ' sensual and Reservations? It's true-as has been mire and envy and are pleased to see emotional forces are suddenly allied with contended-that Miss Croce goes some- enlarged, the durability of movie mythol- some unmistakably valid insight, with an what overboard in her insistence that ogy-voluntarily or otherwise, thoughts actual thought. The best films of the dance as the basis of a musical was on all these matters are tapped , once the Rogers and Astaire series, like all major patented by Fred Astaire and Ginger book's cumulative sketches of the two genre works, have more inside them than Rogers and hasn 't been used to compa- actors take shape. On Ginger, the writ- fragrance and glamour. There's always rable effect since their parting. Her gen- ing is especially acute, gratifyingly in- a tiny spark of true substance some- eralized condescension to the musicals formed with a loving respect for a per- where , sticking out of the sides at odd of the Forties and Fifties isn 't horren- former whose good work has been almost times, never constituting the whole mass dously upsetting . But, when she states routinely undervalued . Arlene Croce lo- of the movie, but dependably inspiring its that the excellence of SINGIN ' IN THE RAIN cates Rogers ' attraction not just in her most exhilarating moments. Typically, owes nothing to choreography-and unhampered buoyancy. Instead, several Miss Croce has no trouble freezing such doesn't bother to explain why-she of her most lucid and comprehensive moments when they appear. I don't want seems inexplicably and uncharacteristi- efforts crystallize the more evasive and to get into the debate as to whether or cally perverse .Certainly , to ignore that in uncommon side of the Ginger mystique- not she overstresses the degree to which terms of polish and gusto, Gene Kelly 's the extent to which contradictory quali- the more erotic dances present a pro- and Donald O'Connor's \" Moses Sup- ties co-exist in her, the rare blend of found vision of romance and physical poses\" dance is every bit the equal of \" sensitivity and sharpness \" that simulta- desire (though it might be said that, at something like \" Pick Yourself Up,\" a crit- neously makes her personality \" tough- one point at least, she understresses it. ic would have to be either terribly preju- vulnerable\"and \" ingenuous-calculating .\" Most probably, Ginger's famous cross- diced or terribly silly. And Miss Croce is eyed breathlessness at the end of \"Night emphatically not the latter. (In her de- Admittedly, the perceptions on Astaire and Day\" has a lot more to do with fense, though , it should be pointed out are a bit less steadily on target. At one postcoital stupor than it does with thanks that she's chosen not to repeat the ultra- point, the author perfectly condenses for the \" wonderful man she's been danc- dogmatic vow that gave a disturbingly Fred 's most cherished attribute: \" He epit- ing with \" ). Unquestionably, some of the authoritarian slant to her initial writing on omized the classless 'aristocratic' Amer- dances do deepen our appreciation of the subject in Ballet Review several years ican of the Thirties.\" But she can 't come courtship and sex. But the really piercing , back. Granted , it's not much of a conces- up with quite as many rewardingly tan- enlightening flashes are elsewhere; and sion, but at least she's no longer willing gential observations about him as she to declare \" the junkiest Sandrich \" more can about Ginger. So , on Astaire, there's what might be the most beautiful of all fit to compete as \" the greatest musicar nothing, for example, to match the ca- of them is unimprovably captured by the ever made\" than \"the slickest Kelly I Min- sually interpolated note on the loveliness author in her description of the suite nelli I Donen .\" of the moment in TOP HAT when Rogers of shots symbolizing the title character's drops her customary truculence and just death in ROBERTA. The desolating recog- A lesser distraction are the big chunks stares affectionately at her partner. The nition of the permanence of death and of production data and studio history that deficiency is understandable, though , of the bitterness it wills to the living that must account for a good third of the text because more than any actor-more than William Seiter's direction and Irene and which occasionally can become even Garbo perhaps-Fred Astaire re- Dunne's melancholy personality achieve rather excessive in their fastidiousness . sembles nobody mortal. Being his own actually seem to multiply themselves in (The best way I can think of to demon- species, he all but defies pinpointing . the book's unfussy evocation- strate the way in which these avalanches With that phosphorescent complexion of information mix their blessings is to say and the inverted-question mark chin and \" In the stage show, Fay Templeton as that being let in on Astaire 's telling editors the constant ethos of unsentimental opti- Roberta sang 'Yesterdays' on her how many sprocket holes forward to mism that comes pouring out of him, he deathbed, and the film follows the original move the film when the synchronization seems to exist only on film , to be less a setting for it exactly, with the light dying was off is fine . But that being asked to moving photograph of a flesh-and-blood as Dunne [playing the protegee Stephan- dwell on the early drafts of THE GAY DIVOR- man than a witty stalk of celluloid ani- ie] sings the last measures. At the end CEE or the biography of the executive who mated by a comic spirit way beyond the of the song-very beautifully sung to a got the partnership started isn 't so fine .) recognizably human. The drollest of car- guitar accompaniment-there is slow dis- More seriously, the illustrations are often icatures, he simply discharges enthusi- solve and an orchestral reprise begins, nagging disappointments-and, in some asm and innocent self-satisfaction ; even continuing under the bulletin of Roberta's instances, infuriatingly so. Following a accidentally, the camera never catches death and culminating in an outpouring trend that shouldn't be allowed to be- him looking troubled or confused. Just of Tchaikovskyan sentiment as Dunne come a convention, the art direction trying to describe Fred Astaire in repose , standsmotionlessintheemptyroom.... \" makes fairly liberal use of actual frames as he appears in the book's stills, is brain- from the movies, ostensibly for scenes of destroying ; trying to catch him in ac- Passages like this one (and the dis- which no suitable stills were available. tion , as a functioning personality , is creetly nostalgic one in which she con- And predictably, the results are a greasy suicidally frustrating . nects the \" Castle Walk\" with \" the one- mess-so drizzly, distorting, and gross step my mother and father used to do\") that, in several places , Edward Everett Without a doubt, Miss Croce's sensi- are what make me feel certain that, if she Horton and the chorus girl's don 't look tivity to the shimmeringly uncerebral wanted to, Arlene Croce would have no notably dissimilar. pleasures of the family of masterpieces difficulty being the first critic to do justice and near-masterpieces she discusses is in English to the unparalleled sweetness Still, to complain any further about the precious and-to put it mildly-extraor- and greatness of Murnau 's SUNRISE. lonly rest of the book would be wretchedly dinary. And yet, as Ginger would have regret that she doesn't write seriously ungrateful, because, ultimately, Arlene sung in LADY IN THE DARK if the score about my personal favorite among the Croce has done lovers of the musical film hadn't been slashed, The pearls and delicate-minded Astaire-Rogers pas- a service that goes far beyond establish- such I They don 't mean much I If there 's sages- the \" Fine Romance \" number in ing a model for the evaluation of popular missing just one thing. That thing, in SWING TIME, where the aridities and the film or catching the essence of a specific the case of the criticism of the Astaire- small discomforts of a floundering rela- group of musical movies . In a very Rogers films and of any films like them , tionship are achingly expressed in both strange, wholly unintentional way, she is the ability to illuminate those rare mo- the exasperated rhythms of the song and has done what would seem to be the the loneliness of the imagery. 58 JULY 1973
impossible-namely, canceled the hid- But now we have, I think , a more subtle script for \" their valient attempts to ma ke eous violence recently committed by Ken enemy than lack of information . We have me clarify my concepts and my prose. \" Russell against the entire idea and the the danger of countless messengers Yet it is precisely the opacity of the prose, entire tradition of the musical in his unfor- capitalizing on information in a way which the sl ipshod use of concepts and the givably noxious film of THE BOY FRIEND . may diffuse and de-fuse the European amateurish structure of the book which Really , it's no exaggeration to say that explosion in film consciousness . We must would make it a shameful publication in after The Incomparable Kenneth was now , in our reading and writing , guard any area other than film . through dumping his sleazy loads of epi- against a facile and modish rehash of cene materialism and leeringly psyche- recent continental thought. Publishers To begin: the structure of the book delic graphics and exhibitionistic Fellini particularly must exercise more restraints promises to be developmental. We are gaucherie onto Sandy Wilson 's lovable in the field of film than they have in the told that if we make it through the first tribute to the spirit of the great musicals, past. They must serve the function for four chapters we will be in the thick of there were strong grounds to fear that which they exist, to counsel their authors the marsh , ready to be saved by existen- the taste and the energy of the form were by means of critical readings and re- tial phenomenology. These first four on the verge of permanent destruction. marks . In short, we are better off with little chapters supposedly investigate in suc- But Miss Croce, through the intensity of published film theory than with another cession the expression , the form , the her devotion and the range of her gifts, glut of film books similar to the countless material , and the function of film. Do assures us-and , as far as it's possible , \" director studies\" which have been these four categories represent some proves to us-that, no matter what may thrust upon us. Publishers must not prey kind of Aristotelian whole? We are never happen to the genre films of the future, on a hungry film public by spewing out told . More likely they are convenient their past will always remain , able to premature or flimsy theory. It would be strings Linden pulls hoping he can close furnish new challenges and new plea- far better for them to concentrate on the net on his rambling and essentially sures . If I may borrow from the coda of translating the original French thought. a-logical remarks . If these first four Arlene Croce's own classic review of THE chapters read like \" Everything Linden FOUR HUNDRED BLOws-\"What a blessing!\" These thoughts were occasioned by ever thought about film in the order of the appearance of George Linden 's Re- the thinking ,\" the central two chapters 1111 1111 flections on the Screen and were entitled \" The Lived World \" and \" The confirmed by Stanley Cavell's more re- Personal World \" surely include nearly REFLECTIONS ON THE SCREEN cent The World Viewed. Both of these everything he has filtered from his studies BY GEORGE W. LINDEN authors are professional philosophers in philosophy . We have the assurance Wadsworth Publishing Company, coming to film not in the patronizing way that Mr. Linden is a philosopher and that Belmont, California , 1970; hardcover one might expect but out of a genuine his bantering of names and ideas is not $9 .50 ; 297 pages ; index, illustrations, love for cinema and in the hope that mere culture-mongering. But what does bibliography. understanding movies might bring them this excursion into philosophy gain for fresh insight into life. I will concentrate him or us? REVIEWED BY DUDLEY ANDREW on Linden 's book because I feel it is more Dudley Andrew is the Associate Head serious of purpose and because its terri- It should make possible the achieve- ble failure illustrates most graphically my ment of the last two chapters, a trium- of the Film Division and teaches film fears about published film theory in our phant return to the bog of film talk. But theory at the University of Iowa. His arti- day. it is precisely here that the reader's pa- cle on Andre Bazin appeared in the tient suspicions, suppressed now for 200 March-April 1973 issue of FI LM I want it to be clear from the outset pages , seep out in audible curses and COMMENT. that I respect Linden 's ambitions, the in testily scribbled marginal notes. For the breadth of his reading , and his energetic last two chapters, while more focused Film theory seems about to enter into commitment to film . It is important to have than the rest of the book, are huge silos a period of very healthy debate in this men versed in a tradition of ideas, focus- into which Linden has tossed personal country , taking its cue from France. On ing on problems in film. Yet I cannot help anecdotes, film reviews, opinions on the one hand there is the prestigious but consider Reflections on the Screen minor film critics, long selections from school of semiotics and on the other the to be the most disappointing and over- major philosophers, and just enough politically committed Cinetique group and blown of books in an area rife with such logic to make the reader look helplessly its variants. Often these schools work books. And I feel that in my condemnation for directions. together, especially in their common ef- of this book I am indicting Wadsworth fort to denounce the vestiges of the more Press for their failure to apply brakes and When we are ready to receive the final mystical, \" phenomenological\" followers direction to an author as speedy and payoff or \" revelation \" in the last chapter , of Andre Bazin. While it is premature to reckless as George Linden . Linden treats us to a lengthy and juvenile sort out this debate, film students in the attack on underground cinema. Is this United States are feeling out positions On the surface of it, Reflections on the what we have struggled through the vol- and gravitating toward battle lines. Even Screen is the first original book in English ume to find : a defense of foreign art films though the field of action is foggy , there supporting the phenomenological ap- and accepted American greats under the is enormous excitement in our proach to film problems. Such a book has theoretic framework of New Criticism and classrooms; for the first time we have a been needed as both an antidote and a organic unity? chance to participate in an important and target for the semioticians and Marxist! current debate. No longer must we wait MaOists. But the book has received little Had I read the preface at the outset years to hear the results of theoretical attention and no serious attacks. My fear I should not have been so surprised, for struggles, as when Andrew Sarris arrived is that Linden has so emasculated his there Linden candidly confesses that his in our midst out of breath with the news own argument that serious students will book is \" an attempt to articulate my pref- of the Auteurist victory at Marathon. No dismiss not only his book (as perhaps erences,\" which he labels \" fine films.\" longer must we dread being totally igno- they should) but also his orientation , as These turn out to be your film SOCiety rant of important conflicts as we are of I feel they can 't. Linden asks all the right standards with some personal deviations: that over Amedee Ayfre 's essays on neo- questions, but answers them in the most a distrust of Godard , dismissal of Viscon- realism which took place in 1954. lazy and faCile of ways. ti , and so on . Every aspect of the book is hurried The shallowness of the book's ap- and confused . In his preface Linden proach will strike different readers at dif- thanks the critical readers of his manu- ferent times. I admit to having given lin- den my faith and hope up until the final FILM COMMENT 59
chapter. There, blindly thrust into a sec- tive expression. Commercial films. The within chapters to the flow of paragraphs tion called \" articulation,\" lies the follow- personal film . and the movement of sentences this book ing paragraph , occurring as quoted, with Since Linden claims that his book has the is a disgrace. And yet I admit to having neither lead-in nor follow-up: structure of a film , the table of contents read it at one sitting and with more inter- must be the previews , for it is packed with est than I have given an American film Luchino Visconti, for example, as far interesting flashes and traces of a prom- book in some time . Linden has brought as I am concerned, is an overrated direc- ising organization . But what happens in to film , albeit in a clumsy way , the Chapter 8? After two paragraphs defining perspective of modern , though by no tor since he has little sense of thematic the purpose of the opening sequence of means contemporary , thought. Many of any film , Linden gives us his theory of us have tried to engage Sartre, Merleau- tension . LA TERRA TREMA is a long, slow movie credits. And in the middle of this Ponty, Marcel, Langer, and Kaelin with digression he characteristically deflects cinema problems . All of these obliged us bore; and, though it has some striking his discussion (\"A word should also be a little with inadequate \"Notes on the said about naming .\" ) reducing it to the Film .\" Here Linden 's background in phi- visuals shots-such as the women , like casual observation that he prefers credits losophy helps give a continuity to our which include the picture of the character efforts. rocks, waiting out the storm for their with the corresponding actor's name in men-it builds no tension but simply print. This remark leads him into consid- But even here Reflections on the slodges along. The same may be said for erations of transitional development, I Screen fails to go beyond the stage of ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS or THE LEOPARD. suppose because development follows \" What I have thought about film .\" Linden (or should follow, he would argue) the advances existential phenomenology as Not only is ROCCO dependent upon plot credits . Such an incredible mish-mash of if it were the life blood of modern culture , points tangles any thread of logic or ar- whereas it is currently struggling to main- almost entirely for its development, but gument he might be weaving and forces tain a prestige which reached its peak the reader to return to the table of con- in the Fifties. Notice the names listed also it is restricted by cardboard charac- tents to reorient himself in relation to the above. Only Kaelin could be called a whole book. contemporary scholar and he is merely ters. Again we have some striking visual a kind of translator. Reflections on the sequences (for example, the pursuit on Time after time Linden employs the Screen is a 1950 's book in its tastes and the roof of Milan Cathedral), but the ten- feeblest of transitions between para- in its supports for those tastes. Yet it graphs or, as above , within paragraphs . reads as if no one had ever before sion of the film does not build. Ro c co is Some of the transitions are transparent thought about organic unity, tension, in- and cute . Thus he introduces Godard as ternal rhythm and all those other aspects so incredibly saintly and Simone so sim- an example of a director failing to rely of art the new critics emphasized and our on visuals. The next paragraph opens: more modern critics are debunking . plistically \" bad\" that one feels he is \" The instance of Godard brings up the watching a contrivance. Rocco is pure problem of style and its relation to film .\" The fact that Linden fails to cite any plot. If ROCCO is a cartoon, it fails to be (page 223) An author whose train of truly modern aesthetics (after all, Sartre 's thought follows his examples rather than Psychology of the Imagination was 1938) funny. his argument is just filling up space. For limits the impact of the book to a consoli- This is a most pathetic attempt at eval- a theorist expounding pace, organic dation of the views most of us or our unity, tension , and inner rhythm , his book teachers had in the late Fifties and early uation . Linden must feel guilty about his is a model for reproach . Similarly capsule Sixties, views many of us still hold totally inability to enjoy Visconti and so hopes reviews of films and philosophers crop or in part, views which our students must to devalue his market price in the great up to the point of exasperation. This at some time or other work into and film society brokerage. so-called book of theory has become a book of taste. The investigation of verbal- possibly out of. For this fact Reflections What if Linden reads and sees every- pictorial redundancy is reduced to lin- on the Screen is important and will be thing with the insensitivity he displays den's dislike of the long monologue pas- read by my film theory course for one . before ROCCO? Isn 't his book full of noth- sages in WINTER LIGHT . Hasn't he seen ing other than such presumptuous evalu- DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST? Or THERESE But now let me loose my greatest ations? He dismisses George Mead, holds DESQUEREUX? disappointment. In a book trying to define up Suzanne Langer, allows that in one a personal cinema by means of phenom- situation at least \"Kant is correct. \" The When Linden really wants to make a enological thought, how could he possi- presumption! point, he creates a pun . Puns have an bly have avoided treating Andre Bazin honorable tradition in phenomenology: and Amadee Ayfre. Didn 't he know that It is not that I demand reverence be- they are presumably a way of making Ayfre and Marcel were friends? He quotes fore established films , theories, and language stretch. But Linden 's puns are the one article written on film by Marcel thinkers ; it is that I demand argument not to be confused with Heidegger 's. He (citing its source incorrectly in the refer- when any of these are adduced. tells us, for instance, that \" the fascinating ence) and clearly hasn 't read the five full thing about man is not his mereness, it volumes of Ayfre which define a phenom- And here the book displays its essen- is his more ness.\" Or again he tells us that enology of cinema. Ayfre has entire tial immaturity. It proceeds like a tran- the word \" presence\" stands out more in chapters devoted to the meaning of pres- scription from a series of index cards French because it is an \" iamb \" and then ence and revelation in cinema; yet Linden placed side by side. Presumably the he tells us that \" iamb \" is a pun . For the tramps his way into this terrain without chapter titles were originally labels on the most part though his clever verbal dis- the help of this elegant and careful-think- file boxes, cataloguing as much as possi- tinctions are welcome (pose vs . ex-pose , ing Frenchman. ble the unrelated entries. The best indi- tension vs . extension vs . intention) for cation of the ram bing agglutinative struc- they are handholds in a terrain which is While Ayfre is not well known in Ameri- ture of each chapter is mercifully by turns slippery, then boggy . ca , his friend Andre Bazin most surely is. provided by Linden himself in an itemized Yet Bazin does not even appear in the table of contents. Look at what the last Thus on every level of articulation , bibliography. This omission is felt most chapter holds in store for the reader: from the flow of the chapters, to the flow embarrassingly when Linden discovers the use in cinema of Sartre 's concept of Film Form: Situation, Articulation, Rev- style transparency. Of course Bazin used elation. Symbolism. Names. Tensional development. Unity. Color. Posing and ex-posing. Reel time a function of struc- ture. Investment of meaning. OrganiC unity. Making the covert overt. Suspense and tension. Plot / Theme tensions. Exter- nal form : THE GRADUATE . Music. Internal form : 8Y, . Technique as escape. Com- pression and exploration. Revelation ends plot, extends theme, reveals stance. Culmination and consummation. Flawed forms and emotional cop-outs. Telic fulfillment and contemplation. The under- ground film. Self-expression and objec- 60 JULY 1973
this example over and over in conjunction coons leaping out of windows and gener- Father of with neo-realism, coming to conclusions al consternation in the streets . Cat Peoole which Linden doesn 't approach even twenty years later. The Cinematheque , Etc .: The Rue VAL LEWTON d'Ulm branch of the Cinematheque has And finally, how can a philosopher, regrettably closed for good, but a new The Healitv interested in phenomenological aesthet- screening room to be devoted exclusively ics, fail to mention the one phenome- to silent films will be opening in the Cine- of Terror nologist who has devoted his life to ma Museum . Due to various difficulties, aesthetics: Mikel Dufrenne? It can 't be a the long-awaited catalogue to the Muse- bv Joel E. Siegel language problem because most of Du- um exhibits has not yet appeared , and frenne's work is translated . Dufrenne is due to a series of thefts, the Museum has Cat People. The Body Snatcher. particularly relevant to the discussion of temporarily closed in order to house the film for he is something of an authority other exhibits in protective cases ; but one I Walked with a Zombie. Isle of on Ayfre 's film theory. may hope that, by the time this appears, the exhibits will be both catalogued and the Dead. Misleading names I'm not suggesting that every film book open to the public again . for subtle psychological be au courant and cite all the proper studies made by the master of authorities , but in a book which proceeds Local Abuses And l Or Mutated Bas- the horror film , Val Lewton. through discussion of modern aesthetics tard Children Of La Politique Oes Auteurs: Now the master lives again in and film theory such omissions seem to (1) The cassette recording of the music this book of his notes and let- me inexcusable and portentous. from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE that is being ters plus the testimony of his sold here apparently couldn 't fit the story collaborators - compiled In all honesty, I think Linden has re- words \" Stanley Kubrick 's A CLOCKWORK by a member of the Film Heri- markable ideas about cinema. But at the ORANGE \" on the spine of its container, so tage editorial board and writ- moment they are inchoate, undifferentiat- it settled instead for \" Stanley Kubrick's. \" ten in tribute to the man who ed, disorganized, unsupported, and un- This honor is presumably extended to inspired some of filmdom 's tried. In his book these ideas are lost amid Kubrick not because he composed or minor classics. banal reviews and evaluations, faddish performed any of the music, but merely A Cinema One Book treatment of modern figures, and com- because he selected the pieces that are Illustrated pletely irrelevant material. One gets the used in the film : an anomaly that some- cloth $6.95; paper $2 .75 feeling that Wadsworth Press has pub- how recalls Walt Disney's famous remark lished every thought George Linden ever after seeing one of the sequences in For a free brochure describing all of had about cinema, so diffuse is this vol- FANTAsIA- \" Gee , this ' ll make Beethoven! Viking 's film books write : ume . I trust he will keep thinking , will cull -(2) On an ad for MONSIEUR VERDOUX in from this volume those thoughts worth the Paramount Odeon last summer: THE VIKING PRESS pursuing, and will test these against \" scenario par Orson Welles.\" (3) Also those thoughts of others which are rele- some time ago, but well after Pauline Dept. ATE-Fe vant to the problems which interest him . Kael's \"Raising Kane \" and its numerous 625 Madison Avenue rebuttals appeared, Jacques Doniol-Val- New York, N. Y. 10022 I dislike the haughty tone this review croze, writing in L 'Express, referred to has forced me into. For a long while I've CITIZEN KANE as a perfect example of a FILM COMMENT 61 been upset with the flimsy , half-baked film that was written and directed by one quality of film books generally, and now person singlehandedly. (4) The Last having given an entire day to the close Laugh : When SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE reading of Reflections on the Screen I opened in Paris last year, it was listed feel that all of us have a right to expect in Pariscope under the category \" film those who break the silence with their d ' auteur.\" reflections to have thought them out and pared them down to what is important. That is, we expect our film authors to have truly reflected on the screen. 11111111 PARIS JOURNAL continued from page 2 which is to say that a lot of important films Flashback To The Good Old Days: are apparently being made, but remain Although it has other minor if agreeable unseen . virtues-including an uncharacteristic affection for its jaded types, a witty use Another Note For Harassed Filmog- of sound, and a pleasant absurdist sense raphers And Auteur Critics : L'AN 01 , a of logic-Roman Polanski's WHAT? de- somewhat loose and light sci-fi comedy serves some sort of tribute for provoking by Jacques Doillon and Gebe-adapted such an apoplectic rage in the film re- from a book-length cartoon by the latter- viewer for the International Herald- contains brief sequences by Alain Res- Tribune, Thomas Quinn Curtiss, that he nais and Jean Rouch , shot in Wall Street even managed to get the title wrong. (No and Africa respectively, showing the \" in- doubt as a reflection of his pique, he ternational \" effects of a general strike in reviewed it as WHY?) For moviegoers who France. Resnais' short bit, the longer and miss Bosley Crowther ' s out- more interesting of the two , begins with raged diatribes in the New York Times reverse-zoom shots of skyscrapers syn- as convenient codifications and sum- chronized to the off-screen recitation of maries of philistinism-at-Iarge, Curtiss' stockmarket figures, and proceeds to ty- reviews are heartily recommended as L
nostalgic evocations of that unlamented stories . He's announced that LES NOCES better than any other and a writer can bygone era: I still recall with particular add a hundred grand to his asking price fondness Curtiss' nineteenth century ap- ROUGES will provisionally end his series by contriving imaginative violence . praisal of MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER , also reviewed under a different title , in which of films devoted to bourgeois life , and that Something even more disturbing is he remarked that \" The dialogue sounds happening , too . There is a personality as though it had been written in a Hol- he will next devote himself to adventure cult arising from these young turks that lywood gents' room .\" Before I read that can only leave one perplexed at best. line, I'm sure I didn 't recall that gents ' films ; the first of these planned is scripted Twenty years ago, the antics of James rooms ever ex isted , least of all in Hol- Dean and Marlon Brando were on every- lywood . by Paul Gegauff, and will star Catherine body's tongue. Today, it's those of the hotshot writer. Assorted Flashes: Shooting of Bres- Deneuve and Richard Burton . 11111111 son 's Lancelot film , which he has repu- Their personality seems to freeze into tedly dreamed of making for nearly fifteen L. A, JOURNAL continued from page 3 a persona very quickly , making them as years , will start in May. Tentative title: THE famous for their \" act\" as for what they 're HOLY GRAIL ... . Two projects currently and actor Tony Bill who made the transi- putting on paper. And there is a correla- shooting : Philippe de Broca's HOW TO tion to producer under Calley. Perhaps tion between their strutting and bragga- the first producer to evince an informed docio and the prices they command , even DESTROY THE REPUTATION OF THE MOST interest in the writer-a foolhardy stance for puerile re-writes . The arrogance, of CELEBRATED SECRET AGENT IN THE WORLD in those auteur-ridden days-Bill now has some of these guys is astonishing . One options on the work of half-a-dozen tal- writer told me that if he were going to with Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Jacques ented people. see Larry Turman about work, he would Demy's THE MOST IMPORTANT EVENT SINCE add something bizarre to his already- MAN WALKED ON THE MOON , with Catherine It is obvious, then , that this program colorful appearance . \" We 're punching Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni; the was highly successful. It is the mark of their hip ticket,\" he crowed, meaning that latter is said to be about a man who the industry's myopia that more stUdios he and his cohorts were giving a lease discovers that he's pregnant .... Cha- do not follow suit. If the future vitality of on life to dried-up producers. brol-whose latest film , LES NOCES American movies is as reliant upon the ROUGES, was held back for several weeks writer as this trend indicates, somebody Pauline Kael has already immortalized by the French censors, which led to a should do something fast-not excluding Milius, but he was a much-talked-about lot of angry articles and statements by the federal government, institutions such character before her article appeared. He Chabrol in Pariscope and elsewhere-is as the American Film Institute (still direc- talks a glib, Fascist line that seems to now busy at work on two films for televi- tor-oriented) or foundations such as Ford simultaneously scare the wits out of sion adapted from Henry James' short and Guggenheim. movie execs and also fascinate them- what with guns decorating his office, din- A little security, along with an atmo- ner party monologues about shooting, sphere truly receptive to innovation and rape and carnage, and his insistence experimentation, might help to alter what upon a contractual stipulation that he re- I regard as a truly alarming course: the ceive a gun in addition to his fee . Who propensity to-and reliance upon-violent else but a genius would act this way? themes . Action-adventure stories still sell Those who know Milius claim he is shy and enjoys the effects of this \"number; \" When writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT his scripts, however, would tend to show he is not altogether kidding . . Get ready to It is frightening to see a man not yet have a FIELDS day! 3D, developing a rigid , inclusive world- view, and playing off freakish behaviour i.e.FIELDS for power. An acquaintance told me of BY HIMSELF a recent unsettling experience. He had His Intended Autobiography given his script to a friend for comment. with Hitherto Unpublished Letters, The friend , age 26, had recently sold a Notes, Scripts and Articles script for a lot of money and was feeling Commentary by Ronald J. Fields his oats . Dressed in Hollywood tough- faded jeans, cowboy shirt and boots-the It's a grab bag of the Great One's own friend silently paced around his new writings, and you ' re seeing it here for the Brentwood house a bit before delivering the verdict: \" It won't sell. \" More pacing . first time ever! His original notes, Then , \" It needs more of this ,\" he yelled, outlines, scrapbooks, letters, scripts, picking up a gun off his coffee table and scenarios, photographs-masterfully waving it in my acquaintance's face. He assembled by Fields' grandson, Ronald also had acquired a copy of Gun Digest J . Fields , and including over 100 exclu- which was prominently displayed. sive photos, posters, and drawings. $10 .00 He went on to proclaim that audiences ~ PRENT;C'E.oHALL go to movies to see their fantasies reen- Att: Addison Tredd acted , to feel in control of their lives-and Englewood Cliffs, N.J . 07632 that my acquaintance had stupidly written about a victim! He proceeded to verbally rewrite the script, adding scene after scene of obscene violence. \"Some- body's got to get it,\" he averred. My acquaintance escaped from this \"act\" as quickly as possible , deeply sad- dened . He wondered where in the new Brentwood house would his friend find 62 JULY 1973
a place for his treasured autographed agent must know the scene well: he must \" act,\" agents \" direct\" and all but a hand- picture of Robert Bresson. know who admires whom ; who is sleeping ful of megalomaniacal stars retreat re- with whom-or wants to-or already did; spectfully to the wings. This man 's point of view would un- the various stages of professional des- doubtedly be echoed by a number of his peration . It 's a delicate balan c e. An as- The saving virtue of the new group of compatriots. They are fond of calling tute agent can have every studi o, pro- screenwriters is their dependence upon themselves the \" New Philistines,\" duction company , producer and an the American film as a model. It 's high defining that dubious term as a pragmatic impressive number of stars all franti c ally time for American movies to come home, approach to a grim situation: get your trying to outbid each other for The Prop- to find their roots in native American art audience into the theater any way you erty. More than half the Players know and stop imitating European filmmakers, can and find another way to get your art they're not going to win . And they don 't however great and innovative they may in , too . It's intellectual machismo , almost really , really want to . But if this is the only be. comical because these men-there's game in town , they 'll play it to the hilt. nary a woman am o ngst them-are not It absolutely works : the price for The But that's not enough . To searc h is writing from their own experience. Most Property, the Package, escalates and, one thing , to fi nd , anothe r. Too much of them came from affluent backgrounds just as the excitement peaks , the agent contemporary screen writing is safe and and spent four to eight years in a univer- clinches the Deal. stale . It is crucial that alternative funding sity where they passed an inordinate for scripts come forth . If novelists, poets , amount of time watching the march of A Hollywood agent is like the conduc- historians and so on are given grants to celluloid in a dark room . What do they tor of an invisible orchestra. By remote research and write in some comfort-why know about authentic violence-they control , he manipulates a wide variety of not the screenwriter. Now that he is finally have n' t even served in the U.S . Army! people. He has to know them well .. . receiving his long over-due recognition , strengths and weaknesses ... and be let those who care about the future of The answer is not a damned thing and very clear about the part they will play American film art speak up. that is precisely why those trafficking in in this cacophonous piece . Timing is all this particular scene are writing stuff that important. As in THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO I should like to express appreciation is attenuated and highly stylized. Al- MUCH , there can be only one clash of to Film Comment and its editor, Richard though intermittently brilliant, it doesn 't cymbals : that's the time to make the kill Corliss, for publishing these two articles even have the truth of EASY RIDER and and the agent must be poised and wait- spotlighting the plight of the screenwriter. the films that followed it. ing . His performance is public by now. One ... two . . . three. Close the Deal. 11111111 These writers defend themselves by Performance over. The winner throws a saying that the psychic violence of Amer- party and the losers go to Palm Springs MOVIE POSTERS ican society is responsible for their pen- for the weekend. chant-and they are probably correct. PRESSBOOKS-STILLS -PROGRAMS They are , indeed , the children of the This is the marketplace in which Actual Posters Used By Theatres strife-ridden Sixties. It is true , nonethe- American films are created , bought and Thousands of Titles Available less, that they are departing from the sold , a topsy-turvey world in which writers dreams of their school years when a CATALOG $1.00 (Refunded with order) director like Ford was fo rgiven for his violence and racism and admired for his The Cinema Attic. Department GT transcendental humanism . Theirs is a pe- P.O. Box 7772 • Phila., Pa. 19101 culiar kind of culturally-inculcated self- censorship, more insidious than anything This is movie comedy as it has never been the censor board could invoke. written about before. Their protests that they are \" mirroring And we're not kidding . society\" or \" cutting deep into the Ameri- can psyche \" are too facile . True, their THE eEJMIe MINE) movies make money-but movies, just like toothpaste, are packaged and sold. Comedy and the Movies An inordinate number of projects are by GERALD MAST now generated by the big agencies who must find a way to make money for all From slapstick and sight gog to screwba ll their clients. Producers, Cinematog- an d sati re, here is \" on inv est ig ation in to raphers and , in one or two instances, the vita l intel lectua l and social views even art directors have agents nowadays. which un d er lie 'se r ious' f ilm comedy \" Any film person 's prestige-and market- (Kirkus Reviews ), fr om the sile nts to the ability-is greatly dependent upon who p rese nt. It cove rs such g reat clow ns represents him . And the infighting that as Chop li n, Kea to n, Fiel d s, and the goes on for an agent, and by agents for Ma rx Brothe rs, and the g rea t sou nd cl ients , is incredible : there 's a regular d irecto rs, inclu d ing Capra , W ild er, civil war between the three big agencies, an d Lub itsch. Explo ring the id eas an d William Morris, Creative Management As- talents of all the g reat comics, this sociates (CMA) and International Famous book is one of the most comp rehen- Agency (IFA). sive eve r w ritte n on the subject. 80 photographs. $9.95 cloth; $4.95 paper In order to make a Big Deal you must have a top-flight agent who takes charge - At you r bookseller of The Property and starts to Package EJr T1BOBBS-MERRILL it from his stable of clients . Every con- ceivable relationship between human beings can come into play here and the FILM COMMENT 63 &
FOCUS ON FILM LETTERS reprinted volumes is an extremely useful , The first three volumes of Film Comment have been reprinted entertaining and sometimes and bound as paperbacks. All volumes are complete and stimulating British film To the Editor: printed on archival quality matte magazine, firmly established I was interested to read Ian Cameron 's paper, with slightly lower photo as an important source of quality than the original. Eight of original research into subjects London Journal in FILM COMMENT, No- the 14 issues in the three and areas of film history vember-December, 1972. There are sev- volumes are out of print. Each largely ignored elsewhere. eral points which seem to me to be worth volume is available separately at making . $15, or three for $45. No discounts. We ship anywhere in Past issues have included Firstly, Ian Cameron opens his re- the world postpaid. Film Comment box 686 Village studies of: The American B marks by referring to the British film in- Station Brookline MA 02147 USA. Film , John Barrymore , Sergei dustry and then moves to the British Film Semiology Bondarchuk, Rowland Brown , Institute inferring that in some mysterious way the Institute has a mandate to affect Cinema Semiotics Lon Chaney, Robert Donat, and the Work of Christian Metz -even run-the British film industry. This plus major articles Clint Eastwood, Douglas on cinema semiotics is clearly not the case . Similarly , he refers Fairbanks, John Ford, Sidney to the New Wave and Cahiers du Cinema .Screen Franklin , Alec Guinness, Henry and then compares them to Woodfall and special double issue $2.95 available now from Hathaway, Bob Hope; Edward Sight and Sound-once again a quite SEFT 63 Old Compton Street Everett Horton, Ken Hughes, extraordinary and misleading compari- London W1 V 5PN (01-734 5455) Per Lindberg , James Mason, son. Monthly lists of scarce cinema books & magazines sent Oswald Morris, Walter Mr. Cameron does list some of the airmail - $5.00 yearly . Newman, Suzanne Pleshette, many and diverse activities of the Institute A. E. COX, 21 Cecil Road, Itchen, Fritz Rasp, Donald Ogden and in so doing suggests that its work , Stewart, Monica Vitti , Tuesday though naturally open to critic ism , is in- 50uthhampton 502 7HX, Weld, Susannah York. deed extremely valuable . But he does in ENGLAND. so doing totally mislead your readers by \" .. .all at most reasonable prices.\" Each study has been fully referring to the expansion of regional International Film Guide. documented (usually by activities as \" the BFI 's own empire build- filmographies) and richly ing .\" As Mr. Cameron knows only too Errata well , the regional theatres, with two ex- The opening line of Jay Leyda's review illustrated, usually providing ceptions, are totally autonomous and rely of The Documentary Tradition : From Nanook to Woodstock edited by Lewis the most thorough available on the BFI only for services , money and Jacobs, Documentary Explorations: 15 material on each subject. advice. They did not come into existence Interviews with Film-makers by G. Roy as a result of any empire building proclivi- Levin , The New Documentary in Action : A Casebook in Film Making by Alan Ro- Each issue of FOCUS ON ties on the part of the Institute, but exclu- senthal, and Perspectives on the Study FILM has 68 pages in a sively as a result of local initiatives. of Film edited by John S. Katz that ap- distinctive landscape format; peared in the November-December 1972 and all numbers are currently It may well be true that in the past, FILM COMMENT on page 62 should have available price $1.25 . Binders when the NFT lacked any direct govern- read , \" Despite the superficial similarity of ment subsidy, programming was adver- this group of books . . .\" instead of sely affected , but in recent years, as Mr. \"Despite the superficiality of this group of books .. .\" and an index to issues 1-8 are Cameron himself points out, this has also on sale. Write for changed for the better. We look forward individual copies and further to the time when even Mr. Cameron may information to The Tantivy approve our programming at the NFT, Press, 108 New Bond Street, always allowing for personal taste. Once London W1 Y OQX, England . again Mr. Cameron knows , or if he does not certainly ought to know, that sugges- tions for programming at the NFT are Subscribe to FOCUS ON FILM sympathetically received. Indeed , one of through FILM COMMENT. the programmes he specifically criticises Four issue (one year) in his article was devised and organised subscriptions cost $5 and by a supporter of the so-called Members checks should be made Action Group. payable to Film Comment and sent to Box 686, Village As to the new team , it would be invi- Station , Brookline, dious for me, as one of them to enter into Massachusetts 02147. a debate as to our qualities. However, I welcome Mr. Cameron's generous offer to wait and see. It does seem a pity that Mr. Cameron cannot find anything more If you are seriously interested constructive to say about the London film in the study of film, find out scene-after all there is quite a lot hap- about FOCUS today. pening , even in the BF!. FOCUS ON FILM Sincerely yours, Keith Lucas , Director 64 JULY 1973
BACK PAGE The University Film Study Center, the RBC Films announces two new film film department at Boston University series available for rental. The Chaplin The Environment Information Center and the George Eastman House Series is made up of 11 showings which has a new publication , The Environment announce a symposium on \" The include Chaplin features never available Film Review. The Review lists over 600 Coming of Sound to the American Film , on a non-theatrical basis before. Only films dealing with ecology and indexes 1925-1940 \". The symposium will be the complete series will be released for them by subject, title , industry and held at the Eastman House in bookings. The BBS Series consists of 7 sponsor. A synopsis and critical Rochester , New York from October 19 films made by BBS Productions . These evaluation of both content and style is to October 22 , 1973. Lectures will be include FIVE EASY PIECES , EASY RIDER and given of each film . Names and given by invited, knowledgeable guests THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. Prices range addresses of distributors are also given. and there will be screenings of rare from $500 down. For further information Cost is $20 . Write Environment sound prints . There is also an open and a free brochure write RBC Fi lms , Information Center, 124 East 39th essay competition for the best essays 933 North La Brea Avenue , Los Angeles Street, New York NY 10016 . submitted on a topic relating to the CA 90038 . symposium. Top prize is $300 . Contact A warning to film renters has been sent Peter Feinstein , Symposium on the Indiana University Press announces its out by Janus films. They claim that their Coming of Sound, University Film Study forthcoming Filmguide series edited by recently acquired print of PYGMALION Center, Box 275 , Cambridge MA 02138 . Harry Geduld and Ronald Gottesman. was pirated and offered for sale before 617 / 894-0920 . Each filmguide provides basic they could release it. Janus has filed information about a film-its director, suit against the alleged pirate, Budget FILM COMMENT is now being actors, and other contributors-a Films of California . They also state that distributed to bookstalls in Great Britain . summary of its critical reception , and an they have coded their masters and If it is not on your bookstall , tell the annotated bibliography. Films covered negatives to protect them and that none manager to get in touch with range from PSYCHO to THE GENERAL. Cost of their prints are for sale anywhere. Moore-Harness Company, London . is $5 .00 hardbound ; $1.75 paperback . Having a Janus print in one's Subscriptions to Film Comment, payable Write Indiana Press, Tenth and Morton possession without their permission is in pounds , are available through Tantivy Streets , Bloomington IN 47401. unauthorized and the print may be Press and please include your stolen property. Janus Films, 745 Fifth occupation . £ 4.40 for 1 year , £ 8 .50 for Back Page deadline for the Avenue, New York NY 10022. 2 years. Remit to: Film Comment c / o November-December issue is 15 August 212 1753-7100 . The Tantivy Press, 108 New 1973 . Send to Film Comment, Box 686 Bond Street, London W1 Y OQX Village Station, Brookline MA 02147. England. 6171782-3323 . THREE NEW 1\" VTR UNITS FROM SONY. FROM CAMERA MART Sony Videocorder Model EV·320F- A color and monochrome video tape lA\" ¥2\" I\" VTR SYSTEMS rec ordin g unit. Feature s cap stan se rvo electronic ed iting, with a roo Whether you shoot 1/4\" Black and White or 1\" Color, tary era se head . You ca n take se· you know that you can depend on CAMERA MART'S quences from tape , off·the·air, live complete line of VTR equipment and accessories. camera s, etc. and in se rt them into a pre·re corded tape with perfect VTR Cameras and Zoom Lenses syn chronization. VTR Recorders and Playback Decks VTR Monitors (All Sizes) Sony Video Color Pack Model CLp· B - Brings full color re cord and play· Write today for free rental list of our latest VTR equip- ba ck capability to Sony's EV·31O ment or phone Rupert Alberga in our VTR Department. and PV-120 U Series Videocorder video tape re corders. Exce ll ent sta · THE CAMERA MART INC. bility and color fid elity. 456 W. 55th ST., NEW YORK, N. Y. 10019 • (212) 757-6977 Sony Trinitron Color Monitor/ RENTALS 0 SALES 0 SERVICE Receiver Model CVM·1710 - Use with video tap e recorders ·and CCTV sys· t ern s. Special circ uit ry and tran s- f9rmer s allo w input from VTR s, Vid eo cameras or any other video si gnal source. When writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT
Maybe you're shooting documentaries. THE Or features. TV news. Or commercials WHOLE (live or animated) ; travelogues; sports; The works: You can extend your wildlife ; educational fi lms ; macrocine- photography or cinephotomlcrography, SHOOTING basic equipment almost indefinitely with you name it. Bolex can provide you with a wide range of accessories. exactly the right camera body, lenses For instance: if you choose a spring- and accessories to assure you 'll have MATCH. wound camera, you can automate easily just what you need when you need it. with anyone of three auxiliary motor (And at prices that may surprise you with drives, for time-lapse or animation, for their economy.) variable speed shooting or for filming The cameras: You get to choose from five rugged camera bodies with sync pulse generator or crystal. designed for hand held or tripod use. With either three-lens turret or bayonet The system offers you tripod; monopod ; mount, with spring motor or electric drive, with 100' to 400' film capacity, for camera grips; blimps; an automatic silent filming or sync sound with sync pulse generator or crystal. And that's just The lenses: With the Bolex system, fading device; cable releases; matte the beginning. you can choose from 7 fixed focal length boxes (complete with masks); an Consider features like: automatic threading , flickerless reflex viewing lenses, ranging all the way from 10mm underwater housing; attachable exposure and focusing with complete depth of field control , a filter slot behind the lens, super wide angle to long 150mm meter ; 400' magazine ; closeup lenses ; single-frame counter, unlimited film rewind, variable speeds for accelerated telephoto. And they all have built in extension tubes ; optical magnetic and slowmotion filming , single frame filming, variable shutter with automatic macro focusing , automatic depth of field sound projector. control possibility, registration claw for total accuracy in picture steadiness scales and diaphragm presetting so It's quite a list. But that isn't all. The even when films are blown up to 35mm. you can step down the aperture without full story of Bolex's whole shooting taking your eye off the reflex finder. match fills a 32 page book. Which we'll You can choose a lens as fast as fl1 .1, or be happy to send you. Just write to one that can focus down to one inch Paillard Incorporated, 1900 Lower without accessories. Road, Linden, N.J. 07036. You'll get a The system offers you seven zoom very professional response. Other lenses with zoom ranges from 5:1 to 10:1. products : Hasselblad cameras and Oneof those is the Vario Switar100 POE-4 accessories . with built-in power zoom, automatic light measuring through the lens, focusing as close as four feet and picture sharpness equal to any good fixed focal length lens. BOL..E>< Ie PAILLARD
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