VOLUME 19 - NUMBER 03 MAY-JUNE 1983

JUNE 1983/$2.00 COMMENT Richard Corliss and William Wolfon Ingmar Bergman: page 13

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n •Sl•SSUe pu bimonthly by the Film Society ofLincoln Center Volume 19, Number 3 May-June 1983 Bergman at Twilight. . . . . . . . . 13 Midsection: The Hard Part 33 How far has Ingmar Bergman's Moviemaking is an Olympic event: critical star slipped? Far enough so high hurdles. First you try to get your that that novelist Scott Spencer picture made; then you try to get it could cite Wild Strawberries as a shown; and finally you figure on get- Guilty Pleasure, for goodness' ting it right. Herewith, three eyewit- sake. Two critics take exception to ness reports on The Hard Part of Hol- this fall from renown. Richard lywood. L.M. Kit Carson shares the Corliss looks at Bergman's career diary he kept during the five years he through the glass of all his women; and Jim McBride struggled to remake ' and William Wolf sees Fanny and Godard's BreathLess (page 34); Alexander, Bergman's latest, as a Stephen Farber chronicles sad tales reflection of so many masterpieces. of unreleased movies (page 39); and David Ehrenstein defines The Aes- 'Superman,' Super Salkinds. . . 49 thetics of Failure, from CLeopatra to Here comes the Man of Steel Heaven's Gate and beyond (page 44). agai n , looking to leap tall I--=---::----=,..-\".---=----:;:;,.--;,..----.,----------~....._I r Headsploitation Movies . . . . . . 67Jedi at a single box-office bound. But Superman III is hey like wow man remember only the latest big movie pro- when we all blissed out on duced by the legendary head movies and peter fonda Sal kind family. Harlan like turned from tammy's Kennedy talks with IIya and doctor into this stony dude Alexander (page 49); and and movies took us on like David Chute meditates trips into the sorta innermost fondly on Clark Kent's new- karma of our essences? est fetish, succulent Annette Charlie Haas takes another O'Toole (page 53). look at Headsploitation. Also in this issue: Joe Dante's Guilty Pleasures .. 56 Books .................... 72 Can even a confirmed trivia freak ad- Screenwriter John Sayles reviews Journals ................... 2 mit to liking A.C. Lyles Westerns? screenwriter William Goldman's Harlan Kennedy is back from Berlin The director of The HowLing and one- screed on screenwriting. Barbara with a folio of insights and a few good fourth of The Twilight Zone relives a Learning discovers \"an essential book movies. Mitch Tuchman kibitzed misspent youth in our pages . on film theory.\" Jack Barth rehabili- with Canadian David Cronenberg on tates the Three Stooges. the set of his new thriller. Israel: Why Not? ........... 60 They are smart people, crafty war- Independents............... 76 Mustache.................. 20 riors, a lonely Mideast outpost of Amos Vogel goes to Berlin and finds a Burt's got one, Dirk's got one, Errol democratic sense. So why can't the provocative new Japanese film. Flynn above his smirk's got one. Israelis make better movies? Dan David Thomson delightfully decodes Yakir went home and found out. Back Talk ................. 79 \"that obscure wound of desire.\" A final look at the 1983 Oscars. American Graffiti ........... 64 The Otherlndia ............ 28 For Charles Ahearn, the words of the Back Page ................. 80 Forget Gandhi . India has hundreds of prophets are written on subway walls. It's quiz time. Go on a trip and win a movies (five based on one Erich Segal The filmmaker talks with Harlan Ja- free year of FILM COMMENT. novel) and a movie star as Chief Min- cobson about his eye-popping, as- ister. By Elliott Stein. sumption-shattering WiLd StyLe. Cover photo: Embassy Pictures. Editor: Richard Corliss. Senior Editor: .HarianJacobson . Business Ma~ager: Sayre Maxfield. Advertising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. Art Director: Elliot Schulman. Cover DeSign : Mike Uns. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Executive Director, Fil~ Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch. Second class postage paid at New York and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 1983 by the Film SOCI~ty of LmcoJn Center. All nghts reserved. The opmlons expressed m FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. This publication IS fully protected by domestic and mternatlonal copynght. The publication of FILM COMMENT (lSSNOOI5-119X) is made possible in part by support from the New York State Council on the' Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. Subscription rates in the United States: $12 for six numbers , $22 for twelve numbers. Elsewhere: $18 for six numbers , $34 for twelve numbers, payable in U.S. funds only. New subscribers should include their occupations and zip codes. Editorial , subscription, and back-issue correspondence: FILM COMMENT. 140 West Sixty-fifth Street, New York, N .Y. 10023 U.S.A.

Berlin Titanic, and Cronenberg's Niagara Wag Harlan Kennedy full evening dress~and in very challeng- In The White City takes Swiss director ing 3/4 time, to the accompaniment of an Alain Tanner to Portugal, where he is hit from Berlin oompah waltz. by a dose of minimalism even stronger The festival rallied, and steamed on \"than the one that got Wim Wenders in At first sight he may appear a trifle toward a fair final week. Balmy zephyrs The State of Things. Ship's engineer rough, even vulgar. But you have to re- arrived with four feisty movies by Bruno Ganz stops off at Lisbon to have a member that he spent more than half a Margarethe Von Trotta, Eric Rohmer, mid-life crisis. This consists of large century in Berlin, where there lives-as Alain Tanner, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. hours ofwalking the streets or gazing ou t many a detail has made me realize-a spe- Von Trotta's was best. Heller Wahn of his hotel window. Meantime, he has cies of the human race so bold that little (Labor of Love) is a smoldering tale of an affair with the young hotel maid, can be gained by treating them with nicety; sibling loyalties like her previous film, writes letters and sends an 8-mm film on the contrary, you have to grit your teeth The German Sisters. This time, though, diary to his wife in Germany, and is and resolve to be brutal yourself if you the two heroines, mentally disturbed mugged and non-fatally stabbed by don't want to go under. -Goethe, 1827 Ruth (Angela Winkler) and ice-cool street hoodlums. Sounds like my vaca- It was a dark and wintry night when Olga (Hanna Schygulla), aren't sisters, the Titanic came to West Berlin. This they're the wives of mutual friends. was not the ghost of the great ocean liner When they strike up an intimate, symbi- but a giant chunk of live-in sculpture, otic friendship, despite the jealous cries formed of a large slab of shiny gray stone of their males, Von Trotta seems to be pierced at an angle by a glass room. It bugling a reveille for a new Germany, was craned down from the skies on the reknit by feminist strength and wisdom FilmFestspiele's opening night. As- and the banishment of patriarchy. tonished Berliners stood by and dropped Labor ofLove is also kookily electrify- their bright red toffee apples. The ar- ing on its own level of character-chemis- rival of the Titanic, designed by Peter try. Winkler, whose brother's suicide has Sturzebecker and Kenji Tsuchiya to tipped her into mourning madness, is a symbolize the split and encompassed lightning-struck, black-garbed Anti- city (a room of light encased in stone) gone; her goldfish mouth is ever agape also marked half a century since Hitler's to communicate the incommunicable. ascension to power and was, possibly, Schygulla is a tender, musk-cheeked the most alarming thing Berliners had nymph in primrose yellow, with a streak seen since the erection of The Wall. of pure viciousness. The sweet and sav- Behind this architectural beast (soon age sides of a Platonic romance are to be tamed by becoming a festival infor- strongly folded together, and the movie mation and news point) lurked the pala- climaxes with one of the most memora- tial Zoo-Palast Cinema, where the early ble gunshots since Spellbound. phase of the Main Competition was hit- How the mighty are time-warped! ting an average of two icebergs per day. Robbe-Grillet is still fixated on Enough to crack the spirit. Concussed Marienbadesque surrealism. Tall men in Margarethe von Trotta's Heller Wahn. passengers wondered how the festival tuxedos;' sex and shadow-play in Palla- ship could possibly survive a movie like dian mansions; glances exchanged like Tanner says he made the film up as he West Germany's This Rigorous Life by moves in a game ofNim. There is noth- went along. But no rude remarks, Vadim Glowna, a story of displaced Ger- ing more formalist than some forms of please, because this is one movie where mans in Texas oppressed by colliding irrationality. And yet La Belle Captive, spontaneous evolution does work- accents (Spanish Angela Molina and photographed by visionary French vet- oddly, crankily, and eventually. A clock Polish Jerzy Radzilowicz, Wajda's Man eran Henri Alekan, was the best-looking that runs backward, white sheets danc- of Iron, play the lead \"Teutons\") and film in Berlin. Its plot-hero seeks beau- ing in the wind, and Ganz's dazzlingly Fifties-style color photography. Or Dan- tiful girl, casually met the day before at a extemporized performance, built on iel Schmid's high-camp Hecate from disco, who turns out to have been dead doodles and tiny tics of behavior, tell the Switzerland, where Lauren Hutton and for six years-is the trigger to a Cocteau- story of a man trying to create a clean- Bernard Giraudeau cavort through the like game of mystic erotic conse- slate freedom by a constant, time-defy- North African casbahs. Here Miss H. quences, using Magritte's paintings as ing rhythm of wiping away the past and surely becomes the first leading lady of iconic text and a dazzling knock-on of cinema to be ravished on a balcony in non-sequitur as rhythmic base.. starting agam. In Pauline a la Plage Eric Rohmer 2

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says, \"Take your partners, please\" for one-woman funeral processIOn . But ner-like tragedy falls out of the heavens, another of the French helmer's sprung- Bennett's direction doesn' t make the threatening to bash him on the cranium. rhythm sexual comedies. This one is set pulse race, and he tends to simplify the in beach-resort Normandy among a per- Irish problem into a mere Emerald Isle What galvanizes this monochrome mutating sextet of three men, three extension of that old British warhorse, movie oflove's lumbers loosed is Dorst's women. There's something unnerving class conflict. use of an all-through symbolism of rift about Rohmer's productivity-rate. Like and rupture. The East-West German rabbits from a bottomless top hat, these • border setting acts as tuning fork to all toujours charmants tales keep being the barbed emotional \"frontiers\" of the plucked. But this one is as wise and All in all, the 1983 official movies story-the girl's adolescence, the fa- funny as the best, and no moviemaker in were some compensation for the fact ther's brute dithering before the no-go the world has Rohmer's knack for find- that year after year fest-chief Moritz de area of sex-and there are leitmotiven ing the tiny air-gap, like a man drowning Hadeln (and, before him, Wolf Donner throughout that give imagistic density to in an icy river between farce and trag- and Alfred Bauer) has been caned red the film . Cracking, grass-pierced tiles in edy, and breathing deeply, luxuriously and raw for the poor quality of the Main a tavern kitchen are rhymed with Competition. This year, as if blessed by quaked and fissured cobbles in a street. In. Herr Micawber, something kept turning Turkeys and chickens squawk and up. And even on the days when some- clamor as farmyard ids. Best of all , Dorst • thing didn't, there were always the eventful Berlin sideshows-The Young Tankred Dorst's Eisenhans. A brace of movies in the Competition Film-Makers Forum, The New Ger- unironically bestows angelic qualities on deserve to be hymned for their visual man Cinema section, The Retrospec- the girl (visual puns on haloes and an- qualities. Xavier Schwarzenberger, the tive, The Information-Show-to which gel's wings) but ends by making her pas- Austrian cinematographer of several one dashed off for a hot and hasty bite. sivity the strongest force of evil in the Fassbinder films , directed his first fea- These filmgoing equivalents of the Im- movie.\"Slumberer, awake,\" the movie ture , The StiLL Ocean , and it joined biss kiosks on the sidewalks yielded up seems to say-perhaps as much to Ger- Robbe-Grillet's film and Erden Kiral's A hot dogs and currywurst to gelid or ex- many as to its heroine. Season In Hakkari from Turkey as one of piring passers-by. the three handsomest movies on show. • Hanno Poschl plays a young country Ulrich and Erika Gregor run the Fo- doctor coping with personal guilt (for rum with firmness, vigor, and a brave Those who didn' t want to wake could past negligence that killed a patient) and attempt at air-conditioning, in a large, hibernate in the Retrospective. For an a rural rabies epidemic. Meanwhile a tomb-like air-raid shelter called the event that has previously fielded lus- pastoral storm of fabulous lighting ef- Delphi Filmpalast. This \"alternative\" trous tributes to Lillian Harvey, Marlene fects-lucent mists and foliate shadows event boasts huge and faithful audi- Dietrich, 3-D und su weiter, this year's and swags of chiaroscuro-turns the film ences of the bedenimed young. If the Retro was a disappointing rag-bag. \"Ex- into an Eighties realm of true German kids can't find seats at a packed screen- ile: Six Actors from Germany\" spoke the ing, they don't stand demurely against title, and the intent was no doubt to Expressionism. the wall as in the Zoo-Palast; they en- mark the 50th anniversary of Hitler's The Turkish film is differently eye- camp on the tobacco-ashed floors or hang from the bomb-damaged caryatids catching. Blocks of daylight-scorched on the ceiling. Kurdish primitivism build the tale of an itinerant teacher spending winter in a Many of the Forum movies are either snow-clad mountain village. Slow story hard-line political agitprops or hard-core but hewn and hieratic images. Kiral won structuralist conundrums. The latter the Silver Bear Special Jury Prize for the come with titles like (I'm improvising) film. Windows No. I7A or Replay Gestalt with Negative-exposed Taxis . They are good • to sample as aesthetic flavor-c1earers- cheese or sherbet-between courses. The Golden Bear was again surgically Some are even tangy and revelatory in bisected. Mario Camus's underwhelm- their own right. Michael Snow's So Is ing La Colmena (The Beehive), a kind of This plasters white-lettered Iceman Cometh set in post-Civil War words of varying sizes on a black screen Spain, shared the top prize with Edward and, like Godard in his heyday, shows Bennett's Ascendancy from Britain. Ben- the astonishing kinetic, sensual impact nett casts Julie Covington (the original of words and letters. Evita who played Sister Sarah in the National Theatre revival of Guys and But even the Forum stands or falls by Dolls) as a rich girl in 1920 Belfast; she its feature films , and this year it tottered. wears the trauma of her brother's death Best discovery was Tankred Dorst's in World War I in a paralyzed right arm Eisenhans. This plugs into the German and is slowly awakening to the new war Wozzeck tradition of boor-as-hero, with on her very own doorstep, between the Gerhard Olschewski playing a lumber- British and the Irish. (1920 was the year ing beer-truck driver of low I.Q. whose in which British rule came to Northern devotion to his semi-autistic daughter Ireland. ) (Susanne Lothar) is more than paternal. He remains undismayed even as Buch- The movie is decent and austerely serious, and Covington wears her black weeds attractively in a role that's really a 4



election-to-power by outlining six ca- oddities were no-narrative meditations, nia, taking hammers to nuclear-missile reers that might have been totally differ- using cinema's sleight-of-hand to warp nose-cones, here pop up in wobbliest ent had Herr H. not goose-stepped into us into different worlds, where time video to argue their pacifist defences history. Whether they would have been stops or speeds or slows, and traditional before Judge Martin Sheen. any more distinguished is open to ques- notions of \"structure\" are dissolved. tion. Given de Antonio's Marxist sympa- Echtzeit (Realtime), by Helmuth Cos- thies, you'd think it would be an open- The medium-to-Iow-magnitude ca- tard and Jurgen Ebert, purports to have and-shut case. And it is. The General reers of Francis Lederer, Curt Bois, a thread ofstory, but on first viewing few Electric spokesmen are played (by ac- Dolly Haas, Hertha Thiele, Wolfgang could be expected to seize it, or even tors) for maximum hot-under-the-white- Zilzer (aka Paul Andor), and Elisabeth find it. The film is. a dnnse macabre of collar pomposity, and Sheen as the Bergner duly unspooled. But outside trick photography set in a mysterious Judge is so busily biased and near-de- Deutschland, Bergner was the only space station, where human beings have mentedly short-fused that it's impossi- \"star\" of the sextet. And even her elfin been reduced to ghostly \"programs\" of ble to see how a mistrial wasn't called face, cracked-honey voice, and poor-Iit- their past selves and vision is atomized after half an hour. One suspects, in tle-rich-vamp persona wear thin when into lucent beads and dots like a moving short, that de Antonio's \"digest,\" even if she's called on by director-husband Paul mosaic. It's a pointillist Wonderland, it contains nothing but the truth, is so far Czinner to carry movie after movie set in where the mansions are the human short of the whole truth as to shade into the same key of S for Schmaltz. Stolen mind and the medium is the message. an area all its own of fiction-by-imbal- Life is a fair 1939 predecessor of the ance. Bette Davis classic, but Dreaming Lips is Sans Soleil brings back to us France's a gooey-eyed embarrassment entwining Chris Marker, once a nouvelle vague But the next night Andrzej Wajda's Bergner with \"international violinist\" name to juggle with. This globe-hop- Danton bounded into the Zoo-Palast and Raymond Massey. ping documentary is a kind of Levi- demonstrated the perfect fusion of film- Strauss-as-Supertourist: rhyming differ- making and politics. For a movie that Today's Dream Factory, English- ent townscapes and cultures (Japan, has been dragged over rude critical cob- speaking division, came to Berlin with Africa, France) in a visual collage, while blestones of late, by such diverse horses Tootsie and That Championship Season. also pinpointing and celebrating their in- as the French Communist Party and Va- The first was a special treat opening the alienable differences. The commentary riety, its qualities were quite a surprise. festival and wowing Berliners with Dus- is polymorphous-pretentious and The movie is a masterpiece of historical- tin Hoffman's beaky transsexual allure. springs from the letters of Sandor drama cinema, and those that have eyes The second won Best Actor Silver Bear Krasna: \"He said he had been round the to see should take the trouble to open for Bruce Dern. Also on display, honor- world three times and that now only them. ingJoseph L. Mankiewicz's presence on banality interested him.\" But the im- the festival jury, was a special screening ages, freewheeling from emus to umbrel- The Communists no doubt passed up of Alles Uber Eva-missed by me, alas, las to computers, have a crazy-quilt poe- Danton's rich complexity of theme and which means I'll never be able to honor- try worthy of Robbe-Grillet. image because it didn't spew out a for- ably emblazon my T-shirt with the Ger- tune-cookie message at the end and be- man slang version of \"Fasten your seat Erik de Kuyper's Casta Diva, from the cause Wajda, since Man ofIron, isn't all belts, it's going to be a bumpy night.\" Netherlands, is an aria to the human that popular with Poland's current gov- body, male. In consecutive, unhurried, ernment. Variety disliked the movie, • fIXed-camera sequences, a man washes more bewilderingly, because it was himself at a sink; another man fIXes a \"stiff' and \"literary.\" Did they stumble In Berlin's market and Information strip-light in a bathroom; another cuts into the wrong cinema and see Gandhi Show-ever-expanding catch-all pro- his hair; another repairs a car; another by mistake? grams where the sublime rubs sprocket- cleans a large mirror. The soundtrack is holes with the certifiable-large slices now mute, now quietly talkative, now Wajda and screenwriter Jean-Claude from the underside of American cinema exploding outward with an operatic aria Carriere (Bufiuel's ex-collaborator) don't were served up in Berlin, hot and steam- or an Italian pop song. It's free-associa- skim the surface, Attenborough-style, ing. Liquid Sky and Vortex attracted mas- with a series of limpid Sunday School sive audiences which equally massively .tion serendipity, locomotion, and ges- tableaux clinched by takeaway maxims. dwindled as the movies progressed. The They scoop straight to the bottom of the law of diminishing Punk returns-how ture as a ballet without rules. For 107 pan to find the richest, darkest gravy, do you keep your viewers interested minutes it's oddly hypnotic. where political ideas and human pas- when you shoot all your taboo-shattering sions blend. In Danton, as in all Wajda's bolts in the first reels?-sent many away ' best work, the people are their ideas and with a new respect for minimalist Tan- passions. Gerard Depardieu's Danton is ners and slow-as-she-goes Turkish pics. On the last two days of the festival, a force of Nature, hands waving and lank two contrasting and much talked-about locks streaming down a demon-worked Three of the best fringe-of-festival political movies juggernauted into West face as he argues himself literally hoarse Berlin: Emile de Antonio's In The King in the people's tribunal where he was MOVIE STAR NEWS ofPrussia and Andrzej Wajda's Danton. arraigned in 1793 as a ·counter-revolu- tionary. Woijech Posniak's Robespierre COME IN PERSON. MON-FRI 11·5 SAT 12-5 (Mail Order) De Antonio shot his dramatized is a force of Nurture-chalk-white mock-up of the 1981 Ploughshares 8 trial moon-face strangled by high collars and Pin-Ups • Portraits • Posters • Physique -starring the defendants as themselves a thin-lipped voice ever prophesying Poses • Pressbooks • Western • Horror • and based on a digest of the actual court doomy Utopias. Robespierre is the pas- Science Fiction • Musicals • Color Photos • transcript-in a tiny two days squeezed sion of repression and auto-pilot ideal- SO Years of Scenes From Motion Pictures between the group's trial and imprison- ment. The eight religious anti-nuke cru- Rush $1.00 FOR OUR ILLUSTRATED BROCHURE saders who stormed the General Electric building in King of Prussia, Pennsylva- 212 East 14th Street, NYC, New York 10003 6

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ANOTHER BROOKS GRAD WHO MADE IT TO THE TOP. ism, even more terrifying, like a penned hurricane, than Danton's freely detona- As Director of Photography for MAS.H., one of history's most highly-regarded ted fury. TV shows, Dominick Palmer has paved the way for a new generation of creative Even Robespierre is given his slice of the human tragedy by Wajda. In the last cinematographers. Where did Dominick learn his craft? Brooks Institute in Santa scene, after Danton's guillotining he lies a-drench with sweat under a bedsheet Barbara, California. while his young son, prompted by his At Brooks, we provide the type of comprehensive education that's designed to mother, proudly recites by heart the ru- brics of the revolutionary constitution. bring the best out of our students. You'll learn a/l aspects of film making, including: But for a moment it looks as if Robes- pierre, eyes popping with silent pain, is o Stage & location lighting 0 Directing 0 Stage & succumbing to death by lethal irony. o Film & video camera technique 0 Editing location sound Great moviemakers are sometimes without honor even outside their own o Screenwriting 0 Production techniques countries. Wajda was clearly fired to come to France to film the Danton- If you're considering a career in film making, first consider how important your Robespierre conflict for its kinship with political polarities in present-day Po- education can be to your career. That's why Dominick Palmer chose Brooks. land: \"counter-revolutionary\" Lech Wa- Iesa versus the unyielding \"revolution- And maybe that's why he's where he is today. ary\" rigidity of the Party. Once in power, Wajda argues, a revolutionary move- BROOKS INSTITUTE ment often becomes as autocratic as the tyranny it ousts. It congeals in its own For information, write to Brooks Institute, 2190 Alston Rmid, dogmas; it is a prey to the barbarities it preached against; most alarmingly and Santa Barbara, CA 93108 Attn: Director of Admissions irreversibly, it enthrones itself above the very laws it instituted with its first breaths of freedom. No doubt Danton's ambivalences are too complex for modern European Communists, who want a message that spreads straight from the Moscow freezer. And Wajda hasn't even made the stylistic concession to them of shoot- ing the film like an agitprop documen- tary-in that hand-held, smallpox- grained, shake-em-up style that's always considered the imprimatur of revolu- tionary cinema. Wajda says that he took the neo-c1assi- cal paintings of David as his model for both color (rich blues and grays) and lighting (from stylized shafts like Roman columns to the theatric flicker of can- dIes). And the clash between formalist surface and seething, impassioned inte- rior gives the film the very energy- through-conflict that is absent in most camera miLitant movies, where style and Message redundantly and often concus- singly duplicate each other. Furthermore, Wajda's movie is about the struggle between formalism and freedom : the body democratic wrestles with the corset autocratic. When the screen does suddenly explode in a coup d' oeiL-a giddying track-forward into the towering, black-draped guillotine, the hectic pan-shots that follow Depardieu- Danton up and down court as he argues his defense-the dramatic dividends are far higher for the surrounding restraint. 8

There is one scene whose fiercely America's oviest deo Catalog funny idiomatic humanity radiates out and helps to heat the whole movie. Dan- Just Got Movier. ton, not yet arrested but suspecting he soon will be, invites Robespierre to his Brand new 1983 edition! house and sets out a lavish banquet to soften him up. But Robespierre remains • 1000's & 1000's of titles on VHS, BETA, VideoDisc-Nobody unmoved as dish after dish is wafted has more! solicitously under his nose-foie gras, quails, duck-and gestured impassively • Order with confidence from one of America's largest, most away. Finally the host, realizing that that dependable home video services. game is up, sits down and sweeps each dish coolly and purposefully onto the It's bursting at the seams with pure video entertainment. From early floor before beginning his next strata- silent films to the latest releases ... the classics (and not-so- gem: talk. classics) ... concerts ... cartoons ... famous tv shows ... foreign films ... sports ... hard-to-find titles ... the list goes on an~ on. \"We are the last chance for freedom,\" You'll also find complete listings for video games, acceSSOries, blank says Danton. And Wajda's movie per- tapes and more! Imagine-154 pages jam-packed with a complete suades us of the terrifying fragility of description of every title, trivia, delightful photos and freedom. For doubters, come to the Ber- illustrations ... and access to the entire exciting lin Wall and see the Soviet guillotines. world of home video. So stop searching. And start finding. Order yours today! Mitch Tuchman from Niagara-on-the-Lake, (Enjoy Adult Video? Enclose an additional $2 for our huge Adult Video Catalog!) Ontario D Enclosed is 55 (cash, check or money order). Success, the tail that wags the little Send me your new Video Catalog, plus periodic dog Career: such is the irony of Success that much of what has contributed to updates of new releases and sale items. David Cronenberg's good fortune must now be changed. Until now, when D Enclosed is 52 additional. Please include your 6736 Castor Ave. • Phila., PA 19149 Cronenberg began work on a movie, it Adun Video Catalog. I am over 18 years old. was by concocting a fantastic story and 215-722-8298 writing a loose script. Until now, he never story-boarded his shots but got to Name _____________________________________________________ the set and improvised. Until now, he worked with a line producer, Claude Address __________________________________________________ Heroux, who kept his distance. The re- sults in the horror-suspense genre were City ________________________________ State _ _ Zip ________ never less than impressive-Shivers (U.S. title: They Came From Within, Phone ________________________ § J ©1983 Movies Unlimited. Inc. 1976); Rabid (1978), and Videodrome (1983)-and sometimes outstanding- The Brood (1979) and Scanners (1981). \"There's a momentum to success,\" explains Cronenberg, as if trying to ex- plain it to himself. \"I have to be frank. There's this career that you have; it's like a little dog. Your agent tells you, 'Ie's good for your career,\" 'Ie's not good for your career.' I can't conceive of some- thing being good for me but bad for my career-how do you separate those things?-but it seems to exist. Ie is that momentum. \"My agent would love for me not to write my own stuff at all, from a strictly commercial point of view. If I started working from scratch now on a screen- play that I've only had a few notes on up until now, I would be facing six months to a year to two years writing, with or without the participation of a producer. Then, on the basis of a first draft, or a treatment at the very least, I would have to try to hustle it. Ie's a long process. 9

\"When you like making movies, as I you? You knew . Cronenberg's location manager, states. \"He never blames others for the nega- do, and you don't have to wait that long, Dodd: You're the devil ... sent from tive results of his indecisiveness or spon- taneity. \") it's very tempting not to. \" hell. On the set, this is what I did not Hence, January 10, with Videodrome's §Cronenberg shoots the two-shot a observe: Debra Hill. I was told she was in the sauna or on the telephone with debut still weeks away, Cronenberg be- half dozen times; Walken retires to his friends in the States. I was told that Hill's absence from the set was a testa- gan shooting The Dead Zone. Its story is trailer, a grim look on his face, followed ment to her thoroughness in preproduc- tion. based on Stephen King's limp apology shortly by the director. Returning, they \"David is harder to pin down,\" for assassins (Albert Camus he is not); its shoot the scene again, perhaps a dozen Coatsworth explains. \"He is relatively indecisive and uncommunicative. script is by Jeffrey Boam; its story- times, with Walken attempting every Given a selection of three locations, he will postpone a decision.\" Seasoned boards, for action sequences only, are by possible reading, every change of inflec- members of his crew-art director Carol Spier, Irwin, Broad, and Coatsworth, all Jim Craig; its supervision is the responsi- tion-accusation, anger, astonishment of whom have worked with him on at least three pictures-are accustomed to bility of line producer Debra Hill. -that could be wrung from the lines. Cronenberg's ways. Others, such as the special effects people, are partly wasted Executive producer Dino de Lauren- (Later Cronenberg called the session by having to jerry-rig things on the set when they might have tested for weeks tiis was as eager to find a project for Hill, \"an exploration for both Chris and me. beforehand. The death of Barry Convex in Videodrome had to be reshot after the associate of John Carpenter in his Hal- With good actors you get much more picture wrapped for just this sort of squandered preproduction opportunity. loween and sordid other enterprises, as response for your own input.\") Yet, in Coatsworth's view, it is pre- he was to acquire a property by King. §Midway through the morning, cisely Cronenberg's inscrutable indeci- siveness, combined with the presence of While Hill, like Cronenberg, is a vet- Cronenbergjokes: \"I think this is where his loyal Canadian crew, that has neu- tralized Hill's strong will and ultimately eran of low-budget horror movies, there I make my Hitchcock-like appearance. isolated her from her own set. is a major distinction in their affinities: I'm Henrietta's other son.\" \"I don't feel isolated,\" Hill protested, when I questioned her on this point: \"I Hill is basically a film fan, given to the §The crew moves upstairs in Henri- don't feel a need to be on the set. They're getting the work out, and the precise recreation of childhood, and of- etta's house to block a scene in which work looks good.\" She described her relationships with Cronenberg (having ten childish, fantasies; Cronenberg is Sheriff Bannerman (Tom Skerritt) in developed the script with him), with de Laurentiis, and with Boam, as \"very basically an eclectic egghead, given to self-defense blasts Henrietta with his close.\" confident, intelligent, and freewheeling service revolver. Hill has representatives on the set: Belyeu and stunt coordinator Dick War- improvisations, which are known to run §Cronenberg and Mark Irwin, his di- lock, both Americans, and Craig, whom she hired in Toronto to make renderings over schedule and over budget. As he rector of photography on The Dead Zone of action sequences. Craig intermit- tently presents sketches to Cronenberg, confesses: \"I like the excitement of as he had been on The Brood, Scanners, asking, \"Is this what you want? Is this what you had in mind?\" The questions thinking, 'Okay, this isn't working. and Videodrome, survey the scene. (It is must seem partly ironic to the regulars on the crew, but Cronenberg looks and What are we going to do now?' \" necessary for viewers to know that Hen- occasionally indicates a change. \"On the next film,\" Coatsworth speculates, Hill is a continuer of tradition; rietta has mounted the stairs, slipped \"David may use boards, but if he does, he will be unaware that it was the Dead Cronenberg, a transcender. Her inspira- into her son's bedroom-the kind of Zone experience that changed him. \" tion is other movies (a coming project, El room that gives psychotics a bad name: Meanwhile, Videodrome has not re- placed E.T. in the hearts of MCA stock- Diablo, she described as \"the Searchers muscle magazines, a ventriloquist's holders; nor has it replaced The Brood in the heart of this Cronenberg fan. The journey to the center of the earth\"); his dummy, a stuffed, snarling wolf's head, Dead Zone opens in late October. The tail till then wags on.® is William S. Burroughs. Hill is meticu- and a newspaper with a headline pro- lous, efficient, and forceful, even when claiming the assassination of John Ken- imagination wanes; there are no sur- nedy-and seized his pistol. She is prises in her cutting room, she told armed and very, very dangerous.) FILM COMMENT (January-February §John Broad, the first assistant direc- 1980). Cronenberg thinks, \"There are tor, with no sketches to consult, in- always surprises in the editing,\" and quires, \"Do we have a shot of Colleen cited Bernardo Bertolucci's learning on coming out that [bedroom] door?\" Then The Conformist that the cutting room he adds: \"that's just a question.\" contains a treasure trove of possibilities. Cronenberg replies paternally, \"That's (Sometimes a treasure trove is not okay.\" enough. Both Scanners and Videodrome §Cronenberg muses, \"This is re- required the shooting of additional minding me of a shot in The Brood. \" scenes during post-production.) §Cronenberg ponders whether a jet of I went to Niagara-on-the-Lake, On- \"blood\" can be directed ' from Dew- tario, with a hunch: Dino was depend- hurst's back to the doorjamb behind her ing on Debra to dissuade David from and up to the ceiling above should he dawdling. I suspected something of a decide to frame Henrietta's death from a clash of wills, with Debra's triumphant. very low angle. The special effects coor- I anticipated that the tail Success would dinator, John Belyeu, assures him, given wag the little dog. On the set, this is time, he can direct blood wherever it is what I observed: required. §Cronenberg rehearses a scene in §Cronenberg remains patient and af- which the psychic Johnny Smith (Chris- fable throughout the morning's shoot topher Walken) touches the harridan and into the afternoon , when he travels Henrietta Dodd (Colleen Dewhurst) to assess a location scouted hastily after a and intuits her awareness that her son local landowner had demanded an exor- Frank is a rapist and murderer. bitant fee for another site. (\"He never Smith (whispering) : You knew, didn't loses his temper,\" David Coatsworth, 10

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God,Sex,and IngmarBergman by Richard Corliss COMMENT by William Wolf Bet you haven't seen a headline like It would be perfectly understandable that lately. Yep, times surely have if Ingmar Bergman's recent announce- changed. Why, in my day, sonny, you ment that he was retiring from filmmak- couldn't open a film magazine without ing had brought a good-riddance sigh of reading some highbrow critic's solution relief from every Scandinavian director to the latest Ingmar Bergman conun- or would-be director. Ever since his leap drum. Would Death have beaten Bobby to international eminence in the mid- Fischer at chess? What did it mean if Fifties, Bergman has thoroughly domi- God was a spider (Through a Glass, nated, indeed been synonymous with, Darkly), or indifferent to man's prayers Scandinavian filmmaking. His genius (Winter Light) or not there at all (The has both inspired and cast a discouraging Silence)? Was the relationship ofArt (Liv shadow over those tagging along in his Ullmann) and Humanity (Bibi Anders- footsteps. Scandinavia has not produced son) symbiotic or parasitic in Persona? anyone who approaches his stature; I Why did the morally constipated charac- would argue that this is true for world ters in Bergman's films always wear cinema. glasses, and how come so many of them had the surname Vergerus? Back then, The inevitable curse of having their we all took ourselves, the cinema, and work measured against Bergman's in- Bergman much more seriously. Andrew credible accomplishments will continue Sarris wrote a long analysis ofrhe Seventh to weigh heavily on Scandinavian film- Seal for Film Culture and, upon comple- makers for years to come. If the master, tion, came down with choking spells. who will be 65 in July, were content to That sort of thing doesn't happen when retreat to his beloved island of Huo to you're writing about Tootsie. bask in past triumphs, or to confine his creativity to the theater, the spotlight For a lot of us-well, for me and a few could at last begin to readjust, illuminat- other premature geezers-the discovery ing other artists as we ponder the ques- of Ingmar Bergman in the late Fifties .tion: after Bergman, what next for Scan- was as exciting as the arrival of the Bea- dinavian cinema? But those who would tles would be a few years later. Suddenly rush his withdrawal may be disap- we could see the difference between pointed. movies andfilm, between the Hollywood product we assimilated like so many Bergman's latest, eagerly awaited White Tower hamburgers and the haute film, Fanny and Alexander, supposedly cuisine food-for-thought of European his last, demonstrates not only that he cinema. Bergman was an exhilarating remains at peak power but introduces a night school: he showed the Silent Gen- new dimension, putting into fresh per- eration that films could be considered spective and balance his career-long the- with the seriousness previously reserved matic struggle with the anxieties that for the poems of Wallace Stevens. Lon,g have haunted him. It's a joyous, positive before Structuralism hit film academe, film, in which good triumphs over evil, Bergman provided \"texts\" to be explica- in which near-maniacal puritanism loses ted only by readings in literature and to pleasure. This is the work of a very psychology. You could get a liberal edu- mature, wise man in full control of his cation trying to find appropriate refer- artistry as he faces whatever the future ences to even the jolliest of his films: holds for him. What if Bergman gets a Marivaux (not Moliere) for Smiles of a great idea for another film? Could he really resist? (continued on page 18) (continued on page 14) 13

WOLF (continuedfrompage 13) storyteller reveling in his characters in- The familial follies are observed by It's the physical stress involved in stead ofstripping them bare. You may be the impressionable Fanny (Pemilla Al- reminded of the effervescence dis- lwin), who is eight, and Alexander (Ber- filmmaking, not creative bankruptcy, played early in his career in Smiles of a til Guve), who is ten. To the extent that that has been plaguing him. In 1980, Summer Night, or more recently, in The the film can be assumed to be autobio- when I visited him on Faro, he spoke of Magic Flute. graphically based, Alexander, with his the fatigue he experienced during the large, dark, inquisitive eyes and quiet rigorous shooting process, explaining There is the temptation to read too self-assurance, is the primary conduit for that he had been on the verge of retiring much autobiography into Fanny and Al- Bergman's childhood memories forged for some time. \"I don't want to wait for exander. True, the well-known Bergman into fiction. The action is not filtered somebody to come in and tell me, 'Ing- traumas rooted in his childhood and cer- through the viewpoints of the children, mar, it is better for you not to make this tain factual parallels are inescapable, but a decision that allows Bergman much picture because physically you can't it would be shortsighted to insist on such wider latitude, but the children are take it anymore, ' \" he said. \"So one day narrow confines instead of recognizing nearly always central to the drama. I'll say to myself, 'No, Ingmar, it's this tour de force as a spiritual reprise of over.' \" His subsequent solution was to striking universality. We know instinctively in a Bergman announce that he would continue work- work that the holiday mood cannot last. ing in the theater and would also make Set in 1907, Fanny and Alexander is The catalyst for the sudden, somber television films, a chore he finds less preoccupied with the Ekdahls, an eco- turn is the death of Oscar, which leaves taxing. nomically comfortable theatrical family Emilie widowed and vulnerable. She is in Uppsala with whom we become ac- drawn to Edvard Vergerus (Jan But the demarcation line between quainted at Christmas time, when the Malmsjo), the officiating bishop at Os- worthy films for television and those for clan gathers to celebrate. Bergman's car's funeral, but her subsequent mar- distribution in cinemas is less clear long-time cinematographer Sven riage to him is a descent into purgatory. abroad than in our video wasteland in Nykvist has outdone himself-this is Vergerus insists that Emilie and the chil- the United States. It should be remem- one of the team's most sumptuous look- dren come to him without possessions, a bered that Scenes from a Marriage was ing films throughout. The home setting harbinger of layer-peeling that reveals originally made for Swedish television and the sparkling holiday atmosphere in the embodiment of fanatical puritanism and condensed for theatrical release. In particular are visualized magnificyntly in bordering on sadism. In contrast to the Italy the Taviani brothers have done a mosaic of reds and greens. The food bishop's tyrannical, twisted nature, some of their best work for television table overflows with goodies, and the young Alexander has a marvelous imagi- and parlayed it into theatrical showings. overall impression is one of boundless nation and is given to conjuring up visits The same can be said for Rossellini dur- joy and well-being. from his departed father. He clings to his ing his later years. Even if Bergman memories of happier days and stub- were to confine his work to television, Reigning over the family is former bornly refuses to succumb to the will of we could expect an overlap with cinema, actress Helena Ekdahl (Gunn Wall- his stepfather; their mounting confron- not a break. gren), a widow with three adult sons. tation is a symbolic juxtaposition of hu- Oscar (Allan Edwall) is an actor-not a man warmth and religious mania, culmi- \"The sum total of my life as a film- very good one-who manages the local nating in the bishop cruelly punishing maker,\" is how Bergman describes theater and is married to Emilie (Ewa and humiliating Alexander with a whip- Fanny and Alexander, and yet the work Froling), also an actress. They are the ping. His mother, by now revolted and does not seem to be that of a great artist parents of Fanny and Alexander. An- rebellious, is locked in a room. bidding us good-bye; it is a testament of other Ekdahl son, Gustav Oarle Kulle), Bergman's narrative takes a dramatic newly discovered faith and prima facie a loquacious restaurateur and bon vi- turn as Emilie, now pregnant, plots her evidence that Bergman could enter a vant, makes no secret of his romps with escape, while Isak smuggles the chil- fertile new period, a teaser to make us Maj, Helena's inviting maid (Pemilla dren out of the bishop's household. wonder what might come next. Techni- Wallgren). His wife, Alma (Mona cally, Bergman's mastery has long con- Maim), has learned to live with her hus- The rescued Alexander, concealed sisted of the enviable ability to synthe- band's dalliances. (He does manage to with his sister in Isak's house, meets size the use of cinematic language, pay proper respect in his wife's bed.) Isak's mysterious nephew Ismael (Stina sound, and dialogue with greater sophis- The third son, Carl (Boerje Ahlstedt), Ekblad), who introduces him to the su- tication than any other filmmaker. Be- whose German-born wife, Lydia (Chris- pernatural with mesmerizing talk of yond that, he has applied his skills both tina Schollin), cannot speak Swedish af- magical powers. What follows is extraor- to probing philosophical questions that ter twenty odd-years, is a failed profes- dinary-voodoo, Bergman sryle, a chill- have concerned humankind and to com- sor whose specialty is flatulence on ing exorcism of the wickedness that has plexities of character and emotion. The demand. Not every youngster is lucky intruded upon Alexander-surely a cine- Seventh Seal was astonishing because it enough to have an uncle to entertain and matic exorcism of experiences that col- raised our expectations ofwhat was artis- awe them by snuffing out candles with a ored Bergman's own childhood. In a bi- tically and intellectually possible on posterior gust. zarre accident, the bishop's obese, bedridden aunt (Kabi Laretei) catches screen. A guest at the festivities is antique fire when she topples over a lamp. Run- His films have repeatedly jolted us as dealer and moneylender Isak Jacobi ning hysterically into the bishop's bed- (Erland Josephson), a Jew who was once room, she engulfs him in flames, and he explored the reaches of behavior and Helena's lover. The warmth of their en- consumed by this fire of damnation, he the psyche. But in Fanny and Alexander during friendship is reflected in a gentle is left charred on the bedroom floor. the canny writer-director delightfully scene of reminiscence when the rest of Bergman astutely depicts the horrifying mingles his preoccupation with angst the entourage has settled in for the and a new, entertaining, almost Rabelai- sian view of life. He becomes the sly night. 14

Ewa FroLing and Mona MaLm in Fanny and Alexander. event in muted understatement. Lindblom's Sally and Freedom, a high- he to make them. Evil having been stamped out, the light among the films shown in the The director has chosen wisely in United States last fall as part of the Scan- action shifts to the Ekdahl house for a dinavia Today promotion. The range casting the children, avoiding any hint of happy finale, a dual celebration of the between the two performances is im- cuteness or precociousness. Alexander births of Emilie's baby and of Gustav's pressive. As Sally she plays a contempo- brings to mind Johan in Bergman's 1963 illegitimate child with Maj, the maid. rary 28-year-old social worker who, after masterpiece The SiLence. Johan was also All's well that ends well. Helena, about breaking up her marriage to a lawyer, adrift in an adult world, observing the to be lured back to the theater, reads attempts to establish her independence. resentment, torment, and flaring sexual- from Strindberg: \"Anything can hap- She's no saint emerging from bondage, ity around him. In Fanny and Alexander pen, anything is possible and likely. but is a rather narcissistic, spoiled young Bergman has laid out a battlefield of Time and space do not exist. On flimsy woman with unrealistic ideas about re- wickedness and sadism in the name of ground of reality imagination spins out sponsibilities and relationships, al- religion from which a child must extri- and weaves new patterns. .. .\" though essentially likable. Her character nuances amusingly advance Lindblom's cate himself. Glancing at my watch, I was as- treatise on underprepared women who Bergman's screenwriting has long re- tonished to find that three hours and attempt freedom and re-discover them- eight minutes had sped by. No tedious selves. flected the importance of visual impact spots, no sections that might have been in filmmaking. Like Hitchcock, per- snipped. Bergman, as usual, was in firm In Fanny and ALexander Froling is far haps even more so, he has understood command of his material and had once more mature in both appearance and that dialogue should only be essential. again enlisted an acting ensemble of the manner and fits easily into the period But in Fanny and Alexander he has al- highest order. Gunn Wallgren is espe- ambience. She perfectly captures Emi- lowed his script to become unusually cially effective as Helena, and Jan lie's vulnerability, then shows us her verbal, as was also the case in Scenes Malmsjo's bishop bristles with warped fierce determination to break free from from a Marriage. Here it works, too, dedication. Erland Josephson projects a the hell into which she has consigned because he is spinning a family saga that believable blend of warmth, worldli- herself and her children. Her admirable requires a strong narrative. Even though ness, and resourcefulness as Isak, a role acting skills aside, Froling is a screen Oscar, returned ghost-like, sometimes markedly different from others I have beauty of the sort upon whom the cam- speaks, Bergman knows how effective seen this fine actor play. Harriet Ande\\\"S- era dotes. Her confident bearing, her the mere sight of him standing in the son, veteran member of Bergman's act- oval, dimpled face, tantalizingly full distance can be. ing pool, effects a parched, constricted lips, and generous smile heighten the look and demeanor as the bishop's impression of sensuousness and open- Where should we place this film in kitchen maid, accen~ing the household's ness. She is in some respects a younger the pantheon of Bergman's work? More rigidity and austerity. Liv Ullmann, a new discovery who, one time and perspective is needed for that might expect, could assume a spectrum judgment, but at the moment, it im- But the film's major acting revelation of parts in other Bergman movies, were presses me as an extremely confident, is the work of Ewa Froling as Emilie. I ultimately serene film that could have had seen her before in Gunnel come only after Bergman had repeatedly shaken us with the tormented, penetrat- 15

ing fury that earned him his towering tions for the trip and captures the period Berti! Guve and Pernilta Allwin. reputation. In Fanny and Alexander he look, showing the elaborate methods of reveals his sense of movies as sheer plea- housing the balloon and preparation for graphical in spirit if not in fact, it traces surable entertainment as well as art, and takeoff. The film is in many ways spec- the experience of a young girl growing this new exuberance is consistent with tacular, but there is a key problem. Once up in an impoverished, bleak part of his appetite for playing paterfamilias the balloon is forced down and the men northern Sweden during the 1940s, when his extended family from mar- marooned, the momentum is lost for the struggling to stake out her own niche in riages and mistresses gathers on occasion viewer. The three are doomed, but the swirl of an unhappy family. Al- on Faro. waiting for them to die is undramatic, though weak in narrative, Broken Sky and the film slips into tedium, unre- reflects Thulin's talent for conveying at- In looking beyond Bergman to the lieved either by tensions that erupt or by mosphere and her keen appreciation for next rank of Scandinavian film directors, excessively lyrical flashbacks of the lives using landscape to evoke mood. the focal point remains Sweden. The they have given up. These flashbacks quantity of talent would appear to be could well be cut, not for commercial While in Stockholm I went to see a greater than in Norway, Denmark, or reasons, but because they intrude upon film that had become a hit, The Simple- Finland (Iceland is also developing an the realism that is the film's strongest Minded Murderer, directed by Hans Al- industry but it is in its infancy), and asset. Nonetheless, The Flight ofthe Ea- fredson , about a young villager with a Sweden also has the most extensive set- gle is a courageous, ambitious attempt speech impediment subjected to mock- up for institutional subsidies to guaran- with many rewards for an audience. ery for retardation. Although sometimes tee filmmaking. Foremost among the Troell expressed disappointment over heavy-handed, the drama is emotionally Swedish directors who have already his film's reception at the box office in involving and marked by strong per- made a considerable reputation beyond Sweden, but hoped that the story, per- formances: Stellen Skarsgard is the hap- their borders is Jan Troell, noted mostly haps too familiar to Swedes, would seem less youth, and Alfredson plays the for The Emigrants and his new release fresh in the United States. cruel, overbearing boss for whom the The Flight ofthe Eagle, which was nomi- young man slaves in a menial job. Al- nated this year for a best foreign film Other Swedish directors who have re- fredson has directed several previous Oscar. ceived varying degrees of attention in- films, but is best known in Sweden as an ternationally include Bo Widerberg actor, largely because of his theatrical During a visit to Scandinavia last fall, (Elvira Madigan, Adalen31 , Raven's End, collaborations with actor-director-writer I found apprehension at the Swedish Man on a Roo!>, Vilgot Sjoman (J am and partner Tag Danielsson. They are Film Institute, which had helped fi- Curious-Yellow, J am Curious-Blue, and considered two of the funniest men in nance the project. At a cost of $3.5 mil- My Sister, My Love, the best film I've Sweden, and their plays are extremely lion, it was unusually expensive for a seen on the subject of incest), and Mai popular. Scandinavian film; Fanny and Alexander, Zetterling (Night Games, Doctor Glas, also financed in part by the Institute, The Girls). But this group constitutes an Another intriguing current Swedish cost more than $7 million, but nobody old guard, stirring memories of things film is Suzanne Osten's first feature, Our worries about getting money back on a past rather than exciting us with new Life is Now, an adventurously biographi- Bergman project. I encountered a gen- ventures. cal work about Osten's late mother, a eral feeling that at two hours and twenty film critic who longed to become a film- minutes The Flight of the Eagle was too Recently, Scandinavian films have long and should be cut. According to demonstrated the extended influence of Troell, after it was acquired for U.S. Bergman through several associates who distribution bv Summit, cuts were worked closely with him and have now agreed upon, but it was finally released ventured into their own projects. Two of in its full version. the leading actresses who have graced Bergman's films, Gunnel Lindblom and The film recounts a tale of adventure Ingrid Thulin, have become directors. that every Swedish schoolchild learns Besides the aforementioned Sally and about-the disappearance of explorer Freedom, Lindblom previously directed S.A. Andree and his two-man creW in Summer Paradise, in which an ostensibly their attempt to reach the North Pole in happy family vacation is .turned into a a hydrogen-filled balloon. The balloon nightmarish revelation of repressed con- lifted off in 1897 and vanished. In 1930 flicts; her film is clearly a metaphor for the remains of the men were discovered, life in Sweden and the universal ten- together with diaries detailing their dency to try to avoid deep-rooted prob- forced landing after three days and their lems while giving an outward appear- subsequent three-month ordeal in the ance of normalcy. Lindblom's greatest Arctic. The story that emerges in strengths are her sensitivity to character Troell's film deflates the supposed hero- nuance and her lack of dogmatism in ism of Andree (played by Max von Sy- pursuing her obviously strong feelings dow with his customary expertise) and about the need to improve the lot of alleges that he was willing to sacrifice women and of society as a whole. himself and his men in his egotistical, somewhat mad quest for glory though Thulin's Broken Sky was also a part of knowing that the mission had only a slim the Scandinavia Today program and won chance to succeed. the best first feature award at the 1982 Chicago Film Festival. Heavilyautobio- Troell brilliantly details the prepara- 16

Erland Josephson and Gunn Wallgren reminisce in Fanny and Alexander. maker, but never did. ecutive producer of Fanny and Alexan- channeled through the Film Institute to help the movie industry meet the com- In Norway, there is also emerging tal- der.) The new tone at the Institute has petitive challenge. ent worth noting, such as Anja Breien, become one of caution. Its new chief, Scandinavian filmmakers and execu- tives in various film institutions seem director of Witch Hunt, Next of Kin, Klas Olofsson was given the post be- baffled by the same pathetic question: why isn't there more interest in our films Wives, and Rape; Vibeke Lokkeberg, cause of his previous financial manage- in the United States? No matter how much the difficulty all foreign language who not only directs (The Revelation and ment experience, not because of any films encounter on this side of the Atlan- tic is explained, I sympathize with the Betrayal: The Story ofKamilla) but is also knowledge offilm. Bengt Forslund, ex- frustration felt, particularly in Denmark, Norway, and Finland. American films an accomplished actress; and Laila perienced in production, has assumed enjoy such popularity there; the Scandi- navians have an understandable wish for Mikkelsen (Growing Up). One of Fin- the post of artistic consultant. some measure of reciprocity. The prob- lem appears insoluble. land's small group of quality directors is Olofsson is an affable man who seems At least the Scandinavian films are Heikki Partanen, whose Antti Tree- to enjoy the challenge of his four-year occasionally showcased through such promotions as Scandinavia Today, branch was showcased two years ago at appointment to the institution at the through the New Directors series run jointly each year by the Museum of the Museum of Modern Art in New very core of Swedish cinema. During Modern Art and the Film Society of Lin- coIn Center, plus the latter's New York York. When last in Denmark I saw a our meeting he ventured his view that Film Festival. More good news: a Scan- dinavian Film Festival has been sched- remarkable documentary, which in there has been too great a concentration uled for Sante Fe inJune 1984. some respects brought to mind Best Boy. on esoteric pictures in Sweden at the Scandinavia, of course, has long had an honorable, sometimes influential tra- Lone Hertz, 'a leading Danish actress, expense of those aimed at the broader dition, with names that are Iegendary- the great Danish director Carl Dreyer, reveals the problems'of coping with her public. Institute funding is built into the Sweden's Mauritz Stiller and Victor Sjostrom, and of course, the fabulous 14-year-old psychotic son (Best Boy dealt system-ten percent of all box office re- Garbo. For nearly three decades Bergman has occupied the North Coun- with retardation) in Tomas, which she ceipts are plowed back into its program. tries' directorial throne. FannyandAlex- ander notwithstanding, sooner or later co-directed with Mads Egmont Chris- Therefore, when director Jonas Cornell, we must begin to think of Bergman as master emeritus and start paying more tensen. The film unflinchingly exam- who usually works in a more serious attention to the contemporary directors trying to live up to the Scandinavian ines a situation more often kept clos- vein, scores a hit with a light slapstick legacy. ~ eted. comedy like Beware the Jonsson Gang, a Each of the Scandinavian countries spinoff from a comedy series popular in has an institutional mechanism for sti- Denmark, the temptation is to sink mulating film pFoduction, and in every money into more such films. situation there is a current budget \"The collision between culture and squeeze. (Where isn't there a budget economy has been my field for years,\" squeeze these days?) The cost-con- commented Olofsson. Only about sciousness at the Swedish Film Insti- twenty films are made each year in Swe- tute, for example, could result in some den, and my impression is that it will be serious problems for Swedish cinema in harder than ever for directors to be ex- the immediate future. The situation is perimental and get their work financed; reflected in the change in administration more grumbling over who partakes of that has occurred. Jorn Donner, for the limited funds seems likely. many years the SFI mainstay, left his The Swedes have done some creative post as managing director and is now thinking and applied themselves to the based in Finland, his home country. , havoc on movie attendance caused by (Donner is known as a phenomenally the burgeoning home video market. A energetic and creative person-author of new regulation taxes video cassettes, novels, director, actor, producer, and ex- with the stipul~tion that the revenue be 17

CORLISS (continuedfrom page 13) Summer Night, Casals for All These Women, Shaw for The Devil's Eye. I re- member looking at Sarris' program notes for a Bergman retrospective in which he alluded to Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait as one analogue for The Devil's Eye, and thinking, \"Compare Bergman to a Hollywood director? Never!\" \"Never\" came soon enough-in the next decade-as Sarris and Pauline Kael and Robin Wood offered strong argu- ments for the legitimacy of the Ameri- can cinema. Old Hollywood was a yawn- ing unconscious open to almost any interpretation, as art, entertainment, or industry; New Hollywood was throwing off its training wheels to become every bit as sophisticated and salacious as the Harriet Andersson as Monika. Bibi Andersson in Wild Strawberries. toppled gods of Europe. Though all Bjorkman, Torsten Manns, and Jonas Sima, that runs a close second to Hitch- three of those seminal critics continued is cited in a movie these days, it is in a cocklTruffaut as insider chat, and sur- passes the earlier colloquy for access to to address Bergman films with measures mixed spirit of homage and parody; and the filmmaker's spirit). Bergman had cast Andersson, just turning 20, as the of enthusiasm and respect, not many of itcomes from filmmakers (Woody Allen, wanton lead in Summer With Monika, and he tumbled to her charms as quickly as their followers did. Compare Bergman Monty Python) working from an older the film's hero. \"I was no little infatu- ated with Harriet,\" Bergman recalls to Lubitsch or Ford or Hitchcock or sensibiliry, one that grew up with a sub- merrily. \"Oh yes, we took our time when trying out costumes!\" They Hawks, and his concerns seemed too title squint in the eyes and the linger of stayed together for three years. ethereal, his mise en scene too stodgy, cappuccino in the nostrils. To see Death Bergman has noted that the mood of his scripts often complements his own the problems his films posed simultane- stalk a modern suburban dinner party in disposition while writing them-that the gay and wise Smiles of a Summer ously too tough and too easy to solve, Monty Python's The Meaning ofLife is to Night, for example, was composed dur- ing a period of black depression. If this is like a British-style crossword. In the realize that satire can also function as so, Bergman must have been ecstatic with Harriet. Monika, despite a midfilm rush to embrace the physical and dump nostalgia for the avant-garde of one's lovers' idyll, is as brooding and sultry as the sky before an August rainstorm; and the metaphysical, all the art-house Eu- youth. • the strong, splendid Harriet is re- ropean filmmakers suffered. And nounced for her character's amorality. Their next film, The Naked Night (Saw- Bergman, as the most prominent, suf- Is it that same upscale nostalgia, on dust and TInsel in Britain, and Clowns' Twilight in Swedish), would be fered the most. the part of authors and editors, that fuels Bergman's most merciless screed on hu- man companionship until The Silence a Fashions in celebrity move, not with a the ~cholarly engine of Bergman books? decade later. He cites E.A. Dupont's silent film Variety as his model, but The steady pendulum swing, but with the In the face of popular indifference to- Naked Night is even more starkly Teutonic. The circus-performer couple ricochet of a drunken jaywalker. So it's ward their subject-indeed, toward the at the film's core must slog through life on pity instead of love, and the only hard to predict whether Bergman will notion of serious film studies-they character with a poetic vision is a clown who dreams of finding warmth and sol- again be hot, either with this summer's keep coming: Vlada Petric's symposium ace in his wife's womb. The Harriet films suggest that, as much as he was release of his domestic epic Fanny and on Bergman and dreams, Lise-Lone attracted to her robust sexuality, the par- Alexander, or in the next few years, or Marker and Frederick J. Marker's study son's son needed to distance himself posthumously. At the moment, pros- of Bergman's extensive and crucial the- from it-to punish himself and her for pects don't look good. The Zeitgeist has ater work, Paisley Livingston's analysis the uncomplicatedness of young lust. turned away from him and his kind of of Bergman as social critic, Peter films. The Strained Seriousness of High Cowie's biography of the filmmaker. Hollywood and Old Europe may reas- This last book-brisk, thorough, fastid- sert itself at Oscar time, with Gandhi ious-is catnip to the unregenerate knighted for its plodding nobility, but at Bergmaniac. By detailing. the seismic the box office and in the critical columns rumbles of Bergman's not-so-private Strained Frivolousness reigns. Ask to- life, with five wives and at least three day's brightest American directors to longtime colleague-mistresses enliven- pick a mentor, and they would choose ing the story, Cowie gives the Bergman Walt Disney or Hitchcock or even Har- viewer evidence of what he has alway.s vey Kurtzman over Bergman. suspected: that the films are a species of And why not? American masters for emotional autobiography, in tone if not American filmmakers, even if the elect in content. Look at Bergman's 40-year, are limited to manipulators of Masscult. 40-film career, and divide by conquest. Bergman's solemnity, his insularity, his THE HARRIET PERIOD. \"There's largo pacing, his insistence that viewers never been a girl in Swedish films who work for their pleasure, all are aspects of radiated more uninhibited erotic a temperament foreign in every way to charm,\" says Bergman of Harriet An- the passionate proficiency of the new dersson (in Bergman on Bergman, a con- Hollywood technocrats. When Bergman versation, with Swedish critics Stig 18

'.. ravaged by the onset of war (Shame) or fascism (The Serpent's Egg), crippled by remembrance and remorse (The Passion of Anna), gutted by the rapier maso- chism of family life (Cries arui Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage)-and, withal, trying heroically to cope, like Irene Dunne in an Ibsen role. Not a lot of laughs for any actress to mine there. And yet there is in Liv Ullmann a softness-something that wants to sur- render-not evident in other Bergman heroines. Harriett Andersson went mad in Through a Glass, Darkly, but she fought that madness. Bibi Andersson de- veloped, against her brighter instincts, an arsenal of invective. Lindblom and Thulin were two more tigresses of the Ullmann with Erlarui Josephson in Cries and Whispers. spirit. Ullmann's beauty-her Techni- color blue eyes framed by white, almost THE BIBI PERIOD. \"Just take a girl homely, tortured women whose only ex- translucent skin-is passive, childlike, like Bibi Andersson. You can never get pression of self-love is self-abuse, in more traditionally feminine . And her her to do anything she doesn't want to!\" Winter Light and The Silence; and Gun- strength as an actress is to find the black Another teenage Andersson came into nel Lindblom, dark-skinned, flashing- hole of desperation in the \"average\" Bergman's life in 1954; she played a tiny eyed, rangy and powerful, as a pathetic woman. It was her and Bergman's rotten role in Smiles of a Summer Night. And parishioner in Winter Light and Thulin's luck that they chose to investigate The starting with The Seventh Seal, Bibi in- sulfurously sexy sister in The Silence. Old Woman just as a new one was carnated the careless optimism of youth As a vacation treat after the trilogy, emerging in Western consciousness- that Bergman now chose to allow into his Bergman made a color comedy, All These one closer to the fiery goddesses of films. She could cozen a smile out of Women, based on an anecdote of Kiibi's; Bergman's, and our, youth. craggy old Victor Sjostrom in Wild Straw- but its mood of airy burlesque soon berries and, with the help of flashbacks , turned flat and sour as curdled sorbet. • reconcile him to life and death. She was The word at the time (1964) was that the a merry maid in The Magician and a seven actresses who starred in the film as Now, just before he turns 65 (on July rebellious mother-to-be in Brink of Life. the mistresses of a randy cellist were all 14), Bergman has offered what he prom- The later Bibi Andersson-the mature former mistresses of Bergman's: among ises/threatens (which side are you on?) to actress of Persona, The Touch, and them, Harriet and Bibi Andersson and be his last film. In a way, Fanny arui ScenesfromaMarriage-would provide the magnificent comedienne Eva Alexaruier represents a conciliatory move self-criticism for these young women. A Dahlbeck, who had brought her Lom- by Bergman toward the appetites of the frown would cross her sunny features, bardian grace to a half dozen Bergman new movie audience: it is airy and and then a cynical rictus. But in 1955-58, films of the Fifties. Considering how bawdy in its first part, spooky and magi- the great years that brought Bergman to poorly all these women are used, one cal toward the end. It means to send international acclaim, Bibi sat alone on would like to think the rumor was false. viewers away happy and a bit misty- the \"healthy\" side of the filmmaker's THE LIV PERIOD. Liv Ullmann ac- eyed. And for the remaining Bergman weighted scales, and then jumped gaily companied Bergman through some of stalwarts, it offers a concordance of off, friskily eluding the swinging scythe. his most harrowing and beautiful films, referents to his earlier films. (I do wish that Fanny arui Alexaruier had reunited THE KABI PERIOD. Kiibi Laretei and through the years that revealed the some of the director's favorite actresses was not an actress; she was a wife, first cracks in the statuary of his reputa- of days gone by. There are roles here Bergman's fourth, and the first he might tion. Some say Ullmann wielded the that would have been perfect for consider an artistic equal. A renowned chisel. She has been attacked for choos- Dahlbeck, Thulin, Lindblom, and Bibi pianist, Kabi would have an important ing to appear in perhaps the most mere- Anderson. As it is, the lead roles are played mostly by Bergman's B team.) Its influence on her new husband's films. tricious handful of English-language three-hour running time begs the mov- These are the chamber plays: the \"God movies made by a major actress in the iegoer's indulgence-but who deserves trilogy,\" with few characters, desolate Seventies; her autobiography earned that indulgence more than Bergman? settings, and scenarios that enclose the sniggers, her good deeds sighs. Re- No contemporary filmmaker has tried as actors like an adult fist around a chil<;i's cently David Denby criticized Ullmann hard, aimed as high , made as many chal- finger. To perform these rituals of a for lacking \"that saving grace of any ac- lenging works of art. dying faith, Bergman employed three of tress, a sense of humor.\" He may be If Fanny and Alexander restores his strongest actresses: Harriet Anders- right; certainly her characters lack it. Bergman's cachet, good for him. It if son, with a burning intelligence behind But, after her smashing debut in Per- doesn't, bad for the churls. In any case, her dark, feral eyes, in Through a Glass, . sona (1966), Ullmann was cast by the new film is just an exclamation point Darkly; Ingrid Thulin, the aristocratic Bergman as the harried housewife- to the career of this solemn Swede, who avatar of worldly-wise common sense in harried by her husband's demons (Hour has earned our respect and gratitude for his Fifties films, now daring to play of the Woif) or her own (Face to Face) , wrestling with God, art, and fickle us. ~~ 19

That Obscure Wound o/Desire. D~~d~~~~'~ Thomson boyant as the particular growth-any- equivocal trust. Because it is the least \"\"=',- = - thing from a grim black line to an elabo- functional part of a face, it draws atten- ----- rate, recumbent parenthesis. Without tion to masquerade and makes the apparent differences, it can make a wearer seem an unsound adventurer, a The mustache is a folly, a vanity, a weapon of one face and a wound of an- trickster, a gay blade. There are kinds of other. There are faces where a woman low theater in which most performers disaster: in any other part of the body it drawn into a kiss risks laceration, and wear false mustaches, as if the integrity others where the mustache has sewn up of play-acting depended on owning up would require surgery. But it is a pas- the mouth in a suture of suppression. to fraud. Movie mustaches make so much more discreet an admission ofsub- sion, and an indication of passion. All its A mustache may seem a small part ofa terfuge. film. But as this attempt at a survey meanings are at odds, so that any man shows, there are directors who can My remarks are not intended to alarm hardly look without seeing them, and any readers who have mustaches; their with one is sultry but a cuckold. For a actors whose being is hinged on that anxiety should be left decently alone. A small scar of hair. There is something real mustache must be tended and used; mustache (preferably without the fussy absurd in the codifying of mustaches. like my cock it is not a symbol. It can be (Knees next?) But the embarrassment felt and trained. Its bushiness may cling substantiating beard) is the one thing on comes from the thing itself. The more to the aroma of coffee, or to the morsels cultivated the growth, the more fatuous ofa hurried breakfast. But a mustache in a face no one needs. Ofcourse, in a state and incongruous it seems. Kings, states- a movie has no texture-it could be a men, Freud, Stalin, and Einstein have hiding place for birds or dragons. On of nature all hair grows, and it is only all been mustached: and sometimes film, we notice how the man is attached their hurt eyes, their dignity, and their to the dynamic growth. He is its passen- convention that persuades most modern exhausting lives have seemed to suffer ger, its rider, and its victim. It is cos- their own elected growth, as if they tume, falsehood, and meaning, Don men to trim and style their hair but guessed that the scraped parchment face Juan and Basil Fawlty. A life of tugging of Marcel Duchamp might one day and . will not it off. shave their faces every day in search of scorch all whiskers by adding a quick brush to the upper lip of the Mona Lisa. There are movie faces defined by a that legendary \"closeness.\" A mustache crisp sketch of hair, moons that become A bearded lady is an acknowledged bold grins. The mustache of Douglas could be as normal and automatic as hair, freak, but the shaved friction oflegs and Fairbanks was seldom more than a armpits in a woman is legitimately \"at- straight line, only a few millimeters and it was certainly more prevalent in tractive.\" Duchamp's quick touch-up of deep, and separated by the same dis- the Mona Lisa was a joke on High Art, tance from his upper lip-so precise it the 19th century, just as it may be ortho- but its innuendo taunts our confused must have needed daily, detailed atten- responses to sexual differe,nce. I daresay tion in which all the surrounding lip was dox in other countries and cultures. Still, there have been adored actresses who shaved. But in most of his movies before had to treat dark hair on their upper lips, 1918, Doug had no mustache; and in in the age and domain of movies, to even as Marcello Mastroianni might much of his private life (on his honey- have advised his apish wife, Daniela moon with Mary Pickford, for instance), grow a mustache has been an act of mod- Rocca, to do. And there are some he did not wear it. At those times, he women in film who sport mustaches: looks older, flatter, a little flabbier, less est eccentricity and willful stylishness, Jeanne Moreau in Jules and Jim, Marga- amused, and a lot less noticeable. The ret O'Brien in the Halloween sequence mustache overlined the white teeth of as well as a man's one chance to master from Meet Me In St. Louis, and Domi- his silent chuckle, and it gave him pa- nique Labourier in Celine and Julie Go nache. his own face and be an actor. Boating. Clark Gable's mustache was rather It follows, in pictures, that the mus- Of course, those are false or assumed fuller, but it could have been learned mustaches. But so was Chaplin's. Any tache is always an assertion of purpose, mustache in a film whispers to us that nothing in the medium deserves un- and invariably of desire. It lays claim to an ardent sexual edge as sharp or as flam- Errol Flynn , 20

from Fairbanks, along with a sense of its tache helped make O'Toole amiable- masculine necessity. The young Gable just as it had been hired for humility in Garbo and Barrymore in Grand Hotel. was often clean-shaven: he was a gigolo Goodbye, Mr. Chips and arbitrariness in with a billiard-ball head of ivory and Becket-and its frame held his smile in both orgasmic and hairy, were sexual black lacquer, attendant on Joan Craw- place. But O'Toole's wasted blue eyes overwhelmers, too condoned to be rap- ford in Possessed and Garbo in Susan stared out above it, unaware of its exist- ists, but too domineering to be resisted. Lenox: Her Fall and Rise. He was also an ence, and when one looked back at the And Gable was a pioneer, the first com- insecure celebrity: in Big Bad Wolves, mustache from that stricken pallor it mon-man lover with screen credibility. Joan Mellen says that Gable shaved his seemed like a mistake. chest and his armpits even as he grew a The group of mustached actors who mustache, in a desire to be tough but Wherever he is, in his long retire- frequently took romantic leads includes ment, William Powell must still have a Ronald Colman, John Gilbert, John ingratiating. Was Mutiny on the Bounty mustache. It could no longer be de- Boles, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, his last bare-lip picture? After that, the tached from his teasing smile or the George Brent, and Melvyn Douglas. mustache was a blunt badge of whimsi- knowing lilt of his voice. Without it, the But screen lovers are weighed by their cal sexual superiority, and the stamp of rims of all the Thin Man's cocktails own expectations: you cannot convince authority that looked down on Scarlett's might have burned his face; without it, unless you yourself believe in love and white bosom. Father in Life with could not have been the rapture of falling. Both Colman and It's a failing of Hollywood's system so forgivable an autocrat; and without it, Barrymore are lacking in that respect; and Gable's nerve that no film tweaked it might have been impossible to tell their mustaches are a defense or an ex- that mustache, or saw how cold and ap- that Powell was ever smiling or smitten. cuse, an impeding ribbon that explains prehensive his \"twinkling\" eyes were His mustache was as long, slender, and their preoccupation with other things. without it. Instead, we settled for the lazily foliate as Myrna Loy's lipstick Barrymore was disillusioned, and Col- hairy myth that in bravado and the pro- mouth, two wavy lines equaling the man too well-mannered. The one rode tected maleness of his parts Gable was in the disguise of being a grand actor, happy. fi=Thirties. and the other that of nobility. Only when they can rid themselves of such Nor did Errol Flynn ever risk probing A Brush With Love deceits do their mustaches flare with the image of his youthful flourish, which took on a narrow strip of mustache after Little girls, allegedly, flinch from be- life. In Barrymore's Twentieth Century, Captain Blood and relinquished it only ing kissed by uncles with mustaches. sexual contact is never at issue: skins for Gentleman Jim, where Flynn was The barb of hard hair tickles or stings- back away from the battle of ham vani- meant to be modem, slippery, cocksure, or does it only mar the erotic dream of ties in which a mustache is one more and a boxer next to the archaic dignity unhindered slide and sheen in skin? Is it device for upstaging, likely to creak at and stupid slugging of Ward Bond's han- a rude intimation to the child that sexu- the height of another's pathos. And in A dlebar-Irishman, John L. Sullivan. So ality will bring \"ugly\" pubic hair and often prick-lipped, Flynn deceived rougher transactions in which pleasure himself for more than a decade that his cannot count on the lack of blemish? life, his booze, and his womanizing were Big movie girls, apparently, can be \"gentlemanly\" enough not to slow him just as sheltered or neurotic. Lovers down. But there is a beached sadness in armed with mustaches are rarely allowed his later face, a feeling that the mustache passionate or prolonged embraces. Mter has become a piece of wreckage. Apart all, when Rudolph Valentino returned from his wretched eyes and battered from a European trip with a beard and · body, it was the most abiding sign of mustache, public opinion willed them failure-still a mustache, but wom out away. Mustaches are attentive consorts, like a mat on which too many careless like Albert to Victoria: loyal, consider- kisses had wiped their feet. ate, and hovering guardians, but muf- Just as he approached SO (the age at fled faces. For them, the mustache is which Flynn expired), Peter O'Toole , like a sheath on the needy mouth, and wore a mustache in My Favorite Year, so they kiss gently in order not to break where he plays \"Alan Swan,\" another the lady's skin. Which is to say that drunken movie romanc«f. The mus- Flynn and Gable, whose potential was Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind. 21

Double Life, playing an actor hurrying as Sir jasper-\"O, Sir jasper, do not \"disdain\" to outsiders. The perilously toward dementia, Colman's mustache is touch me,\" the maiden cries, trembling articulate gospel of universal loathing a part of his malign ego, an unruliness no the more as his lusting whiskers flex. It that Waldo Lydecker utters in Laura one can touch, but which might be use- is as ifjack the Ripper did all his cutting would be risible witholJt a mustache. ful in smothering Desdemona. with a sharp mustache. With it, we see something so much more The young Melvyn Douglas was ur- There are false beards, like clumps of troubling: that this gloomy stylist is a bane, smart and groomed, an actor use- hay, on pale faces in early Westerns, and travesty, and that he must remain so, or ful in films as some single men are at some mustaches that droop as glue dried kill himself, unless he can sneak another parties. But as an older man, usually in the location sun. But not many early up-yours mustache on that chocolate- clean-shaven, he was so much more classics employ mustaches; perhaps hair box portrait of Laura. Better still, he somber as to be unrecognizable. George got too much in the way of vanity and might scratch out her entire lip. \"Pretti- Brent could never make up his mind visibility in long-shot cinema. In The ness is not enough.\" about his mustache. But why was he in Birth of a Nation, the little Colonel films in the first place? He was like a sail (Henry B. Walthall) has a mustache, and on a still day, and even if his mustache in Intolerance Robert Harron has one had flicked in and out in a single scene, terse enough to suggest a naive kid we might have taken it for a strand of likely to drift into crime. But D. W. that voyeur's mustache always threaten- Griffith was too subtle for stock hair. He ing film, the hair and fluff that can get in left that to the comedies, where Ben a projector's gate. Turpin and Chester Conklin-no mat- john Gilbert was a silent lover, a mus- ter how gormless they were trying to be tache in an age of bee-sting lips on -wore the black horsehair that might women. Once such mouths could have gone to villains. They subscribe to speak, their engraved image tumed on an inner meaning of many film mus- them as mockery. It was not Gilbert's ' taches: that a man wearing one is a fool, voice that betrayed him, but the extrem- or lost in a dream. It is like the merry, ism with which he burned-so that, in mustached face, always on the point of our minds, his silent, palpitating screen vanishing or exploding, that belonged to partners were branded by his kiss. The George Melies, but which served as Laurence Olivier in Rebecca. extra realism of sound was more than his guinea pig in several films. Mortification manner could bear. It is erotic not to hear More recent monsters seldom give ~\"'''''J'''''' There, the mesh of a mustache crushed on soft Like a Weed lips, and a comic distraction if you have themselves away quickly; like the me- dium, they are not sure they are to listen to every hair squeak. Equally, bad. There is little Adolf in Leni At the opemng of Chekhov's Uncle the most lavish sound kisses are actually Riefenstahl's Triumph ofthe Will-surely Vanya, Astrov the country doctor pon- spared the real gulp and mashing of the only man in that film with facial hair ders on the changes that have crept up noisy mouths. -able to raise a mustache's eyebrow on him: \"This sort of life drags you along with his languid salute, and giving down. You're surrounded by queer peo- his toothbrush lip to the cinema's most ple-they're a queer lot, all of them- passionate portrait ofa man by a woman. and after you've lived with them for a Long before the end, we foot-tapping year or two, you gradually become queer faithful want his cramped, abrasive yourself, without noticing it. That's in- mouth to kiss the lens and put an end to evitable. Ugh, what a huge mustache everything. I've grown....Silly mustache!\" Elsewhere: Brian Donlevy in a few In any production of Vanya, the actor films, grumpy and prickly; Anthony puts on a Maxim Gorki growth as heavy Quinn in his earlier \"savage\" roles; Con- as plaited cable; and when he removes it rad Veidt in Casablanca (as if the very at the end of the evening he feels naked word Nazi were the sound ofcruel super- and lighter than air, like someone who ciliousness hissing through a mustache); sheds a plaster cast after months of bur- and Basil Rathbone, who could always dened healing. This is a mustache to .i! Triumph ofthe Will . use his upper lip when disarmed in a keep the Russian winter out, and to sword fight, but who picked up Gillette mask the owner's disappointment. It before laying Sherlock Holmes, as if grows on you, like age or illness; and, - virtue and intuition could like any vital defense-work, it leaves the 4fO The Villain's Whip face no poilu tion. sheltering spirit all the more vulnerable. It may need only one winter, or one It speaks for the wistful mood of The Curl of Contempt rebuff, for the lover's sprightly show of movie mustaches that they have not virility to become the damp straw drag- been an easy code for villainy. The the- He may be in sole charge of this cate- ging down his smile. And on screen, this atrical melodramas that influenced mov- gory, but the aloof Clifton Webb re- mustache does not have to be over- ing pictures did have such a tradition: a quired a place of his own. His embossed grown. In Rebecca, Laurence Olivier's tall, dark figure of malevolence who mustache is a barrier against the world, Maxim has one no longer than a safety wore a mustache. In Britain he's known reading \"narcissus\" on the inside and catch that means his gun only goes off 22

inside him. It is a knot of hair to repress Groucho, with a slash of black grease This daily chore has been neglected his feelings, a mustache with no name, paint and an unlit cigar, a blighted lover by the movies, no matter that it affords like his new wife, a scar that lets us know led through life by this mockery of pubic so many metaphoric suggestions. How- how easily Rebecca can scratch him hair and a cock that will not subside. ever, there are two notable shaving from beneath the sea. scenes, of nearly opposite tone. In Rio Redford in The Electric Horseman . Bravo, when Dude has cleaned up his David Niven's trim military growth act, a sequence starts with the harsh kiss has often equipped him as a boy-scout Westerns of a razor as Angie Dickinson finishes blade or a courtly lover. After all, he was shaving Dean Martin. And in Astruc's a crony of Flynn's, and a genuine lieu- Une Vie, when the country squire, Chris- tenant-colonel in the British Army. But tian Marquand, is jerked out of morose in two movies the emotional politeness doldrums by the appearance of An- in Niven was braver than Flynn could tonella Lualdi, he goes up to his room ever be. In Separate Tables and Bonjour and prepares to kill his shabby, tawny Tristesse , his mustache contributes to his beard. He looks in a mirror, and gestures characters' bogusness and to their hol- with his razor as if to cut his own throat as low mood of good cheer in striving to he feels sexual energy coming back. He grins to himself, and it is his character's forget a disas.t.e..r.......,..,.,.- most touching revelation. Of course, his raw white jaw, and Lualdi's gaping eyes, will be found side-by-side, dead and adulterous, in the wreckage of a small fucking cart on the stones of a Nor- mandy beach. Photography indicates that the mus- tache was as common on the frontier as mud, cattle, and stupefied frowns. But most cowboy heroes find time to shave, Gene Hackman in The Conversation. even if they' re on a grueling cattle drive. Indeed, in My Darling Clementine, the Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice had a barbershop is a cherished place in the mustache that seemed to weep with mu- town, after which Henry Fonda can sic and distinguished self-pity in the lounge on the sidewalk, pleased with his sympathetic decay of a city where the mustache and a fresh feeling, so long as most famous boats are really upended no one mentions the sweet smell. In The mustaches. Gene Hackman is more sub- Gunfighter, it added to foreboding that ject to hurt, and more introspective, the handsome features of Gregory Peck when he wears a mustache. In The Con- were suddenly draped in a mourning versation, Harry Caul has a kind of c1ip- mustache. Whenever he goes West, in Charlie Chaplin. on growth that is one more lock on his Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and §l-On Looking Older privacy; and in Night Moves , Hackman is The Electric Horseman, Robert Redford Even Chaplin, he claimed, added a mustache to the tramp's outfit because so led by the nose by plot and double- lets his blond mustache grow and edges he was widely regarded as too young at Keystone. We should always be ready to cross that his own mustache resembles a unwittingly closer to the feeling ofa beer read the mustache as an attempt to enter the mysteries of sophistication-and to fishy clue that his dead senses cannot commercial cowhand in whom the stuff- expect a middle-aged mustache to be hacked away in the bitter regret that sniff out. ing is breaking free. believes it has lost its youth. I can think of at least three comic In most of Sam Peckinpah's \"along In Giant, as 20-odd years slump by, James Dean puts on a gray mustache actors for whom the mustache is a flag of the border\" pictures, the mustache is a and totters with the drunken disillusion of being past it that only a kid could the failure they can never surpass. mark of brotherhood. It claimed William imagine. And in She Wore a Yellow Rib- bon, as John Wayne presents a cavalry These are not just \"funny mustaches,\" Holden for The Wild Bunch; it made for a officer on the point of retirement, so he silvered his hair and wore a mustache. but the tattered relics ofa dignity that no haunted Warren Oates in Bring Me the one else takes seriously. John Cleese,in Head ofAlfredo Garcia; and in Pat Gar- Fawlty Towers, always likely to rip off his rett and Billy the Kid, it is what cuts mustache and cheer the mad rush of James Coburn offfrom happy days with blood; Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther the Kid, and identifies him as the des- movies, caught up in a spiral of unac- tined executioner of an old friend . \"So knowledged horror whereby he cannot · you worked it out at last,\" mutters an- dislodge the dank moss on his lip or get other mustache, snow-white, perched his mouth to speak stage French prop- on the sour, omniscient face of Peckin- erly under its macabre weight; and pah himself. 23

His name in that film was Nathan Brit- face clamped together by bristle that as Locke takes offas Robertson, and the ties, not bad for an old mustache so long might alarm even a blind girl's adora- new man arrives in Munich to find his in the desert air that it wonders if it tion? Chaplin loved and resented role as an arms merchant ready and might snap and turn to dust. women; his smear of mustache was the warm, Nicholson wears 3. mustache. But secret badge of sado-masochism and just before he departs for Barcelona, re- Burt Lancaster was pushing seventy self-inflicted ignominy. Just consider luctant to appear gaudy, in a bar phone when he made Atlantic City. Still, I think the flux of vanity and self-reproach if booth, he peels it off and sticks it on the that quite proper steps were taken to Chaplin ever reckoned that Hitler's light, as if it were \"For a good time, call, glorify his age: was his hair dyed, or does mustache had been inspired by the he keep it brown at other times? What- tramp's sentimental ugliness. \" ever the answer, his mustache in that film is a white horse, salty and wavy, that At a more mundane level, I can never 0-Sutherland in Don't Look Now. has been lifted off memory's Atlantic to see Paper Moon without wanting to Electric Affinities ennoble the elderly numbers man's know more about the brothers played by fancy; or, it is the crisp edge of a perfect John Hillerman: the one a sleepy boot- And with that throwaway mustache, margarita which, if Susan Sarandon legger as nicely placed in a nocturnal only one of so many take-it-or-leave-its bites, will make a piquant lemon and hotel lobby as a figure in an Edward in that great film, we are approaching clam canape. It is a mustache richer in Hopper picture, with mustache; and the pantheon of mustaches and the se- wisdom than information, but that befits sans, the wicked, gloating sheriff, just as rene circumflex that is Adolphe Men- a man-of-the-world type who has never relaxed, who is the one person in Kansas jou. But, on the way, a few moments once ventured outside his dream of sa- or Missouri the Prays cannot fool. On when mustaches call to one another voirfaire. the one hand, Hillerman offers two char- within a film like lost twins. acters so different that one has to study ~ Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit. the credits to be sure it is only one actor. In Don't Look Now, the mustache of On the other, he manages to suggest Donald Sutherland comes mouth-to- ;..-~:\":>c{\"~~.'!A~. ''~\"W/JI/J, ~ that the first brother was only the bait mouth with the eroded face ofa gargoyle tossed out on still waters by a cunning he is attempting to remount on an old . On and Off fisherman brother with a taste for con- Venetian building. His is the only mus- J /~ S~metimes it seems like playfulness, men, fried . tache in the film, but in its dense ~-_ a magician flipping a knot in a silk hand- scheme of echoes, we gather up all the No mustache feels more negotiable picture's embraces: hauling his drowned kerchief in and out; but in others, to than Burt Reynolds'; no leading movie daughter out of the water and starting to star is so unsure of himself. In Hustle and bellow; in the pandemonium of love chop and change the upper lip begins to Starting Over, when he presumed diffi- with his wife, Julie Christie, bodies try- dence and hurt in his characters, he took ing to drown their unhappiness; and convey insecurity. No matter how often off his mustache and used his own lank, reaching out for a small figure in a plastic receding hair. The jollier Burt, the one raincoat the color of blood. the conjurer fools us, we trust his obses- who makes so much money, has a crin- There are more Red River-D belt sion with surprise. But as unstable sin- kly rug and a Spanish-fly teaser. This buckles than mustaches in Howard I makes his veering from Smokeyism to Hawks' films. And yet, in Scarface I cerity paces back and forth, trying to be self-conscious efforts to impress all the enjoy Tony Camonte's implicit knowl- more disconcerting. If only he could edge that a fissure in his skin is more himself, we grow edgy; his alternate play both sides of himself in the same manly than the twitch of lip grass that film-a remake of A Face in the Crowd, belongs to Johnny Lovo. stares of brave earnestness, with and say, a Mustache for America-he might yet make a major contribution to the In R. W. Fassbinder's Querelle, not without, start to ache with doubt. Even tradition of the American confidence only does the mustache link the broody man. circle of gays like a song. It is also the when the magician hangs his false mus- incriminating tag that draws one charac- Such an achievement already belongs ter into a crime and forces him to face his tache in the closet, it retains the adroit to Jack Nicholson, though he is drifting sexual inclination. out of box-office favor and falling out of professionalism of the Cheshire Cat's love with movies. But if he is character- istically clean-shaven-and able to feel grin. But when alteration turns over a stripped and plain next to Bruce Oem's Hawaiian-mouth lai in The King ofMar- fresh face, he is as jittery as Lord Jim vin Gardens-nevertheless, Nicholson has a collection of mustaches. He is a jumping on a second chance. florid lover in A Safe Place; he has a sergeant's stripe in The Last Detail; in So it seems biographically significant The Fortune he engages in an intrigue of scene- and mustache-stealing as Warren that the most famous mustache, Cha- Beatty lays the first clues to his Howard Hughes identity; in Reds, his O'Neill plin's, was more than the man could drawls out so many barbs of eloquence that the shades of Clifton Webb are wear in life. Equally, one could ask why stirred. But, best ofall, in The Passenger, so beautiful a man of affairs chose to become known as a forlorn lover with a 24

Walbrook's bared mustache is the poses of men of different ages, as if to wound of romantic agony that will never assess the passage of time she had made heal. with Sternberg. And in and as The Devil, there are times when she has upended question-mark curls, flat and black on her brow, like the mustaches of old con- quests. Scalps? The evoked texture of von Stern- berg's films-of a wavering mist of veil, lattice, shadow, and undergrowth that comes between us and the light-is the ecstatic torment of a man looking through his own hair at a radiant but unattainable beloved. In Morocco, John Lodge in The Scarlet Empress. Menjou is an ideal protector, a patient And because films do have other sub- Robert De Niro in The Godfather, II. gentleman, who gives Amy Jolly pearls jects than mustaches, it is only this kind and is on the point of professing his love of dogged pursuit that discovers themes Sternberg when her gloved hand reaches out to beneath surfaces busy with plot. For in- stop his mouth. The great pathos in such stance, Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone Josef von Sternberg's Mount Para- scenes is that the man never weeps. But is as tough and homespun as his mus- mount should have a frozen mustache at the gesture has neutered him, and her tache. Robert De Niro's younger Vito its summit, just as Hemingway reported touch has turned his mustache from grows its original only when he has the legend of a leopard in ice on top of hope to ash. proven himself. But Al Pacino's Michael Kilimanjaro. In the series of movies never stoops to be so Italian. Thus, it is Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich, The Blue Angel is a transitional film, in an odd recurrence of family character that insolent, immaculate woman which the discovery of an implacable when the utterly unfit Fredo picks up a eludes her most understanding suitors, female ideai seems to persuade Stern- raffish, sleazy mustache on his way to leaving them at attention with only a berg how much he despises his humbug disgrace and elimination. He has let his sardonic smile and the curse of their ele- male lead. As a result, it is his cruelest brother down, but perhaps he is a truer gant mustaches to conceal their loss. film. Still, it goes as far as only Luis Corleone than the smooth Michael. More insidiously, these men could all be BuflUei has gone in its darkening medi- mistaken for Sternberg himself (the von tation on hair. When Professor Rath first At the start of La Ronde, Anton is another mustache). Let us not forget encounters Lola, it is through a photo- Walbrook introduces himself as \"Ie me- that some directors have mustaches, graph circulating in his classroom. But as neur de jeu,\" the incarnation of our de- too. the picture looks up at him from his sire to know everything. He puts on a desk, it is oddly like him: Lola's under- cape and a top hat to be impressive; but The arrogance in Sternberg that did wear is not just flat and photographic, he has the mustache already, and it is the but scraps of flimsy cloth stuck on the secret switch that works the roundabout photo's surface. His own lugubrious -reliable, authoritative, but only a tool. so much to ensure his downfall is palpa- face, worthy with beard and mustache, How remarkable then that in Lola ble in his films as the uncompromising looks down and then he begins to blow Montes, the ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) ardor that insists on nothing less than on her undetwear so that it comes to life. is barefaced and himself a slave to Lola, humiliation. No other director has so In time, he will wipe his face with her even if he does direct the show, and no fixed on the mustache as the valor of panties, and he will be sent out to sell matter that in other films Ustinov so romantic attempt, sure to be left like a more of these arousing postcards. There often plays peekaboo with facial hair. donkey's tail on the lover's face. Stern- is not a finer image in film of the mixed To go further, in Lola Montes berg has no equal for the simultaneous dread and awe that a mustache feels Walbrook is the king whose old motor is commitment to and skepticism toward imagines a woman's sexual hair charged when Lola rips open her own passion; and no one else saw the mus- the tangle that the two bodice. His face twitches, as if he real- tache as being at the same time so be- . ....E;.\" make together. ized how far his mustache was a thing coming and so damning. All his great that had sewn up feeling. In which case, films glow with an erotic fatalism in he must now carefully take out the which the tumescent light of aspiration, stitches, even as Lola's rent is repaired. of becoming, is snuffed out. Where once This is not a way of getting excited Mustaches go round and round, like that candle burned there is now only the about Menjou as an actor. Not that he is clock hands and precious earrings. They charred wick of mustache. a nonentity: he is the surrogate for Cha- are the same old wound, the same €lId No one half as discerning as Sternberg plin in A Woman ofParis. Let us just say pride. An actor may even carry the story wanted to be could have failed to recog- that with Menjou, more than with any from one director to another. After all, nize the pattern in his regiment of men: mustachioed actor, the black bow-tie of Ophuls' Walbrook had been Lermontov Menjou in Morocco, Victor McLaglen in hair is more important than the man. in The Red Shoes, with a mustache as Dishonored, John Lodge and the palace Indeed, he is rather like a polite, well- imperious as Michael Powell's, quiver- ' guard in The Scarlet Empress, Caesar Ro- behaved but rather dilute fellow who ing only at the end when he has to mero and Lionel Atwill in The Devil Is a happens to be astonishingly rich-the scream out the news that Victoria Page Woman. This last film (their last, too) is shadow of this wealth precedes and ob- will not dance tonight. In that moment, especially telling, for there Marlene dis- scures his own deft meekness. That, I 25

think, is what prompted Bunuel to write ~ cise, so matter-of-fact; but their inner about Menjou, and what provides us life is like a jungle. now with a sleek segue from Morocco to Adolphe Menjou in Morocco. Toot Obscure Object ofDesire. Like kids at a party, the characters in sian Dog1tt.,...L......~... Un Chien Andalou challenge each other From Paris, in the late Twenties, Bu- after the death's head moth has been nuel regarded Menjou as a phenomenon It is not simply mustaches with Bu- noticed on the wall. The man's mouth - \"the most Menjou of all the Men- nuel: he helps us see the lyricism and becomes so horrid he claps his hand over jous.\" It was perverse, but not the depravity, the shyness and the out- it; she sneers at his propriety. He takes dismissive. He might tum the actor into rage, in all hair. Just as Professor Rath's away his hand and, beneath his nose, his a surreal vacancy: \"He takes from his expanding speculation stirs an erotic de- face is as clear as the sky. That sugges- jacket a magnificent gold cigarette case, lirium in taffeta tacked on to a flat pic- tive mouth has gone. You beast, you a gift from the ex-Kaiser, opens it and ture, so in his flat films Bunuel can comb cheat, she says, and in a fury of supersti- offers it to us, full of mustaches.\" He the elements of his imagery in directions tion she takes out a lipstick and makes sees essence coming with that hairy sig- that chart our absurd games with deco- her mouth all the more emphatic, just to nature on a passive face , and he regards rum and abandon. The films are so pre- show him. that as proof of film's \"authentic and unexpected beauty,\" the capacity for Now hair grows where once his seeing significance in odd realities. mouth was; it is a beard, or a bush, or Menjou struck Bunuel as a phantom pubic hair, as if his old mouth were her blessed by this sinister but silly handle: new hole. She stifles a cry of dismay and \"Who, moreover, is not aware that, like anger, and instinctively holds up her the syrens of song, his immense men- armpit to find answering hair. But she is jouesque force irradiates from his mus- a good little girl who shaves there every tache, that wonderful black mustache of day, and so she leaves, in a huff, while the films.\" the man's face turns into a secret garden of abandoned sexual hair. As she goes I would submit that in his revery on she pokes out her tongue-\"fuck you\" Menjou, Bunuel gave us one of the most -and swings from one room to another useful ways into his own films , like the and into an inspiring, dreamy wind that Paradisi sonata that lets people in and makes her scarf and her hair flutter with out of the closed form of The Exterminat- joy and adventure. Wind on film, espe- ingAngel. cially when there is no dutiful sound effect, is as vibrant a poetry as the me- Groucho Marx and Thelma Todd in Monkey Business. dium knows, for it ruffles or stirs appear- ance. This agitation by an unseen force is akin to our eager watching of more people. More than SO years old, that scene shames the generality of filmmaking; it is so crazily particular and so mysteri- ously comprehensive. And just as it ties Bunuel to the Surrealist fever (of Ma- gritte paintings in which the framing head of hair encloses a female nude with erogenous hair where her mouth might be, or the Meret Oppenheim teacup possessed by fur), so it furnished several central themes in his later work. For one, there is the man hedged in by all the growths of good manners, good form, and his own depression- whereas the woman is plucky, defiant of his morbid sentimentality, and happy to let her hair down. Fifty years later, this will be acted out again: in the way the grim, mortified mustache of Fernando Rey must watch the flagrant bush and the burning pleasure of Angela Molina from the other side of iron bars in Toot Obscure Object ofDesire. Rey is a Men- jou set in melancholy, a mustache that wants to flower in every cunt, but which is clipped back every day and endlessly stroked to assuage dilemma. In Bunuel, at last, we find the totality of failed de- 26

sire and throttled violence in the elegant ORIGINAL AMERICAN & EUROPEAN ,I mustache-and in those mournful pretty faces (of Rey, of Archibaldo de la MOVIE POSTERS I Cruz, of Francisco in El) we discover the unique astringency of his comedy. LOBBY CARDS AND PRESSBOOKSj l1 But there is one film in which the r4t fll~ ~()II2/()I£1\\1 ~ ()41l I - - I--- constraint is not to be endured. In L'Age d' or, hair tears off its chains, and Gaston $:r I--f- Modot abuses dogs, blind men, and the ,l- I--f- polite delays of societal love. He is ready to hump in the mudholes of EI Dorado, £()12~4~/()()[)412[)/ l4~(J I - - I--- he is prepared to be orgiast and ripper. When he fails in every quest for the I--f- woman, he becomes a beast of the bed- room, ripping pillows to s.hreds so that I--f- the feathers become a storm of frus- trated desire. 1l11£1l£()£l\\/f4SSI3I~[)112 I--f- With drumming accompaniment, the f-- f- scene changes to the chateau of Seligny. The libertines stagger away from their f--I- orgy-eight splendid girls, with four de- praved women to tell inflaming stories. flJllll2/f()I2[)/ll2lJff4lJl I - I--- The leader, the duke ofBlangis, is in the I--f- guise of Christ, with beard and mus- tache. When a young girl emerges from ... MAN~ MORE . I - f- the chateau-bloodied, terrified, and '~MA\" »;&!p;' ~%:'~T·if~~i(/:r;·,~'· ~ devastated-the duke helps her back I- I--- inside. There is a pause, and then a terrible scream from within: even after '1-a;..1' :f 0 ~.. 2'£ 'V .(.y% h so much debauchery, fresh violation can be invented. The duke comes out / again, Jesus still, but clean-shaven. The film dissolves to a snowy cross with sev- l- f-- HEAVILY ILLUSTRATED CATALOG FILLED WITH INFO f-- f- eral hunks of hair on it, blowing in the wind. The script says they are women's / y/ For the Advanced Collector & Novice . $5. Walter Reuben/Box scalps, but they could be pubic pelts or 26 6, pe?t. 1/A~stir'Y ~87~8 I I I I I I I I I f-- f- bloodstained mustaches. Welles in Citizen Kane. ...and 'Rosebud' \"\"\". . the last word of a desperate ' mus\"- tache, begging for fiction's rescue, per- haps the most sensual shot in all cinema . as the mouth fills the screen, defining the secret intimacy that exists between the audience and the pain of being a mustache.® 27

1• 8 by Elliott Stein ecology which may have made converts all over the subcontinent, had its re- to air pollution. wards; and the superb Retrospective of In 1304 Sultan Alauddin Khilji built a 28 classic films from 1937 to 1978 by four walled city on the plains ofSiri to protect The films in competition were a me- great directors, organized by P.K. Nair Delhi from Mughal invaders. Siri Fort, diocre lot, but although the information of the Poona National Film Archive, which became medieval India's second section had its lapses, it was on a much would alone have justified the trip. capital, was sacked by Tamerlane's army higher level. I regretted missing Youssef in 1398. In 1982, a vast modern complex Chahine'sAn Egyptian Story, \"a semi-au- • was built at Siri (now a part of South tobiographical film\" whose plot was de- Delhi) for last November's Asian scribed as \"the tale ofan Arab film direc- At the Panorama, I saw my first As- Games. Early this year, the Asiad Cen- tor, representing the aspirations of the samese film: Jahnu Barua's Aparoopa ter became the main venue for the emerging nation, struggling to find a (Woman in a Tea Garden). The first Ninth International Film Festival of place in world cinema, but being denied movie ever made in this troubled north- India. his due in the Jew-dominated Western eastern state was]oymati (1935), an epic film festival circuit.\" about a legendary Ahom queen. Assam Barely a trace remains of Alauddin's now produces about ten films yearly. seven-gated city, orofhis famous Quasri It was a placid festival. Bombay, Ban- Hazar Palace; off in the fields, the bases galore, and Calcutta, sites of recent film Barua's protagonist is an army captain of a few foundation walls can be seen. festivals, are movie-mad cities. Delhi is who returns home after a long absence. The Asian Games complex is a pile of not; the festival created little local ex- He encounters a childhood friend, now brutalist architecture in gray concrete citement. The lull at Siri Fort was shat- the discontented wife of a tea-plantation and marble-pretty much of an Al- tered on but one occasion, and that for- owner she had married in order to payoff phaville, but an Indian Alphaville, tuitously: two fire extinguishers a family debt. The captain and the lady which means that a ten-minute walk will exploded during a screening of Missing, run off together and achieve some brief bring you to the village of Shalipur Jat, creating temporary panic. In the melee, happiness. where cows trot down the main street, a second-string critic from Bombay was and a crumbling 400-year-old mosque robbed of his wallet. Aparoopa is underplayed and non- lies just off the modern road. judgmental: the husband is a reasonably Although I do not disagree with much good egg, as much a victim of an oppres- It was at Siri that Minister ofInforma- of the criticism, I spent a rewarding two sive social system as anyone else. It is tion N .K.P. Salve lit the ceremonial weeks in Delhi. Indians attend Indian difficult to associate the peaceful slopes lamp inaugurating the festival. And at festivals to see foreign films; foreigners and lovely gardens of this sympathetic Siri, two weeks later, jury chairman who make the journey do so largely to first film with the ghastly scenes of mass Lindsay Anderson regretted to an- see what India has been turning out. slaughter which took place in the state nounce that no grand prize had been Indian Panorama, the yearly anthology early this year. awarded: \"In our judgment no film has of21 new films from production centers shown the powers of expression, the im- Male moviegoers predominate in In- portance of theme, or the originality of dian theaters. They spend an average of conception which would justify a Golden Peacock.\" ~ The Ninth IFFI was blasted by the Suhasini Mulay and Biju Phukan in Aparoopa. press; no Indian festival has ever prompted such criticism. Delhi boasts of the quantity of Third World films it shows. As long as a film submitted could claim that provenance, standards of quality seem to have been quickly low- ered. The inaugural program was a di- saster: Amok, an appallingly acted Mo- roccan tract with Edmund Purdom, directed by Ben Barka, was preceded by The Thinker, a dismal Indian short on 28

ten hours a week ogling Indian films. sluggish, cinematography turbid. To its Bengal government has produced a The heroines of 95 percent of these credit, the film does not resemble any number of features recently, there has films spend 35 percent of their time on other Indian film of recent years and , if been no new investment in Calcutta's screen running around trees singing flawed, is socially an important work. production facilities in many years. Only songs. In Jabbar Patel's feminist Marathi four studios still function; no Bengali film Umbartha (Threshold) , Savitri Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Elippathayam studio can supply quality service in any (Smita Pati\\) is a no-nonsense lady with (Rat Trap) comes laureled: it won the department. Satyajit Ray and Mrinal British Film Institute Award, the Indian Sen resort to sound-recording studios in little time for such dalliance. National Award for best film, and the Bombay or Madras. Savitri is a lower-middle-class sociolo- Kerala State Award for best feature, and was selected for this year's New Direc- Creativity is apparently also at low gist married to Subhash (Girish Karnad), tors series at the Museum of Modem ebb. I sawall of the five Bengali films in an inert hunk from an upper-class fam- the Panorama. Four were clinkers. ily. Her in-laws treat her with conde- Art. scension. Her childless sister-in-law has It concerns a middle-aged bachelor, a Saikat Bhattacharya's Dulia concerns taken over the task of raising Savitri's an idealistic young reporter who takes member of a disintegrating feudal soci- daughter. She feels unfulfilled and ap- ety, who is unable to come to terms with up the case of a young tribal woman plies for a job. When her application is the modern world. He lives with his whose child has died of malnutrition. A accepted, she appalls everyone with the sisters, one of whom is virtually his must for deja vu buffs. Buddhadeb news that she is leaving home to become slave. He gradually slips into paranoia. Dasgupta's Grihajuddha (Crossroad) is a the superintendent of a \"remand Although the film is critical of a parasitic confused tale of corruption in a steel house,\" a rescue center for deserted and privileged rural upper class, its ma- company; in this one an idealistic young women . jor concerns are formal rather than politi- reporter is murdered by company goons. At this Mahilashram, which is run like cal. The sound track is detailed and ex- Utpalendu Chakraborty's Chokh (The a prison, Savitri witnesses the oppres- pressive; characters move through an Eye), produced by the West Bengal De- sion of the rural women, most of whom architectural space (a recreation of the partment of Cultural Affairs, takes place have been abused sexually and dis- director's own ancestral home) that be- in 1975, during \"The Emergency\"; a carded by men. (The inmates are mostly comes the trajectory of an elaborate and few pointed references to that troubled portrayed by actresses from a Dalit- funereal ritual. Two hours of these aes- period resulted in some censor cuts. untouchable-dramatic company.) thetic benefits do not minister to Mr. Jethia is an egregious tycoon who Savitri has to deal with prostitution, self- enough delight to offset the lack of nar- owns a jute-mill. Jadunath, a labor immolation, insanity, and the pomposity rative interest and the frequent lapsing leader, organizes a strike during which and indifference of the committee of understatement into stasis. the tycoon's brother is killed. Jadunath which surpervises the place. A violent Rat Trap was produced by Ravindran is innocent of the murder, but is framed pother is caused by the discovery of a Nair, the backbone of the art film move- and hanged. He bequeaths his eyes to lesbian love affair. (Homosexuality is a ment in the state of Kerala. Nair is also any needy blind fellow workman \"so subject rarely treated in Indian cinema, the king of the cashew nut industry in that he may continue to watch the class and even more rarely treated with any Southern India. There has been a struggle. \" seriousness.) She also discovers love, af- cashew crisis of late; prices have plum- Jethia's son is blinded during an at- fection, and a sense of community with meted, due to a fall in exports. Art film tack by Naxalite Marxist-Leninists . the inmates. After two years, she returns production in Kerala is likely to be af- When Jadunath's eyes arrive at the local to her family. They seem as strangers. fected by the drop in nuts. hospital's eye bank (which is chock-a- • block with blind workers, awaiting do- She leaves home again, forever. Umbartha's script, by playwright Vijay Calcutta has always been one of In- nations), Jethia demands them for his Tendulkar (based on Begar, the autobi- dia's three main production centers. It son and tries to intimidate the ophthal- ography of Shanta Nisal), is admirable. still is, but greatly diminished. The mologist who will not permit an opera- The movie isn't. Patel, a practicing pe- Bengali film industry seems almost on tion without the proper legal papers. diatrician, is a clumsy director. Pacing is its last legs. Although the Marxist West Jethia's goons steal the eyes. When the Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Elippathayam. Gopalakrishnan, right, receives awardfor Elippathayam. 29

mill owner discovers from whose head dian New Wave. Since then, Sen has Man, Woman and Child, based on the they were removed, he is aghast. Better averaged a film a year. The work is un- Erich Segal novel and directed by Dick blind than Red-he will not put Marxist even, but the films are nearly all marked Richards, has not yet turned up in India, eyes in his son's head. He cannot even by a fluency of style, a healthy disre- but the book, which was a best-seller bear the idea of Jadunath's eyes surviv- spect for authority, and a militant radi- there, has already been the source ofjive calism that has mellowed over the years Indian movies. One of them, Shekhar ing, \"for they contain the fighting spirit without losing its bite. Kapur's Masoom (The Innocent), was in of the workers.\" His goons destroy the the Panorama. eyes and bury them in an empty lot. Kharij (The Case Is Closed) is one of The film ends with a workers' demon- his better films. Ayoungish middle-class It is a first film. Before taking up di- stration. Faces, eyes fill the screen. couple hire a country boy as servant. rection, Kapur had been an accountant, The wife sees no need to supply the then an actor. He had been wasting his This demented story could have child with warm clothing-after all, the time. He seems a born filmmaker; he given rise to an entertaining narrative Calcutta winter only lasts two months. has engineered an intelligent, adroit, with some political clout, if only it had When a cold wave descends on the city, and moving commercial movie. An hour been played straight. Chakraborty never the boy takes to sleeping in the kitchen. longer than the gooey, insufferable makes a right move. His awkward cam- He dies there one night of carbon mon- American picture, Masoom seems much era zooms unrelentingly; The Eye is an oxide poisoning. shorter. Some of the credit should go to assault on the optic nerves, 95 minutes the deft editing by the husband-and- of exclamation points, typed with a His bereaved family arrives, and the wife team Aruna-Vikas. sledgehammer. poor temporarily seem theatening. A post-mortem report declares the death Woman is the lovely Shabana Azmi; Shyam Benegal's ArohanlThe Ascent, an accident; no one is responsible. The the Indian Man is a successful architect although produced by the Government case is closed. Everything appears ready (Naseeruddin Shah), who has a brief of West Bengal, was made in Hindi, to fall back into its ordered place, but for fling in the Himalayas while on a busi- with nationwide distribution in view. the couple the case is open-their crisis ness trip, and ten years later finds out This episodic film covers a decade in the of conscience has just begun. that he has a son. The musical numbers life ofan exploited sharecropper. Its true are irresistible, especially those involv- star is Govind Nihalani, India's finest Sen has conducted a post-mortem on ing the talented child actors. Saeed Jaf- cinematographer (he was second-unit the class to which he himself belongs. It frey is the very model of a nouveau riche director on Gandhi and has directed sev- Punjabi businessman. eral successful films of his own), who has is a finely controlled film of self-doubt, registered some extraordinarily beauti- in muted colors, of muted humiliations. Masoomwas the best film by a new ful monsoon and flood scenes. Arohan is There is an uncanny scene in which the director I saw at Delhi and the most often visually striking, but dramatically couple is making their own bed after the entertaining movie I've seen so far this schematic, unmoving. Characters re- boy's death, and the mattress, which year. I can't see Satyajit Ray making main symbols. The graceful camera keeps getting stuck, somehow becomes films in Hollywood or Mrinal Sen shoot- movements seem mere directorial ges- an objective correlative for their guilt. ing in London , but I do think that tures made to inflate a sketchy script. A Sen is an indispensable figure in Indian Shekhar Kapur is possessed of a rapport theme of some import is nearly wasted: cinema. with actors and the kind of cunning tal- the tragedy of hard-working people who ent that would permit him to make have been given legal rights, but are • successful films just about anywhere in incapable of using them because of ad- the world. (Masoomwas released shortly ministrative corruption. For some writers and directors, the after the festival. In Bombay, it opened main interest of Indian festivals is a at the Metro. This theater and the Cal- Mrinal Sen's landmark Bhuvan Shome golden chance to rip off the plot of cutta Metro are the work of the great (1969) marked the beginning of the In- American movies. Subcontinental trans- plants of Rocky and Love Story are al- ready too numerous to cite. Paramount's Posterfor Masoom. Masoom at the Bombay Metro . 30

American movie palace architect, Tho- is one of the great debut films. Adults Only category; it cannot be seen mas Lamb. Many of Lamb's American by anyone under 18. theaters have been demolished. The • Bombay Metro is intact, its long attrac- Various ways of trafficking with the tive vertical sign a familiar landmark Two speeches were delivered during censors have been adopted in India. above the city's traffic.) the festival which did not sit well with Some have worked. Mr. Madala Ranga members of the industry. At the Pano- Rao undenook a fast unto death in order • rama inauguration, N.K.P. Salve, the to get his Viplava Sankham passed by the new Minister oflnformation and Broad- censor board . Six hours after he under- The fascinating retrospective of the casting (which is in charge of cinema), took it the censor's cenificate was is- work of Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor, B.N. declared that \"while the government sued. Mr. Gopal Datt's fast was less Reddi, and V. Shantaram supplied should not normally tinker with the cre- successful. Datt, formerly Director of strong evidence that, stylistically, the ative medium of the cinema, something the Films Division (the company which golden age of the Indian cinema was the must be done to halt the proliferation of produces government documentaries), late Forties and the Fifties. Roy's sex and violence on Indian screens , in went on a 48-hour fast a few days before Madhumati (1958) is a lively hocus-pocus order to preserve social norms.\" the opening of the Delhi festival \"as a opus about reincarnation, with horror ritual act dedicated to the promotion of film trappings. His Yahudi (Jew , 1958), Salve's predecessor at the Information good cinema and as an act of atonement set in ancient Roman times , recounts Ministry, Vasant Sathe, had , on the for the neglect of good cinema for almost the ill-starred love affair of Prince Mar- whole, enjoyed good relations with pro- two decades.\" Datt's fast did not seem cus and Hannah, the daughter of a Jew- ducers. He was a movie fan and ap- operative on the films in competition at ish jeweler. peared to have a good understanding of Delhi. the industry's problems. Sathe was In addition to the celebrated Awara known for his frankness . He spoke his In January, a Tamil producer, Mr. (1951) and Shri 420 (1955), the Kapoor own mind , even if this involved taking Manimaran, attempted to commit self- section included Mera Naam foker personal political risks. He is now India's immolation in Madras, outside the Shas- (1970), with Kapoor as a circus clown, Minister of Chemicals and Fenilizers. and two later films directed by him in At the closing night ceremony, the tri Bhavan, the location of the regional which he does not act: Bobby (1973), Vice President of India, M. Hidayatul- film censor, to protest \" the unjust, un- starring Dimple, is a breezy teenage ro- lah, in the course ofa long speech during necessary and unreasonable cuts made mance, one of the biggest hits in Indian which he quoted Wordswonh and Eddie by the censors\" in his movie Pan- film history; Satyam Shivam Sundaram Cantor, deplored that \" today there is not chavarnam. Mr. Manimaran was taken (1978) is a monument of delirious, ro- much maturity among actors and ac- into custody. He was later released. His mantic, magnificently lit kitsch. The tresses.\" He singled out Aparna Sen's 36 uncut film was not. revelation was Aag(Fire), produced and Chowringhee Lane (its producer and star, The event of the year in India was not directed by Kapoor in 1947, when he both highly regarded in the industry, Gandhi; it was Amitabh's accident. Ami- was 22. In this full-blown melodrama, were in the audience), whose \"bedroom tabh Bachchan has been the most stable he plays a theatrical producer whose face scenes\" he found offensive. Cho- commodity in the Indian film industry has been horribly burned, and who en- wringhee, made in Calcutta in 1981 , was for nearly a decade. Admiration for him counters a young woman who has no awarded the Grand Prize at last year's cuts across sex, age, and caste. The typi- name , comes from nowhere; all of her Manila festival. Its love scenes, by inter- cal Bachchan film is a melodrama of re- family have been killed in the fires of national standards, are restrained. venge or the story of a deprived child Partition. The visual style is a rich inter- The speeches point to a tightening of who grows up and turns to crime. Last mixture of film nair and expressionism. censorship regulations. To an outside July, while shooting Coolie in Bangalore, (Many of the best Indian films of this observer, these seem rigid enough as is. he was injured during a fight scene, rup- period were very German-looking.) Aag In India, Raiders ofthe Lost Ark is in the tured his intestine, and nearly died. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Prime Minis~r Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv flew to his bedside. For months, hundreds of thousands prayed for him in temples and mosques. When he was released from the hospital, he blessed a huge assembled crowd. The Bombay film industry blessed him when he returned to work early this year. He had been working on five films when the accident occurred-for producers who had borrowed money at an interest rate of 30 percent. • In 1982, India produced 763 feature films, an all-time high for the country, and a world record. In Madras 487 were made; in Bombay, 210; in Calcutta, 66. In addition to the major languages, films were made in Bhojpuri, Nepali, Kon- Raj Kapoor's Aag (Fire). kani, Brajbhasha, and Maithili. This production high took place dur- 31

ing a year of financial crisis. The box Can' t Please Everyone, a study of Indian ema, not only in his state, but in other office was in a foul mood: 70 percent of the Indian films released in 1982 did not film censorship by Kobita Sarkar (IBH parts of the country. The day he took recover their investments. This is partly due to a precipitous drop in foreign Publishers, 212 Backbay Reclamation , office, N. T. R. shaved his head and told sales. Pirated video tapes of Hindi films are now being sold in many countries, Bombay), and Ashish Rajadhyaksha's the press that as long as he is Chief with predictable results: in England , un- til recently, nearly 100 theaters pro- Ritwik Ghatak: A Return to the Epic Minister, journalists will have access to grammed Hindi movies; today there are two. (Screen Unit Publications, H-156 Mo- him at any time, even when he is in the The biggest flops of the year were han Nagar, Bombay). bedroom or bathroom. H .S. Rawail's Deedar-e-Yaar, with Rek- ha and Jeetendra, a \"Muslim social\" When a Ghatak retrospective was N.T.R. is more than idol of the Tel- which the industry had expected to be one of the smash hits of the decade, and held at London's National Film Theatre ugu screen. For the illiterate rural Vinod Pande's Star. (The sequel, Super- star, has been canceled.) Last Novem- last year, all of the films sold out. The masses of Andhra Pradesh he is a rein- ber, in shock at the failure of Deedar-e- Yaar, a group of producers and directors entire series was programmed a second carnation of Lord Krishna. He has por- met at the Naaz Building in Bombay where most of them have offices. They time, something which had not hap- trayed a number of gods on screen joined in group prayer for the success of a new big-budgeter, Subhash Ghai's pened previously in the history of the (Shiva, Rama, Vishnu) and starred in a Vidhaata. NFT. At the writing, Ghatak (1925-76) Telugu version of Superman, but he has The prayers were answered. Vidhaata (with Dilip Kumar and Dr. Sheeran La- is being honored at the Beaubourg Cine- always accentuated his self-appointed goo) made a mint. Three of Amitabh's films, completed before his accident, matheque in Paris. A retrospective of avatar as Krishna. He owns the Rama- did well: Namak Halal, Khud-Daar, and Ramesh Sippy's Shakti. Dev Anand's the films of India's greatest director is krishna Studios, which served as party Swami Dada was a success, and Raj Ka- poor's PremRog, which attacks the prej- long overdue in this country. headquarters. His twin movie houses in udice against widow remarriage , was popular with women audiences. Ketan Hyderabad are the Ramakrishna 70mm Mehta's Bhavni Bhavai, the finest low- budget Indian film in recent years-a and the Ramakrishna 35mm. His seven musical comedy about untouchables, which had remained on the shelf for sons are named: Jayakrishna, Sai some time due to the skepticism of dis- tributors-was finally released and did Krishna, Hari Krishna, Mohana well. If there was a discernible trend, it seemed to point away from action films Krishna, Balakrishna, Ramakrishna, and toward small, sensible movies, fam- ily dramas, and domestic comedies. and Jai Sankar Krishna. He has appeared • in more than 300 films; when shooting a Satyajit Ray was not at Delhi. He was film in which he portrays a deity, he at home in Calcutta, completing produc- tion of Ghare Baire (The Home and the abstains from meat. When he passes at World), based on the Rabindranath Ta- gore novel. It stars Soumitra Chatterjee the studio, employees fall to the ground and Victor Banerjee. Ray's son, Sandip, has just completed his directorial debut to touch his feet. When his films are with Fatikchand, the adventures of an amnesiac boy on the streets of Calcutta. shown in villages, moviegoers remove In spite of the country's abundant film their shoes and go in to theaters bare- production, few noteworthy film books are published in India. Things have foot, as if entering a temple. picked up recently with the publication of the screenplays of Mrinal Sen's In N.T.R.'s campaign tour through the Search of Famine (Seagull Books, 26 Circus Ave., Calcutta) and Satyajit Ray's state was in \"Krishna's chariot,\" a re- Sadgati/Deliverance (Eksahn, 73 Ma- hatma Gandhi Road, Calcutta), You modeled 1942 Chevrolet van. He bathed in wayside pools and ate under trees. The crowds at his rallies were mostly composed of hysterically enthu- siastic women. (His important, but less . visible support came from the landed gentry, since whatever he portrays in films, he is one of them.) Thousands of women broke coconuts as homage to N .T. Rama Raa in Superman. him; at one village, a young supporter slit her wrists wirh a razor blade and The elections that took place in the smudged his forehead with her blood. South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh N. T. R. appeared at rallies in long flow- were of particular interest to members of ing brocades, covered with jewelry-a the film industry assembled at Delhi. sort of butch Liberace. Since Independence, the state had been Since 1977, the Chief Minister of the a Congress Party fief. Last year a new neighboring state of Tamil Nadu has regional-patriotic party, Telugu Desam, been another film star, M.G. Rama- was formed by film star Nandamuri chandran. M.G.R. , as he is always Taraka Rama Rao, known by nearly ev- called, specializes in Robin Hood type eryone simply as N.T.R. (Rickshaw roles. N.T.R . and M.G.R. are old pullers affectionately call him \"Yenti.\") - friends. Centuries after the splendid The Desam gained a majority in the Cholas and the glorious Hoysala dynas- state assembly; N.T.R. was Andhra's ties, rule by screen now prevails in two new Chief Minister. large South Indian states. The social and His electoral promises had included economic problems in Andhra are enor- aid to New-Wave, non-commercial film- mous. The rest of India now wonders makers and an easing of film censorship. what miracles N.T.R. will be able to Many at Delhi were confident that he p~rform without the aid of special ef- would take an interest in aiding the cin- fects. iW 32

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The Hard Part, I: Getting It Made. Richard Cere in Breathless. by L. M. Kit Carson redo Jean-Luc Godard's A Bout de Souf- ment to his inner office. We wait out- fle, updated into L.A. today. McBride's side, talking ourselves down. McBride: Labor Day weekend, 1978: Jim been pitching this at studios, some peo- \"He was snoring in the big love scene.\" McBride and 1 stare and smoke in his hot ple like it; but nobody wants to bankroll I shmg: \"Bad idea. Marty 'discovered' L.A. duplex; and type the opening shot of the scriptwriting. It's a real right idea. I Streisand. BreathLess, forget it.\" Erlich- the Breathless script: a rockabilLy punk suggest we do it together, and pitch it to man pokes himself through the door, his juking around infront ofa Vegas casino at a producer I sort of know, Marty Erlich- beard split by a grimace/grin. He rasps: sunset. Labor Day weekend, 1982: man. \"Ya know what I like? The basicness of McBride shoots that imagefor the movie. the sensuosity.\" We go into his office [Historical note: Since 1966, Jim and he sticks out his hand: \"Let's agree Between those two dates twists a four- McBride and I had teamed on two to agree. The lawyers can work out the year zigzag as Breathless turns go, no-go, movie projects, David HoLzman's Diary agreement. \" into turnaround, into limbo, etc. 1 kept and The Moviegoer script. Diary, another daybooks covering those four years. The of McBride's right ideas, had notched a August 28, 1978: Next step: get Go- dates record a story about how something kind of odd status as a \"classic\" indie dard's OK. Jean-Pierre Gorin (friend of happens in Hollywood. They don't tell movie; we'd just filmed a bit of Walker McBride's, and co-worker of Godard's) \"why\" something happens. Fact is, there's Percy's The Moviegoer (my favorite makes the call; intros McB and Mr. G. no \"why\" in Hollywood; there's onLy chro- novel) at Mardi Gras '78, and I was Turns out Godard's a fan of David Holz- noLogy. The following excerpts from my scheming to raise money to complete it. man's Diary, and he'll be in L.A. in a few daybooks Log the chronology ofB reathless From all I knew or could guess, weeks, and do the deal. from day zero to day one. This is how it McBride was my best partner, somehow worked, this time. our combo of religioso Texas hick and September 4, 1978 (Labor Day): The sophisco NYC slicker truly clicked. writing starts at McBride's. No con- Beginning: July 1978- Deeper than this, Godard and A Bout de tracts, just hand-shake and telephone February 1979 Souffle had been a root movie experi- OK; but we figure the trick is to get ence for both of us-there was all the going and the project will be harder to JuLy 31,1978: I'm at a motel in Venice other movies we'd seen, and then there stop. finishing a supernatural horror script for was Godard; he was the one who kicked director Tobe Hooper. The script us in the head at age 20 and said: \"Make A Paris girlfriend has expressed to spooks me, it's full of baroque, violent, movies.\" It seemed a fitting reckless McBride a French magazine that's holy-card weirdness; so I phone friends payback to Gooard co try this.] printed a 30-page replication of action- a lot to talk the edge off. (No surprise and-dialogue from A Bout de Souffle. this ~cript didn't get made, also no sur- August 17,1978: Overnight we write a (The original had no script, only a short prise elements from it end up later in nine-page treatment for this other story-outline by Franc;ois Truffaut. The Hooper's PoLtergeist.) One foggy night BreathLess. We screen Godard for Erlich- mag had invented this \"script\" by run- McBride comes down, he's got an idea: man at Paramount, where he has deals. ning the movie through a movieola and writing it all down.) McBride translates Marty Erlichman looks like a short this slangy text, and we read and chew it bear wearing a jump-suit, and falls over out loud for hours to re-root our- asleep halfway through the screening. selves. After the screening, he takes the treat- 34

Director Jim McBride (right) and screenwriter Kit Carson (rear) on Breathless set. Even reduced to words, the movie's fumble and chop up a lot of ideas. But choice: crazy eyes, wild grin, bristling impressive. Two apposite geniuses, gradually one image stands up, a new energy. The Buddy Holly Story had just Truffaut and Godard, working right on angle on manhood that's tested out and made him a star on the cover of Rolling top of each other like matter/anti-mat- stuck with us since the Fifties: rock- Stone. ter, like Beatles/Rolling Stones, except moll. We go back to a source: Elvis. Hn. Within two weeks Erlichman sets up they synergize instead ofcombust. Truf- Not exactly, something went wrong a deal for Breathless with Busey at Uni- faut's structure hits exactly the right sim- with Elvis, he went showbiz. Nope, we versal. The Baby Moguls over there love ple beats as Godard's dialogue loops, re-think and hit on the original crazy boy it, they say: \"We want to make Breath- changes direction, goes into diversions, of rockmol1: Jerry Lee Lewis. Yep: au- less with or without Gary Busey!\" Big contradicts itself-sometimes seven dif- thentic, unbroken, started wild and deal! Agents send champagne to our ferent states of soul in one scene-while stayed wild-it's the right stance for our small workroom. the big themes emerge, such as: how is hero to aim at. We reverse Godard: he October 21, 1978: Godard comes to it that men and women do not fit to- went cool, we go hot. Later, Jerry Lee L.A. McBride drives him around for a gether? We shake our heads. McBride: doesn't feel size enough, so we add The few days to meet agents. Godard wants \"It's got everything: sex, violence, phi- Silver Surfer (a Marvel Comics su- to make a movie about Bugsy Siegel losophy, the works.\" I add: \"It's got perhero from another galaxy who's ex- with Robert De Niro and Diane Keaton. love, too.\" iled to Earth); and that's our Bogart: Naturally Godard's Bugsy Siegel script is Jerry Lee Lewis/The Silver Surfer. We an anti-script-pages with a few words Our job is to wrestle with this and try try to explain this to Erlichman. Me: on them, mostly covered with Xerox col- to make it come out new and real. Try. \"Look, Marty, it's sci-fi and rockmoll, lages of photos of De Niro and Keaton- the two most important artifacts in our and of course the effect of the script is September 20, 1978: We're working in culture today.\" He looks at me like I'm tough and profound. On his last day in a small room in Erlichman's cluster of crazy. McBride: \"Jerry Lee and the L.A., Godard unceremoniously hands offices at Paramount now. I sit at the Surfman, they've both got the power McBride the Breathless rights papers: desk and type, McBride stretches out on cosmic.\" He gives McBride the old fish- \"OK, Jim, I signed them.\" We make a the sofa; the scriptwriting goes back and eye too. deal with Godard. De Niro's and forth between us. Chevy Chase is across Keaton's agents don't. the hall, Laverne and Shirley two floors We keep going. below. Feels like Hollywood, but we park in Visitors Parking. The script develops, five to six good October 17, 1978: About halfway November 21, 1978: The first draft of pages a day. We're slowly rubbing lout through the first script draft, Gary Busey the script is finished. But the contract is the deep black-and-white imprint of joins the project. Amy Ephron, a smart, not. We wrote the movie faster than they Godard's movie in our minds, and put- fast-talking young mogulette who works wrote the contract. So they say we can't ting up a story that criss-crosses L.A.'s for Erlichman, has flown to Minneapolis get paid. So we say they can't have the tanned underbelly at neon sunset. . where Busey's shooting a movie with a script. No dough, no go. After some Item: Godard's French punk had Bo- 16mm print ofA Bout de SoujJ1.e. She gets shouting, they hurry up the contract. gart for his emblem, a true Fifties a projector and screens the movie for McBride stops me in the Visitors choice. He went cool. Our Eighties Busey on the door of his hotel room, and Parking lot as we head home. It's driz- American joker-who's his Bogart? We he says OK, maybe. Busey was our zling, a few days before Thanksgiving. 3S

Kit Carson. Marty Erlichman. ThomMount. McBride: \"I gotta tell you something.\" February 15,1979: We turn in the first ited). I'm hired to write a comic space- McBride's giving me a weary look, rain draft, with revisions; and Thom Western, Spacecoach. Gary Busey goes on his face. Mount's real \"problem\" becomes clear. off into Carny. He wants to dump not only me, but also McBride: \"A friend of mine heard the McBride. (But he can't because Godard August 1979: The second draft is execs talking about Breathless, they has assigned the rights to Breathless turned in. Unofficially I check it over were saying: 'Now that the script's in, through McBride so that McB was ce- with McBride before it's finished. It's the first thing we have to do is get rid of mented to the project.) not much different; but Universal loves Carson.'\" Hard to believe, I sputter: it again, sends it to De Niro. De Niro \"But if I hadn't brought you in here, McBride has the job of telling me I'm won't say yes or no for 6 months, finaIly they wouldn't have Breathless.\" fired. I ask why. McBride: \"I can't ex- says no. Universal quits. McBride shrugs: \"I dunno what to say. plain it, but here's what Mount said: Happy Thanksgiving.\" He gets in his 'Carson wears the mantle of hipness a February 1980: Orion's interested. beat-up Buick and drives away. I get in little too heavily for my taste.'\" The But unsure of McBride as a director. my beat-up Oldsmobile and sit there in Mantle of Hipness? This irritates the rain. Fuckola. What'd I expect, a McBride because for years we'd argued One Saturday afternoon McBride and medal? over who was the Hipness champ. Man- I meet at his agent's house. The agent, tle of Hipness?? Maybe my Armani Keith Addis, looks like a wire-haired ter- January 11, 1979: Erlichman, jacket? (Never figured out what Mount rier in a Brideshead Revisited suit. He McBride, and I have a couple meetings meant-except years later, in a Bev spends the afternoon coaching McBride with Thom Mount, production chief at Hills men's store, I'm considering a yel- in style. Addis: \"Jim, people think Universal. Mount's a semi-legend in his low cashmere scarf. Mount passes, you're a beatnik. That's dangerous. No- late twenties, an ex-SDSer, one of the shoots me an offended glance, com- body wants a beatnik to direct a movie.\" Baby Moguls supposed to steer the stu- menting: \"Nice scarf.\" Uh-oh: the Scarf (Actually Addis' intentions are heartfelt. dios toward \"relevance\" and the \"Youth of Hipness? I buy it.) He's spent the last year obsessively Market\" at the same time. So far he's pushing BreathLess around Hollywood. picked Car Wash, Animal House. Mount Now Mount gives McBride a list of When a reader's report on the script at seems bright and focused, the kind of new writers to work with, and a new Warners was negative, somehow Addis guy who rolls his Brooks Brothers shirt deal: McBride can select a new writer for after midnight one night got the report sleeves precisely one-fourth up his arms. Breathless; but he can't write with the switched to favorable. Later Addis But when we talk about the script, he new writer, he can only \"consult.\" would be executive producer of Breath- gets fuzzy. \"The script's not exactly McBride has to accept this deal or the less.) By the end of the afternoon right,\" he says. We ask why. \"It's almost project is dead. McBride looks L. L. Bean, smoking a right,\" he answers. Eventually we get pipe and wearing a button-down shirt. his drift: the script'S got an \"insider's Middle: June 1979-May 1982 Ready to meet Mike Medavoy, head of view\" ofL.A. We agree, the movie goes Orion. around the \"inside\" of L.A.-back For the next three years, BreathLess rooms of record stores, downtown alleys became a movie-we-can't-make. Dead Medavoy OK's McBride, and starts a -all the places of small-time criminal and Alive. McBride keeps me in touch. . series of star-meetings. John Travolta action. \"I've got a problem with that,\" and Al Pacino like the script; meet with Mount concludes. A \"problem\" with lo- June 1979: McBride starts \"consult- McBride; but say no. McBride faces a cations? Later in the elevator, McBride ing\" (aka writing) again with a new hard truth. McBride: \"I figured it out: if and I try to decipher the meetings. writer (nameless here, since the Writers these guys liked the script, liked the What's this bullshit? Movies are about Guild later ruled he shouldn't be cred- role, and still didn't want to do it, it was souls, not locations. because they didn't trust me to direct it. What was it about me?\" Imponderable sadness. 36

Barry Diller. Mike Medavoy. Keith Addis. November 1, 1980: I have a dinner January 1982: Gere lands Michael props. Then he stops in front of McBride; looks at him; sticks out his meeting with a Columbia exec at Musso Mann, who just wrote-directed Thief hand. McBride is stunned, and bear- hugs Gere. and Franks. Gradually I bring the con- Orion OK's a new deal, sets Mann to May 27, 1982: It's near midnight in versation around to making Breathless at write a new script. New York when McBride phones me from L.A. McBride: \"The rumor is true. Columbia. Abruptly the exec explodes, We're doing Breathless. Get on the next plane, Orion wants us to write a new flecks of creamed spinach flying from March 1982: Mann's script comes in. final script in ten days.\" the mouth. Exec: \"Listen! Forget Orion balks: the script's mean, macho, End: May 30-August 1,1982 Breathless! Forget it! That movie will ultra-hip. An Orion exec later says, May 30, 1982: At 2:30 A.M. I check into a small suite with a phone-booth- never, never be made in this town!!\" \"This script almost killed the project.\" sized balcony at the Chateau Marmont over Sunset Boulevard. Hyperventilat- OK, I'd had enough. Been paid to Erlichman makes his last move. He ing, pogoing silently on the balcony, I try to think this is real-remembering write seven scripts in three years, but no asks Medavoy to reconsider McBride as the mad dog Columbia exec insisting Breathless never, never gets made in this movies. Three days later I vote for director. Medavoy says yes. town. It's still unthinkable. Carter and catch a plane to New York. Now Gere balks. He feels it's too Later, McBride breaks things down for me. The deal is to work on the script By the time I land, Reagan is President. risky to work with McBride, who hasn't for two weeks with him and Gere. Then Orion has one last chance to say no. OK, I return to journalism where it's sim- been behind a camera for twelve years. keep everything inside slo-mo. pler: you write good; they print it. McBride flies to New York, starts getting June 1, 1982: First meet-and-work with Gere in my suite. We triangulate friends to call Gere. Paul Schrader, Jona- the room: McBride on the sofa, me at a big table, Gere at a writing desk. February 1981: McBride bites the than Demme call. Gere relents. He and It's been three years since McBride bullet. He agrees to remove himself as McBride talk over the movie for two and I have worked together, and Gere is a stranger with squinty Roy Rogers eyes director, just to get the movie made. days, until Gere says, \"You're the first and a certain cocky loneliness. But our guards drop fast because there's just no (Unknowingly McBride has connected guy I've talked to who really under- time. Our job now is a) streamline the script's structure, b) intensify the main to the Karmic Boomerang Law whereby stands this movie.\" McBride laughs. \"I characters. (If we pull off this rewrite by June 10, we shoot the movie Augl.lst- if you let the thing go, the thing comes ought to. It was my idea.\" Still Gere back to you.) won't commit. Franc Roddam, hot from Quadrophe- nia, comes on to direct, bringing in May 1982: The final crucial meeting Richard Gere. For twenty-four hours, is held in Medavoy's olympic-pool-sized Paramount says yes. Then reportedly office in Century City. It's orchestrated Barry Diller, boss of Paramount, wakes like a one-act play. Erlichman, Gere, up in the middle of the night muttering, Orion big shots, and McBride in the \"Hold it. The guy in Breathless kills a middle. An Orion exec starts grilling cop. I won't make a movie about a cop- McBride, questioning the project, exil- killer.\" Paramount says no; assigns ing Sartre and Existentialism to \"that- Franc Roddam to direct The Lords of was-the- Fiftieslthis-is-the-Eighties. \" Discipline. McBride fights back, but the pressure continues. Now Gere jumps in, defend- ing McBride and the movie. Suddenly March-December 1981: Now Gere's Medavoy swivels in his chair to face moving Breathless around, trying to find Gere, and interrupts: \"You know, Ri- a director. McBride's working on a script chard, we want to make this movie and about the infamous stripper and mistress ' make it now. We want McBride to di- of Gov. Earl Long, Blaze Starr. I'm rect. So it's up to you.\" Gere starts wan- working in a New York think-tank, writ- dering around the room, not answering ing reports on the moviebiz. the question, talking about costumes, 37

ideas in a group-think. Pages from photo-books are taped to the walls. We' re coaxing together the movie's style, and how to get it-colors of the character's clothes, lighting, loony buildings. We're following McBride's basic focus that this is a movie about \"extremes.\" Periodically Erlichman eyeballs things, cracks: \"Don't wanna hear 'concept' in this room. 'Concept' closes on Tuesday.\" Erlichman, Gere, and McBride fly to Paris to cast the girl's role. About sev- enty actresses-people seen in maga- zines, casting books, movies-are wait- ing to be interviewed. They'll pick an 18-year-old unknown, Valerie Kaprisky, a girl we spotted literally in a group- photo torn from a French magazine. What's a nice girl like Valerie Kaprisky doing in a dive like this? July 20, 1982: Less than two weeks till shooting. In the mucky L.A. heat September. if we don't, back to Bozo- June 15, 1982: Orion green-lights the wave now everything runs together: lo- land for two of us.) project. Production offices open in a cations, casting, sets, costumes, days, two-story stucco building at Zoetrope nights. So a dynamic starts clicking around Studios on the corner of Akira Kurosawa our triangle semi-quickly. McBride and Avenue and Buster Keaton Boulevard. This overheated afternoon in a I take on our writing partnership's roles: At 10 A. M., the first phone call McBride cramped Zoetrope office, Gere closes I'm the jerk at the typewriter improving, gets is mega-agent Sue Mengers pitch- the gap between himself and the role, overdoing lots of screwball ideas; he's ing a client for the girl's role. McBride Jesse Lujack. For the last two months the skeptic who selects and modifies the declines, but how did she know we were we've been talking Jesse: he's a \"gut- right ones. Gere clocks this game, and going only an hour after we knew? Soon player, guy always doubles his bets the fun of it; he jumps in, sometimes there's a horde of agent phone calls. when he's losing\"; ' he's \"permanently taking my side, sometimes Jim's, play- Friends and enemies (sometimes hard running the edge, stuck at 180 mph\"; ing both the joker and the judge. An to tell the diff in Hollywood) call to con- etc. O. K., but this is just talking about a ironic, mocking ease develops among gratulate. The town knows. fiction . Soon now Gere's got to take the us. risk, make this wacko real. And abruptly I'm sitting on McBride's desk, suit- this afternoon it seems to hit him in June 7, 1982: We're writing and cases packed, ready for the New York mid-sentence-we're re-working a screening movies: Gun Crazy, Kubrick's plane. Medavoy calls to ask if there's scene, Gere's running Jesse's lines; and first movie, Killer's Kiss. Medavoy runs more writing we'd like to do during pre- the words start going faster, no pauses High Sierra, the ending ofwhich Godard production. I go back to the hotel and for breath, in a new erratic rhythm. I lifted whole to make the ending of A unpack. look over and he's standing up sweat- Bout de Souffle. soaked behind the desk reading, laugh- June 18, 1982:Early summer '82 (pre- ing, snapping his shoulders, raving on, It's funny: I realize we're doing a dou- E.T.). Hollywood is at near-zero produc- wide open. Sounds strange, but I watch ble remake. Godard took chunks of tion. Mter the Christmas bombs (Pen- Gere change himself: loosen the outline American movies and re-invented them, nies From Heaven, RoLLover, etc.), it's of his body, shake up his dimensions even dedicated his movie to Republic been a loser year so far. A lot of the great inside. Right then he gets it, or some- Pictures, the Thirties studio of cheapo and near-great aren't working. Orion's how Jesse Lujack taps into Richard gangster melodramas. gamble makes Breathless one of maybe Gere. six movies-in-the-making; and McBride June 11, 1982: The rewrite's done, can pick from the top of the lists for his August 1, 1982: The last night before re-typed, reproduced, and sent to Orion production team. The first key players shooting, McBride and I stand on his for their weekend-long decision-making sign on: cinematographer Richard Kline porch watching one of L.A. 's grand, sick process. This wraps what will be my (Body Heat, The Fury); art director Ri- sunlsmogsets. The sky's green and or- favorite time on BreathLess, these ten chard Sylbert, whose credits start with ange. McBride: \"Like to get that in a days when nobody knew if we had a The Manchurian Candidate, run through movie.\" I laugh: \"Shoot it, now you can, movie or not-except me, McBride, The Graduate to Reds. Jim. The years people kept saying: 'No, Gere; we believed it. The rest of what no-go, you can't make the movie'-I happens-the shooting, editing, the re- Location-scouting and screenings think they were just kidding. Just jokin' views, box-office-it won't count as overlap: The Conformist, The Third Man. around. That joke's over now, y'know?\" much for me as having come to this At the end of each day, free-form ses- moment when we finally got one other sions in McBride's office-the bunch of So we shot it. person to believe. It's hard to believe. us feeding questions, feelings, stories, The rest ofwhat happens is the movie Breathless. ~ 38

Burllves and Paul Winfield in Sam Fuller's White Dog. sion-a development that one regards new cable market may make the studios less willing to search for a campaign that by Stephen Farber with decidedly mixed feelings. On the will bring their offbeat films to theaters. Rather than trying to solve the problem positive side, the voracious appetite of posed by an unconventional film, they can simply unload the movie to pay TV, If the proposed release schedules of pay TV for product means that from now pocket several hundred thousand dol- lars, and forget about the problem. the major studios were relief maps, by on, virtually no film will be permanently • the end of the year they'd look like unseen. A decade ago, people who In the last few years, the number of Dresden 1945. Holes as big as craters wanted to take a peek at tantalizers like shelved films or films receiving very lim- ited theatrical release has been steadily gape where the titles of medium-size Sidney Lumet's The Appointment, rising. As producer Fred Roos confirms, \"This seems to be a new phenomenon. films once were. MGM-UA allowed Charles Eastman's The All-American I remember when almost every film used to have a full-scale national release. only two of its half-dozen films to see the Boy, or Deadhead Miles, directed by A lot of them did badly, but at least they opened in every major city. Now more inside of a movie house in the first three Vernon Zimmerman and written by Ter- and more films only get very limited openings.\" The troubling thing is that months of 1983: the Australian The Year rence Malick, had no options unless these lost films encompass a growing number of works by major directors like of Living Dangerously and the long-de- they happened to have a friend at the Robert Altman, Nicolas Roeg, Wim Wenders, and Samuel Fuller. Talent, layed The Black Stallion Returns. Other studios that had shelved them. Today reputation, even previous success are no protection. Indeed, the more innovative studios are almost as capricious, as anx- almost every film eventually pops up on the artist, the more difficulty he may have finding a place for his idiosyncratic ious to jettison the dead weights and one of the cable systems. Says Jerry Har- movie in today's increasingly homoge- nized market. make room for the airborne hit. vey, who buys films for the Z Channel, There is one basic, simple reason for For the big movies, the new instabil- Group W's small, adventurous cable this threat to filmmakers: the increasing ity of scheduling is no problem: You can service in Los Angeles: \"Whatever stu- tell years in advance on which day the dio politics were involved are long since next George Lucas adventure will be gone by the time we inquire about released, since May 25 is the lucky Star shelved films. They just want to know Wars number. But for smaller, riskier what they can get out of the deal. We films, nothing is sure. They may be re- haven't had any insurmountable prob- leased on schedule; they may languish lems.\" for months while the bosses recut, or try These films weren't made for televi- to dream up a snazzy campaign, or try to sion, of course. They were meant to be forget about it. In some cases, the films seen on the large screen with large audi- may simply be shelved, to inspire film- .ences, and it is inevitably frustrating to buff cults or at least curiosity. the makers of the films that they have to Now these orphan films have found settle for this second-best method ofdis- their final resting-place on cable televi- tribution. The insidious thing is that the 39

cost of advertising. According to director Eastwood action picture, a Cheech and \"The studio executives were the ones Richard Rush, who had a well-publi- Chong comedy-are the perfect films to who really wanted to make the movie,\" cized battle getting The Stunt Man re- open in 1200 theaters with relentless TV says Davison in some bewilderment. leased, \"Just a few years ago, $1 million advertising. On the other hand, films \"They had had it for seven years and could buy a hell of an advertising cam- that are slightly more eccentric or diffi- had scripts by several different writers. paign. Now $5 or $6 million is consid- cult to categorize are the ones that don't They assigned the picture to me and ered just an average campaign.\" In other work in mass bookings and noisy TV told me to make it in six weeks. I called words, a modestly budgeted $5 million spots. Sam Fuller, and he wrote a new script in film suddenly doubles its price tag when ten days.\" it is about to open. Robert Kaylor, the director of Carny (another film that received limited dis- Paramount president Michael Eisner Advertising costs have exploded be- tribution), offers the most stinging com- confirms his strong interest in the proj- cause of the increasing reliance on TV ment on the new studio attitude: \"The ect. \"I liked the Romain Gary novella,\" advertising to sell movies. The rates are studios are interested in nothing but a he says, \"and I always thought it was a astronomical: a single 30-second TV fast payoff. A slow payoff film like Carny terrific idea for a movie. I thought it spot in prime time can cost anywhere is a pain in the ass for them. As a busi- made an interesting statement about from $50,000 (for a low-rated show) to nessman I can understand that. But how prejudice is taught rather than in- $400,000 (for a Super Bowl or M*A*S*H they're working in a business that's a herited. But it always ran a high risk of farewell). Is this expense necessary? It's little more than a business. They have a being misunderstood by people. \" worth recalling that just ten years ago, responsibility to the artistic side of very few movies were ever advertised on movies as well. If they finance the film, Controversy swirled around the television, and people managed to find they should support it-unless it's just movie while it was in production. The out about their existence. But to change irredeemably bad.\" NAACP had a representative on the set, the ground rules now would require con- and NAACP national executive director certed action. Notes Alan Ladd, Jr., of In the last two years, classics divisions Benjamin Hooks warned Paramount The Ladd Company: \"There's no way have arisen at a few of the studios to that the film might be a \"dangerous\" of reducing advertising costs until every- handle some of these orphan films. But a incitement to racism. The filmmakers body decides to cut back and not let egos couple of them, like Columbia's Tri- dismiss these charges. \"Sam Fuller interfere. Although it's illegal to get to- umph Films and Universal's new clas- turned White Dog into a very liberal film gether as a group, unless everybody's sics division, have been devised primar- in the best sense of the word,\" says Jon going to do it, you're stuck with the ily to distribute foreign films. UA Davison. \"Looking back at Sam's films situation. When you're dealing with classics and 20th Century-Fox Interna- like Steel Helmet, Shock Corridor, and filmmakers, they say, 'So-and-so had an tional Classics are known for picking up China Gate, you can see that his heart expensive campaign on his picture. independent American films as well. was always in the right place. Everyone Now I want my full-page ad in The New But this still leaves films made by larger who has seen the movie has seen it as a York Times. I want my billboard on Sun- companies and by studios that don't powerful indictment of racism. Maybe set Boulevard. I want X amount of dol- have classics departments. Warner Bros. that isn't deemed to be commercial.\" lars on television.' You can't say, 'Your and Paramount, for example, do not as picture is better so you don't need it,' or yet have classics divisions, and so there Paul Winfield, Academy Award nomi- 'Your picture isn't as good so you don't is no outlet for their \"difficult\" films; nee for his performance in Sounder, need it.' \" they tend to be consigned to limbo, and plays a black anthropologist who tests eventually exiled to pay TV. the white dog. \"If I had thought the Because of this reliance on TVadver- racial issue was a major one,\" Winfield tising, most films now open in very wide \"White Dog\" says, \"I would never have done the breaks. The single-theater opening in a movie. I gave it a lot of hard thought. I few large cities, which used to be the A heralded director: Samuel Fuller. liked that the story showed a thinking norm for all \"quality\" films, is increas- An honorable cast: Kristy McNichol, black man, a scientist who did not react ingly rare, reserved for foreign films and Paul Winfield, Burl Ives. Excellent in a knee-jerk way. He was neither an a few other movies perceived to be early reviews: from Todd McCarthy in all-perfect black man nor a clown or a highly specialized. In a recent illustra- Variety, many of the influential critics in villain. That appealed to me. The black tion of how misguided the current mar- Paris. A virtually unseen movie: White consultants on the film were concerned keting strategy can be, The Year ofLiving Dog. about a lot of details. For example, my Dangerously opened in some 800 the- character didn't actually finish his de- aters across the country and bombed. A Based loosely on Romain Gary's no- gree at Harvard; he felt he had learned few weeks later, MGM/UA announced vella, White Dog tells of a dog that has what he needed to learn and had that it was cutting the number of houses been trained to kill blacks and then (at dropped out. He was something of a -to find theaters \"worthy of the pic- least in the original story) is retrained to renegade, which interested me, but the ture,\" as the flacks had it-as Living kill whites. The story was always some- NAACP representative wanted us to Dangerously belatedly entered the bou- thing of a hot potato, but it was a movie change that. All of those concerns might tique venue it should originally have oc- that Paramount very much wanted to be valid if you were writing an article for cupied. make. The studio bought the book al- the NAACP journal, but they have very most a decade ago. At one time it was to little to do with theater or drama.\" These changes in the distribution and be produced by Robert Evans and writ- marketing of movies have given certain ten by Robert Towne, but they eventu- After filming was completed, the stu- kinds of films a preferred place in the ally moved on to other projects, and Jon dio grew more nervous about possible market. Movies with an exploitable title Davison (fresh off the success of Air- objections to the film. As Davison says, or star-a sequel to a smash, a Clint plane!) was assigned to produce the film. \"They wanted to tone down the racial content of the movie. So they re-edited 40

it. Now instead of killing people, he simply bites people, which is fairly ludi- \" crous. They also inserted speeches ex- plaining that it was only a minority of whites who would do something like this. \" According to Don Simpson, who was head of production while White Dog was being filmed and is now an independent producer with Paramount, \"Mter they looked at the picture, the executives felt it was possibly incendiary. There came to be a general feeling that there would not be a good reaction.\" Michael Eisner, however, insists that this was not the reason for the studio's decision to shelve the movie. \"I hope there will never come a time when we will be intimi- dated by pressure groups,\" Eisner says. \"The movie sits on a shelf not because I was afraid of controversy, but \\;>ecause I was afraid nobody would go to see it. Every time we tested it, we never got a strong enough reaction to justify a major opening.\" The studio did attempt a limited dis- Russell, Hackman, and Hauer in Nicolas Roeg's Eureka. tribution. The movie was test marketed in Detroit last fall and performed poorly, Paramount has now sold the movie to had departed before the film was com- though it was not exactly given a major pay TV, where it will air for the first time pleted. According to a friend of producer sendoff. Davison reports, \"I had a friend in January of 1984. The version that will Jeremy Thomas, when MGM's new in the lab who told me they were making be shown on cable is not Fuller's original president Freddie Fields saw the movie, a bunch of prints and shipping them to cut but the studio's re-edited version, he hated it and removed it from the Detroit. That was the first I heard of it. and this rankles Davison. Paul Winfield studio's release schedule. Now that There was never a trailer or a poster or a is especially disturbed about the impli- Frank Yablans has taken over, he has TV or radio spot. It was never given a cations of Paramount's decision. \"As a agreed to give the film a \"major\" New reasonable chance to succeed. We had member of the audience,\" he says, \"I York opening in the fall. If it isn't well had a sneak in Seattle, which went very think it's a form of censorship. I hate received, it may not receive many more well; the two major critics there had people deciding I'm not grown-up bookings. \"This movie has gone seen it and loved it. Paramount knew enough to see this movie. Any time you through four different studio manage- that but decided to test it in Detroit deal with racial hatred, you run the risk ments,\" says Roeg's agent, Robert Litt- instead of Seattle.\" of seeming to endorse it. But if you ig- man. \"Maybe one day I'll actually de- At around the same time the film nore the problem it's not going to go liver a movie to the person who made opened in Paris, and there have been away. I'm prepared to take my lumps the deal.\" conflicting reports about how it per- with the film, but I'm disappointed not A few years ago Lorimar, a prosperous formed there. Paramount terms its box- to have it released at all.\" supplier ofsuch TV series as The Waltons office reception disappointing; Fuller and Dallas, decided to enter the feature says that it built steadily over the course 'Eureka' &Lorimar film arena. The company sponsored an of its engagement. (Both may be true.) ambitious slate of films without produc- Davison points out that Paramount Nicolas Roeg has had problems with ing a single major hit. Two of the Lori- changed the movie's title to Trained to distributors on all but one of his six mar movies, James Toback's Love and Kill for the Paris opening. \"The book films. (The exception is WaLkabout.) Money and James B. Harris's Fast-Walk- won a prize in France,\" he explains, Warners sat on Performance for months, ing, had virtually no release at all. Love \"and Gary has a very strong following nervously whittling away at its sex and and Money, a lackluster tale of romantic there. Why you would change the title violence. Don't Look Now was trimmed obsession and Latin American revolu- when the title is an obviously salable by Paramount, and The Man Who Fell to tion, stars Ray Sharkey, Klaus Kinski, element is another thing I don't under- Earth was more drastically truncated by Omelia Muti, Armand Assante, and stand. To tell the truth, I never felt this distributor Donald Rugoff. Roeg's last King Vidor (in his only acting job) as the was a mainstream picture. Basically, film, Bad Timing, had trouble finding a hero's senile grandfather. Paramount people like dogs, and this is a movie distributor at all. had originally owned Toback's screen- about a dog that goes around killing peo- Eureka, an $11 million film starring play, then placed it in turnaround. In a ple. So I could see not making 1,500 · Gene Hackman, Rutger Hauer, Mickey grotesque irony it ended up back at Par- prints. But there is a market for a good Rourke, and Theresa Russell, was set amount when Lorimar sold its last eight Sam Fuller film, and this is one of his into motion by David Begelman when films to Paramount to distribute. After a best movies.\" he was running MGM, but Begelman year of procrastination it opened in New 41

York, died, and only recently appeared on some pay TV networks. \"I am very dissatisfied with the film-as dissatis- fied as I ever hope to be with a film I've made,\" Toback admits. \"But just King Vidor's performance alone makes it worth seeing. He creates a unique char- acter in American films, and I know it was very depressing for him not to have it shown. When you think of the hun- dreds of pieces of shit that do get re- leased, it's discouraging.\" Escape Artists James B. Harris's Fast-Walking, a Agneta Eckemyr and John Huston in William Richen's Winter Kills. prison movie starring James Woods, Tim Mcintire, and Kay Lenz, was filmed in Jeff Bridges and Bianca Jagger in Richert's re-titled Success. 1980. It is the kind of seamy, un- sparingly cynical film that studios dis- Film Festival in 1982. It has apparently thing but that treatment. In New York it like. Paramount refused to release it at done well in Paris, and less well in San opened in a flagship run, in 72 theaters all, so Harris arranged to sell it to Pick- Francisco, Seattle, and Portland, the throughout the area. As Kaufer points man, a smaller distributor. It had only a three U.S. cities where it has opened. out, \"Diner opened in one theater with very limited release, and the few re- Although it has not yet been sold to pay 500 seats. We were playing to 75,000 views it got seethed with moral outrage. TV, there are no definite plans to open it seats. Diner had lines around the block Writing in The Hollywood Reporter, Ar- in any other major American markets. and was perceived as a hit. Soup for One thur Knight mounted his pulpit and \"Not to get an L.A. opening for either was perceived as a flop, though a lot asked, \"What do people think of when movie is hard on the ego,\" Roos admits. more people were actually seeing it.\" they write a script these days, just how The movie also opened in Toronto and much sex and action they can put into it The fate of another Warners movie, Cincinnati to small audiences, and then to make it 'commercial'? Don't they Soup for One, demonstrates the freaky Warners sat on it for the summer, prom- have any sense of human values or hu- arbitrariness of release patterns. Direct- ising Kaufer a West Coast opening in the man decency?\" Film Journal, while con- ing his first movie at age 25, Jonathan fall. It finally opened in San Diego in ceding that the picture had much to rec- Kaufer got a good deal of publicity as November, on double bills with The ommend it \"from a qualitative angle,\" one of the youngest directors to secure Missionary, with an ad that Kaufer calls offered this demurral: \"But rarely has financing for a major studio film. This \"the tackiest thing I'd ever seen-an this writer noticed a bleaker, more cyni- comedy about the New York singles Animal House-type cartoon that tried to cal view of humanity.\" The movie will scene stars the gifted Canadian actor make the film look like Porky's. I got my appear on all the cable networks in June, Saul Rubinek. On its New York opening Clint Eastwood opening in New York to degrade and corrupt Americans in the last year it received nice, though hardly and my porno movie double bill in San privacy of their own homes. spectacular, reviews. \"All of the people Diego, and that was it.\" connected with it are up-and-coming Two of the movies that helped to sink new talents,\" wrote Vincent Canby in The Directors Guild finally arranged Francis Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, The New York TImes. Newsweek's David a screening in Los Angeles in March of Wim Wenders's Hammett and Caleb Ansen concurred: \"Kaufer bears watch- this year. Kaufer invited several Los Deschanel's The Escape Artist, have also ing-he could be a real satirist for the Angeles critics, telling them in his letter, had trouble making it to theaters. They 80s.\" \"As we know, 'releaseable' is a market- were both Orion movies to be distrib- ing judgment, not an aesthetic one. I uted by Warner Bros. When Orion left Obviously this was a small film that believe that, whatever its flaws-and Warners and bought Filmways, that left needed careful nurturing; it got any- the two films without any strong parti- sans at Warners. \"They were bastard projects caught between Warners and Orion,\" says their producer, Fred Roos. The Escape Artist was filmed in 1980, finally appeared at the Dallas Film Fes- tival in the spring of 1982, then opened in New York and a few other cities. Most of the reviews were-deservedly- apathetic, and there are no further plans to release the movie theatrically. Ham- mett's problems during production have been well documented by now. After shooting in early 1980, reshooting in late 1981, the movie played at the Cannes 42

I'm sure you will find them-Soup for \"My faith in the two films has cost me a One is not from the studio cookie-cutter, lot,\" he conceded. \"I had to sell my and it deserves to be seen. \" Encouraged apartment and my car. Even my own by good responses, Kaufer tried to per- agent thought I was crazy. But I felt sure suade the studio to try a Los Angeles I was doing the right thing.\" Originally opening. Unfortunately, by that time, released on a limited basis in 1979, Win- Soup for One had already been set for ter Kills has found new partisans in its showings on cable. (It was aired in re-release engagements in New York Film Music Is April.) While that does not rule out a and Los Angeles. Now Richert plans to Our Forte later theatrical release, the odds against take his two movies to other cities as Exclusive Soundtrack Selections And Limited Editionsl it happening are definitely greater. well. \"It's as if these two films of mine Over 1,000,000 LP'S available: have been imprisoned,\" Richert says. In-Print and Out-of-Print, an array of imports, highly-desired reissues, and Wmter Success •\"And now I've set them free.\" original casts (on and off Broadway). Kaufer might derive some encourage- Very few filmmakers are willing to go We offer the finest service available - monthly auctions by mail ment from the checkered history ofJon- that far, so they watch helplessly as their (rare, unique titles), the only monthly Fllmusic Newsletter \"Music Gazette\" athan Kaplan's Over the Edge. which had movies receive their only major expo- For YOUR copy of our extensive been shown more than once on pay lV sure on pay lV. Most of them regard the catalog, a sample of \"Music Gazette\" ($2 value), and monthly auction, before it ever opened theatrically in cable showings with ambivalence. Please Remit $1.00 TODAY TO: New York. By now this study of teenage While they are happy to see the films RTS, Dept. 20C anarchy in an upper middle class surface at last, they regret the inevitable P.O. Box 687 Costa Mesa, California 92627 \"planned community\" in Colorado has losses on television. \"If it wasn't for ca- (714) 544-0740 Tu-Th 12-4 pm achieved cult status, though Kaplan esti- ble,\" Jon Davison says, \"White Dog mates that it has played in no more than would never be seen by anybody. 15 percent of the national markets. Thank God it's on cable. I just wish they Filmed in 1978, it originally opened in had shown Sam Fuller's version instead some half a dozen cities (including of the studio recut version. At least the Kansas City, Minneapolis, Denver, At- movie wasn't shot in 'Scope, so you'll lanta, and Dayton) in the spring of 1979. only lose 15 to 20 percent of the image. The ad campaign made it look like a Bruce Surtees shot it in afUm noir style, horror film about devil children, a sort of and they'll probably 'correct' that and Levittown of the Damned. \"The execu- lighten it.\" tives were not comfortable with the Most of these filmmakers particularly film,\" Kaplan asserts. \"It's a movie that lament the visual limitations of televi- gets a very emotional reaction from up- sion. Over the Edge is filmed in a great per middle class white adults. \" many striking long shots that place the When the film fizzled in those early characters in a coldly impersonal, anti- engagements, Orion quickly sold it to septic environment. \"I wanted to show cable TV and prayed that it would go little people in these vast, bleak, sterile ;'';il .__ _ away. Two and a half years later Kaplan landscapes,\" Jonathan Kaplan explains. Now for a limited time, you can add these won a showing at Papp's Public Theater, \"That's lost on television. Also, the Super 8 classics to your collection for as much as 50% OFF. Check the titles of your choice and where it won outstanding reviews. The soundtrack was very rich. It had kind of send in this ad with payment. studio tried a wider release, but without a heavy metal aspect, and that's lost, too. o MICICEY MOUSE: THE FIRST 50 YEARS (COlOR) Highlights from the best of Mickey, from StEamboat any real enthusiasm, and once again the But at least it's reaching some of the kids Willie to the Mick£y Mouse Club. 400' of supe;r entertainment! REG. $69.98 SPECIAL $49.98 film quickly vanished. But at least the it was intended to reach. \" o KING KONG w)UCSWAGEH COMMERCIAl. reviews helped Kaplan get his next di- Jonathan Kaufer points out another (COLOR) Incredible footage of Kong in action. recting job, on Heart Like a Wheel. Be- sacrifice a director must accept when REG. $14.98 SPECIAL $11.98 fore the reviews came out, no one would seeing his movie on television: \"Soupfor O'IIH COMMANDMENTS (COlOR) Ane: promotional trailer WIth Cecil k. DeMille:. hire him. \"The fact that Over the Edge One has about 17 different comic styles, REG. $29.98 SP£CIAL $14.98 wasn't released really hurt my career,\" and in a theater, different segments of o $PIUS AND onus Oscar winner! Hair-raising stunts from the 20's. REG. $24.98 SPECIAL $19.98 Kaplan admits. \"If a picture doesn't the audience were always responding to O~KEE DOODLE IWN (COlOR) Hilarious madcap cartoon! REG. $29.98 SPECIAl. $11.98 open, you can't even get people to look the film, so you had a continuous audi- BUGS RAllY (COlOR) war effort! at it ifyou're up for another job.\" ence reaction. Such stylistic eclecticism, Perhaps the most satisfying success while interesting on the big screen, only story in the annals of unreleased films is aggravates the existing problem of that ofWilliam Richert, who went so far viewer alienation with films on cable. \" as to borrow the money to buy back two This isn't to deny that some movies of his movies, Wmter Kills and Success. actually play better on television, and it Both had already been aired on cable, is certainly better to see a film on cable but Richert was determined to see them than not to see it at all. But the magic of play in theaters as originally intended. .that moment when the lights go down, He recendy told the Los Angeles Times the hushed sense of wonder that makes that,in his batde to resurrect the films, movies special, will never come into he incurred personal debts ofS280,OOO. play when you see a movie on Tv. ~ 43

TheAesthetics of Failure The Hard Part, lll: Getting It Right. - Berruulette Peters in \"Love is Good/or Anything That Ails YaH turn in Pennies From Heaven. best. Each aspect of the project s~emed sizzling dance routines, eye-popping sets by Ken Adam, and the brilliant cin- The Aesthetics of Failure to spell success. Here was Steve Manin ematography of Gordon Willis. How could it not but knock 'em dead? by David Ehrenstein fresh from his box-office smash The Jerk One scene in panicular was a stand- -he'd be sure to pull in the high school out. Manin and his lady love, played by Bernadette Peters, sit in a movie theater I would say to her, \"Ingrid, it's only a and college kids. Then there was the watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in the \"Let's Face the Music and movie!\" You see, she only wanted to ap- property, already road-tested as a Dance\" number from Follow the Fleet. Enraptured by what they see, the two pear in masterpieces. How on earth can B.B.C. television series: that Master- rise from their seats and stand before the movie theater screen aping the great anyone know whether a picture is going to pieceTheater aura just had to impress the dance duo's every move. Suddenly, the image is transformed, and instead of As- be a masterpiece or not? carriage trade. The director, Herben -Alfred Hitchcock Ross, had helped to sell the world of ballet to the masses in The Turning Point; It was obvious from the Denver pre- now he'd bring his skill as a Broadway view that somewhere along the line musical choreographer to a production something had gone wrong. It wasn't sure to be ranked with the classics of that everyone hadn't done his or her Metro's golden era. Add Danny Daniels' 44

taire and Rogers, it's Manin and Peters unlike the late Sixties, when everyone Fox, an industry leader in the days of pirouetting in evening clothes. Clever tried and failed to make another block- CinemaScope, now found itself in a stuff, no? buster like The Sound of Music, no spe- slump. So Fox president Spyros Skouras cific model lurks in the back of the ftlm- looked to the past in order to set the Well, it didn't go over in Denver. It makers' minds. Rather, what's at work studio's future course aright. He handed wasn't that the audience didn't under- here is a process that's been at play producer Walter Wanger the script of the stand the scene-they didn't get that within the mainstream cinema for over silent Cleopatra that had starred Theda far. What was really on their minds was two decades. Bara, and said, \"All it needs is a leetle the identity of the dancers up on the rewriting. \" screen behind Manin and Peters. No The ironic thing about Hollywood's one seemed to recognize Fred Astaire lust for big-budget artistry is that it The film was first conceived as a mod- and Ginger Rogers! comes at a time when the industry has estly budgeted venture that could be been characterized by all and sundry as shot largely on the sUldio backlot with a Well, after all, Ingrid, it's only a being interested only in playing it safe, few bits of location work in Europe, on movie! And on a commercial level Pen- the order of Fox's sword-and-sandal pro- nies From Heaven was simply a project either with middlebrow melodrama ala grammer Esther and the King. In fact, the that didn't catch the public's fancy. But star of that Raoul Walsh opus, Joan Col- this was no ordinary multi-million dollar Ordinary Kramer, or slick thrill shows for lins, was pretty much set to strut her disaster like Inchon or Raise the Titallic- sub-literate adolescents. Yet right along- stuff as Cleo-until Elizabeth Taylor destined to be forgotten by all save a side the Rockys and Porky's stand these came into the picture. Once Wanger se- small clutch of industry bookkeepers. tattered would-be birds of paradise, cured Taylor'S services, all thoughts of a Here was a film of ambition, with im- pairing Big Art and Big Bucks. B film were abandoned. Shooting com- peccable cultural credentials. Not only menced in London in 1960 with Rouben were Rogers and Astaire evoked but Hollywood has never been shon on Mamoulian directing a script credited to Brecht and Weill, the photographs of creative lunacy. But this panicular strain Lawrence Durrell (several other hands Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, and doesn't originate at the cinema's begin- were involved) with Peter Finch as Cae- the paintings of Edward Hopper. ning, with the truly imaginative ex- sar and Stephen Boyd as Marc Antony. cesses of D. W. Griffith and Erich von After a few months' work, however, But what's really at stake in the con- Stroheim. It is rather at a later stage of shooting ground to a halt when the star figuration of commerce and culture American film where the new hubris was felled by an illness that nearly took called Pennies From Heaven? Surely makes its first appearance-the point her life. nothing to truly tax a viewer's intellect. where the dreams of the old Hollywood Once recognized, the references have died, and the fantasies of the new one According to producer Wanger, in his served their function. They aren't inte- began. In a word, CLeopatra. My Life With Cleopatra, production grated into the story on any level deeper might have ceased of its own accord. No than the decorative. The social realities Cleopatra. one, director Mamoulian included, was of the Thinies, and their relation to the happy with the script or the rushes. Con- characters played by Manin and Peters, Richard has a magnificent speech, vinced he could still save the day, remain unexplored. Scrape off the ve- wherein he tells Cleopatra of his torment Wanger asked Joseph L. Mankiewicz, neer of culture and all you've got is a at having to follow Caesar's image aLL his who ironically was working on a screen burlesque sketch tumed sour. life, at being beset by ghosts and shadows adaptation of Durre11's Alexandria Quar- of Caesar wherever he goes. Great stuff. tet at the time, to take over the project. Pennies From Heaven is scarcely the What a picture. (Watch it die.) Mankiewicz agreed, providing he could only example of such grand-scale fatu- junk the footage already shot, rewrite ousness. Consider the likes of Cannery -Jack Brodsky, The Cleopatra Papers the script, and stan from scratch on new Row, Tempest, Blade Runner, Honky Tonk locations in Rome. With the star now Freeway, and the two most lavishly ap- Return with us now to those thrilling fully recovered, Rex Harrison cast as pointed and heavily publicized flops of days of yesteryear, when Hollywood Caesar and Richard Bunon as Antony, recent years, Heaven's Gate and One films were regarded as little more than shooting resumed with director From the Heart. Each was mounted with good-natured trash; and film art, outside Mankiewicz forced to write by night considerable care at enormous expense. of a few examples from Europe, was what would be filmed the next day. Each proceeded from a genre (romance, largely thought to have expired with the science-fiction adventure, slapstick coming of sound. The Fifties were More than $S mil1ion had already comedy, western, musical) it sought to drawing to a close and 20th Century- been spent on the aborted CLeopatra. transcend. Each featured a thin script But to Fox's way of thinking, instigating bloated with injections of sets, cos- this new version wasn't throwing good tumes, props, or visual effects. Each was money after bad. Mankiewicz' specialty an An Film aimed at a mass audience. was, after all, sophisticated comedy- drama. How much could one of those From the box-office failure of these cost? He'd gone on record as being op- films we shouldn't infer a sudden up- posed to conventional spectacle, wish- swing in public taste. Those who ing instead to concentrate on the indi- shunned these damaged goods flocked vidual psychology of these to the likes of All That Jazz and Apoca- larger-than-life characters. The finished lypse Now. Still, there's no magic for- film bears this out to some degree, but mula for success. The current style of right alongside the high-flown speeches big-budget an films doesn't fit into the are processions, battles, and other bits of usual pattern of movie production fads and fancies. No one genre is involved; 45

typical costume epic razzmatazz; late Seventies, everyone-critics, mov- Cinerama. But at the same time, 2001's iegoers, filmmakers, and studio execu- waltzing rocket ships and space-time Mankiewicz knew that he couldn't stray tives alike-were taking Hollywood warp light shows were visually every bit films quite seriously indeed. as vulgar, in spirit if not design, as Liz's too far from the norm. And he couldn't triumphal entrance into Rome in Cleo- The collapse of the old studio system, patra. Popcorn-munching viewers had make a film of this kind cheaply-as heralded by the Cleopatra affair, had set paid for a show and Kubrick delivered it. in motion a gradual shift of power away Whether or not they understood-or Fox had hoped-without proper prepa- from the centralized authorities of the cared to understand-any deeper signif- past. In place of the Zanucks and icance in it aJl, mattered not a jot in ration. What they finally ended up with Skouras were team·s of production exec- terms of the initial pleasure they re- utives, moving like nomads from com- ceived. was a $40 million monstrosity barely ca- pany to company. Agents, the stars that they managed, and independent pro- The mark 200] left on the industry pable of returning its own cost much less ducers acquired a larger \"creative\" role cut deep. Here was an effective mass- as they assembled the proper \"package\" market product that was also a work of saving the floundering fortunes of a stu- of property, star, and director. Movie personal artistry. Most important, it production was down; the house style didn't arrive in the form of a small-to- dio. that brought specific associations to the medium range melodrama, but rather as names MGM, Paramount, and Wamers a multi-million dollar spectacular. Mankiewicz and his struggle to com- had evaporated. Genres that had served Hollywood so well had been swallowed But was Kubrick truly a star in the plete what he later called \"the toughest whole by television. But all was far from public'S eye? In the past, DeMille and bleak, for the movies that were being Hitchcock had achieved notoriety equal three pictures I ever made\" were only a made had begun, by the late Sixties, to to that of any big name star performer. take on a new look. But that was largely because they'd be- sideshow in the Cleopatra circus. At the come identified with a specific type of A Hard Day's Night, Bonnie and Clyde, film-the Biblical spectacular and the center ring stood Taylor and Burton. At and The Graduate, three of the most mystery thriller. Kubrick had no particu- popular and celebrated films of this era, lar genre. He did have a particular style. the time, the public blamed Liz and her had clear connections with genres of the But did style mean much at the box past-the musical, the gangster film, office? amorous dalliances for the film's soaring and the romantic comedy-but their style and substance broke with tradi- Style certainly made an impression in costs. But as the production's publicists, tions. Like the work of Godard and FeI- the boardrooms. Though the critical lini, these films sported elaborate cam- battles that raged around the merits of Jack Brodsky and Nathan Weiss, note in era movements, flashy editing effects, the politique des auteurs were fading into sudden shifts in dramatic tone, self-con- history, the war concerning directorial their memoir, The Cleopatra Papers, re- scious visual playfulness, and a casual authority in Hollywood was just being disregard of narrative conventions. won. To be sure, many a director still lations between the director and his Critics who hadn't considered the Hol- faced the sort of indignities a lywood films of Hitchcock or John Ford Mankiewicz had experienced. But as principal players were harmonious. It worth serious attention were suddenly the Seventies rolled into view, a new comparing the new boys-Richard Les- possessive credit for directors was cre- was in the boardrooms of Fox that chaos ter, Arthur Penn, and Mike Nichols- ated-much to the outrage of screen- with the top talents of European Cin- writers. No matter how anonymous the ruled. ema. Few critics, however, were as artistry involved was, a director with the enthusiastic when the most important proper clout could now be assured that Were the Cleopatra comedy-drama to commercial film of this period was re- his name would now be featured at the leased-Stanley Kubrick's 200]: A top of the production masthead. unfold today in the post-Begelman era, Space Odyssey. Many of the newer directors were Spyros Skouras and his successor, Darryl At first, most critics saw little more in making truly creative contributions. Ro- bert Altman's light-fingered improvisa- Zanuck, would surely take precedence 200] than a plotless, slow-moving, tech- tional techniques and Martin Scorsese's nically assured but dramatically unre- quicksilver sense of drama were tuming in the public eye over Liz, Dick, and the solved morass. When audiences began Sixties flourishes into the stuff of solid, responding to Kubrick's intergalactic ink original films. The problem was in the greatest love story tabloid journalism has blot, however, the critical tune quickly way in which all this was being per- changed. What was initially seen as in- ceived both outside the industry and in. ever known. By the same token, coherence was quickly transformed into existential ambiguity. Altman's Nashville was a brash, often Mankiewicz today would be in for a witty entertainment that received just But what was really going on inside of about as much in the way of popular large share of Coppola-style commisera- Kubrick's grand Homeric planetarium success as a film of its kind could reason- show? Certainly this multi-leveled, de- ably expect. But in the context of the tion in the press. When Zanuck, having liberately disjointed epic contained a film's hysterically favorable reviews, this depth and seriousness far in advance of didn't seem to be nearly enough. Like a wrested control of the studio from anything previously produced in delayed reaction from the rush of cul- Skouras' shaky hands, used his new- found powers to fire Mankiewicz in or- der to fashion his own final cut of the film, few outside the industry called foul. The Hollywood director was not considered a heroic figure back then. Moreover, no one went to Cleopatra with any expectations of Class A artistry -a \"good movie\" would do. And there it was up on the screen after all that time and trouble. Hardly the movie everyone wanted, but a movie nonetheless. Only a movIe. • He is playing with the grammar and style of film as Joyce played with lan- guage, or a Pound with literary sources, or an Eliot with elaborate systems ofrefer- ence through different cultures. -Michael Pye and Linda Myles, The Movie Brats If this observation (directed at some- thing no more intellectually earth-shat- tering than Martin Scorsese's New York, New York) had been offered up in Cleo- patra's day, it would have taken months for the laughter in the boardrooms of Hollywood to have subsided. But by the 46

Francis CoppoLa's One From the Heart. tural adrenalin produced by 2001, Nash- to say more than it actually did-the try desperately to blend their own styles ville was trumpeted as a film designed not simply to enjoy but to ponder as a hallmark of the new Hollywood. The with Hollywood's, in FitzcarraLdo and Major Statement. That a film like this should turn a modest profit rather than pattern was set and the wheels were 1900. It's conceivable that the foreign- be a smash seemed tantamount to fail- ure. turning. In the eyes of the industry made classics of the past may be re- Yet even while the Altman name was Cimino was a genius. So what if the garded as just another genre, like fiLm failing to make a dent in the movie pub- lic's consciousness, Hollywood was gear- public reaction to The Deer Hunter was noir. But then-as the current thinking ing itself up to sell another director as a full-fledged star-Michael Cimino. ambivalent-they'd be sure to snap to goes-why should anyone look to for- Here was a maker of television commer- cials with only a Clint Eastwood action attention the next time around. How eign shores when we've got Francis film-ThunderboLt and Lightfoot-to his name. Yet thanks to the canny manipu- could they resist Heaven's Gate? Coppola right here? lations of entrepreneur Alan Carr, • Coppola embodies the new hubris. A Cimino was being launched as an auteur Surely Cleopatra will come to mark the perfectly respectable, highly successful extraordinaire with his second film, The Deer Hunter. Recognizing in this Viet- end of a Hollywood era. I think with this mainstream craftsman in the George nam war drama possibilities for a pres- tige film, Carr arranged heavily publi- fiLm it can be seen that the whole system Stevens-William Wyler mold suddenly cized private screenings to which critics and select celebrities were invited, fol- finally breaks down under its own weight declares conventional narrative of no lowed by an exclusive one-week re- served seat run in major cities. The re- ... .There will always be movies ofcourse, further interest to him. Possessed of sult was a triumph of movie flackery. and presumabLy better ones than there enormous technical skill, he embarks on How could The Deer HUJlter not fail to make an impression? Its questionable were ever before; and yet they won't be a project that will allegedly wed the glo- political perspective on the war to one side, few were left uncowed by its sober: quite as grand, as foolish, and as wonder- ries of the past to the brave new world of brooding atmosphere and sudden bursts of extreme violence. Some Great ful as they used to be. How marvelous ... gimmickry of the future. The result- Theme or other just had to be lurking behind these lingering c10seups and that with Cleopatra The Movies go out in One From the Heart-is exactly what heavily weighted silences. No on'e wanted to be caught napping at the birth styLe. might be expected from a filmmaker of a new Kubrick. -Nathan Weiss, The CLeopatra Papers working in an area in which he is in no As it turned out, Cimino was a Ku- brick of effect without design. Every inci- It would be nice to think that in the way suited: a ribbon of visual tricks dent and gesture was arranged with care, but,as a whole,the film was dramatically light of Heaven's Gate, One From the wrapped around a virtual void. And be- vague. No matter. Cimino had learned the trick of how to make a movie appear Heart, Pennies From Heaven, et at., the hind this void stands a filmmaker still motion picture industry would have inextricably linked to the most vulgar learned something about the extents traditions of yore. For what is One From and limitations of its quest for cultural the Heart if not CLeopatra all over again? respectability. But there is no easy route The difference is that this time only one out of the current quagmire, nor is there showman was involved; Coppola was any indication that were one offered that Mankiewicz, Skouras, Zanuck, and Liz there would be any takers. The monkey Taylor all in one.And not in the name of of culture that rides the back of the new commerce, mind you, but in the name Hollywood has achieved King Kong pro- of An. portions in light of the decline of the Coppola might say he was bucking European art cinema. As the success of the system. In reality he was simply Alan Parker (Shoot the Moon), Ridley keeping it running. And so everything Scott (Alien), and Hugh Hudson (Char- has worked out just as Nathan Weiss iots ofFire) has proved, England is now predicted-the machinery repeatedly little more than a graduate film school breaks down under its own weight but for future members of the U.S. industry. survives nonetheless. And films do con- Louis Malle has abandoned France for tinue to be grand and foolish-but not America. Others, like Werner Herzog as before. Now when a movie fails, it's a and Bernardo Benolucci, meanwhile, masterpiece. f};. 47

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