VOLUME 11 - NUMBER 03 MAY-JUNE 1975

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FILIVI C IO IM IM IE IN IT publi shed by THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCO LN CEN TER VOLUME 11 NUMBER 3 MAY-JUNE 19 75 STAFF CONTENTS ed itor Journals RICHARD COR LI SS Rotterdam/Ri chard Roud page 2 ass istant editor East Coast/Jonathan Rosenbaum BROOKS RILEY page 4 director of fi nance & production Erich Von Stroheim SUZANNE CHARITY The Making and Remaking of WALKING DOWN BROADWAY graphic design by Ri chard Koszarski and William K. Everson G EORGE SILLAS page 6 SUSAN DOBBIS Don Rugoff contr ibuting w riters Ball yhoo With a Harvard Education RAYMOND DURGNAT by Stuart Byro n page 20 STEPHE N FARBER ROGER GR EE NSPUN Art and Ideology JONAT H AN ROSENBAUM Notes on SILK STOCKINGS by Robi n Wood RICHARD ROUD page 28 ANDREW SARR IS AMOS VOG EL ROBIN WOOD contributing editor Midsection STU AR T BYRON The Art of Art Direction, by Elliott Stein page 32 advertis in g manager Independents: Today's Avant-Garde, by Amos Vogel TONY IMPAVIDO page 35 The Industry: Prints and Proj ectionists, by David Rosenbaum research assista nt page 36 MARY COR LI SS Tel ev ision : Video Artists, by John G. Hanhardt page 38 The opinion s expressed in FILM COMMEN T are those of the ind ividu al authors and do not The Day of the locust John Schlesinger necessarily represent Film Societ y intervi ewed by Gene Phillips of Lincoln Center polic y Or the opinions page 40 A Pl ag ue of Loc usts of the ed it or or staff of the magazine. a review by Brendan Gill page 43 FILM COMMENT. Ma y- june 19 75, Nathanael West in Holl ywood Volume 11 number 3, publi shed bimonthl y by The Film Societ y of Lincoln Center 186S by Mitchell S. Cohen page 44 Broadwa y, NY, NY 10023 USA Dusan Makavejev Second class postage paid al New York , New York and additional mailin g interviewed by Edgardo Cozarinsky and Carlos Clarens page 47 office'. Copyright © 197 5 by The Film Societ y of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved. Thi s publication is full y protected by domestic and international copyright . II is forbidden 10 duplicate any pari of thi s public ati on in any way wi th out prior wrillen permiss ion from the publi shers. Subscription rates in the United Slales: $9 for silo. numbers, $17 for twelve numbers. El sewhere: $10 .50 for six numbers, $20 .00 for twelve numbers, pa yable in U S fund s onl y. New subscribers please includ e your occupati on and zip code . Subscription and back iss ue correspondence : FILM COMMENT, 1865 Broadwa y, New York , N.V. 1002 3 U SA. Editorial correspondence: FILM COMMENT, 1865 Broadway, New York , NY 10023 USA. Please .send manuscripts upon request onl y and include a stamped self-addressed envelope. Microfilm ed it ions available from Universit y Microfi lm s, Ann Arbor MI The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie 48 106. Printed in USA by Acme Printing, Medford , MA. Distributed in by Raymond Durgnat the USA by Eas tern News Company. 155 West 15th Street , New York NY page 52 10011 . Internationa l di stribution by Worldwide Med ia Service , 3 86 Back Page Park Avenue Sout h, New York, NY 10016 U SA. Di stributed in Great Austin Lamont on the American Film Community page 64 Britain by Moore-Harness Compan y, London . FILM COMMENT partiCipates in the FIAF periodic al inde. ing plan . ISSN : 001S· 11 9X . Library of Co ngress card number 7 6-498 . on the cover : Donald Sutherland in DAY OF THE LOCU ST Photo : Paramount Pictures

JOU& conductor, Michael Gielen, singers (Moses) and that imagery which inevitably Gunther Reich and Louis Devos, and in- distorts its purity (Aaron). Schoenberg NALS deed the album has come about as a result himself once said that he saw the work as of the film, and not the other way around. the Jewish counterpart of Bach' s St. ROTTERDAM JOURNAL But the Straubs have not used the record- Matthew Passiol1! by Richard Roud ing: with their horror of dubbing, they in- sisted that the singers should actually sing Whatever interpretation one may The Rotterdam Festival, now in its their parts on location. Only the orchestra, choose, the film remains the Straubs' most fourth year, is something of an unique which we don't of course see, was pre- accomplished, most achieved work, and event. For one thing, it takes place in two recorded in Vienna. Rather than shoot the probably their most accessible. It has also countries: the films shown in Rotterdam opera in a theater or in a landscape, they turned out to be their most controversial are bicycled across the border to be shown found a miraculous compromise: the ruins film-and this for noncinematic reasons. in Antwerp the next night. For another, it of a Roman arena in the Abruzze moun- The film is dedicated by the Straubs to an has a range of selection which manages to tains of Italy. And just as Schoenberg's old friend and filmmaker, now dead. The go from Jean-Marie Straub (whose MOSES twelve-tone system provides a substruc- fact that the dedicatee was called Holger AND AARON received its world premiere ture for the music, so the elliptical space of Meins has set off a storm of protest in here) to Russ Meyer (whose SUPERVLXEN the arena contains the action without sti- Germany. Meins was a member of the . was given its European premiere, and fling it. Indeed, only for the Golden Calf Baader-Meinhof group, and he died in whose FINDERS KEEPERS LOVERS WEEPERS \"orgy\" scenes does the film move outside prison before coming to trial. German tele- and FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL! were into the surrounding countryside. And in vision has refused to show the film with also shown). And this is no isolated exam- the third act, for which Schoenberg never the dedication, and so has the board of ple: the festival showed two films by succeeded in writing the music, the censorship. Straub said that the dedication Werner Herzog and two by John Waters Straubs have \"replaced\" the music with a was meant to serve as a reminder of the re- (PINK FLAMINGOES and the new FEMALE truly spectacular landscape---a deep-blue lationship between the prevailing witch- TROUBLE.) Nor is there any question of a lake with mountains sweeping down into hunt climate in Germany and the Jew- ghetto situation, as at Cannes, where some it-thus avoiding any sense of anti-climax. baiting climate of Schoenberg's time-and films are shown in the Palace and others his point has now been amply proved. outside. Here all the films are shown side As in Straub's THE OOONICLE OF ANNA by side, and while I can't exactly report MAGDALENA BAGl, there is no attempt to • that Straub and Russ Meyer actually rub- compete with music, or even to \"express\" bed elbows physically, they might well it; instead music and visuals each have Unlike Jonathan Rosenbaum (in his have. their part to play. Although the Straubs London Journal in FILM COMMENT' S have been faithful to Schoenberg, they January-February issue), I found the new Every time Schoenberg's opera Moses have not used him as a crutch-the film is Fassbinder film MARTHA disappointing. and Aaron has been produced, audiences an autonomous creation. As such, it is Made for television, it stars Margit have discovered, to their surprise, that their most extraordinary work to date. Carstensen (Petra von Kant) as a remarka- however difficult it may have been for Their use of camera angles and particularly bly masochistic lady who seems unable to them to put up with, say, Pie/Tot Lunaire, camera movements are not only more leave her husband (Karl Heinz Bohm) Moses turned out to be not only \"easy to meaningful but also more complex than even when he kills her cat, cuts off her take\" but also extremely moving. The anything Michael Snow has attempted. telephone, forces her to have sex when she same reaction prevailed in Rotterdam dur- is suffering from sunburn, and-he's an ing the world premiere of Jean-Marie There have been many interpretations of intellectual-makes her stop listening to Straub and Danielle Huillet's film of the the opera . The Straubs see it as a historical Donizetti to concentrate on Orlando de opera . However difficult or unrewarding reflection on the advent of monotheism: Lassus. they may have found OTHON or HISTORY that decisive moment in the history of LESSONS, they reacted very enthusiasti- civilization when the Egyptian gods who All this would be believable if he had cally to MOSES. always represented the Pharaohs and been able to give us some notion that central power were abandoned for a new Martha is sensually chained to this man, Schoenberg did not \"write down\" to his and purer religi6n which separated church but the treatment of the characters is so audience with Moses; it, too, is a twelve- from state. They think mankind might do super-cool that this is impossible. There tone work; nor have the Straubs jazzed up better without any God at all, but are some fancy shots (a double whirl their rigorous cinematic language. It is just monotheism represented an important around a Roman courtyard to underline that, in both cases, there has been a step in the right direction . It is also a study Martha's first meeting with Helmut): but miraculous marriage between subject and of the relations between people and their two 360-degree pans, no matter how fast, style. And whatever the rigors of Schoen- leaders. It can also be seen-but not by the are not quite enough to suggest l'al11ourfou. berg's methods of composition, the music Straubs-as a McLuhanesque battIe bet- Maybe the great crane shot of an amuse- of his opera is sensually ravishing; and ween the representative of the Word ment park is meant as a reference to SUN- however intellectually stimulating the film, its visual splendors are both sensual CONTINUED ON PAGE 62 and-yes-lush. The musical forces of the film are the same as in the recent Philips recording: 2 MAY-JUNE 1975 Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet's MOSES AND AARON .

Highlights On Lowlife. Catch the glitter of our diamonds COOL HAND LUKE ContemporaryIMcGraw-Hili Films in the rough. They'll show you the Iron bars and brutal guards do not a Rate us liE\" for Entertainment. bright side . . . of murder, mayhem and prison make . .. especially if your hero discontent. For film entertainment is Paul Newman . With George Ken- For booking information, call or write: that's darkly delicious, try two. nedy. Directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Each one 's a rear gem. Amy Hustedt THE WILD ONE Princeton Road ON THE WATERFRONT Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin Hightstown , New Jersey 08520 Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint and va-va-vroom their way to happiness (609) 448-1700 Karl Malden prove you can 't keep with Mary Murphy along for the ride. a good man down . .. but Rod Steiger Directed by Laslo Benedek. Gary Facente and Lee J. Cobb keep trying . 828 Custer Avenue Directed by Elia Kazan. Written by TOBACCO ROAD Evanston , Illinois 60202 Budd Schulberg. Music by Gene Tierney, Charlie Grapewin, (312) 869-5010 Leonard Bernstein. Marjorie Rambeau , Ward Bond , Dana Andrews and William Tracy down and Barbara Taylor OF MICE AND MEN out down south . Directed by John 1714 Stockton Street The tender trap snaps again .. . Betty Ford. From the novel by Erskine San Francisco , California 94133 Field 's the bait, Lon Chaney Jr. and Caldwell. (415) 362-3115 Burgess Meredith the victims. Directed by Lewis Milestone. Music REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT U.S. Distribution Only by Aaron Copland. From the novel Muhammad Ali beats him, Jackie by John Steinbeck. Gleason betrays him, but Anthony Quinn won 't stay down fo r the count. Julie Harris and Mickey Rooney are in his corner. Directed by Ralph Nelson . Written by Rod Serling .

year for film since 1914\" and \"I think it's as I look up lost acquai ntances. But tonight tim e we s to pp ed kidding o ur selves . I gladly capitulate to the needs of this col- Movies aren't going a nywhere in particu- umn by ca tching an uncommon double- JOUR- lar aesthetically,\" I felt sorrow in recogniz- fea ture: my friend Harvey Marks' intri- guin g, s till unco mple ted a nd untitled ing that he and rare apparently resicling on super-8 opus, and the premiere of George clifferent planets. Yet I feel sympathy for NALS his and Kael's plight. They both ha ve to Cukor's gently stupefying LOVE AMONG w rite for masses of indiffere nt p eople THE RUINS on a black-and- white TV set. about inclifferent movies (e.g ., MURDER ON One viewing is scarcely eno ugh for either: I THE ORIENT EXPRESS) as though there were can't attempt to read a film until after I can so me basic correla tion be tween wh a t is see it, and it takes me a w hile in each case seen and what is cared about-when it's to peel away misguided expectations a nd usually a matter of where the money trail immedia te co mparisons, pursuing a re- EAST COAST JOURNAL chooses to travel next. It's a trail that yo u spectable number of blind alleys, before I either follow or di verge from at your ow n can sink comfortably into these film s o n by Jonathan Rosenbaum peril . My problem is writing mainly about their own terms. movies that few people will ever see; theirs At first glance, Harvey's film-a scrap- February 28: H ea throw Airport, Lon- is mainly writing about movies that people book collage, includin g bits of a n un- don. As soo n as I step on the plane, TWA's talk a nd think about-if at all-only be- finis hed fiction film, dancing a nd recip- Muzak system has seen to it that I'm al- cause they're aro und and visible. rocal relationships between various people rea dy back in America. Listening on the and the camera, and lovely still-lifes plastic earphones to blatant hypes for GOLD Later in the weekend, in Long Island, I selected from travels all over the globe- on two separate channels, the soundtrack try to tell the fri ends I'm visiting abo ut mainly demonstrates, through its variety o f THUN DERBOLT AN D LIGHTF OOT o n Ri vette's OUT ONE/SPECTRE, which they'll of textures and filmstocks, how supple and a no th e r (wh ere \" fuck\" is co n s is te ntly probably never be able to see-doing what bleeped out, but \"fucker\" and the sound of I can to describe the overall structure, the subtle an instrument the super-8 ca mera is Jeff Bridges getting kicked in the face are scenes between U~a ud and Ogier, the con- becoming. LOVE AMONG THE RUINS offers dutifully preserved), it becomes evident tent and experie nce of the last two :;hots. enough of the beauty and terror of old once more that America starts a nd stops No critic alive has yet begun to do justice to age-Olivier's, Hepburn's, Cukor's, that film-n ot even John Ashbery in Sol1o H ollywood's-to fill a nother scrapbook. where its money reaches, and that \"going there\" means following the mo ney trail. It's over two years since my last visit-my longest sojourn abroad, during which I' ve had to miss the sple ndors of Wa terga te and depend on such things as Michael Arlen's excellent TV column in 771e New Yorker for acco unt s of shifts in th e na ti o n al psyche-but TWA tells me in its own quiet way that nothing essential has changed . On the plane I read Pauline Kael's pre- release rave about Altma n' s NASHVILLE, and it certainly does its job: I ca n't wait to see the movie. But why does she have to embarrass everyone by comparing Altman to Joyce? It's just about as unhelpful (a nd unsubstantiated) as her earlier co mpari- u sons of, say, LES ENFANTS DU PARA DIS w ith ~ Ulysses and THIEVES LIKE us with Faulkn er, Laurence O livier and Kath arine Hepburn in George Cukor's LOVEAMO NG THE RUI NS. which confuse more tha n they clarify. Kael a nd Andrew Sarris ha ve both been dis- News last October, when he started off by Wh a t alm os t see m s to re prese nt (o n tressing me lately with their increasingly remarking that \"it seems to mark a turning Cukor's part) a remake ofTRAVELSWITH MY would-be populist positio ns. Kael seems point in the evolution of the art of film ,\" AUNT, with Oli vier ass uming the Aunt to reach for literary heavyweights in order and then never got around to explaining Augusta role, clarifies how the relatively to convey the complexity of her subjects by w h y; certainl y not myself, wh e n I was fl at spectacle of Maggie Smith \"giving her transposing it to safer models rather than foolish e nough to call it a \"dead-end exper- all \" in TRAVELS robbed that film of the confronting it directly. While I yield to no iment\" in Sight and Sou nd last fall. But how depths that leak out of this stagier produc- one in my enthusiasm for recent Altma n, it can it ever become th e turning p oint of tio n from every pore, revealing the chasms appears that despite her depe ndable arse- anything when no more tha n a handful of be twee n-a nd occasionally th e fu sion s nal of s uperla ti ves (all suitabl e fo r im- pe ople w ill eve r h ave a cha nce to en- of- what Olivier and Hepburn do, what mecliate quo ting), she's afraid to di ve into a counter it, much less return to it, live with they can d o, whom they play, a nd who concrete, more-tha n-impressionistic tex- it? Which is wh y I mu st keep spea king they are. For all the mechanical courtroom tual a nalysis for fear of losing her a udi- about it . . . .In the room the women come crosscutting and theatrical grandstancling, ence, who tends to love rhetoric more than and go, spea king of TOWERI NG INFERNO.. this is a movie that brings back some ves- movies . March 6: New York seems slower a nd tige of every Cukor-Hepburn collaboration Sarris, on the other ha nd, seems to be friendlier this trip, as though the oncoming to date a nd then expa nds upo n it, with limiting his cinephilia nowadays to a recol- Depressio n has simplified a nd domesti- concentrated tracking shots down real or lec tio n of old , familiar pl eas ures ra ther cated a lot of fra ntic lives. More empty cabs imagined 1911 Londo n streets serving as than a consideration of new and different a nd prostitutes on the street, more exciting nearly Straub-like punctuations between on es . Rea ding la st month in th e Village movie revivals all over Ma nl1attan, and lots the lengthy interior clialogue scenes. In to- Voice tha t \" 1974 was probably the worst of $1 theaters, all of which I stoutly bypass CONTI N UED ON PACE 6 1 4 MAY-JU NE 1975

POP CULTURE HERO/THE HARDER THEY COME In their exub erant celebra- THE HARDER THEY COME OTH ER POP CULT UR E I l(0 FILMS INC. HERO MOVIES Co ntact your local office tion of an alternative li fe Reggae singer Jimmy Cliff Death Wish d. Mi chae l Winner. Atlanta , Geo rgia 30341 sty le, po p culture h eroes realizes too late the bitter Charles Bronso n , Hope Lange 558 9 New Peach tree Road 4 04 / 451- 7445 offer inspira tio n for revolu- irony in the lyrics to the The Last American Hero d . Lamont Johnson. Hollywoo d , Califo rnia 90028 tionary action . Of course, songs he makes No.1 in Jeff Bridges, Valerie Perrin e 5625 Ho llywoo d Bo ulevard 213/466-548 1 societ y's usual nega tive Jamaica - \"The harder they Vanishing Point d. Ri chard Sarafian. Skokie, lllinois 60076 (a nd in these films some- come/The harder they fall , Barry New man, Cleavo n Li tt le, (Chi cago area) Rita Coolidge 4420 Oakton Street times fa tal) responses makes ... one and all. \" 31 2/ 676-1088 Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry fo r reflection o n just how \" Rock movie of the year.\" d. John Hough. New York , New York 100 16 to go about living life to - R olling Stone Peter Fo nd a, Susan Geo rge 440 Park Avenu e So uth the limits. 212/88 9-791 0 Distributing in th e Uni ted States ex

The advent of the talkies affected not order of things they kept falling through in ternal revenue investigations were insti- only the faces in front of Hollywood various stages of pre-production-the tuted against him (largely through the in- cameras but many of those behind them as handwriting was on the wall. In 1929 a ver- fluence of Louis B. Mayer and his friends well . New directors were rushed in from sion of McCutcheon's East of the Setting Sun with the Hoover administration).! the theater (Whale, Mamoulian, Crom- for Schenck, and in 1930-31 a Technicolor well) and troublesome old Hollywood remake of BLIND HUSBANDS at Universal With the studio in receivership various hands were slowly elbowed out (Herbert both came to nothing, the latter on the very executives vied for control, and Stroheim Brenon, William deMille, and Victor Sea- eve of shooting. Severely depressed, came into the picture at a moment when strom, for example) . Technological excuses Stroheim returned to acting during this Winnie Sheehan was in charge of produc- masked political power plays, and the period in a series of inconsequential re- tion. Stroheim had a certain respect for sound revolution offered yet another pre- leases: THE GREAT GABBO (1929) , THREE Sheehan, whose journalistic background text for the majors to exert greater author- FACES EAST (1930) , FRIENDS AND LOVERS and college degree he admired .2 But the ity over their more willful directors . (1931) . Finally in the summer of 1931 he Fox executive, while sympathetic to the di- managed to promote a one-picture deal rector, felt obliged to put more than the Erich von Stroheim was one of these with Winfield Sheehan at Fox for the direc- usual restrictions on his new employee. In casualties. As far as Hollywood was con- tion of a minor program picture, in scope a memo to John H. Tracy, assistant legal cerned his career had been a dramatic the least ambitious film of his career, WALK- counsel to the corporation, Sheehan pro- downhill spiral since the box-office success posed a contract specially calculated to of THE MERRY WIDOW in 1925. The months ING DOWN BROADWAY. keep Stroheim under control: spent on production of THE WEDDING MARCH in 1926-27 won him an even greater • \"Please draw up a contract between the reputation for excess, and the film' s finan- Corporation and ERIC VON STROHEIM, cial flop on its appearance in October of The Fox corporation had been in a state incorporating all the usual provisions for 1928 further soured the atmosphere. of flux since the recent collapse of William the direction of one picture to be based Shooting on QUEEN KELLY, while never so Fox's financial bubble. In control of the upon the story \"WALKING DOWN terribly extravagant as many believed, was Tri-Ergon patents, he had had a reasona- BROADWAY\" which we agree to purchase stopped on January 21, 1929, and every bly convincing stranglehold on the pro- for not in excess of $10,000, and if we can- penny of the investment was lost. Thus, duction of talking films; and his expan- not obtain complete rights another story is sionist theater-buying policy led him to to be substituted by agreement. ~w~~Bw~tycl~w~S~~m momentary control of Loew's Inc. , and therefore MGM itself. But, fiscallyoverex- \"Von Stroheim has the right to prepare, had to bear the brunt of two colossal fiscal tended , Fox was wiped out in the stock advise, change and supervise continuity, failures within a matter of months. market crash; his Tri-Ergon claims suffered etc. , but is to so supervise the same that the the fate of the old Motion Picture Patents film will not exceed 8500 linear feet. Despite this he managed to promote a Company; and federal anti-trust and in- few directorial projects, but in the new \"We will pay him $30,000 as his entire 6 MAY-JUNE 1975

compensation upon completion of the pic- As usual, Stroheim wrote the script of Stroheim. The property was immediately ture, but he may draw at the rate of $1,000 the film, but this time he worked in collab- given to staff writer Edwin Burke to rewrite oration, Leonard Spigelgass being as- for Alan Crosland's direction. An extant per week after commencement of produc- signed to help him through the intricacies script prepared by him reads: \"WALKING tion for not in excess of seventeen weeks. of the talking film . (He apparently needed DOWN BROADWAY, (Based upon the play by this help; his own scripts for BLIND HUS- Dawn Powell) Story by Erich von \"There will be no time limit in the con- BANDS written in 1930 and 1931 are stilted Stroheim, Dialogue and Continuity by tract and we further wish a special provi- and naive in comparison to the surviving Erich von Stroheim, Leonard Spigelgass, sion that either party may cancel and ter- WALKING DOWN BROADWAY scripts.) In an Harry Ruskin, Maurine Watkins (com- minate the contract at any time without article in Academy Leader3 Spigelgass tells of piled, edited, revised by Maurine Watkins) cause and in such event any work that he working on the film at night over a six- (started February 17th) (complete March has performed up to that date shall belung month period, suggesting that Stroheim 11th) Changes by Edwin Burke.\" Within a to us and any money that he has drawn was moonlighting from his acting chores at week, then, the script was under revision shall belong to him, but we shall be under RKO in October, November, and De- by other hands, and Burke's and Cros- cember of 1931. According to Spigelgass, land's names had entered the film's check- no obligation to pay him anything further. Stroheim's staff consisted of \"a charming \"He will have a business manager ap- red headed secretary and a young priest. \"4 ered history. Maurine Watkins, the author Often during their all-night sessions this of Chicago (ROXIE HART), was probably cal- pointed by the studio, and Von Stroheim is priest was joined by others. \"They'd just led in to assist on color and atmosphere. to make no purchases, contracts or ar- sit around and watch us compose (while rangements without the written authoriza- Mr. Von Stroheim sipped his Scotch, a • tion of the business manager. Von quart a night), and at some point Mr. Von Stroheim is not to playa part in said pro- Stroheim would take them into another Nothing much was done with the prop- duction without our consent in writing. room and have a private conversation.\"s erty for three months. In an interview in The entire contract of course is contingent Spigelgass's personal opinions of the Los Angeles Times on June 5, 1932, upon our being able to purchase this story Stroheim are unflattering (he seems miffed Stroheim comments that the WALKING and if we cannot obtain complete rights at having been used as an errand boy for DOWN BROADWAY deal with Fox is appa- within a reasonable time after execution of midnight hamburger runs) but he did ap- rently off, but suddenly the studio started the contract, or if another story cannot be preciate the director's dramatic skills: the project up again. On June 21, 1932, agreed upon, we may terminate our obli- George Bagnall, comptroller of the West gations under this contract.\" \"It was hard to understand why Mr. Von Coast studio, entered into a new agree- Stroheim, who had been associated with ment with Stroheim reviving the full force The contract was dated and signed Sep- pictures like GREED, THE WEDDING MARCH, of the September 2, 1931, contract. By so tember 2, 1931, and Stroheim retroactively and BLIND HUSBANDS, would find this sim- doing it would only be necessary to pay went on salary as of August 31. Walking ple kind of American story appealing, but Stroheim an additional $16,500 to make the Down Broadway, an unproduced play by as we discussed it, and I began to put it picture-an irresistible bargain to a cost- Dawn Powell, was purchased for $7500, conscious administrator. Stroheim im- but before much work could be ac- mediately went back to work and suhmit- complished Stroheim was offered the part of \"De Forest\" (later changed to \"Von Stroheim's Broadway. The marriage-license bureau The dan ce hall Furst\") in Paul Sloane's THE LOST SQUAD- down on paper, it became clear that he was ted another treatment on July 14, 1932. RON at RKO . This was a part tailor-made chiefly interested in the neuroses of these Stroheim and Spigelgass have their same for him and Stroheim was eager for the people. We turned the simple American credits here; Maurine Watkins is credited chance to play it. On October 7 his Fox con- characters into far more complicated ones, with \"additional dialogue\"; Ruskin's and tract was suspended to allow him six Vienna-oriented. And Mr. Von Stroheim's Burke's names have disappeared. weeks on the RKO picture starting October sense of drama and unity was enormously 15. But the illness of Paul Sloane caused a impressive. \"6 Unlike the February script, the new delay in THE LOST SQUADRON, and on No- script included casting indications, some- vember 25 Fox granted up to six additional But there were problems brewing be- thing found in nearly all Stroheim's shoot- weeks' leave. George Archainbaud re- hind the scenes at Fox. Although Stroheim ing scripts-he was happiest writing with placed Sloane, wrapped the film up had already completed a first treatment of particular players in mind. Zasu Pitts and quickly, and on December 31 Stroheim re- the picture, a studio shakeup resulted in James Dunn were seen in the roles of Millie ported back on salary at the Fox Hills his contract being unilaterally terminated and Jimmy, and George Raft in the role of studio (a new development far from the on February 13, 1932. He was told that \"the Mac (eventually played by Terrance Ray). main offices-and executives-on Western studio did not want to go through with the The part of Peggy was not yet cast. The Avenue, and now the site of Century production\" (memo from Al Rockett, Feb- final shooting script is dated August 9, City). ruary13, 1932) which really meant that they 1932, and credits the story and continuity didn' t want to go through with it with to Stroheim, with dialogue by Stroheim, FILM COMMENT 7

Spigelgass, and Geraldine Nomis. Zasu Hero and that it was set for direction by Stroheim-centered publicity for WALKING DOWN Pitts, James Dunn, and Terrance Ray are either Stroheim or Frank Borzage (eventu- BROADWAY: Boots Mallory steps into the director's now cast, but at this late date (a week or so ally G.W. Pabst directed it for Warner shoes. before shooting) the part of Peggy is still Brothers). Things were so good at this time open. In addition, Stroheim buried himself that Stroheim even managed to sell the 30, 1932, Wurtzel sent a memo to George in the last days of preparation by spending studio an unfilmable story of his called HER Wasson in the legal department: \"Please a week or two working out the film 's visual HIGHNESS for $25 , 000. 11 His WALKING look up our contract with Eric Von style with James Wong Howe, a rare effort DOWN BROADWAY contract was settled on Stroheim and advise me if we are compel- for so minor a release, but indicative of the November 5,1932, indicating that the film led to give him credit on the screen and ad- seriousness of his intentions . By mid- was now officially completed. Publicity vertising matter as director. We plan on August principal photography had began going out. The Theatre Collection of making a considerable number of retakes started . the New York Public Library received stills on the picture with another director.\" The from the film on November 21, 1932, and a answer was no. As was usual, the director completely pressbook carrying full credit to Stroheim disregarded the niceties of studio shooting on November 23. Most amazingly of all, How many hands came into the film at and drove his crew day and night. James the fan magazine Screen Romances carried a this point is uncertain . There is some evi- Wong Howe, who still has tremendous highly detailed novelization of the film in dence that Raoul Walsh worked on it admiration for Stroheim and his feeling for its January 1933 issue (the previous num- briefly (Howe remembers shooting the re- the camera, recalls that \"we were working ber had carried a large ad for the Stroheim take fun-house scenes with Walsh, his twenty-six hours; not twelve hours, not film) . only contact with the retake footage);13 twenty-four hours, but twenty-six hours. Spigelgass mentions Sidney Lanfield as We worked over Saturday and he wanted But when the executives saw the picture one of the group behind the new version. 14 to continue working Sunday into Mon- everything began to unravel. Fox Vice But the main person responsible was day. I couldn't-it got so I couldn't look President Sol Wurtzel had by now re- Edwin Burke, who had taken over when through the camera. My eyes are all puffed turned from a European holiday-during Stroheim was first bounced from the pro- up. So I went in [and] I told Mr. Wurtzel, I which time Stroheim had been contracted ject in February of 1932. said, 'I'm going home because I can' t by Sheehcfn-and was appalled by what work. ' He said, 'That's right. Go home, he saw in the film (and of course Howe's Burke came onto the project once again, Jimmy. I got to put a stop to this. That statement above indicates that Wurtzel and by February 6, 1933, had produced a Von-he gets going, he doesn't know was already annoyed at Stroheim during \"retake script\" for WALKING DOWN BROAD- when to stop.\"'? But Howe stayed on the the shooting). Unlike Sheehan, Wurtzel WAY carefully divided into \"old scenes\" picture, challenged by Stroheim' s de- never had any use for Stroheim or his (those that could be salvaged from mands for a \"dancing camera\" during a films . In his biographical note in the 1936 Stroheim's shooting) and \"new scenes\" cafe sequence, intrigued by the director's Production Guide and Director's Annual it is (which were either completely his own imaginative schemes for even the most said of Wurtzel that he \"is convinced most creation, or altered versions of scenes that routine sequences. people want entertainment, not preach- had been in the Stroheim-Spigelgass ment, in motion pictures .\"12 That this script) . Of the 163 scenes in this script With the actors Stroheim worked very single phrase should be used to charac- fifty-five are labeled \"new,\" 105 \"old,\" and much as he had in the silent period. There terize him indicates Wurtzel's tastes as a three are unlabeled (but since the \"old\" was a gramophone playing on the set dur- producer rather aptly. But even Sheehan, scenes are mainly dialogue passages the ing rehearsals to take the place of the ear- with his earlier faith in Stroheim, was puz- retake footage takes up proportionately lier sideline musicians, a way of getting zled and upset by the film. Evidence indi- more screen time in the final version) . By performers into the proper mood . To cates that both men considered it some sort February 21, 1933, the New York Sun was achieve less delicate effects he would occa- of aberration. reporting that \"WALKING DOWN sionally use threats and even physical vio- BROADWAY is being remade now that Erich lence. Boots Mallory, a prospective Fox It was always Stroheim's contention that von Stroheim is no longer directing.\" starlet who seems to have been a last- Wurtzel had used the issue of WALKING moment casting decision, proved to be a DOWN BROADWAY as a convenient excuse Alfred Werker (whose later films in- particular problem in one sequence. James for attacking his rival Sheehan's manage- cluded HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD , ADVEN- Wong Howe remembers: \"He wanted her rial capabilities, implying that nothing TURiS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and WALK to be hysterical, crying. He just didn't get it would have happened but for Wurtzel's EAST ON BEACON) was assigned to help out of her the way he wanted it and he intervention. Yet while Wurtzel was appa- Burke put his material on screen. Accord- slapped her, oh so hard that the crew, they rently the chief villain it seems clear that ing to Werker: \"The retake version, which I were ready to jump and pound on him. Sheehan supported him without much of co-directed with Edwin Burke, took about That poor girl, her face almost black and a fight. (Note Alfred Werker's comments five weeks to shoot. We used the Stroheim blue-it swole up the next day. \"8 This sort below, in which he says he directed the re- long shots, street scenes, etc., but the body of treatment of minor actors was often re- takes as a favor to Sheehan .) On November of the script followed Mr. Burke's scenario. ported of Stroheim (for example, Malvine I believe Mr. Walsh did one sequence be- Polo in FOOLISH WIVES), but he didn't seem to treat major stars or the regulars of his own stock company that way. Despite such lapses, the film was com- pleted in mid-October for a reasonable $300,000 on a forty-eight-day schedule. 9 (Stroheim later claimed the film to have been three days under schedule and $150,000 under budget-although this last seems hard to believe.)1° Relations with the studio were amicable, as might be gathered from a New York Sun dispatch of October 6, 1932, which noted that Fox had purchased Louis Bromfield's A Modern 8 MAY-JUNE 1975

fore Burke and I took over .. .. I was under Mayer Foundation and the American Film those higher are the work of other directors contract to the studio at the time and Institute-enable us now to finally set on the pichrre. (This study of still numbers worked with Mr. Burke as a favor to Mr. straight the WALKING DOWN BROADWAY is an important aspect of filmic archaeol- Sheehan, but the retakes were really a ogy. By carefully analyzing the classmark project of Mr. Burke. The pichrre was re- story. numbering for any individual title one can leased, but I don't know what happened to often get a rough idea of what sequence a it and I certainly did not want credit for Like the complete GREED, WALKING film was shot in-but that's material for it. \"15 DOWN BROADWAY is a lost film, its only sur- another article.) viving remnants the interpolated footage As HELLO, SISTER! the film was copy- included in HELLO, SISTER! But, like GREED As we have said, WALKING DOWN righted on March 23, 1933 (the film WALK- and THE WEDDING MARCH, a reasonably BROADWAY is lost to us, but HELLO, SISTER! ING DOWN BROADWAY was never copyright- complete set of stills from the original ver- remains. For those interested in comparing ed although its pressbook claims a 1932 sion does exist, enabling us to present the the version. presented here with the final copyright). Variety on April 3, 1933, an- re-creation on the following pages. While product, rental prints of HELLO, SISTER! are nounced that Burke and Werther had only Herman Weinberg's collection has been available from Films, Incorporated. spent $62,000 on these retakes, but that able to flesh out those two films in suitably neither would get screen credit, \"as Von opulent fashion,21 it must be kept in mind Article C> 1975, Richard Koszarski Stroheim's contract called for him having that they were superproductions com- it\"-not the case, as we have seen. On its pared to the relatively modest WALKING FOOTNOTES appearance the only one of the various DOWN BROADWAY . Over six hundred dif- writers and directors who worked on the ferent stills were issued for both GREED and 1. Sinclair, Upton, Upton Sinclair Presents William film to receive credit was Leonard Spigel- THE WEDDING MARCH, but only 145 scene Fox, privately published, Los Angeles, 1933. gass, who was none too pleased about it. stills were released from Stroheim's only Publicity went out again on the film, and talking picture-and not all of these have 2. Letter from Erich von Stroheim to Peter Noble, the New York Public Library received a come down to us. November 13, 1947, p . 5. new packet of stills on April 4, now under the title HELLO, SISTER! The HELLO, SISTER! We have correlated a selection of these 3. Spigelgass, Leonard, \"There Once Was a Place pressbook now carried no mention of stills drawn from the William K. Everson Called Hollywood,\" Academy Leader, November Stroheim whatsoever, although a careful collection with a precis of the final shooting 1972. reading of some of the prepared articles script of August 9, 1932, but this has raised (\"Realism good for art, but bad for Gom- one particular problem. Some of the 4. Ibid. bell\") indicates a campaign orginally plan- scenes described in this script are not rep- 5. Ibid. ned around Stroheim's public image. resented in any known stills. It is possible 6. Ibid. that these stills are merely among the miss- 7. James Wong Howe to author, July 17, 1971. The film opened to poor reviews at the ing, but more likely the scenes were never 8. Ibid. Seventh Avenue Roxy on May 5, 1933, shot, or eliminated early on in the film's 9. Variety, April 3, 1932 (the film 's cost) ; Los considered a weak choice as the theater's editing. They are not mentioned in the Angeles Times , October 15, 1932 (the film ' s sixth-anniversary attraction. (It followed a lengthy Screen Romances novelization, for schedule). stage show which included Ann Pen- example. We have included these scenes in 10. Stroheim, op. cit. nington, Martha Raye, assorted singers, our screenplay narrative for the sake of 11 . Ibid., p . 6. musicians, tap dancers, and a donkey act.) completion, and listed them as \"Missing\" 12. Production Guide and Director's Annual, Film Of the major reviews only Variety 16 and the (as in scenes 3A and 3B) . Daily, Los Angeles, 1936, p. 245. New York Sun 17 indicated Von Stroheim as 13. Howe, op. cit. the original director. The New York Times 18 As a final note it might be useful to dis- 14. Spigelgass, op. cit. and New York American 19 both credited cuss just how one can tell merely by look- 15. Alfred Werker to author, October 12, 1971. Alan Crosland, while the other papers ing at WALKING DOWN BROADWAY/HELLO, 16. Char. , \" Hello, Sister!\", Variety, May 9, 1933. mainly kept their silence. For them the film SISTER! stills which ones represent New York Sun , May 8, 1933. was \"indifferent,\" \"routine,\" \"a stupid lit- Stroheim footage and which the work of 17. Cohen, John S. , \" Hello Sister!, A Weak Ro- tle trifle, aimless and dull.\" It quickly dis- alien hands. Fox stills of this period are mance,\" The New York Sun , May 8, 1933. appeared . Herman Weinberg's notice in identified by a lower corner classmark con- 18. A. D.S. (Andre Sennwald), \"A City Romance,\" the Spring 1933 Cinema Quarterly settled sisting of 1) a few letters of the directors The New York Times, May 6, 1933. the question for later historians: someone name, 2) a number which tells us if it is his 19. Crewe, Regina, \"James Dunn Does Splendidly had \"re-shot the whole film\"20 and that first, second, third, etc. film for Fox, .and 3) Trying to Be Soft Hearted, \" The New York American, was the end of it. a final number identifying that particular May 8, 1933. photograph. For example, MUR-1-25 20. Weinberg, Herman G. , \" Another Film Car- For decades the film moldered peace- would be the twenty-fifth still issued from nage,\" Cinema Quarterly, Summer 1933. fully, but then in 1970, like a bad penny, SUNRISE, Murnau's first Fox film . The 21 . Weinberg, Herman G. \"The Complete Greed of HELLO, SISTER! turned up once again. Wil- classmark for WALKING DOWN BROADWAY Erich von Stroheim, \" Amo Press, New York, 1972; liam K. Everson, working with Fox's Alex was VS-1-( ), and this was continued and The Wedding March , Little, Brown, Boston, 1974. Gordon in an expedition described in the even through the retakes. When Stroheim December 1974 Films in Review, brought the was shooting, approximately the first WALKING DOWN BROADWAY (Fox, print to light for modem reappraisal-and, thirty stills issued were posed portraits of 1932) despite received opinion, it was apparent the leads, and scene stills of the action con- to most historians that there was consider- tinued through to 174. When the retake Director: Erich Von Stroheim . Story and continuity: able Stroheim even in this watered-down scenes were shot in 1933 this numbering Stroheim. Based on a play by: Dawn Powell. Screenplay version. In the Fall 1970 Sight and Sound I system was simply followed from 175 up and dialogue: Stroheim, Leonard Spigelgass, Geral- attempted to sort out the most likely until at least 250. This can be ascertained by dine Nomis. (Harry Ruskin and Maurine Watkins Stroheim scenes based on the only evi- cross-checking the final shooting script contributed to earlier treatments .) Director of Photo- dence then available, the print. But, again against the \"retake script\" with attention g raphy : James Wong Howe. (Charles Van Enger thanks to the efforts of Everson and Gor- given to those stills known to have been is- claims to have worked on it briefly. ) Art director: Wil- don, files of studio documentation and sued in 1932 (e.g., those received in liam Darling. Costumes : David Cox (according to scripts began to tum up which--combined November by the NYPL) . Therefore, still script), Rita Kaufman (according to pressbook) . with research sponsored by the Louis B. VS-1-174 and all those with lower num- Editor: Frank Hull. Assistant director: Louis Germon- bers represent Stroheim action, while prez (and , uncredited , Eddie Sowders) . Sound : Alfred Bruzlin. Business manager: R.L. Hough . Shot in 48 days, from mid-August through mid-October 1932. Cost: $300,000. Not released . HELLO, SISTER! (Fox, 1933) Directors : Alfred Werker and Edwin Burke. (Raoul Walsh may have directed Coney Island scenes in the winter of 1932-33.) Retake script (written around pre- vious footage) : Edwin Burke. Photography credited to James Wong Howe, who did not shoot the Werker- Burker footage . Retakes shot over five weeks in Feb- ruary and March 1933. Cost: $62,000. Copyrighted March 23, 1933. Released May 5, 1933 (Roxy Theatre, New York). Length: 5800 feet. Cast: James Dunn (Jimmy) , Boots Mallory (Peggy) , Terrance Ray (Mac , Zasu Pitts (Millie) , Minna Gombell (Mona); Will Stanton (in retakes); uncredited: Claude King, James Flavin, Astrid Allwyn, Wade Boteler, Walter Walker. FILM COMMENT 9

1. From the crowds of people wa lk- in g down Broa d way o n a wa rm Saturday ni ght the ca mera picks out Pe ggy (Boots Mallory) and Millie (Zasu Pitts), whom we see are being closely followed by Mac (Ter rance Ray) and Jimm y (ja mes Dunn). The brash Mac soon manages an intro- duction. Peggy is ann oyed (\"You've got a lot of nerve! We don ' t kno w you! \"). But Milli e see ms eager to make fri end s-espe c iaIl y with Jimm y. 2. Millie makes conversation by di s- cuss ing her hobby of acc ident chas- ing (\"yo u should 've see n the blood! \"), a topic which further em- barrasses her shy friend . But before we know it Mac is wa lki ng away with Peggy, leaving the perple xed Jimm y to follow alo ng with the wide-eyed Millie. To ge ther , the group sets off dow n the street, w ith Millie now car ry in g on about last Sa turday's big funeral. 3. In a dingy spea keasy the boys are trying to get the girls loose ned up. Peggy won 't drink, but Mil lie, down- in g her glass \" with a pathetic flouri sh\" is desperatel y trying to be bright and coquettish. It's obvious that both boys are interested in Peggy and both girl s in Jimm y, althou gh Millie is being awkwa rdl y and out- rageou sly forward about iL 3A. (Mi ss ing: ) The girl s di sappear to - the powder room. Milli e is deli ghted that the y took Mona's adv ice to \"wa lk down Bro ad way and look willing! \" Pe ggy is not so sure . \" The y' II 'think we' re a co uple of cheap pi ck ups,\" she says. But Milli e is tired of hav ing no one to talk to \" but a deaf landl ady an ' that old cI ub footed foreman down at the shop. \" She' ll do anythin g to esca pe her lonel iness. 38. (Missing:) While the girl s are gone M ac buys a \" hot\" diamond ring for four dollars from a tough in the men' s room . He also manages to sell Jimmy twenty doll ars more of the lottery tickets he has been peddling, and bets Jimm y the entire sixty-five doll ars he owes him th at Peggy will \" fall for\" the di amond before the evening is over. 4. When the girl s return , Mac suggests going to the dance hall for some hot jazz. M ai nl y to pl ease Mil- Iie, Peggy agrees. Whi Ie they dance, Millie tell s Jimmy about her experi- ences at the fortune tellers'. \" I' m just a fool about Fate! \" she says, but Jimmy is lookin g longin gly over hi s shoulder at Peggy. As the black jazz band goes into high gear, the lights are turned low. 5. \" Some shoulders!\" drool s Mac, as hi s hand wanders down Pe ggy's back. \"You keep your hands where they belong! \" she snaps, all the while looking sea rchin gly aro und the dance floor for Jimm y. After a lit- tle more wrestling the lights go back on , and all the couples stop to appl aud. 6. Millie is deli ghted with Jimm y as a dancing partner and in si sts that Peggy ha ve the next one w ith him . \" But rem ember-he's mine! \" So mewh at hesitantl y, Jimm y and Peggy go out on the floor and make conversation about how happy they are with their res pective partners- but we easily see the affection be- tween them . 7. Suddenly Mac c uts in , pu she s Jimmy aside, and makes an obscene gesture at him whi l e dancing off aga in with Peggy. Jimm y reluctantly sta rts up again with Mill ie, who has been waving her handk erchief at him . The crowd dances on for the rest of the evening. 8. Wondering what to do on leavin g the dance hall, the group makes a strange di scovery: they li ve across the street from each other, on the co rner of Forty-seve nth Street and Ninth Avenue. \"A in ' t that ju st like New York ,\" mu ses Jimm y, but the impatient M ac hustles them all off in the general direction of home.

9. When the y reach Ninth Avenue Mac giabs Peggy' s arm and pulls her toward the O ' Leary Hotel, where he and Jimmy share a room. \" Are you crazy? \" stammers the now extremely irritated Peggy. Mac feign s disgust, and Millie sees her chances with Jimm y slipping away. 10. Millie quickly confers with Peg- gy. \" Wh y can ' t we go? If we don 't-we' ll lose 'em! After all the trouble we went to-to get ' em .\" Pegg y is adamant, but for Millie ' s sake agrees that the boys can come across the street to their place. \" Now you' re talkin '!\" grins Mac. 11. As the y start across the street Jimmy spots a dog lying injured in the gutter. Mac growls to leave the mangy thing alone, but Jimm y and Pegg y are concerned and want to care for it. The excited Millie offers the use of her medicine cabinet : \" I got iodine-an ' Brown Wunder Salve-an ' Pluto Water-.\" They pick up the dog and start across. 12. An open sewer excavation runs in front of the girls' building, and as fate would have it Millie falls in. Jimmy pull sher out and they rush her upstairs where Peggy prepares some clean clothes for her in the hallway bathroom. \" Once in my life I' m hav- ing a little fun-an ' I gotta fall in the sewer! \" cries Millie. 13. While Millie showers , Peggy finds the medicine chest and applies first aid to the little dog, fixing a ban- dage for its injured leg. Jimmy de- cides to keep him, to which Mac mutters, \" Sure! We ain't got enough fleas! \" He suggests the downstairs ash can as a better home. 14. While Millie showers off the dirt, Mona knocks on the door and tells her to hurry up. \" If anybody'd asked me who'd fall in a sewer-I'd a said 'Millie,'\" cracks the blonde. 15. Millie comes in waving her handkerchief, thanking Jimmy pro- fusel y for saving her life . She impul- sively grabs his hand and kisses it. The dog is also all right again and licks Jimmy' s hand . Mac makes some more cracks about the dog. \" Don't you like pets? \" Millie asks. 16. Millie brings out a box contain- ing her pet, a turtle named Lady Godiva. \" She was given to me by a man who went to sea,\" says Millie. \" Did he? \" quips Mac . She asks Jimmy what he' ll name the dog and he answers \" Pick Up,\" a name that seems to upset Peggy.

17. \" I' m half starved, \" Mac groans impatiently, but all Millie has in the cupboard are some crackers and grapen uts. Jimmy volunteers to run out for hamburgers and takes orders. Peggy is disgusted and wa nts no- thing, but Millie asks for a large dill pickle (\" I' m just a foo l about dill pic kles! \" ) as she throws a pathetic kiss after him. 18. When Jimmy lea ves Mac tries to wrestle a kiss out of Peggy, but she slaps him. Her tortoise-shell comb falls from her hair and Mac clumsily steps on it and breaks it. \" You can't come up here-and act like a rough neck! We' re good girls,\" she cries. \" Good girls? Good night !\" says Mac, who gets up to leave. 19. But Mac is interrupted by Mona (Min na Gombell). entering to return Millie's dress which was hanging in the bathroom . Mac recognizes her as the model in the deodorant ad he has tacked up in his room: \" You know-' Your Best Friend Won't Tell You. '\" Flattered, Mona mentions some of her other credits, including ads forfallen arches and Black Raven Corn Plasters. 20. Jimmy arrives with the food and also recognizes Mona, who is now claiming to be a star of the George White Scandals. Mona invites the party over to her apartment (\" you don 't want yo ur friends to eat outta paper bags,\" she says to Millie) where she has some gin and a \" sup- per iodine\" radio. 21. The girls are miffed that Mona has made off with the men. Peggy pretends not to care and decides to go upstairs to her own room . \" I' m sorry-everythin ' turned out all wrong-for you-Peg! \" says Millie sympathetically. Peggy goes upstairs and Millie follows the noise of laugh- ter and radio music to Mona's apartment. 22. At Mona's, Mac is making him- self comfortable on the couch. He shows Mona a set of spicy postcards (\" My barber got 'em from Paris !\" ) to which Mona can only repl y, \" Burn my clothes! \" Noticing Millie at the door (\" Well-if it ain 't grapenuts! in person!\") he indicates that Jimmy is washing dishes. 23. In the kitchen Millie is glad to see that Jimm y hasn ' t gone. He asks what's happened to Peggy, and Mil- Iie say she went to bed upset because she saw Mac pla yi ng up to Mona. Jimmy is puzzled and a little disap- pointed . 24. \" Here' s your dill pickle! \" says Jimmy, and Millie gets even moreef- fusive and wide-eyed. Jimmy takes the plates into Mona's room, where Mac and Mona are still studying the cards, then decides to take a tray up to Peggy. Millie tries almost hysteri- cally to change his mind, but he starts upstairs away.

25. Peggy opens the door for Jimmy and feigns annoyance; she tells him to go back to his friends, but he per- sists. Mac means nothing to her she insi sts, and she is heating up some glue to repair the comb that was bro- ken \"when-Mac kissed me!\" \" You ought to have ' Stick·o·Cement,'\" says Jimm y matter·of-factly. 26. Discussing the lonel iness of New York life, they discover that both are newly arrived out-of-towners. Peggy warms a bit and agrees to have a bite to eat. The dog wanders into the room and Peggy, still a bit embarras· sed, asks Jimmy to call him \" Lone· some\" instead of \" Pick Up. \" 27. jimmy asks her why she doesn't live with Millie; Peggy replies that she likes to be alone sometimes. \" It's cheaper with a roommate,\" answers Jimmy, describing his own situation. He then launches into a lecture on thrift tied in with his own position in the public relations department of the People ' s Bank. Peggy is fasci- nated and a bit awed. 28. After some more fiscal facts and figures they finish eating and start on the dishes. \" You got it fi xed up pretty nice here! Too bad you haven 't got a window!\" \" Say, I got the greatest window in the world,\" she says, pointing to the skylight. 29. Peggy pull s out the table, props a chair up on it, and climbs up. \" It' s kinda close quarters-but it' s worth it! Watch out for that glue-pot!\" Jimmy holds his nose as he puts the pot away and climbs up after her. Looking out over the city, they see the crowds of people below, boats in the harbor, and listen to the noises of the city. 30. While gazing out the skylight the pair slowly realizes that right from the beginning they were attracted to one another, and onl y chance had temporarily set them off with the wrong partners. They kiss to the ac- companiment of the boat whistles, auto horns, and streetcar bells of the WestSide. 31. While they embrace Millie comes to the door, knocks, and timidl y enters. Seeing them on the chair she walks closer and looks up in terror. \" Jimm y !\" she mumbles under her breath , but no one hears her. An ambulance screams past and the elevated rumbles by. Millie slinks out of the room in a daze. 32. As day breaks, Peggy and Jimmy are quietly walking down the stairs together. \"Isn't it funn y-a few hours ago-I didn't even know you -and now-I couldn't live-with· out you,\" whispers Pegg y. She watches Jimmy walk across to his hot!!1 as a street·cleaning truck pas· ses by.

33. On her way back up the stairs Peggy passes Mona coming out of the bathroom. \" Fast work, hayseed, \" she cracks. \" You don 't understand! We love each other,\" replies Peggy, throwing her head back . Mona just laughs. \" Ain 't lovejustgrand! Take it from me-ya poor sap-it' s a trick-it's done with mirrors! An' it gets ya nothin ' but a lotta grief! \" 34. \" It's what you can squeeze outa ' em-that counts! \" Mona flashes Mac' s new ring. \" See how it's done? ' 5 worth two grand! Comprenny voo? Take anythin' you can lay your fins on! Why, I' d even take old sus- penders! \" Peggy starts upstairs in disgust . 35. Mac enters the hallway from Mona ' s room and sees Peggy just going upstairs. \" Good night- ' Good' girl! \" he sneers. Mona eyes all this suspiciously. \" I' d better be see in ' that wristwatch you prom- ised, \" she tells him . Mac walks downstairs and Mona goes back to her room . But Mac stops, turns around , and goes back up to Peggy' s room . 36. Mac opens the door to Peggy's room , where she is getting un- dressed. \" So you' re a 'good' girl- are you? Well-we' ll see just how good you arel Catch on?\" But the- suspicious Mona has heard Mac coming back up the stairs and goes out to investigate. Mac jumps at Peggy and starts wrestling with her as Mona bursts in. 37. \" Listen-Romeo-come down offa that balcony-before I pull ye off! \" screams Mona. Mac blows her a raspberry and she slaps his face. He grabs her by the neck and pushes her out the door, she kicking and punch- ing at every step. They struggle down the stairs and Mac kicks her into her own room and slams the door be- hind them. 38. Later, Mac returns home nursing some scratches and a black eye. \" Lonesome\" growls at him and he blows back another raspberry. \" Where you been?\" asks Jimmy. \"Give you three guesses!\" Back in Peggy's room we see her lying in bed gazing upthrough the skylight, as the city noises \" slowly change to sound of thousand viol ins and an unearthly organ . \" 38A. (Missing :) Noon . The boys in their underwear, just getting up. They quarrel about the jazz Mac has on the radio, and Jimmy takes of- fense when asked \" Did you make the grade?\" Jimmy orders Mac never to make any more cracks about Peggy, but Mac coolly replies , \" Don't hand me that alfalfal I know what time you leftl \" and predicts Jimmy' s illusions about love will soon fade : \" It just ain ' t done on Broadwayl \" 39, Mona is banging on the bath- room door and Peggy finally comes out. \" You ' ve been in there long enough to wash your ears, \" she cracks. Peggy is very distracted, and thoughtfully goes over to knock on Millie's door. 40. Millie is sitting on her bed, her eyes swollen from crying, still fon- dling Jimmy' s hat. She quickly hides it when she hears Peggy's knock . Peggy comes in and tries to make amends. \" I ain 't blamin ' you! You can ' t force anybody to love you ,\" says Millie sadly.

41. \"Gee I' m gl ad -M illie! I was afraid yo u wo uldn ' t und ersta nd! \" says Peg gy. \" I wou ldn ' t under- stand-huh ?No ! I' m made 0' wood! Don 't cha think I got a hea rt ? I sup- pose I' m so funny-looking that no- body could love me-bu t that don't mean that I don't understand!\" Millie gazes forlornly off and Peggy kisses her. 41A. (Missi ng:) Next da y Jimm y ar- rives with one of hi s qu arter savings banks. When he's saved a thousand doll ars, they ca n be marri ed. They rea lize how lu cky they are to have each other. \" It sure wa s fate!- wasn't it?\" says Peggy. Jimm y asks her to go to Coney Island , but Peggy wants to ask Millie, too. 42. Mi lli e ca n't bring herself to go, though Peggy and Jimm y try to coax her. Jimmy looks for the hat w hich he remembers leav ing, but ca n't find it. (\"Well-there goes $1. 98 .\") Millie watches them from her wi ndow as they leave, pat heti ca ll y wavi ng her handkerchief, then bursts into tears. She goes to ge t Jimmy 's hat from where she ha s hidden it. Suddenl y, another knock at the door. 42A. (Missing :) It isMiss Pl att, Millie's be spect ac led , hunchbacked li - brarian friend . She has a ne w roman- tic novel for Millie, w hich starts Mil- lie talking about her own \" ro mantic life\": one of the Va nderbilts is in love with herbagai nst the famil y's w ishes. She ela orates several storie s, in- cludin g how he once saved her li fe whi le rowing at hi s huntin g lodge in the Adirondac ks. When Miss Pl att leaves, Lady Godiva comes out to keep Millie company. 42B. (Mi ssi ng:) A brief co mic scene shows Jimm y peddlin g hi s qu arter sav ings banks to two middle-a ged black women in a tenement hallwa y. He is ve ry efficient , and they are completely taken in by hi s pitch. 43. The seed pack in g factory w here the girls work . \" Club footed nasty old Foreman and cross eyed ugly ass is- tants walking up and dow n watc hing gi rl s-fore ign types. \" 44. Suddenl y Peggy, w ho has al ready see med ill , drops her head on the table and falls off her chair. All the girls rush aro und . Millie makes ex- cuses for Peggy to the foreman , but he growl s that it's happened before. 45. Peggy goes home ea rl y, but at the cashier's window to pick up her check find s that she's bee n fired for fainting \"o nce too o ften .\" The cashier mech anicall y snaps \"Merry Xmas\" as he hands her the pink slip. On her way out Mi ll ie advi ses her to \" take a good dose of ' Pluto,'\" when she gets home. 46. But instead of going home Peggy stops off at the local medical build- ing, looks up the name of Dr. How- ard Bl ake, and starts up to hi s office. 47. The phone rings in Jimm y's build- ing and the landl ady ca ll s him down. Peggy tells Jimm y to meet her im- medi atel y in front of Liggett' s drug store. (N.B. Thi s still is actuall y from a retake, no original pose being ava ilable.) 47A. (Miss ing:) On the rai n-drenched street in front of Liggett 's, Peggy word lessly informs Jimmy that they must get married. She is depressed , he deli ghted . Jimm y immediatel y sta rts maki ng plan s for their new apa rtment. As they kiss w ildl y, six sa nd wic h men adve rti si ng cheap wedd in g rin gs on the in stallment plan are seen wa lkin g behind them. 48. Peg gy asse mble s Millie and Mon a and te ll s them she 's gettin g married . Millie is stunned , Mona merel y cynical: \" Just the backbone 0 ' the Nation! We ll-I ain ' t go nn a get curva ture of the spine that way!\" Millie is even more di smayed to hear that they may be mov in g away to Brook lyn or the Bro nx w here they can :'get some air.\" \" Don ' t worry! You ' ll get the air soo n eno ugh !\" chimes Mona.

48A. (M issi ng:) In a pool hall, Mac finds that the lottery ti cket he had passed off on Jimm y has won $10,000. \" Don ' t that get yo ur an- gora?\" he mutters. 49. Jimmy is in the office of the bank vice presi dent trying to get an ap- poi ntment, but has difficulty gett ing past the secretary. Brewster hears the fuss he is ma king and invites him in . Jimmy immediately puts on the hard se ll , says he ha s so ld 822 sav ings banks in the past five months and wants to get ahead in the business, to deal in bonds and sec urities. 50. \" I' m not satis fied with $100 a month-I don ' t want to spend the rest of my life in a furnished room- and eat in a beanery-I wa nt to have a littl e home of my ow n-with trees and grass-like yo u have! \" When Jimm y adds th at he' s soon getting married, Brewster retorts that he has \"no right\" to take such a plunge dur- ing a depress ion. 51 . \" That' s just the trouble! Depres- sion ! There wo uldn ' t be any depres- sion if yo u' d give young wide-awake people a chance-in stead of letting things run in the same rut-they' ve been in for 25 years.\" Jimmy's argu- ments begin to carry, and he uses the excuse of M r. Sedgewick' s appear- ance to fast talk a position at $150 in the bond department the following week. 52. Peggy arri ves at the marriage license bureau at 3:15 , a few minutes early for her appointment wit h Jimmy. She sits down to wait. 53 . Mac succeed s i n finess ing the lottery tickets away from Jimmy, and implies he is soon co ming into a lot of money. \" I' m glad of that! Beca use I need the $78 you owe me! \" When Jimm y tell s him he needs it because he has to get married, M ac is dum- founded . \" How d'ya know she ain ' t Iy in' ? Huh ?\" he ta~nts . 54. \" Pic ked her up on Bro adwa y! Didn' t ya? You poor hick-yo u think yo u was the first guy ever up in her room! \" Jimmy becomes increasi ngly angry as Mac reminds him of how he came home late the night they met the girls, and ·the bet they made ear- lier on. \" I ain ' t say in'- nothin ' ! But I don 't owe yo u nothin' either!\" Jimmy knocks Mac to the ground and runs out. 55. At 4:00 the marri age license bureau c lo ses and Peggy, alm ost panic- st ricken, goes to call Jimm y. Mac gets on the phone, and in his usual malicious manner tells her he has just left. \" He said for me to tell yuh-to find yo urself another suck- eri-That' s al l-an '- Merry Xmas! \" Peggy wanders out into the rain. 56. Jimm y ha s mi ssed Peggy at the bureau and ru she s back to her apartment. Mi llie tell s him she is still out, then asks w hat's bothering him . H is answers are very cryptic, and fi- nall y he snaps, \" yo u wou ldn't un- derstand! \" \" No, I wouldn 't under- stand! It ' s alw ays the sa me from everybody! \" sobs the hurt Mi llie.

57. \"Just because I'm homely-you think that I don't know anythin' ' bout love-an ' the way it hurts you- an' every thin ' ! I don ' t understand! Well-that' s where you' re wrong! I had lots 0 ' lovers before I met you an' Mac! \" Jimmy is almost in the right frame of mind to believe so me of this. Millie starts talking about how she and Peggy picked up plenty of guys wa lking down Broadway. 58. Jimm y won ' t believe it. \"Oh- she's the good one-an' I 'm the tramp .... Say-she' s done things I wouldn't do! \" Millie says itwas Peg- gy' s idea to pick up the boys because she Iiked Mac , then sw itched to Jimm y because she was mad that Mac went for Mona. Jimmy throws Millie to the floor and runs out; she screams after him hysterica ll y. 59. Peggy is walking home in a daze when Jimm y comes up to her and glares. She doesn ' t know what's happened . \" Found out what asucker I was,\" screams Jimm y over the noise of the street. \"When a woman tells a man what yo u told me last night- because she' s tired of getting up in the morning to go to work! That's the gag! Understand!\" 60. Jimmy tells her that Mac has fi- nall y set him straight, and that \" Mil- lie letthe cat out of the bag, too! \" He is very sa rca stic ; she is astounded , surprisingly calm , and more taken aback by Jimmy' s strange attitude than by what he see ms to be hinting at. 61. \" I'm going to ask yo u one ques- tion! Understand! \" he demands. \" Did Mac come up to yo ur room after I left! Peggy tries to expla in but he won't listen. Falteringl y she ad- mits he did come up. \" That's all I want to know!-I'm thru! Now pick yourself another sucker,\" he inter- rupts, turns and walks away. Peggy stares blankly after him as a truck ad- vertising baloney and play ing Christmas carols turns down the street. 62. Peggy wanders home and the girls follow her to her room. At Mo- na's urging she sobs that her relation- ship with Jimmy is all over. Someone has told him so mething evil about her. \" It doesn' t matter-who told- him-or what-they said-it's that-he believes it~hat 's what hurts !\" she cries. Mona tries to cheer her with some cynical humor, but Millie is paral yzed . 63. \" But it isn't me alone-you see-I ' ve got to think of-there's something else--()ow!\" Peggy sobs. \"Say! An' he' s tryin ' to walk out an' leave you singin' ' Baby shoes'-Not a chance!\" retorts Mona, who vo lun- teers to make him \"co me across with every red cent he's makin ' !\" Peggy hystericall y tells her to mind her own business and Mona skulks out, fol- lowed by the very depressed Millie. 64. Across the street Mac is telling Jimm y that Peggy will soon have lawyers after him-Mona and Millie at least. \"What 'd I tell yo u ? The Militia! \" he beams as Mona bursts into the room. \" Shut that trap 0' yo urs-or I' ll stick my foot in it! \" she orders . \"We ll-you white-bellied double-crossin' rat-watcha gonna do about Peggy? \" she demands of Jimmy.

65. \"Hey-Mug-your pan ' s open -an' I don't like the sounds comin' out of it! Scram-before I throw ya' out the window! \" Mac threatens. \"Listen !-You may be a tough guy to that palooka-but yo u' re just another phoney to me! \" she snaps back. Her ire has quickl y changed focus from Jimm y to Mac- especially as she remembers the \"d iamond\" that Mac had given her earlier. 66. \"Yo u know what yo u can do with that piece 0' glass-doncha?\" she screams as she throw s the ring at him . \" I tried to hock it-see? An' they offered me fifteen cents!\" He is stunned. \" Yeah! A worn-off dime- an' a greasy nickel! \" Mac sla ps her, battles her to the door, and sends her fl ying with a vicio us kick. 67. A brief scene shows Mac buying a steak for his eye and sizing up two new prospects in a Broadwa y butcher shop. Meanwhile Millie has come to confess her lies, but Jimmy doesn' t believe her. \" I don't care what yo u do to me Jimm y-hit me-kill me-but don'Uhrow her . down,\" Millie pleads. \"Well-look who' s here! Madame Grapenuts, \" snorts Mac as he comes in . \" Didn't I tell you?\" 68. As Millie continues to plead , Mac grabs her and shoves her out the door, now screaming for Jimm y to belie ve her. Mac calls after her, \"Seco nd door to the left! An' don't forget-(he gestures pulling of chain).\" Millie tries to get back in , but suddenl y realizes it's all over. Stunned, she pauses for a moment and slowly starts back to her room . 69. Mac tries to get Jimm y out of his blue mood. \" Say-I got two 0 ' the snazziest bims yo u ever laid yo ur eyes on! Rarin ' to go! Catch on? \" Jimmy finally allows himself to be practicall y pushed out the door by Mac. During thi s scene we see shots of Peggy and of Millie, and of a girl ' s hand s turning on a gas stove and stuffing rag strips under a door. 70. Down in the street Mac intro- duces Jimm y to a pair of blondes when the tough who sold Mac the lottery tickets comes up. He tells Mac he doesn 't have to worry about getting back the winning tickets, since\"All the tickets of the M&H was printed in Hoboken. The whole shebang was phoney!\" A Iight slowly daw ns on Jimmy. \" So that's why you bought the tickets back! \" 71. \" If yo u Iied about that-I bet yo u lied about Peggy !\" But the argument is interrupted by a tremendous ex- plosion from the girls' building ac- ross the street. \" Hot dog! \" shouts a kid who run s past. The crowd starts running wildly and Jimmy runs into the building, quickl y making his way to Peggy's door, which is locked. He pounds furiously on the door calling her name. 72. In an elaborate se ries of shots an alarm box is rung, engines arrive, and firemen rush into the burning building. Mona and some other ten- ants are rescued (\"Say--<Jid you get out alive? There' s a good fire all ruined for me!\" says Mac). The fire- men remove Millie's body from her room, but Peggy's ceiling collapses and Jimmy isca rried out badly bleed- ing.

73. Reporters are questioning Mona, who tells them that Peggy must have tried to commit suicide . The firemen are still searc hing the building for her body. Mac passes aro und a bottle of gin as a peace offering, w hich Mona j udge s as co ntaining \" too damn much Juniper be rry.\" The reporters phone in their story: \" Got a sna ppy explosion on Forty-sevent h-yea h! Great love angle. \" The piece is im- mediatel y featured in the late edi- tions. 74. Late r, at Grand Central Station, Peggy sees a new spa per headline telling of the explosion and fire. Im- mediatel y she runs to a cab and hur- ries to Roosevelt Hospital , w hich is decorated with tinsel and Christmas decorations. As she inquires about her friends she suddenly sees Jimmy. \" For a second they are about to put arms about each other in a frenzy of joy-but they suddenl y halt- embarrassed. \" 75. They exchange tentative, hesit- ant greetin gs. The turn of events has altered their situation; perhaps each is sti ll loved by the other. Millie is wheeled out of surge ry into a nearby room , and a doctor asks them the name of Millie's nearest relative . \" Is it-as bad-as that? \" asks Peggy. \" It' s just a questio n of ho urs, \" he answers, shaking hi s head . 76.ln Millie's ro om Jimm y and Peggy are waiting by her bed side as she slowly opens her eyes. Millie doesn't know what' s happened. She had been holding a suicide note but it \" got burned with my hands.\" Mil- lie confesses her love for Jimmy, and how it moti vated her lies about Peggy. Bec ause Jimmy didn' t bel ieve her, she felt she must \" lay down my life\" to conv in ce him . 77. Millie pleads with Jimmy that Peggy reall y loves him, and begins to straighten out the lies and misun- derstan din gs. Peggy finall y gets to tell him the truth about Mac coming up to her room, and they throw their arms around each other. \" Thank- God-I ' m not-dyin '-for nothin ',\" says Millie. Jimmy rushes out to the hallway to get her a small Christmas tree. Snow has started to fall outside. 78. Christmas music drifts in from the Paulist church ac ro ss the street. Millie remembers the gift she had made for Jimmy: a laundry bag em- broidered with his name. Suddenly Jimmy remembers a present he had bought for Peggy, and \" gives\" it to Millie. She is electrified . He also has another gift, a wedding ring which he puts on Peggy's finger. Millie smiles feebly at her success reuniting thepak 79. Suddenly Millie feels the lights have been turned off. \" Her eyes widen in ecstatic paroxism [sic] as if she couldn't believe her senses. \" She dies screaming the name of Jesus in a \"fearful crescendo .\" It is midnight. Jimmy and Peggy leave as a proces- sion of nurses fi le s past. As the Christmas bells and organ music swell up, they wa lk slowl y across to the church . 80. It is now Ea ster. Jimmy and Peggy are walking down Broadwa y when they run into Mona pushing a baby buggy-she ha s married Mac. A thin stream is trickl ing out of the buggy, but when Peggy looks she finds only some broken bootleg gin bottles . Mona moves on and they conti nue their walk, winding up in front of Bet- ty's Baby Shoppe , as the camera pulls back to lose them in the crowd . .~~:

DON RUGOFF: BALLYHOO WITH AHARVARD EDUCATION by Stuart Byron ~ Z I Q ~ A Rugoff original: the Impossible Genius himself. When Bob Dylan showed up after the one who would have to be placed on the leases had their New York engagements at flood to take his 1973-74 concert tour, the right-hand side of that \"art-industry\" Rugoff's theaters; many were the battles \"return to the Sixties\" planet waves that which is motion pictures: exhibitor and over advertising placement and design. erupted were confined to ordinary fans distributor Donald S. Rugoff. and the popular press. To my friends in the Even at Joseph E. Levine's Embassy Pic- music trade, it was at least as important This has to do, I'm sure, with my very tures, where I went after Pathe, Rugoff that a second figure central to that still- particular geographical and vocational cir- was important-because of his absence; mysterious decade was returning from the cumstances during the Sixties. Not yet a Levine, so the story went, had opened his ashes: Bill Graham, the producer of the person with the credentials to call myself a Festival and Lincoln Art Theatres (in Man- tour, who had been relatively retiring since critic (inasmuch as I was one, my heroes hattan) partially because of fatigue over his the closings of the Fillmores West and East. were Andrew Sarris and Robin Wood), I Rugoff battles. And finally, and most im- too placed myself post-hyphen in the art- portantly in terms of my acquaintance with To each his own Sixties. lf that decade is industry. And no matter what I did within the man, there was my 1967-69 term at Var- mysterious, it's become even more so dur- it, Rugoff was a commanding figure. iety, where my beat included most of the ing the current recession-for in retro- independent distributors-of which spect it's obvious that the decade produced As it happens, the date of my own entry Rugoff was clearly the most exciting, the political, cultural, and industrial tornadoes . into the field-as a writer for the trade most innovative, the most daring. 1968, year of the Chicago riots and of the bi-weekly The Independent Film Joumal- height of the opposition to the Vietnam was 1963, the year when Rugoff, before Had I lived through that decade's indus- war, also happens to be the year the Dow that only an exhibitor, entered distribution; try history in Hollywood, I no doubt finally went over 1,000, the goingest of the and if my recollection is correct, my first would have come to focus on someone else \"go-go years,\" the last time that any of us fancy press luncheon was at the \"21, \" as the most fascinating symbol of the Six- felt that we were living in an economic where Rugoff presented Larry Peerce, di- ties: Ken Hyman or Bert Schneider or ''boom.'' In the abstract, my own heroes rector of ONE POTATO, TWO PODITO, just the Robert Evans, or Blake Edwards or Peter and heroines of the Sixties are, certainly, second release of Rugoff's new distribution Bogdanovich, or Roger Corman. But I was artists. But in a visceral sense, there is no company, Cinema 5. After that came a job in New York, the business town of the bus- question that the person who most repre- as a flack for a small independent dis- iness, where, despite all of the Lindsay sents the decade to me is a businessman, tributor of foreign pictures called Pathe administration's hoopla, the much- nostalgiacized increase in production Contemporary Films, most of whose re- 20 MAY-JUNE 1975

which took place was almost entirely a his flacks there . Perhaps he's aware that Manhattan's Upper East Side rather than matter of Coast people finding in Gotham the biggest controversy I managed to cause Times Square the prime area for motion a more frequent location spot. Except, in the Hub of New England resulted from picture exhibition in New York, substi- maybe, for the extraordinary \"Dede Allen several scathing pans of STAGE OF SEIGE. tuted Colombian coffee for popcorn, School\" of film editors (Aram Avakian, Perhaps it's all of the above-or none of and-to the chagrin of critics like Andrew Jerry Greenberg, Norman Gay), there was them. Actually, \"falling out\" is the wrong Sarris and the delight of those like John no continuity in New York production phrase, as we were never, in any u s ual Simon-turned \" movies\" into \"films.\" which stemmed from a central figure. sense, friends. Better to invoke filmdom's There were only those mundane aspects of Almost a decade ago, capped by the open- the film biz, distribution and exhibition. most famous advertising line:of the Sixties: ing of the trendsetting Cinema I - Cinema II And once Joe Levine moved into what we have here is a failur~ to communi- theater complex diagonally across from Hollywood-based production to become cate. Bloomingdale's, he had becom.e \"the king no longer an \"indie\" but a \"minor,\" my of the art houses. \" He's still that, having Thus, he might be surprised to hear that largely kept up with a growing competi- only object for impulsive fascination was my heart leapt up when I saw SCENES FROM tion by adding to the chain theaters previ- mid-fortyish, potbellied, always-working, A MARRIAGE become a commercial ously run by others. It now consists of fif- ever-harried showman Don Rugoff. The phenomenon of this season-and not be- teen houses, in eleven of which Cinema 5 man who was always asking the opinion of cause Ingmar Bergman's movies, a decade has a direct financial interest, and three of anyone within a radius of ten yards on after THE SILENCE, are once again earning which it operates for outside owners. anything from a booking at one of his seven-figure rental amounts in the U.S. theaters to a proposed ad for one of his market. (That renaissance, at any rate, had But despite the fact that the Goliaths of films-no matter if that person were an already been marked by New World Films' the industry-including the second, third, aide, the producer of some other movie, release of CRIES AND WHISPERS, which the shoeshine boy, a reporter. The man SCENES now seems destined to outdo at the and fourth largest chains in the who admitted to me, when pressed for an box office.) No, what excited me was the country-were forced to build theaters in explanation of why employees left him in triumphant return to prominence, follow- \"Dry Dock Country\" in order to compete droves : \"1 have one fault. I train good ing three years of much-publicized trou- with this David, Rugoff has not con- people and then I want to do their jobs for bles, of Donald S. Rugoff, much as my structed a new theater since the Cinemas I them. \" friends in the music trade were glad to see and II. In 1968 Cinema 5 went public, but in Bill Graham on the top of the heap again. such a manner that Rugoff was left with But wait. Harvard-educated Don only a bit more than one per cent of the Rugoff. Positively un vulgar Don Our new estrangement forfended any company (he now owns nine per cent); but Rugoff-a man who never called film discussion of the period, but its outline is to the trade Cinema 5 is Rugoff and Rugoff \"product\" and who was rarely known to familiar to anyone who has followed is Cinema 5-and that's reflected in the utter a four-letter word. This was the man Richard Albarino's excellent reporting in company's operations as well . He is a man widely-acknowledged as the greatest New Variety: the succi~s d'es time of THE SORROW who would have to supervise such con- York film 'showman since Joe Levine? AND THE PITY, WR-MYSTERIES OF THE OR- struction very personally, and he hasn't Yes-but with a difference . The first ty- GANISM, MARIOE, STATE OF SEIGE, and A had time for that in recent years. Good coon. The first to adapt his style to the new SENSE OF LOSS, the last three of these par- times or bad times, all that interests Rugoff film business, taking what he could use tially produced by Cinema 5, meaning that is being-or struggling to be again-the from the old showmen and discarding the any sums lost far exceeded those that country's leading \"indie,\" competing as an rest. In sum, an archetypal successful Six- Rugoff ever would have paid for the U.S. independent distributor with the com- ties showman, one who excited creative rights to the films had they already been panies whose films he has always played people to such an extent that Bryan Forbes completed; the absolutely disastrous at- as an exhibitor. (even after his own stint as production tempt to compete with the majors for the head of British Lion had exposed him to all \"commercial\" market, including the ex- For as long as there have been majors manner of \"swinging London\" executives) pensive setting-up of sales offices all over there have also been indies, men who re- could exude: \"The chutzpah of Don Rugoff the country, with such schlock as FROM THE lease, for the \"art\" or \"quality\" (or, at the is what this industry needs, what it needs MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. other end of the scale, \"exploitation\") au- to return to! I feel about him the way FRANKWEILER and HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY .. . dience, low-budget foreign and American everybody else does. Impossible. Im-pos- LOVE GEORGE; the sale by disgruntled stock- films that the majors don't want or don't si-hle! But, in the end, a genius, age-ni-us!\" holders of about twenty-five per cent of the know how to handle, and who, every once company to West Coast exhibitor William in a while, come up with something that As it happens, the Impossible Genius Forman, who still pants outside the door breaks through into that very \"commer- and I seem to have had a falling out, one I'd thanks to various financial counter-moves cial\" market controlled by the majors. If suspected existed for some time but which by Rugoff and the success of SCENES; and, the word conjures up as much confusion was only confirmed by the brusqueness finally, the deal with Francis Ford Coppo- in the minds of many film scholars and with which he handled my recent inquiries la, whose nine per cent buy-in of Cinema academics as it did when Richard Dreyfuss for this article. I don't really know exactly 5's stock as a Rugoff ally earned him a seat said ''I'm an indie\" to Randy Quaid on the why it happened. Perhaps it was because I on the board and a contract to produce drug-smuggling train trip in THE APREN- inadvertently gave him some bum steers small-budget, CONVERSATION-like films by TICESHIP OF DUDDY KRAVITZ, that's because on publicity ideas for two of his movies of himself, George Lucas, and others. And an indie is defined more by size than by na- the early Seventies, and which, to his re- so, if the Rugoff piece that I always had in ture, i.e., it is not a \"major.\" gret, he followed. Perhaps it was bec'a use, me comes off now as something of a when I started four years ago to poke memoir, it at least finds Rugoff in much the Indies sometimes produce films (the around with former employees in re- same place as when I lived in New York early American International, which soon searching what turned out to be this piece, and knew him-and more recent became large enough to be termed a he easily figured out tha t this profile , employees confirm that very few of the \"minor\"), sometimes only acquire them whenever it appeared, would show general conclusions I came to back then during or after production (Burstyn- him-as have none of the others-warts have lost their validity. Mayer), sometimes do both (Roger Cor- and all. Perhaps he was (justifiably) upset man's New World, which produces drive- over an angry telegram I sent him when a • in fodder and acquires art house stuff by competing weekly to mine in Boston Fellini and Bergman, and distributes both) . seemed to be getting better treatment from If they think of him at all, most laymen Whichever way it's done, it's a kind of probably still think of Don Rugoff as the work that requires a great deal of courage man who, more than any other, made and ingenuity, which is why men like Ar- FILM COMMENT 21

thur L. Mayer and Joseph Burstyn (the how their country's producers were going by golly we're gonna try and pull it pioneer indies), or Joe Levine or Roger to lose the American market if they asked through Christmas! \"Open it at someone Corman, have had to be great showman. prices like that. \" else's house,\" it was urged. \"No, no, they aren't good enough,\" snapped Rugoff. Which means, in part, being smart right But he is , as Duncan McGregor, Jr. , Then he got an idea: He would create a at the beginning of the process-knowing head of the French Film Office in New new theater for Z: The Z Theater! So off what pictures to buy. Some of Rugoffs York, puts it, \" a man who changes his about half of the important Cinema 5 per- jealous competitors like to shrug off his mind like he changes his shirt. \" And he is, sonnel went on a search throughout the success with words like \"luck\" or explana- like all legendary showmen from Barnum Upper East Side, looking for empty stores, tions like \"He hires good people,\" but they to Levine, a gambler. To this day, key per- finall y concede, when the list of hits is reeled off, that \"Yes, Don can pick 'em . He A Rugoff smash: Charles Denner runs for his lifein Costa-Gavras ' Z. can pick 'em as well as anyone. \" sonnel throw a dollar into a kitty and pre- abandoned Masonic halls, condemned That he can. Not always pictures that 1 dict the first week's gross on any new film tenements. Best bet was a former super- have personally cared very much for, but opening at a Rugoff Theater. Until he gave market; this produced an instant slogan: film s that are risks-films that no one else up the practice a few years ago after a se- See Z at your A&P! Alas, or fortunately, wants, or films that no one else wants at vere losing streak, he played with toy depending on how you look at it, the slo- the price asked, films that are offbeat or dif- wheels and figured out \"systems,\" and gan was never used. Several theaters be- ferent, films that on the surface look as if when he went to the Cannes Festival it was came available, and Z was booked into the they shouldn' t make any money at all . as much for the roulette at the Casino as it Beekman for early December. Now that he's hit his stride again, there's was for the films at the Palais. no reason to doubt tha t he'll match his For once, Rugoff did not experiment string of the Sixties-all of which grossed And it was at Cannes, that May, where z with a hundred variants of advertising art almost or over $2 million, sensational in re- won a prize, that he saw it again . \"The film but chose to go with the original French lation to investment: Robert Downey's had stayed with me. 1couldn't get it out of campaign: a huge capital letter Z atop Yves PUTNEY SWOPE, the satire about blacks tak- my head. After the prize at Cannes, they Montand's corpse. But he employed it to ing over an advertising agency; Bruce wanted $400,000! I took another look, this create what is still the classic example of Brown's THE ENDLESS SUMMER, the surfing time with English subtitles. And I paid \"wild posting,\" a device he pioneered and documentary; Bo Widerberg's Swedish them what they wanted.\" which New Yorkers cannot help but have love story ELVIRA MADIGA N ; David Wol- noticed in recent years: the placement of per's bug documentary THE HELLSTROM Those subtitles might have had an effect posters on any free space available, usually CHRONICLE, and Vittorio de Sica's THE on him, but Rugoff decided that they were at construction sites. Five z posters in a row GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (the last inadequate for the public. He himself re- looked like the comic-strip word for two released in 1971, and his last real big- wrote them, taking all summer to do it and snoring-ZZZZZ-and were remarkably gies until SCENES). There was also the enlisting the aid of Pierre Cottrell, the effective. Otherwise, the $80,000 launch- Warhol-Morrissey study of the East Vil- young Frenchman who was beginning to ing campaign (twice what was usually lage's lower depths, TRASH, whose produce movies by Eric Rohmer and spent at the time) involved such items as $800,000 in earnings make it the GONE WITH Robert Bresson. Cottrell, so it is said, fuji-page newspaper ads in which Sidney thought he was being invited out to Poitier, Mike Nichols, and others urged THE WIND of underground movies. And of Rugoff's East Hampton summer home for readers to see z-the result of an extensive course, and most of all, z. a lot of sun and swimming, but instead celebrity screening program. These stars found himself spending every weekend were, of course, eventually replaced by • going over z line by line. critics, as z got sensational reviews and be- came the first movie to win both major Ah, z! For years they'd been saying that Then , in September, came the cris e. press awards, being named numero uno of Don Rugoff would one day have a big one. There is at least one per picture, as often as 1969 by the National Society of Film Critics Not just with the classes, but with the not Rugoff-manufactured. There might and by the New York Film Critics. masses-a really big one. Then, in 1969-70, not be a theater for z at Christmas! The best it happened . It happened with z . chain in town had an embarrassment of With those prizes in hand, Rugoff tried riches: EASY RIDER at the Beekman might his most audacious move of all: an attempt A legend has developed around the go through Christmas; BOB & CAROL & TED to have z become the first foreign-language political thriller about pre-junta Greece, a & ALICE had opened at the Cinema 1 and film since Jean Renoir' s GRAND ILLUSION in legend in some measure spawned by was such a smash it would certainly play 1938 to be nominated for the Oscar as Best Rugoff himself. It is not quite true that it through Christmas; for more than a year Picture of the Year. This nomination is was turned down by all of the majors, al- the Sutton had been promised for JOHN theoretically open to all comers but is al- though one vice-president of Universal is AND MARY at Christmas; Cinema 5's own most always given to English-language known to have walked out after a half MORE was doing only so-so at the Plaza but hour, explaining that his company couldn't possibly distribute a \"Communist film. \" What is certain , however, is that every other distributor, major and inde- pendent, rejected the film at th e price asked-which was , by the beginning of 1969, $300,000 for U.S. rights (the film had cost $800,000 to make). Rugoff at first was one of the nay-sayers . \"I flew over to Paris to see it in February. As is usually true, they weren't interested in an outright sale, but an advance against a percentage of the American gross. And I was incensed,\" he once recalled to me. \" Only one or two French films had ever gotten that kind of advance, and as it turned out neither had been worth the price. 1 flew back, but not before giving a nasty interview to a French trade paper on 22 MAY-JUNE 1975

movies. (The foreign-language Oscar is a Bros. in a typical \"hello-this-is-your-new- wanting a lowbudget movie filmed 6,000 separate competition .) For this purpose conglomerate-you' re-fired\" manner miles away to be one of the five finalists for Rugoff hired a veteran Hollywood press- which had old studio hands angry. It was a the top Oscar became, of all things, a vote agent, who had just been let go by Warner decision of genius, because it meant that of confidence in the Old Hollywood. The THE APPRENTICESHIP floated to a group headed by composer Greenwich Village audiences. (The right to OF DONALD RUGOFF Richard Rodgers, who still sits on Cinema turn down the distributor's advertising- 5's board of directors. Rodgers' loyalty was rare in a city where the distributor pays for crucial during William Forman's take-over all ad costs-is still included in every The earliest bibliographical reference to attempt. Rugoff cuntract.) But Cinema 5's first few Rugoff in The New York Tim es Index, I once The event that climaxed this period in years were enlivened only by the success discovered, had to do with his leadership of ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO; a whole rash of a Harvard student group called Vete- Rugoff's life-the opening of the Cinemas of other films proved disappointments, in- rans Against MacArthur in 1948, which is- I and II in 1962-was a watershed happen- cluding the black drama NOTHING BUT A sued a statement in his name that can be ing not only in the history of the Rugoff cir- MAN, Truffaut'sTHESOFTSKIN, anda Boult- seen as both logical to the man who would cuit but in the history of American exhibi- ing Brothers comedy, ROTTEN TO THE CORE, one day distribute z and a foretaste of later tion as well . Its influence on a troubled bus- which Cinema 5 had partially financed in a conflicts with employees: \" MacArthur's iness was immediate and sustained. Ac- pre-production deal. Rugoff later said of actions have proven him autocratic, self- ross the country the construction of twin, this era: \"I was buying what I liked, not willed and unwilling to share respon- triple, and on up to sextuple unit com- what I thought audiences would like. \" sibilities with others. These actions may plexes has permitted, in any given com- Audiences very much liked Karel Reisz' have a merit in wartime; they lead to dic- munity, multiple catering to the many swinging-London farce MORGAN! in 1966, small audiences which the motion picture and it began a winning streak of hits not tatorship in peace.\" audience has become. broken until Cinema 5's second bust He had majored in English with inten- period: that of 1973-74. In New York, the two theaters provided tion of becoming a writer, but accepted the the greatest spur up to that time to the Not until 1969, with MORE and PUTNEY call to enter the family business, founded gradual shift to the Upper East Side as the SWOPE, did Rugoff release a film with con- by his father and Herman Becker in 1921, prime area for the first-run exhibition of siderable X-rated content, and he once at a time when it, like all of exhibition, was anything other than action and sex pro- confirmed to me the prevailing industry threatened with the arrival of television. duct. Fifteen years ago, ten years ago, a By then, what was still called the Rugoff & major company secured its Broadway impression that the presence of Mrs. Rocke- Becker Theaters was disposing of the booking for a new film, and then worried feller in the Cinema 5 background pre- third-run houses in Brooklyn, Queens, about other locations. By the end of the vented him from even bidding for pictures and Nassau with which it had begun in Sixties, however, it was the other way like DEAR JOHN and I AM CURIOUS (YEL- order to concentrate on such areas as around-if, indeed, Broadway entered LOW) . As were Rugoff himself and his Manhattan's Upper East Side (the Sutton had opened during the war) and Green- wich Village (bohemians were already gaz- STAGE OF SIEGE, with Yves ing at the work oflocal artists in the lobbies Montand and Evangel ine Peterson , of the Art and the Eighth Street Don Rugoff's wife (they are now Playhouse). In 1952, a few months before separated). his father's death, the Beekman was opened, and it is still the most comfortable house in Manhattan: a 540-seater that can hold 800, the only theater going with rows spaced so far apart that you don't have to get up to let someone pass by. Five years later, a few months before the death of Herman Becker, came the opening of the Cinema on the \"Miracle Mile\" in Manhas- set, still Long Island' s leading art house and Rugoffs first personal project. consideration at all. In 1966 Mike Nichols' mother, Mrs. Rockefeller was bought out Thrust into the presidency of the circuit WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA ·WOOLF? pre- of the company as part of the process of at the brash age of thirty, Rugoff found miered on both sides of town; in 1971 his going public in 1969, and PUTNEy-with its himself in immediate conflict with older CARNAL KNOWLEDGE was at the Cinema ad campaign that went beyond vulgarity hands , and in 1960, a year after an old I-exclusively. Stanley Kubrick, whose into wit-was his cry of freedom . When (non-Rugof£) fleapit was turned into the DR. STRANGELOVE had played two New Wanda Hale gave the film no stars, called it spanking new Murray Hill on 34th St. , the York houses in 1964, nipped in the bud a \"the most offensive picture I've ever chain's second-in-command, a man suggestion that a Broadway theater join seen, \" and advised her Daily News readers who'd been a faithful employee since the with the Cinema I at Christmas 1971 for A that \"if intelligent people must see it, take war, quit. (As the person in charge ofbook- CLOCKWORK ORANGE. \"Too many seats, \" along your retch bags,\" he ebulliently in- ing the theaters, he has had, thus far, five he said, \"and it will start the picture off cluded her lines in the ads-ads that were successors.) The transition to youth was with the wrong tone .\" refused by papers in Chicago, Philadel- formalized soon afterwards when the help In a sense, distribution was a natural phia, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. Rugoff of Mrs. David Rockefeller was enlisted to step for Rugoff. For many years, he had declined to submit new designs, and as a buyout the heirs to one of the original been creating his own ads for the pictures result newspaper readers in those cities founders, and the Rugoff & Becker Thea- playing his houses, some ninety per cent saw ads with a four-fingered fist and blank ters became the Rugoff Theaters. Later, to of those submitted by the majors being ad- space where the black model had begin the distribution setup, a loan was judged unsuitable for classy East Side and appeared. FILM COMMENT 23

incredible ploy worked: z did become the foreign pix, and z initially was no excep- nurturing that would bring out its poten- first foreign-language film in thirty-one tion: \" At first they said it was a New York tial. \" years to be nominated as Best Picture of the picture,\" Rugoff once said. \"Then, when it Year, and although it lost the top statuette broke records in Los Angeles, they said, And Rugof£, loathe to criticize for print to MIDNIGHT COWBOY, Z managed to win well, it's a big-city picture. After Chicago, the companies he still serves as an two others: Best Foreign-Language Picture it was a big - city - and - east - of - the - exhibitor, nevertheless told me this story: and Best Editing. Mississippi picture.\" In time z was a smash \"Once a major had a whole group of low- north and south, east and west, in city and budget British pictures, and they were get- While waiting for that fateful night in village, in drive-in and hardtop. Final U.S. hng some great reviews but doing no busi- April, however, Rugoff was not idle. Hav- gross: $6.7 million, until LAST TANGO IN ness, thanks to lousy ads and a lack of in- ing thrown out the subtitles provided by PARIS a record for a French film, and ex- terest on the part of the distributor. So I the French, he now threw out their dub- ceeded in all foreign tongues only by went to the president of the company and 1 bing job as well: \"It was dreadful. A film TANGO and those other sexations of their said, 'Let us handle them .' And do you with so many different characters, and you eras, LA DOLCE VITA and I AM CURIOUS know what he said? He put his arm couldn't tell one voice from another. \" In (YELLOW). Some two-thirds of that $6.7 around my shoulder and he said, 'My son, preparation for an assault on the drive-ins million, says Rugoff, was earned by the these pictures are unimportant. We're only and other popular outlets, some six dubbed version which consumed so much using them to train talent for our big- months were given over to prepare a new time and money to prepare. (And z be- budget productions.' And then the chair- English version, a project that eventually came only the second foreign-la·nguage man of the board chimed-in: 'Well, what cost $260,000. It is difficult to describe to film-there have since been two or three are we doing wrong? Look at this ad: See, anyone not in the industry what spending more-to be sold to network television.) we took an ad in an underground news- that much to dub a movie means; most \"Every film,\" says z director Costa- paper.' films come through sounding so dreadful Gavras, \"has an individual personality because they take at most three weeks to and demands special handling. The major \"An ad-in one paper! 1couldn't believe dub and even now cost at most $40,000. Z, companies don' t seem to know or care it! We'd discovered the underground press about that, and would sooner discard a years before.\" it could be said, was the CLEOPATRA of problem picture than give it the kind of dubbing jobs. • Exhibitors in the sticks normally nix What he discovered in a more general sense, it seems to me, was that the \"Levine RUGOFF ON HIS monly assumed that the audience for Hol- lywood only discovered later. Drugs can SIXTIES FLOPS lywood movies is ruled by fads and fash- form an important sub-element, as in ions while that for foreign films is 'selec- TRASH, but not the whole picture. Besides, All distributors have more flops than tive' and always responds to 'quality.' MORE had been made in Europe and the hits, the common wisdom in the film busi- Anyone in the business knows that this dialogue was two years out of date by the ness being that one hit pays for three fail- simply isn't true. Four Japanese costume time it came here. The kids laughed at it.\" ures and one smash for five. But Rugoff's dramas were big hits in the middle Fifties, flops of the Sixties were unusual. Not and then for years after that you couldn't ELDRIDGE CLEAVER (1970)-\"1 pulled a every critic liked every film, but each was switch. Rather than putting on my usual well-reviewed on the whole, and so their give a Japanese picture away. The Czech big campaign, 1opened this at the Cinema fates reveal interesting factors in the edu- phenomenon was even shorter-one II with no ads until opening day and no cated audience's acceptance or rejection of year, 1967, when SOl1le of my competitors advance press screenings. I really thought a film . Here, from my notes, are his con- had THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET, THE LOVES _ that people would be so interested in this versational analyses of his failures during OF A BLONDE , and CLOSELY WATCHED topic that they'd run to see a picture with a that period. TRAINS, all of which did over $1 million. title like that. 1was wrong, although when Then the bottom fell out. The man who 1 reduced prices to a dollar the number of NOTHING BUT AMAN (1964)-\" A film to- had released TRAINS went broke in '68 with admissions did go up . There are lots of tally about blacks made by white liberals, five Czech movies, some of which, like THE political documentaries made, but almost and you can see it in every frame . This FIFTH HORSEMAN IS FEAR and A REPORT ON all of them are not very commercial. Yet 1 didn't really become clear to me until pic- THE PARTY AND THE GUESTS, got terrific re- feel that people today are interested in real- tures like SHAFT and SWEET SWEETBACK'S views . So did THE FIREMEN'SBALL, the only ity. There has to be a way to make a sensa- BAADASSSS SONG, directed by blacks, came one I had, but the public had lost all in- tional picture about Attica!\" (ELDRIDGE along recently . PuTNEY SWOPE is somehow terest in the Czech cinema.\" CLEAVER was quietly returned to its pro- different, a film that uses blacks to com- ducer after an enterprising reporter, Addi- ment on white society, and popular largely (VERY HAPPY) ALEXANDER (1969)- \" A son Verrill, revealed in Variety that some with whites. People have been suggesting really warm and wonderful picture about a weeks after acquiring the picture Rugoff that I release PUTNEY for the SHAFT audi- middle aged Frenchman who liked to loaf. had agreed-possibly, it was suggested, at ence, but I don't think it would work. At The reviews were great, and everyone gunpoint-to give a percentage of any the end of PUTNEY the blacks are running who saw it loved it. So why then did it f~il? profits to the Black Panthers. Did a Panther the ad agency they've taken over exactly as Because of what 1call the What's-It-About delegation march unannounced into his the whites did, and that's not the kind of Factor. You go to a party. Someone says, 'I office? Was there a phone conversation thing blacks want to hear nowadays. I saw a great picture last night, ALEXANDER.' With Huey Newton during which Rugoff don't blame them.\" said, \"Look, if you want to make me a re- 'Good, I'll go and see it. What's it about?' volutionary, I'll have to make you a film ACCIDENT (1967)-\"Frankly I was sur- 'A middle-aged man who doesn' t go to distributor\"? Rugoff wouldn't tell me.) prised when THE GO-BETWEEN did as well work.' 'Ugh-I don' t want to see that.' . GIMME SHELTER (197.Q)-\"Not techni-· in some out-of-town places as it did in Sometimes ads can help you overcome a New York, but very happy for Joe Losey. bad What's~lt-About Factor, as with THE cally a flop. It grossed $1.5 million and we New York is a funny market. There are TWO OF US. But usually no amount of re- made a slight profit, but in terms of in- one-city pictures, and all of Losey' s more views, no amount of excellent word-of- vestment and expectation clearly a disap- serious films before GO-BETWEEN, includ- mouth can get you out of that kind of situa- pointment. The kids didn't like the true ing ACCIDENT, were perfect examples of tion .\" image of themselves. They wanted to be- them.\" lieve Woodstock, but they didn't want to MORE (1969)-\"1 was the first to find out THE FIREMEN'S BALL (1968)-\"It is com- that drugs as the main subject of a movie believe Altamont.\" made for poor boxoffice, something Hol- 24 MAY-JUNE 1975

formula\" -which its originator had used and-ink design by Saul Bass (the film ' s than anyone else in town but that they can mostly on beefcake epics and Italian sex third ad campaign following its opening) be fired for as much as a blown-out light- comedies-could be applied to more was festooned throughout the city's sub- bulb. In similar fashion he will not tolerate sophisticated films as well. A major com- way system and Rugoff eventually re- a single subtitle typo; and, well before z, pany usually spends on distribution costs couped his hefty costs on a movie which such critics as Bosley Crow ther and Archer an amount of money which will make a had seemed a lost cause a week after its Winsten were saying that the dubbing of picture profitable if it earns two and a half premiere . But not even Saul Bass could such films as ELVIRA MADIGAN was the best times what it cost to make. Joe Levine, on save Milos Forman's Czech comedy THE they'd ever seen. For the Rolling Stones the other hand, established his initial repu- FIREMEN'S BALL the following year, despite concert film, GIMME SHELTER, theaters in tation as a showman some fifteen years ads atop every bus, and despite-a typi- New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere ago with HERCULES, the American rights to cally impulsive and expensive Rugoff were rewired for four-track stereophonic which had cost only $100,000 but which he gesture-the purchase of the short subject sound, in each case to the tune of at least ballyhooed to the tune of $1 .5 million (it ORATORIO FOR PRAGUE for an unheard-of $10,000. \"Don' s real uniqueness, \" says a made almost $6 million) . Rugoff has never $50,000 after The New York Tim es' Renata colleague, \"is a combination of showman- gone quite that far. But in the Sixties he Adler said that feature and short together, ship and taste. The two used to be thought rarely launched a new movie in New York as seen at the New York Fnm Festival, antithetical. But Don's ballyhoo is ballyhoo for less than $100,000, and they were the made for \" the best show in town. \" with a Harvard education.\" kind of films normally launched at a quar- As a matter of course, everyone availa- • ter of that. Full-page ads in daily news- ble is corralled to tout a new release . When As far as is known, Rugoff has no paper were de rigeur, and to complement ELVIRA MADIGAN had its first engagements uI).ique way to find new pictures, no inside them there was always some combination out of town, its creators were all busy on track. He goes to Europe about five times a of subway posting, television commer- new projects, so the mountain came to year to scout new films, and his assistants cials, radio \"spots,\" wild posting, college Mohammed: three critics from Boston and also make many Atlantic crossings. ELVIRA and/or underground press advertising. He two from Chicago went on a whirlwind MADIGAN was seen at Cannes, and as with followed suit out of town. junket, flying to Stockholm on a Thursday, z, he hesitated before deciding to take it Nothing used to more gladden my heart interviewing director and stars on Friday on. Other films to undergo a yes-no-yes- more than watching a Rugoff effort to save and Saturday, returning to the U .S. on no Rugoff treatment (sometimes lasting Sunday. \"And THE ENDLESS SUMMER was months) were THE FIREMEN'S BALL, GIMME not just a matter of promoting that fabu- SHELTER, and SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE . lous poster. We sent Bruce Brown to every Producers submit at least twenty films a city; he knew how to work them from his month to his ultra-modern, pop-art- days on the lecture circuit, and the press decorated Madison Avenue office in New coverage was fantastic .\" (In Canada, a York; evenings and weekends are taken up market considered similar to the U.S., the with this activity-as well as with a course surfing film was released by a major which he is teaching this semester on film dis- chose not to utilize Brown's promotion tribution at Manhattan's The New skills, and flopped .) School-but then, as one of his assistants But it is not only the quantity of his ad- says, \"Time means nothing to 'Charles vertising and promotion which awes the Foster'Rugoff.\" __ :;( industry, but also its quality . By common The reference, of course, is to CITIZEN ~ consent, he is conceded to have the best KANE, and the comparison, if limited, is \"\" visual sense around, and several of his ad- useful. Like Kane, Rugoff inherited i1) vertising designs, created with the help of wealth, achieved success young from a his agency-the DienerlHauser/Greenthal family base, and seems to have no idea of z subsidiary of Ted Bates & Co.-have be- what it's like to work for someone else. A Rugoff flop: Milos Forman' sTHE FIREMEN ' S BALL. come classics, including the delicate line Like Kane, he often gets so involved in his drawing of two faces for ELVIRA MADIGAN, work that he ignores the human aspects of the career of a movie which had opened to barechested Joe Dallesandro for TRASH, those under him. Most of all, perhaps, disastrous boxoffice despite superb re- and the clenched fist, with black model there is his Kane-like predilection for the views and seemingly good word of mouth. substituting for upraised middle finger, for large gesture. An employee leaving under Ah, therein lies a Rugoff specialty! Partly PUTNEY SWOPE. strained circumstances will be presented because of his own immense ego, partly (\"The green-eyed monster in the with a $5,000 check. Another, leaving after because of what he describes as a com- HELLSTROM CHRONICLE ads was actually seventeen years only in order to obtain mitment to creators, he never gives up on a created by the producer, David Wolper,\" some peace and quiet for the rest of his life, film until everything conceivable has been Rugoff once told me. \"But I didn't change was offered, as inducement to stay on, part mustered in an effort to bring it to public the campaign. That figure didn't look like of an island in the West Indies which attention and start the cocktail party chat- an insect; it looked like something from Rugoff was thinking of purchasing in ter flowing: \"No director can ever say of outer space . And I told my publicity partnership with others. (For weeks after- me, as they often do of the majors, that I people: 'No stills of bugs! Release no stills ward, an expansive shout of \"I will give threw their picture away or didn't have of bugs!' This was to be sold as a head film, you my island!\" was enough to break up faith in it. I don't buy it unless I have faith not an insect documentary.\") almost any gathering of New York film in it. To close a picture which has gotten That same \"class\" has always been ob- people.) Since the showing of WR at the good notices after a few bad days at the servable at the theaters, each of which has New York Film Festival coincided with the boxoffice seems to me the height of be- a distinct atmosphere (rather than the ap- birthday of its director, Dusan Makavejev, trayaL\" pearance of coming from the latest Ameri- Rugoff provided a monstrous cake, color- In this regard, industry people re- can Seating assembly line) and all of which coded to be cut into a thousand pieces for member with greatest astonisment the feature witty three-dimensional \"fronts\" each and every viewer at the festival that campaign for Claude Berri's THE TWO OF for each film (rather than standard post- night. Once, walking past a department us, a 1967 story of wartime France which ers): \"We try to be the Bonwit's of exhibi- store, someone whom Rugoff wanted to may not become a film classic but whose tion.\" It is common knowledge that Rugoff thank expressed casual admiration for career ranks as a business classic. A pen- pays the managers of his theaters more something in the window; not knowing FILM COMMENT 25

just what was being referred to, Rugoff or- him Rugoff went through empleyees like a me of being in Rugoff's office one day and dered the window's entire contents- sinus sufferer goes through tissue paper. watching in disbelief as he called Diener/ One year there were personal secretaries Hauser to complain that the bottom bor- clothes, furnishings, the lot. variously estimated from a dozen (Rugof£) derline in a Village Voice ad was a quarter of If he has not studied CITIZEN KANE, he to thirty (a disgruntled employee). In one an inch too low. two-year period the leavetakings in- has certainly noted the style of film show- cluded, at the top levels of a staff that was But all of that only holds true nowadays men of the Selznick-Zanuck school, and never over fifty, three treasurers, two chief for sub-executive levels. If constant com- carefully orchestrates his effects. Such di- bookers, three advertising directors, three plaints from financial advisers weren't rectors as Costa-Gavras and Barbet executive assistants, four film salesmen. enough, the ever-present threat from Wil- Schroeder have been left waiting an hour liam Forman is surely sufficient to convince or more outside his office despite Cinema 5 is the showcase account at Rugoff that a company traded on the scheduled appointments. Bo Widerberg DieneriHauser, and the relationship has American Stock Exchange is hardly being was once awakened at five a.m., Swedish lasted for twenty-five years, but the only responsible to its investors when it lacks time, to be confronted with a long-distance answers to be gotten from sources there as \"management depth.\" There were times, question on the Mozart music in ELVIRA to how many account executives Rugoff and not so very long ago, when Cinema 5 MADIGAN. Bryan Forbes was given five mi- has gone through range from \"countless\" had no officer save Rugoff-no vice- nutes to reject or accept Rugoff'S terms on to \"all we've ever had. \" The demand for president, no secretary, no treasurer-no LONG AGO, TOMORROW. But, also like the aesthetic perfection which wins awards for one to prevent Wall St. panic were Rugoff showmen of old, he can take it as well as the agency is always present; an agent told to suddenly die. That's all changed now; dish it out, and respects this kind of gall both vice-president Henry Guettel from directors. Far from having lost a deal, RUGOFF AND (Richard Rodgers' son-in-law) and trea- Robert Downey was halfway home when surer James Hudsons have managed to he barred Rugoff, ten minutes late, from HIS INFLUENCE survive several years. the first screening for potential distributors of the completed PUTNEY SWOPE. It's not only the money that his films Which doesn' t mean that, as long as earn that make Rugoff a figure of fa scina- Rugoff is alive and well, these officers or Almost everyone who has worked for tion in the industry. There's also the fact any other employees are much more than Rugoff uses a phrase like \" twenty-four that his releases have proven time and executive lackeys. Sometimes Rugoff tries hours a day, seven da ys a week\" to de- again harbingers of the future . What suc- to assume the stance of the disinterested scribe the experience; that's probably an ceeds for him in the limited \"sophisti- corporate man in what one imagines he exaggeration, but not an excessive one. By cated\" market succeeds for the majors in thinks the approved Harvard Business any standards which can be applied he is a the wider \"commercial\" market a few School manner, and employs the first per- \"workaholic,\" and there is no family or years later. son plural. \"We learned something from sentimental event which he will not pass handling that film ,\" he will say, or \"We up when the pressure is on; two years ago, Thus, his 1963 miscegenation hit ONE give a damn about our pictures.\" Coming when his mother died, he came straight POTATO , TWO POTATO led , in 1965, to from him, the \"we\" has as much bearing to from the funeral to the office, rolled up his MGM's A PATCH OF BLUE and, two years reality as it did coming from de Gaulle, and sleeves, and put in an afternoon of work. after that, to Columbia's GUESS WHO'S COM- there is really nothing to challenge Variety's He expects no less from employees, and in ING TO DINNER. ELVIRA MADIGAN cued the assessment of Cinema 5 as an exclave of the line of duty they have been asked to return to romantic tragedy which resulted \"one-man rule .\" B-school teachings have sacrifice honeymoons, their children's in blockbusters like ROMEO AND JULIET, little place in a company where there is no birthday parties, hospital visits to new- RYAN'S DAUGHTER, and LOVE STORY. The distinction between policy and operations, born sons and daughters, theater tickets unexpected returns for the all-black PUT- and little between management and staff. scalped at $100 the pair, and that heavy NEY SWOPE meant that films like COTTON Everyone at Cinema 5 is, more or less, an date with the girl of their dreams . \"If COMES TO HARLEM and SHAFT could be \"assistant\" to the top man. you're married he expects a little less, but if made, leading to a whole new genre in the you're single, forget it!,\" says one toiler. film biz. And, as Pauline Kael pointed out Those are the conditions that obtain, at the time, THE FRENCH CONNECTION was and (despite occasional promises of and Rugoff was in Los Angeles during the really a depoliticized and Americanized z. experiments with \"a utonomy\" for de- minor earthquake of 1971, and when, that partment heads) have obtained for almost day, he was more than an hour late for a THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS was twenty years. Decisions that, at rival con- morning appointment, those waiting one of three European films credited with cerns, are considered too small to' need began to fear for his safety. \" Oh, that's all bringing about Hollywood's present presidential imprimatur require Rugoff's right,\" he said when he finally arrived, vogue for Thirties period realism-but it approval at Cinema 5, and employees \"the noise got me up an hour early and I made more money in the U.S. than did complain of being paralyzed for three or was able to get in some more work.\" That THE CONFORMIST or THE DAMNED. As for four days awaiting an okay on some minor kind of mockery of himself is rare, how- SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE, the only thing matter and then having to work through ever, and is not tolerated when it is di- that can be said at this point is that every nights and weekends in order to catch up. rected at him by employees, most of whom exhibitor I know thinks that A WOMAN There are those willing to accept these complain even years afterward that their UNDER THE INFLUENCE-shot at the same conditions, others whose devotion equals veracity was constantly questioned and time but released a few months later- Rugoff's own, and very few who are really that they felt \"vampirized\" and \"emascu- would never have become a hit without granted some autonomy; consequently it is lated.\" Some leave no question but that it the word-of-mouth characterization of it as possible to find some people whose tenure has crossed their minds to arrange the kind being \"like\" the Bergman drama. As for at Cinema 5 has been relatively long. But of \"accident\" which befell Yves Montand the future, who knows? Hollywood they make for a small number. in z, though most would probably settle adapts to any trend, and maybe well see for standing in for Erland Josephson to Robert Redford and Ellen Burstyn shout- But at least that top man's devotion has Rugoff's Liv Ullmann in the divorce ing at each other for three close-up hours been demonstrated in extremis; during that before the year is through. frightful year 1973, when Cinema 5 lost agreement-signing episode in SCENES $1.8 million, Rugoff suspended his $100,000-a-year salaryJor several months. FROM A MARRIAGE. The contract calling for that emolument is It is frequently impossible to determine one of the most airtight in the industry, however, specifying that he can be fired whether someone quit or was fired from Cinema 5 because the disillusionment is often mutual, but in the days when I knew 26 MAY-JUNE 1975

Holly Woodlawn in the GONE WITH THE WIND of underground movies, Paul Bernie Hamilton and Barbara Barrie in Cinema V's first hit film , Larry Peerce's Morrissey's TRASH . ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO. only for \"malfeasance, gross negligence, get it. If I'm having trouble subtitling a strength of the business in the U.S . done or illness, in certain cases.\" And why not? Tunisian movie, he'll find some professor by CRIES AND WHISPERS), Corman had to When things are good at the company they of Arabic at Columbia and get him to me pass on the picture because Bergman are very good indeed, and in 1970, the year that afternoon.\" wouldn't hear of any further cutting. But of PUTNEY SWOPE and z, stockholders were there's a point that Corman missed, which awarded a special dividend of thirty And that's the strangest anomaly in the is that Rugoff-the man often described as cents-this from a company which, on whole Rugoff story: his hands-off policy not so much a distributor but the distribu- going public two years before, said it \" does towards creative people. During the six tion extension of the director-first bought not have any present plans to pay any cash months that she was dubbing z, Gillmor SCENES FROM MARRIAGE and only later dividends in the forseeable future.\" heard from Rugoff \" maybe once.\" How- ard Smith reports that Rugoff didn't even suggested cutting, perfectly willing to dis- • ask to see daily rushes on MARJOE. Even tribute the picture at its four-hour and though hE: has sometimes had the right, ten-minute length should Bergman prove The late Noelle Gillmor, who supervised Rugoff has never cut or altered a film with- intransigeant. those much-praised dubbing jobs (and out the approval of the director-though who got, as per personal fee, $100,000 of considerable persuasion and pressure has Leave it to eighty-nine-year-old Arthur the $260,000 spent on z), thought ofRugoff sometimes been applied when he thought Mayer, the elder statesman of the film in- as \"a businessman with an artistic temper- there should be changes. dustry (and owner of a part interest in ament. I've been around people like that Manhattan's Gramercy Theatre, a Rugoff my whole life . But there other people, The most recent example is also the most house), to give the balanced view. \"Like these salesmen! They're the type that not extreme: it was Rugoff who suggested that many Americans, he is more than domi- only can' t understand someone like SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE go from its origi- nated by business-he is obsessed ,\" Don-they can never understand the nit- nal250-minute export length to its current Mayer once told me . \" As a result, he picking demands of anyone even officially 168 minutes, but Bergman who actually doesn't push employees up, he pulls them 'creative,' like a director. Don makes me, at made the cuts. I knew that Rugoff was down. He wants to do everything.\" But least, feel that a film is important-to him, back in business when, recently, I read an then Mayer paused, finally concluding: to you, and to the history of cinema. He'll angry interview with Roger Corman, who \"I've seen them come and go, but I've go to any lengths to get something right. If complained that when Bergman gave never seen anyone to equal Don for en- I need a few more weeks, another $5,000, I Corman first crack at SCENES (on the thusiasm or courage.\" ~ ;; Iu '«\" t'z\"J iii B; Z I Q A Rugoff hit: Robert Downey's PUTNEY SWOPE. Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann in SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. FILM COMMENT 27

One of the most stimulating and valu- NOTES ON 'SILK STOCKINGS' able developments in recent film criticism has been the concern with ideology- the cave-paintings, were indisputably rep- was basically an innocuous ideological pro- particularly with the ideological content of resentational. ject. Hollywood films, with the notion that the One can distinguish three main phases The classic example of this critical posi- films are \" determined\" (or, at the very in the development of ideological aware- tion is the celebrated \"reading\" of John least, affected) at all levels by an ideology ness and its effect on criticism (though the Ford's YOUNG MR. LINCOLN by the editors (definable roughly as \"bourgeois three are not cleanly consecutive, and all of Cahiers du Cinema (available in an Eng- Capitalist, \" but with specific inflections currently co-exist) . First, there is the total lish translation in the issue ofScreen for Au- and emphases peculiar to America) so lack of awareness that simply takes the Hol- tumn 1972); no one seriously interested in deeply entrenched as to be largely taken lywood film, its forms and conventions, at the development of a critical approach to for granted, hence unnoticed and unchal- face value, that is to say shares its ideologi- Hollywood can afford to ignore it. One lenged, by filmmakers and audiences cal assumptions . Specific films can of senses, lurking somewhere behind this ar- alike. course be criticized adversely from this ticle (and necessarily suppressed), the position, but only on their own terms. For quandary of critics who, before the events As a preliminary, it is important to note example, the critic may object to an \"im- of May 1968, had developed certain very certain problems that arise from the cur- plausible\" happy ending, without grasp- strong critical allegiances-those as- rent usage of the term \"ideological.\" First, ing that plausibility is itself an ideologically sociated with the old Cahiers champion- one is often in some doubt as to its precise determined convention. ship of the Hollywood cinema-and were force-is the term descriptive or deroga- then confronted with the fact that the ob- tory? Some \"advanced\" criticism tends to Second, there is what might be s:alled jects of their enthusiasm were the products capitalize on this uncertainty, concealing a the naive Marxist position of blanket of a system they felt compelled to regard as charge of condemnation beneath an ap- rejection-a position discredited by the politically discredited. They had the choice pearance of scientific description. more sophisticated developments in re- of rejecting those products or finding devi- cent Marxist criticism, though still occa- ous ways of arguing for their acceptability. Second, the notion of a national (or gen- sionally encountered. This position sees This would explain, for example, how it erally operative) ideology, while indis- the Hollywood cinema as simply the means was possible for the pre-1968 Cahiers pensable, itself raises problems which are whereby American Capitalist ideology Pantheon to be taken over more or less in- not always clearly recognized. As soon as imposes and perpetuates itself, and finds tact and (in evaluative, as opposed to in- one confronts it with particular artists and little more to do beyond crudely demon- terpretative, terms) unquestioned. particular works, one comes to realize that strating ideological determination. every individual has his own personal Of these positions, the first and third ideology characterized by its own specific The third phase is enormously more seem to me capable of producing useful inflections and emphases. At times, the complex and sophisticated, taking many and illuminating insights (obviously, of notion of a general ideology comes to re- different forms, and interwoven with the very different kinds) into Hollywood films; semble the \"structure\" (in effect, a gro- current interests in semiotics and struc- yet neither completely satisfies me. With- tesque parody) that Peter Wollen draws turalism. It is accordingly very much hard- out feeling that I can solve all the problems from the films of Howard Hawks in Signs er to sum up succinctly; the work ofCahiers that arise, I want-through an examina- and Meaning in the Cinema . Each individual du Cinema and Screen in recent years tion of a representative Hollywood film- film relates to the structure; none corres- suggests the complexities involved. The to suggest at least an approach to them. ponds to it; and there is a consequent premise is that many Hollywood films danger that the particularities of local reali- (they turn out, in the event, to be by and • zation in which (and only in which) the life large those already established as signifi- of a work of art is manifest will be blotted cant by way of more traditional critical pro- SILK STOCKINGS (Rouben Mamoulian's out in favor of a monstrous parody- cedures) are valuable by virtue of the musical version of NINOTCHKA) offers itself abstraction. ideological tensions and contradictions as a convenient example precisely because they contain. (Or fail to contain-there is a its ideological project appears so clear, in- Third, the question of the possibility of tendency to value films for what traditional deed blatant. I am also drawn to it because distinguishing between ideology and fun- criticism would regard, if it perceived it strikes me as a sadly underestimated, un- damental human drives needs to be very them, as failures of realization.) justly denigrated film-Tom Milne's en- carefully examined. Marxist criticism often thusiastic and eloquent defense of it in his seems to suggest that everything is ideolog- The underlying assumption (if one may Cinema One book on Mamoulian seems to ically determined-yet it also talks about speak of a single assumption underlying be unique-and because I am not at all \"liberation. \" Presumably, there is some- so wide a range of criticism) seems again familiar with Mamoulian's work, so am thing to be liberated which isn't merely somewhat ambiguous. At times it appears unlikely to be diverted into auteurist side- ideological; hence there is a tacit assump- to be that an ideology as monstrous as the tracks. tion that fundamental (universal) drives \"bourgeois-Capitalist\" must inevitably ex- exist. Yet much current film criticism seems pose its own internal rifts and contradic- When SILK STOCKINGS first appeared, the dedicated perversely to denying the most tions, which would imply that these rifts response (in England at least; and I would fundamental drive of all, on which all sig- could be perceived and analyzed in any be surprised to learn that things were nificant art (and all significant life) de- bourgeois-Capitalism work, irrespective of much different on the other side of the At- pends: the phenomenon of human creativ- quality . At other times, it appears to be that lantic) was markedly and almost unanim- ity. It seems to me at times that Marxist the rifts only become manifest when some ously hostile. The overt objection to the critics are bent on repressing precisely strong, defined presence (such as that of film (common in the case of re-makes) was those qualities they should be trying to lib- an individual \"author,\" bringing with him generally that it vulgarized a nostalgically erate, if \"liberation\" means anything. his own set of \"codes\") intervenes in what venerated original. NINOTCHKA had Garbo and the Lubitsch touch; SILK STOCKINGS One also encounters a blanket assump- tion that everything that isn't demonstra- bly Marxist is \"bourgeois-Capitalist.\" Rep- resentational art, for example, is often treated as the product of bourgeois ideol- ogy, the means whereby bourgeois society reassures itself as to the \"reality\" of its world. Yet the earliest known works of art, 28 MAY-JUNE 1975

by Robin Wood make the satire double-edged or ambigu- ous. An example is the absurdly dressed- had Cyd Charisse and a series of deliber- cealed, or slurred over, or at least under- up poodle in the restaurant which ately vulgar musical numbers. Charisse objects to as \"useless\" and- Fred stated. Astaire defends as \"amusing.\" The conno- It is true that Charisse's performances- tations of poodles in American movies are, except when she is dancing- No one will wish to claim for SILK STOCK- after all, primarily farcical-satirical; here seldom transcend the barely adequate. the dog-de-animalized, prettified, con- Wisely, she was not asked to reproduce INGS that degree of deliberateness or of strained-inevitably stands for the sillier Garbo's famous laughing scene; but excesses of Capitalist society. whenever she is given one of the familiar political awareness, yet the film works on a Garbo lines (\"The arrangement of your fea- 2. Less explicitly, but even more per- tures is not entirely repulsive\"), the effect is level of sophistication that warns one not vasively, the film is concerned with the somewhat jarring on those for whom the ideological role of woman in Capitalist ghost of Garbo's delivery lingers in the to dismiss its vulgarities as merely mind- society-with woman-as-object, the mere backgroWld. embodiment of male wish-fulfillment. As less . The concept of\" good taste\" so fa- a Communist, and with the sexually neut- I don't think, however, that the hostility ral title of Comrade, Charisse poses a vored by liberal critics often amoWlts to lit- threat to male supremacy; she must there- to SILK STOCKINGS is explainable in such fore learn in the course of the film to be a simple terms. It is not true, for instance, tle more than the concealment or disguis- \"real woman,\" and learn that that is what that its satire on Communism is cruder she really wants to be. The ideological pro- than NINOTCHKA'S; it is rather a matter of ing of ideological issues, so that the spec- ject here is expressed most blatantly in her altered circumstances. In 1939, Com- song to Astaire, \"Without Love,\" SWlg lit- munism could still be a subject for\"daring\" tator isn't forced into awareness of their but flippant bad-taste humor (Billy Wilder erally looking up to him as she lies on the was, after all, one of the authors of implications. • floor. The song is concerned with woman's NINOTCHKA'S script). By 1957, irrespective function as \"a pleasure,\" and culminates in of one's political stance and of one's at- I discern in SILK STOCKINGS four main titude to McCarthyism, it was no longer a the lines: \"For a woman to a man is just a subject for flippancy, and it is doubtful ideological impulses, linked yet partly whether even the Lubitsch touch could womanlBut a man to a woman is her life.\" have charmed away the feeling of rampant separable, listed in descending order of The richness of the film arises partly bad taste. Certainly, NINOTCHKA survives because of Garbo, Lubitsch, and Wilderl explicitness or obviousness: from the way in which the notion of Brackett. But King Vidor's COMRADE x woman-as-object is satirized in the overtly (1940), which was also very highly re- 1. The film's surface project, which could vulgar musical numbers involving Janis garded when it came out, is now barely Paige, particularly \"Satin and Silk,\" which watchable; its anti-CommWlist satire, once be summed up as \"You're better off under at once enacts and parodies the idea that a chic, now seems merely infantile . The fault woman's function is to be \"a pleasure\" for of SILK STOCKINGS was not so much than it Capitalism .\" The assumption is that all the male . The ideolOgical project here, in coarsened the satire of NINOTCHKA as that fact, is somewhat called into question by it reproduced it too faithfully. Communists would really rather live in the film's clear preference for Charisse as Critics were also antagonized, one Capitalist societies if they could, or if they guesses, because Capitalist ideology is presented so blatantly in SILK STOCKINGS; knew about all the benefits from experi- the offense lies in making manifest what \"good taste\" would conceal. In Godard's ence. The benefits are presented primarily BRITISH SOUNDS, the speech by the ultra- right-wing, National Front- type young in the form of material possessions, with a man derives its power to offend not from its being presented as representative or strong emphasis on luxury goods-per- typical in the usual sense, but precisely from its naked exposure of monstrous im- fume, champagne-the familiar Holly- plications one would expect to be con- wood emblems of romance, success, and wealth. With this goes the upholding of beauty (Paris at night) against utility. Even on this simple, overt level, the film period- ically produces elements or emblems that Capitalism (Fred Astaire) meets ---- Communism (Cyd Charisse) in SILK STOCKINGS. ALL PHOTOS: MOMA/ FILM STILLS

against Paige-the grounds for the prefer- ciiticism and film teaching today is con- tally providing an archetypal Entertain- ence being both the generic definition of cerned, quite rightly, with opposing the ef- ment number. At the same time, the grace the Paige role as comic support and its fective operation of the Entertainment and freedom of physical movement (both thematic definition as parody of the concept as a \"bourgeois-Capitalist\" of dancer and camera) throughout the se- woman-object image. strategy; to reveal Entertainment as, fre- quence movingly express the casting off of quently, disguised art. 1am aware, specifi- repressive constraints. One notes also the weight that is al- cally, that there is far more to be said about lowed Charisse's protest against the THE BAND WAGON-that its ideological Further, this expression of freedom ludicrous musical film Astaire is produc- anti-intellectualism is but one element through dance, while ambiguously linked ing, a moment which draws together a which is countered and qualified by other to \"Capitalism\" as opposed to \"Com- number of the ideological-thematic aspects of the film, for example the pres- munism\" (the quotation marks indicate threads of the film. The musical itself ence of Vincente Minnelli as director.) these as concepts presented in the film parodies the mindless vulgarity and silli- rather than as realities existing outside it), ness of standard Capitalist popular enter- In SILK STOCKINGS the validation of En- is shown later not to be simply dependent tainment. In it, Paige plays the Empress tertainment is also partly undermined. A on it. The other big number from which Josephine (with \"titillating thighs\"), her leading plot-thread is the conversion of the Astaire is absent (\"The Red Blues\") is the number reinforcing the woman-object Russian composer's music (which is pre- film's supreme expression of vitality parody. The score is a debased version of sented, rather awkwardly, as combining through physical movement. It uses the music of the Soviet composer whose the highbrow with the Communist- \"Capitalist\" popular music, and retains (if defection provided the starting-point for utilitarian) into the score for an American somewhat ambiguously) the characteristic the action. Charisse's protest (which we musical; and one encounters the assump- anti-intellectualism of the musical, oppos- are allowed to take unexpectedly serious- tion that Borodin and Tchaikovsky were ing the dance to the static delivery of politi- ly) is provoked partly by her recognition of important composers because they cal utterances during the two intrusions of the way Astaire has manipulated her and supplied melodies for popular American the orthodox Communist, when all ignored her own feelings and commit- songs. On the other hand, the tendency of movement abruptly freezes. (The effect ments. EntertainmeI{t to trivialize and vulgarize is can be read as anti-intellectual or simply as quite explicitly commented upon by the anti-repressive .) Yet the dance is naturally 3. The validation of \"entertainment\" as hilarious \"Josephine\" number; by the dominated by the woman (Charisse), against \"art.\" \"Entertainment\"-as some- composer's outrage (which is treated as not dressed in plain clothes and quite devoid thing to be passively absorbed rather than at all unreasonable, and left unresolved of the emblems of \"Capitalism.\" Indeed, actively participated in, dedicated to the and unmollified); and by the seriousness of freed from \"Capitalist\" trappings, she ap- discouragement of awareness-is a cen- Charisse's protest. One regrets that the pears arguably more beautiful and more tral \"bourgeois-Capitalist\" concept and ending of the film fails to find a satisfactory vital and unconstrained than in her earlier one inherent in the Hollywood musical as way of resolving these ideological solo number. a genre, surfacing in the case of individual tensions- it prefers to forget them. films as an explicit concern. The overt, if One might argue (keeping in view the often only superficial, anti-intellectualism 4. The opposition between an inhibiting, opposed parodies of \"Capitalism\" and of a number of Hollywood musicals- depersonalizing system and freedom, \"Communism\") that the film implicitly including some distinguished ones, such self-expression, spontaneity. Dance is cru- proposes a third ideology, necessarily as FUNNY FACE and THE BAND WAGON-is cial here, and provides the vindication of rather vaguely defined, but based on val- obvious (and is one of the reasons why 1 transforming NINOTCHKA into a musical, ues of freedom, spontaneity, movement, have always had difficulties with this par- dancing becoming not mere decoration but which is set against both the ideologies ticular genre). Art, both classical and a leading thematic motif. Charisse's libera- that are defined explicitly . Some attempt is avant-garde (with Jack Buchanan's pro- tion comes when Astaire lures her into made to balance the two discredited duction of Oedipus Rex in THE BAND WAGON dancing. (Her learning to dance corre- ideologies: the degenerate commercialism nicely combining the two), is belittled and sponds to the moment at the end of ALPHA- of the Josephine musical against the exploi- ridiculed because it is potentially disturb- VILLE when Anna Karina learns to say 'I tation of Russian ballet and Russian films ing and subversive and because it de- love you.\") The implicit theme of dance- as cultural propaganda. But one must note mands active concentration. Entertain- as-liberation, however, recurs throughout that the two \"false\" ideologies are not- ment gives people what they \"really the film, starting from the splendid \"We could not be-presented on equal terms. want\" -the kind of temporary escape and Can't Go Back to Moscow\" number. Cru- We are encouraged to laugh unambigu- distraction that prevents their dissatisfac- cially, the emphasis in the mise-en-scene is ouslyat \"Communism,\" while our attitude tions from reaching articulation. on individual movement, in which even to \"Capitalism,\" even at points of the most non-dancers like Peter Lorre find some extreme satire (the Janis Paige numbers), is This particular ideological project is physical means of expression. partly one of complicity. Similarly, the neatly epitomized in the \"That's Enter- third ideology is decisively and explicitly tainment\" number in THE BAND WAGON, • opposed in the film to \"Communism\" but which explicitly reduces all cultural ambiguously related to \"Capitalism.\" achievements indiscriminately to the same A statement at this point from my own level of innocuousness. (Cyd Charisse's personal ideology: 1 find the first three of ballet-dancing in the same film can be pre- these projects (leaving aside for the mo- sented straight, partly because she is a ment the ways in which they are disturbed woman and ballet is regarded as a or undermined by certain elements) feminine art, partly because ballet here is ideologically unacceptable, the fourth decorative rather than disturbing, hence wholly admirable. Yet in the film, while the poses no challenge to the entertainment fourth is not simply or comprehensively concept.) The blatancy of this is concealed identifiable with the other three (produc- beneath an appeal to debased democratic ing further tensions), it is also not cleanly principle: Entertainment is anti-elitist be- separable from them. cause it is what anyone can appreciate without much effort. The beautiful Charisse solo number, for example, gives unified expression to all (I should stress that these remarks are four simultaneously. She surrenders to the not to be taken as dismissive either of the various allures of Capitalistic luxury, genre or of individual films . Much film dressing to transform herself into the ob- ject of male desire, and thereby inciden- 30 MAY-JUNE 1975 Cyd Charissediscovers the allures of Capitalistic lu xury.

Inevitably, the \"Capitalist\" ideology determined automatism of the film's STOCKINGS lies (as with YOUNG MR . LIN- (and male supremacy) is firmly re- Communism and the woman-object of its COLN) in its internal tensions and contra- dictions . If, for example, the element of imposed at the end of the film. Cyd Capitalism . parody of Capitalist ideology repre~ented Charisse is brought back to Paris by As- This line of argument has implications taire's machinations; the climax of which by the Janis Paige numbers, or the chal- has her seated in a night club (La Vieille that go far beyond SILK STOCKINGS. The in- lenge to the image of woman-as-object Russie) to watch admiringly Astaire's dividual creativity that there finds its con- represented by the Cyd Charisse dances, solo-with-chorus dance number (\"The Ritz crete expression in dance is expressed were absent-if there were no more to the Roll 'n Rock\") which is a blatant affirmation more generally in art itself. To enforce the film than the simple \"Capitalism good- of the material rewards of Capitalism point, however, one needn' t look beyond Communism bad\" opposition on which it (though, again, not entirely free from ele- the present example. The vitality of the is nominally built-its interest would be ments of parody that call this into ques- musical numbers in SILK STOCKINGS itself severely diminished. Yet the film's creative tion). She then, after a brief misunder- transcends their local ideological func- vitality (like that of YOUNG MR. LINCOLN) standing has been cleared up, rather tions. cannot reasonably be reduced to its lamely submits to him. Her earlier stand ideological contradictions. The inventions (in reaction against the Josephine musical) is Consider the first number, \"We Can't Go of the Cyd Charisse solo, for example the forgotten by the film, though not necessar- Back to Moscow.\" Its local function is to es- \"silk stockings\" dance-are almost en- ily by the audience. We are left with, at the tablish and celebrate the conversion of the tirely \"within the ideology.\" very least, a sense of dissatisfaction . three Soviet emissaries to the material de- lights of Capitalism, notably champagne The Cahiers reading of YOUNG MR. LIN- • and \"available\" women; every precise de- COLN, for all its insights, ends by making tail can be explained in relation to this func- the film's potential rewards seem some- There seems to me an alternative way of tion. What transcends the ideological pur- what meager. It is not that the \"gaps and dealing with the ideological issues posed pose here is the energy of the realization, dislocations\" in which the writers find its by SILK STOCKINGS, and countless other an energy expressed not merely in the interest are irrelevant to its creative ener- films. I would suggest-somewhat hesi- physical movements of the actors but in gies, but they are also not simply identifi- tantly, for it is the sort of suggestion that the inventiveness of the mise-en-scene. (The able with them . The attitude to Ford as an gets hooted down in contemporary film director of AT LONG LAST LOVE might have artist is curiously ambiguous or evasive. criticism-that, rather than talk in terms of learned a lesson here in how to build a His centrality to the film is implicitly ac- a \"third ideology,\" one might talk of cer- musical number involving performers knowledged, yet his contribution is treated tain aspects partially escaping ideological who can neither sing nor dance-includ- as though it were merely incidental-or determination. I would suggest, in other ing Peter Lorre! But whether Peter Bog- accidental-to the film's quality. Indeed, words, that there are indeed certain fun- danovich is capable oflearning anything of the ambiguity or evasiveness extends damental drives and needs that are not value from his models is becoming increas- (necessarily, I think) to the concept of qual- ideological but universal-drives which ingly dubious .) It doesn't matter, for the ity itself. In a sense, the quality of YOUNG certain ideologies can suppress but which purposes of my argument, precisely who MR. LINCOLN is taken for granted (the film no ideology creates-and that such things was responsible for the scene's vitality: di- is introduced as a \"classic\"); yet its classic as freedom of expression, delight in bodily rector, scriptwriter, cameraman, choreog- status is scarcely validated by the argu- movement, instinctual spontaneity, are rapher, actors. The issue of personal ment presented. among them. creativity is unaffected by the number of possible active contributors. What is im- The day after I read the piece I happened Heretically, and despite Garbo, the portant is the communication of creative to watch a TV Tarzan episode with my chil- Lubitsch touch, and the laughing scene, I energies. dren. Gradually, and fascinatingly, it be- enjoy SILK STOCKINGS more than I enjoy came apparent that very much the same NINOTcHKA-largely because of the extra The use of abstract words (energy, in- sort of gaps, dislocations, and suppres- dimension given by the musical numbers ventiveness) here is inevitable. I am argu- sions were discernible there. I was grateful (or certain aspects of them), a dimension ing that Materialism is not enough; that, to the Cahiers editors for revealing this- that affects the meaning and values of the even when every concrete detail in a given the Tarzan episode suddenly acquired an film. NINOTCHKA opposes to its simplis- work can be shown to be ideolOgically de- interest it had previously lacked (without tically debunked Communism only the termined, the details may be the product of acquiring any artistic value) . Yet in retro- materialistic trivia of Capitalism and the fundamental creative drives that transcend spect it became clear that the status and dubious charms of Melvyn Douglas. Gar- ideology. The prevailing ideology, in other bo's emotional awakening, moving as it is, words, may determine (to varying degrees quality of YOUNG MR. LINCOLN as a work of finds no adequate embodiment of values according to the artist's level of awareness) art was left unproven and unaccounted for its satisfaction, so that the satisfaction the forms in which the drives find embod- for; and it could only be accounted for, I be- appears a pretense which the film shal- iment, but it can't account for the drives lieve, in terms of individual creativity. lowly fabricates . Cyd Charisse's discovery, themselves. through dance, of her individual physical The evaluation of works of art must al- existence opposes itself to both the state- That is why it is possible (and common) ways be a complex, delicate, and tentative to respond with intensity to works which business. Ideological issues cannot be ir- are ideologically quite alien to us; why I, an relevant to it, yet no work can be justly atheist, can be deeply moved by the St. evaluated on purely ideological grounds. Matthew Passion; or why I can respond Crucial, it seems to me, is the concept of equally to KLUTE and TOUT VA BIEN . Be- creativity as at once transcending ideo- neath the apparent contradictions and in- logy, even when its concrete forms and de- congruities is a creativity which is univer- sal in spirit and generally communicative, tails are ideologically determined. That is however its local manifestations are de- why it can transcend time and space, so termined. It is essential, today, to reinstate that to listen to the music of Bach, or watch and defend (even, or particularly, in the the films of Mizoguchi, can be an enriching field of collaborative art) the concept of in- experience however alien their cultural de- dividual creativity-a reality which certain terminants; and why it is still permissible Marxist critics are striving to suppress by (and necessary)-the united efforts of denying its existence. Marxism and semiology to the contrary- to talk of \"genius,\" of \"personal expres- A part of the interest and richness of SILK sion,\" and of \"individual creativity.\"® Jules Munshin , Joseph Buloff, and Peter Lorre in the FILM COMMENT 31 \" Red Blues\" number.

If smallpox has been eliminated in most market-and, on the \"serious\" side, at direction in the cinema. The one book in countries, nostalgia is still endemic in the least twelve structuralist studies of the print on the subject is an excellent small United States, and useless books on the exemplary rigorous career of Veda Ann paperback \"textbook\" intended as a primer movies have proliferated in recent years Borg, her signs and symbols. for would-be designers. like flies on a dead horse. By 1981 there will be thirty-two unauthorized volumes on While such droppings pock the Dr. Caligari's Cabinet and Other Grand illu- the sex life of Judy Garland's father on the bookstores, there has not been until now a sions, which New York Graphic Press is single book in English on the history of art bringing out this summer, is an American Above left: The cold splendor of the McGurk Institute's elevators, designed by Richard Day for John Ford's ARROWSMITH (1931) . Who can say that Captain Day was not the most versatile and prol ific of all the great Hollywood art directors? He designed films for Strohei m, with Cedric Gibbons at MGM, then for Goldwyn, then at Fox, where he designed sets in the midst of which could be observed the sundry shapes of Shirley Temple, Laurel and Hardy, and Sherlock Holmes. And HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, WEEKEND IN HAVANA, EXODUS, THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS, and a hundred more. Above: John Barrymore as SVENGALI (1931); art director: Anton Grot. Grot's origin was Polish, but he had a lot to do with the somber Germanic look of so many Warners films of the early Thirties : DR. X, MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM. SCARLET DAWN. Middle left: The set for this successful Betty Compson vehicle, WOMAN TO WOMAN, was designed by-Alfred Hitchcock. Hitch was art director on five pictures directed by Graham Cutts. and made between 1922 and 1925; WOMAN TO WOMAN. THE PASSIONATE ADVENTURE, THE BLACKGUARD, THE WHITE SHADOW, and THE PRUDE'S FALL. Bottom left: \"Ah , but what is the sound of the organ compared to the music of Big Bertha .\" (Alexander Kirkland to Leila Hyams in SURRENDER, 1931). This little-known but fascinating World War I drama takes place in a prisoner-of-war camp designed by Anton Grot. ALL PHOTOS : MOMNFILM STILLS

version of the standard work on the sub- designed the splendiferous decors of LES filmography ever printed on the subject. ject, unavailable until now in English: Among the 150 stills, many never before Leon Barsacq's classic Le Decor de Cinema. ENFANTS DU PARADIS. published, are some real eye poppers-as Barsacq was one of Europe's most illustri- this preview should amply demonstrate. ous art directors. He designed sets for the The English-language version brings films of Renoir, Rene Clair, Clouzot, this bible of movie set design up to date. It by Elliott Stein Duvivier, and Rene Clement. He co- is a complete historical and critical survey of production design from early Melies to late Antonioni, with the most complete Above: THE BELOVED ROGUE (1927). The rogue in question was John Barrymore, who, as a frisky Fran~ois Villon, scampered about on snowy Paris rooftops designed by a genius namea Willillm Cameron Menzies-here in a Maxfield Parrish'picture-book mood. Above right: H.G.Weils predicted just about everything-even (as here) the TWA Building at New York's Kennedy Airport. THINGS TO COME (1936) was scripted by Wells, directed by America's greatest designer, William Cameron Menzies, and designed by Britain's greatest, Vincent Korda (assisted by H.G: s son Frank) . Ned Mann, one of the top Hollywood speCial effects men of the period, was brought to England to work on the film ; he trained an entire generation of British SPFX men. Middle right: \"Up this ladder is a little treehouse where I go to be alone\" (Robert Montgomery, trying to make it with Joan Crawford, who sells undies in his dad's department store). Up they go, into an Art Deco treehouse designed by Cedric Gibbons-and roughly twelve ti mes the size of the Rainbow Room (OUR BLUSHING BRIDES, 1930). BoHom right: Amazon waiting room from the 1925 MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Sets by Erno Metzner, who later designed several films for G .w. Pabst (DIARY OF A LOST GIRL, WESTFRONT, KAMERADSCHAFT, l ' ATlANTI DE). Left: Victor Jory as Oberon in the Reinhardt-Dieterle MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM (1935). Sets by Anton Grot; costumes by Max Ree, who, as Art Director, won an Oscarfor CIMARRON (1931).

Above: Not a Magritte, but a studio set still for Above: Charles D. Hall (who did the sets for most Minnelli's THE CLOCK (1945); art director: of Chaplin's features, and for ALL QUIET ON THE William Ferrari. WESTERN FRONT, DRACULA, THE OLD DARK HOUSE, THE INVISIBLE MAN, and many others Right: THE RED LILY (1924). Fred Niblodirecting at Universal) designed this musical number for Ramon Novarro in a Paris sewer designed by the james Whale's SHOWBOAT (1936). Has anyone ever seen itl The scene was apparently cut from great Ben Carre. Novarro is looking for the lily release prints. The set is reminiscent of Hall's (Enid Bennett, Mrs. Niblo in real life) in this sewer. great nightclub set for Paul Fejos' BROADWAY (see FILM COMMENT, September-October 1974, The fil m, which had not been seen for half a page 51). century, was one of the revelations of the Below: Quo Vadis Erectus? Phallic splendor in a Museum of Modern Art's MGM Retrospective in chariot race from MESSALINA (1923), directed by 1974. Carre entered films in 1906, working first Enrico Guazzoni (1876-1949), 'the ltal ian Griffith who made a lavish QUO VADIS in 1912 -before for Gaumont in Paris . He came to the U .S. in CABIRIA. Guazzoni directed two ANTHONY 1911 , worked for Eclair at Fort Lee, then designed and CLEOPATRAs (1913 and 1916) for which he also did sets and costumes. He also turned out the sets for most of the beautiful films made by IVAN THE TERRIBLE, LADY MACBETH, Maurice Tourneurfrom 1914 to 1920. His FABIOLA, JERUSALEM LIBERATED (two versions), BRUTUS, ALLAH, THE LIFE OF ST. memorable decors for scenes under the Paris FRANCIS, CAIUS JULIUS CAESAR, I'VE LOST Opera in the Lon Chaney PHANTOM were MY HUSBAND (1936), and quite a few dozen more. His last film was LA FORNARINA (1943). followed by work on THE JAZZ SINGER, THE Guazzoni somehow found time to decorate the RED DANCE, CITY GIRL, DANTE'S INFERNO (1935), and A NIGHT AT THE OPERA . In 1971 i-J.:interior of the Cinema Moderno in Rome. Carre submitted to an AFI Oral History. He survived that, is still alive, well , ninety-one years old, and living in Los Angeles . -. .. . ., . - -\"..\"

too all-inclusive, this is an achieved work side, she literally disappears . An original of great originality, the more important for vis ion of s ummer , youth , a moment. INDE- appearing in a field already rich with mas- (Kathleen Laughlin, 1521 Tenth Avenue terpieces . (Paul Brekke, 211 N .E. 120th, South, Minneapolis, Minn. 55404) Seattle, Wash. 98125) METAMORPHOSIS (Lillian .Sch w artz, PEND- TOUT ECARTILLE (Andre Leduc, Canada, USA , 1974, eight minutes) Computer- 1973, six minutes) Exploding at extreme genera ted video- graphics turn art, as speed with pixillation, superimpositions, complex orchestrations of abstract color ENTS and stop-action, these are the surrealist patterns and stunning transmutations of adventures of a black-robed figure literally semi-geometric deSigns surpass manual gliding, flying, skipping through coun- animation. A visual and esthetic delight of tryside and city. Intricate visual surprises great formal beauty and complexity . and transformations abound . (National (Lil y an Productions, 524 Ridge Road, TIlE AVANT-GARDE Film Board of Canada, 1251 Avenue of the Watchung, N.J. 07060) Americas, New York City, 10020) WOMEN (Constance Beeson, USA, 1974, OF TIlE SEVENTIES 5x MARILYN (Bruce Conner, USA, 1974, thirteen minutes) An impressionist, sar- by Amos Vogel thirteen minutes) Magical images of Mari- donic overview (through intricate audio- lyn Monroe (or is it?) caressing her body, visual superimpositions) of sexual and looped over and over in a grainy old stag other cliches laid on women, contrasted to The formal and thematic trends within film in different combinations and lengths, their diversity and humanity . A further the current avant-garde are so varied, the as she plaintively sings ''I'm Through With achievement by this unorthodox woman achievements so numerous that several Love.\" Conner transforms footage into filmmaker who has done much to bring an columns are in order, each providing a myth, elegy, nostalgia, tragedy, and an affirming eroticism into the cinema. (Con- sampling. almost personal sense of loss. Marilyn's stance Beeson , 99 West Shore Road , In preparation for my Spring 1975 technologically repeated plastic-smile Belvedere, Cal. 94920) avant-garde series \"Toward the Limits\" at seductions are finally emptied of meaning STAR GARDEN (Stan Brakhage, USA, the University of Pennsylvania's Annen- and sex; only heartbreak and revelation 1974, twenty minutes) A celebration of the berg Cinematheque and as coordinator for remain. Without the constant repetition atmosphere and texture of a day of peace the June 1975 American Film Festival's (\"minimal cinema for a purpose\") , we and human serenity in the filmmaker's \" Film As Art\" event (sponsored by the would not grow thoughtful and Conner warm, lived-in house, centering on faces Educational Film Libraries Association), could not have transformed (revealed) the and movements of his children, rooms and recent screenings of over three hundred ti- heroine as wind-up toy for a nation. (Seri- objects of a poet's existence transformed tles have reassured me of the movement's ous Business Company, 1608 Jaynes by shafts and tones of light. Stylistically, continued striving to extend the borders of Street, Berkeley, Calif. 94703). poetic fragmentation and abstractification the possible and the incursion of the mod- TESTAMENT (James Broughton, USA, remain (complex montage, choreographed ern world view and modern art into a 1974, twenty minutes) A wise, gentle, ac- camera movements, changing camera medium reluctant to enter the twentieth cepting statement about life and (definite- setups and speeds); but there is also a con- century. I am also reassured that the \" for- ly) death by an American master of poetic tinued turning back by a master formalist mal cinema\"-while a significant compo- cinema whose work now spans several to the human element, an evolution al- nent of the avant-garde--is not its\" equi- avant-gardes, yet grows ever more ma- ready evident in his autopsy film, TO SEE valent\" (there exist the most diverse ten- ture . Told in free form, with beautiful, be- WITH ONE'S OWN EYES (Film-makers Coop, dencies of merit); that viewing films with- mused poetry by the filmmaker weaving 175 Lexington Avenue, New York City out narratives can be spectacularly enrich- in and out of childhood images, his former 10016) ing; that the vitality and creativity of cer- films used as proto-documentary mate- FUJI (Robert Breer, USA, 1974, eight mi- tain famed avant-gardists (imperceptibly rials , and live action shot today. The nutes). A poetic, lyrical, rhythmic, riveting becoming older statesmen) continues, as ending-a marvelous, magical presenti- achievement (in rotoscope and abstract do surrealism, expressionism, abstraction; ment of his death-reaches the level of animation), in which fragments of land- that requirements of artistic excellence are myth. (Serious Business Company, see scapes, passengers, and train interiors increasingly met in video and computer above) blend into a magical color dream of a voy- films; and that, negatively and positively, SUSAN TH;ROUGH CORN (Kathleen age. One of the most important works by a all tendencies continue to reflect or un- Laughlin, USA, 1974, two minutes) A po- master who-like Conner, Brakhage, dermine social values (whether their mak- etic, yet formal study of a young woman in . Broughton-spans several avant-gardes in ers know it or not) . All represent an invita- red-yellow dress, running through a very his ever more perfect explorations. tion . Whether you accept it (or rather, green field, followed by single-frame cam- (Film-Makers Coop, see above, for rentals; open yourself to it), is up to you . The. era which, with stalks of com in front and Robert Breer, Palisades, N.Y. 10964, for work-the revelation-is there, waiting. sky-brightness overhead, serves to bisect sales) More to come ® What follows are the titles chosen for the and abstractify her . Emerging on the other American Film Festival event: these films can be obtained either from the individual sources listed, or, if you are an EFLA member or represent a university, as a package for no-admission showings from: EFLA, 17 West 60th Street, New York, NY 10023. DISPARATES (Paul Brekke, USA, 1974, eleven minutes) Abstract study of hun- dreds of often unidentifiable objects from nature, so complex in structure and visual manipulation, so rich in technique and rapid in tempo that it defies verbal descrip- tion rather successfully. Though perhaps Two views of Lillian Schwartz ' METAMORPHOSIS. FILM COMMENT 35

generally in worse shape than the photo- starts the second projector (while the first goes black). That's the change-over. (Bill graphs I print in my cramped and primi- told me that in the good old days, Hol- lywood made sure to end reels on fade-ins THE tive darkroom, I descended last fall into the or-outs to make the change smooth and obscure metaworld of the cinema's Mor- easy. Now, he said, reels sometime end in IN- locks, seeking them out in their various the middle of shots, making the change- lairs throughout the Boston area. over difficult to effect.) The projectionist then takes the first reel off the projector, DUS- Screening films in classrooms on cuddly rewinds it, puts it away and places the 16 mm projectors with automatic feeds is a third reel on the first projector. This pro- cess is repeated until the last reel is shown TRY simple matter. Either a student can be and the projectionist goes home. roped into running the damned contrap- tion, or the professor can proudly de- What can go wrong? Well, without a doubt, the only person in a poorer position monstrate his knowledge of mechanics as to focus the film than the projectionist is the man who stands outside the door tear- TRYSTING well as aesthetics. But pity the poor theat- ing tickets. The projectionist is miles from WITII TROLLS rical projectionist, for his is a world apart. the screen. And, in some cases, he's watching a silent film. Roger Mintz, He sits like a troll in a dank, noisome another projectionist at the Cheri, works in room, peering through a dusty porthole at a booth were the old Century projector's ventilation system makes such a racket by David Rosenbaum a distant screen. The projectionists I visited that we had to shout to hear each other. So it's not much fun for Roger to watch the When H.G. Wells' time traveler flung seemed starved for human contact. They film. In another booth at the Cheri, the pro- himself into the future, he found himself in gleefully and gratefully exhibited their jectionist was watching a Red Sox game on a world divided between the Eloi and the monstrous machines for my delectation a portable TV. He complained to me about Morlocks. The Eloi were children of light. and edification. I discovered Bill Lawler, the set's reception. When I went down into They were blond and beautiful, and they forty-eight years a projectionist, conten- the theater, I saw him make a very sloppy played all day long. At night they cowered tedly painting the walls of his booth at the change-over. in caves because it was then that the Mor- Cheri. He showed me his $30,000 NoreIco locks emerged from their subterranean fac- projector, seven-feet tall and lit by a carbon At the Cinema 57, Herbert Nipson is re- tories. The Morlocks were dark, ugly, and arc. He opened the projector's gate and, sponsible for two screens, as he runs four squat, and they never had any fun. They holding my hand, gently pressed my fin- projectors, two at each end of his booth. slaved in Stygian corridors and kept the gers against the teeth that catch the film's Herb has to shuttle back and forth between world running for the Eloi. sprocket holes and propel it past the lens. the projectors and set up and rewind dou- He asked me to feel the difference between ble the usual amount of reels while keep- In the film industry the Eloi are the ac- ing his eyes on two screens. Herb is a busy man. tors, directors, producers, under assistant Every time the projector's ga te is West and East coast promotion men, and opened, the lens may get jiggled, and the \"shoes\" holding the film in place may yes, the community of critics and scholars. loosen-all these things can affect the focus. The projectionist's diligence, or lack They frolic in the light of public adoration, of it, in watching his screen is an important factor in the quality of the image we see. creating, merchandising and discussing But it is by no means the only factor. Ted Uzzle, projectionist at Cambridge's Orson their impalpable visions. Meanwhile, the Welles Cinema, made me aware of some other problems affecting focus . Morlocks are slaves to the Elois' celluloid. Revival houses like the Welles have cer- They toil in the labs, in the shipping rooms tain difficulties rarely encountered by first-run houses. Revival theaters often and in the projection booths. And does show films that have been sitting in storage for years. When they come out of their anyone ever give them a thought? Well, cans, they retain their flexure because of a phenomenon called \"plastic memory.\" yes and no. No, when everything goes When the print is run through the projec- tor, it swells in the middle of the frame . well and the reels are rolling smoothly. This distorts the image and disturbs the focus. (This is less of a problem with old Yes, when the screen goes dark, or the 16mm prints because 16mm stock is less substantial than 35mm and can be flat- image goes out of focus, or the film is ~ tened by the projector's shoes. Note: This does not mean that you should stomp on scratchy, or the sound crackly. It's only ~ the films you show; leave that to the machine.) when things go wrong that the Morlocks Vi The old films that these theaters show materialize, squinting into the unaccus- 0 are occasionally reconstructed prints. This ~ means that the studio has assembled vari- tomed glare of attention. ous copies of the film, cut them up and Teaching film, reviewing films for the 0.. Boston Phoenix (where this article appeared A projectionist at Boston's Beacon Hill Theatre changes in an earlier form), I spend a lot of my time 70mm film reels during a showing of Kubrick's 2001 . in the dark. Much of the photoplay that the 35mm rollers and the 70mm rollers. He swims out of that darkness seems to be out held up the carbon rods that are the glow- of focus, scratched and generally fucked ing heart of the beast for my inspection. up. This disturbs me . Film is a photo- A projectionist's job involves a series of graphic art. Permit me to invoke the oft- endlessly repeated procedures. The pro- quoted wisdom of Siegfried Kracauer : jectionist puts the first reel on the first pro- \"Film is uniquely equipped to record and jector and the second reel on the second. reveal physical reality and, hence, gravi- (And these are no namby-pamby 16mm tates toward it.\" Unless you've lost your reels. 35mm reels are heavy and mounting glasses, you see \"physical reality\" in focus. them requires muscle.) He starts the first And if you keep your glasses clean, the projector, focuses, checks the sound level material world reveals itself sans scratches. and waits. About two minutes before the If you stay straight and sober, life has no reel ends, a warning bell sounds. The pro- missing frames. Granted, the camera eye jectionist gets ready to make the change- is not as good a recording instrument as over. All films are marked with a circle on the biological ones we were born with, but the upper right-hand side of the frame. that's no reason why an audience should When the projectionist sees that circle, plunk down good money for eyestrain. In which appears on screen for no more than order to find out why the films I see are a second, he presses a foot pedal which 36 MAY-JUNE 1975

spliced together the best footage in order to met and drove to the National Film Service \"three\" is heavily scratched; \"four\" is all create the new print. The tonal qualities in warehouse in South Boston where all of messed up; and \" five\" is called \" junk.\" composite prints will often vary from New England's films are, at one time or Anne Duca keeps a file that contains the sequence to sequence. history of every film that passes through another, bivouacked. her office. I glanced at her cards and What else can affect focus? Ted com- The Film Service is a combination clinic noticed tha t the print of DR. ZHIVAGO, then plained about smoking in the theater. The playing at a Boston first-run theater, was a smoke leaves nicotine stains on the screen, and flophouse for approximately twenty veritable antique. It had played at more he said, impairing the reflective quality of thousand prints, from Alexander Nevsky to than twenty different theaters and was its surface. The heat generated by the pro- Report To The Commissioner . Stanley rated \"three,\" heavily scratched. jector can cause an oil fog to coat the sur- Majorowski showed me around. Film face of the lens, making the focus fuzzy. Or cans, waiting to be shipped to Bangor and The Film Service will only junk a film if it a lens can go soft. If a lens gets dropped, or Brockton, litter the floor in dense profu- can't be run through a projector. They did, bumped, the elements composing the lens sion. In the rear, they are stacked on however, scrap a copy of THE GODFATIfER can shift, causing a softening of contrast. shelves 12-feet high and hundreds of feet that could have made it. They made an ex- Instead of conducting the light to the ception in this case because the print was screen, the lens traps some of the light and long. missing 440 feet of film, a quarter of a reel the picture becomes dim. Every film from all themajor companies or five minutes. People who work closely with the cor- comes to the Film Service from the labs in These ratings are a service. A theater poral stuff of film have a savage love for it. New York and Hollywood. Here they are manager can, if he wants to, play and Ted, demonstrating what happens to film taken off their plastic cores and wound on charge for a No.4 rated print. A movie the- after it is repeatedly exposed to the heat of metal reels for distribution throughout ater is an expensive proposition and al- the projector, tore off hunks of celluloid New England. After the films play in most any manager prefers a messy screen and shredded it into confetti. (\"See, brittle, theaters, they return to the Film Service to to a dark one. Projectors are expensive; the like old toast,\" he said.) Phil Lamport, a await future orders. While they wait, they cheapest will go for $15,000-and that's projectionist at the Beacon Hill, ripped off are inspected-that is, some are inspected, without lamp, lens, or sound. Lenses are a foot of 70mm leader to show me its expensive. A 35mm lens will cost from beauty. (And it is beautiful-proud and others just wait. $250 to $500,. An anamorphic lens costs sturdy, as if proclaiming itself the ultima In a room off the main storage area, ten from $400 to $750. If a lens becomes soft, Thule of celluloid.) All the projectionists I why should the theater shell out for a new spoke with agreed that the labs are not middle-aged women sit at tables equipped one? Projectionists have a fine contempt turning out the kind of quality they used with electric take-up reels. The women for the public'S ability to discriminate be- to. The acetate base of the film, they say,.is wear white cloth gloves and run the prints tween a clear and a fuzzy picture. Mana- not as substantial. The lacquer used to pro- through their hands, looking for scratches gers make the argument that people don't tect the e.mulsion is often unevenly and feeling for broken sprocket holes and really care; that only professionals are dis- applied. The wax, which is employed to uneven edges that might catch in a projec- turbed by scratches and blurs. But haven't lubricate the film, is sometimes spread too tor. One woman demonstrated her you noticed how crowds often leave theat- thickly. When this happens, the wax rubs technique on Disney's CASTAWAY cow- ers rubbing their temples or blinking their off on the rollers, attracts dirt, and eventu- BOYS. She ran the film swiftly through her eyes-headaches and eyestrain, the ally scratches the print. hand, stopping occasionally to trim a jag- wages of fuzz? Poor focus, low contrast, ged edge. Once, she felt an uneven splice. zits on the film, can change a pleasurable • \"I could fix it,\" she said, \"but I like making experience into a chore. my own .\" She lopped off a foot of film Defects in the print are, of course, from either side of the splice and sealed a What can be done? Complain. Urge beyond the control of the projectionists. new one, lickety-split. I asked her if an au- your friends to complain. We deserve good They can check their splices, clean their dience might notice the missing footage . prints, displayed on good screens, pro- lenses, make sure that the film's sprocket \"Aw,\" she replied, \"they might miss a jected by good equipment. holes are not torn. They can keep their word, that's all.\" booths clean, for a clean booth makes for a And finally, I think that projectionists clear screening. But if the print is scratched Every major film company signs a con- should be issued binoculars when they and chewed up, there's nothing they can tract with National Film Service specifying enter their booths. I would call that a mod- do. Accordingly, I donned my crash hel- how often their films are to be inspected. est proposal. ~ Anne Duca, the leading lady of the inspec- Loading film cans at the National Film Service in tion room, informed me that only two An inspector checks for scratches at the National Film Boston . companies pay for one hundred percent Service. inspection-Buena Vista, better known as Walt Disney, and the American Film Theatre. (And AFT can use one hundred percent inspection because, as I was in- formed by a few projectionists, they use an exceedingly thin European film stock, sub- ject to all sorts of malaises.) Warner Brothers pays for seventy-five percent in- spection, Columbia fifty percent, Paramount twenty-five to fifty percent, and United Artists and 20th Century-Fox only twenty-five percent. This means that, ideally, only one in four UA or Fox prints are inspected. However, since the inspec- tion of individual prints is done randomly, a UA or Fox print stands a good chance of never being inspected. Conversely, every time a Disney print comes into the build- ing, it is inspected and \"rated\" before being sent out to a theater. Prints are rated one through five: \"one\" is excellent; \"two\" is lightly scratched; FILM COMMENT 37

TELE- by many video documentarians as a games, and TV furniture . Television has democratization of the medium, since it is created TV spine, TV eyes, and the TV VISION not burdened by the \"professionalism\" of habit.\"- Telethon . film production and the costs of 16mm film VIDEOLOGY processing. In the process of demystifying There has also developed, since the in- By John G. Hanhardt the process, many see an implicit radicali- troduction commercially of the portable zation of the use of the medium-and, video system, the independent video artist \"Since its beginnings in the 1930's, televi- subsequently, of the community and exploring new forms in video. The elec- sion has become a vital force in determin- groups which employ it. tronic modifications of the video image ing our culture, our values, and our fan- have extensive possibilities. This includes tasies. Despite what people think about Concurrent with the increased produc- the best known video experimentation- commercial television, consider these tion of independent documentary tapes employing video synthesizers and tech- facts: the TV set is on an average of five there was the development of cable televi- niques of the colorization processes- hours and forty -five minutes a da y; sion and the projected plans for pay televi- which have been creatively explored by ninety-seven per cent of all families in the sion. The hope contained in the idea of Nam June Paik and others. Formulating an United States have at least one set; and be- cable broadcasting was in part the availa- art independent of the preoccupations of tween the ages of two and sixty-five, an bility of a multitude of channels available narrative network television, the video ar- average American will spend nine full to the subscriber, including a public access tist deals directly with the potentials of the years watching television-one quarter of channel and a community oriented single monitor, the electronic manipula- his waking life. - Telethon. philosophy geared to the many interests of tion of the image, the creation of uniquely its audience. Ideally, cable would give ac- video forms, closed circuit installations. The idea of a video artist working, as the cess to the independent documentary and performance pieces, as in the work of independent film-maker has for decades, tapes . At the moment, however, the po- independently of the commercial media is tential of cable has not been met. The sys- Peter Campus and Joan Jonas. Artists such a relatively new concept. The introduction tem's main objective seems to be purely as Frank Gillette and Beryl Korot have by Sony in 1968 of a \"PortaPak\" video sys- commercial, offering what the networks worked with multiple monitors creating tem brought the medium to a new and di- do not have:(home basketball games. sculptural pieces and environments. Andy verse group of users, many of whom work Mann employs the portable camera to outside of the commercial entertainment The documentary and socially con- create impressions and images from the and public television networks. This video cerned filmmaker has traditionally sought environment, utilizing flexible camera system utilizes a hand-held video camera to gain access to commercial theater pro- movements, edited in such a way as to in- and a portable, battery-powered, tape re- gramming and more recently to public and corporate certain forms and expressions corder. As opposed to television studio commercial television. The independent from film and other arts. equipment, which uses two-inch video- video documentarist has seen this problem tape, the portable unit employs one-half- directly in relation to commercial television The video artist is dealing with many inch tape. The resulting lightweight (and and has often utilized its forms and for- specific factors: the size of the TV screen; relatively inexpensive) video system was mats to structure its product. Tenement the generation of the image from the sur- to change our previously-held notion that dwellers on a rent strike to an investigative face of the screen (as opposed to being pro- the electronic medium of television was report on their building's deterioration and jected onto a surface); the resolution and the exclusive preserve of what we tradi- landlord neglect by utilizing the on-the- immediacy of the image; the strictly narra- tionally have seen on our home TV set. street reporter format of Eyewitness News. tive and commercial associations as- This is a conscious and articulate expres- sociated with the television in the minds of The artists and audiences of video, as sion of a community concern within a for- the general public and critics. The video ar- was the case for the audience and partici- mat that will perhaps make it more acces- tist seeks a radical confrontation with the pants in the early history of cinema, are sible to the habits of the home viewers. narrative devices and representational very self-conscious of its technology. This concerns of traditional television-seeks awareness has informed two areas which, Not all activist or personal documen- to explore the temporal and perceptual for convenience sake, we shall call taries take this form (examples being peculiarities of the medium. documentary and artist tapes. Their rela- Global Village and TVTV). However, it will tionship to television, that all-pervasive be interesting to see what emerges as more The video artist in this regard shares in manifestation of the medium, takes a vari- work is produced which is implicitly tied to the tradition of the film avant-garde (Stan ety of complex and contradictory forms . the medium as seen within the parameters Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, Paul Sharits), but of the TV screen, within the context of the lacks the history and context which film ar- Documentary video, the use of the TV set (the availability of a dial which can tists work within and against. The video medium as an effective and relatively be turned off or to another channel), the artist, who has often been trained in the low-cost means of documenting social and physical environment of the TV set (the other arts, has been increasingly accepted political concerns, partially was made pos- distractions of the living room which range by the art galleries. What experimental sible by the v~ry nature of the portable from wealth to the worst poverty), and the filmmakers and video artists share is a video system. The equipment itself is fairly associations attached to the television's use easy to master; the synchronous sound is as a source of information and the glowing automatically recorded on the tape; and \"night light\" for the country. since the tape can be played back im- mediately, there's a built-in check on image • quality. This facility of production is seen \"Television has changed our conception of information, and has transformed the way we spend our time. It has altered our eating and sleeping habits. TV is an elec- tronic babysitter for the young and the constant companion of the elderly. Be- cause of television, people go out less at night, accept products more readily, and ~ participate in events they never wo~d ex- 3 perience. Television has made pOSSIble a 1~:: vast market of TV foods, TV gadgets, TV 38 MAY-JUNE 1975

Telethon idea: \"The Television Environ- ment,\" a \"living room tableau\" which re- creates the context in which television is accepted by reconstructing and placing it in a gallery context. Playing on the TV set is one of Telethon's collage tapes. It is a museum environment where people may sit and watch the tapes in the \"comfort of their own homes.\" This concern with the television envi- ronment as architecture and psychological space is a direct outgrowth of a series of presentations (which predated Telethon but involved some of the same people) which investigate American vernacular architec- ture. Adler and Margolies prepared an exhibit on Morris Lapidus (the architect of 6 the Eden Roc and Fontainbleau Hotels in :~z: Miami Beach), entitled \"The Architecture of Joy. \" As Adler and Margolis wrote: >- \"We feel that all aspects of the man- Telethon 's classic of kitsch, \" The Television Environment. \" made environment are important in defin- ing how a person interacts with his world. gradually expanding audience and a pauc- describes a series of gestures: Nixon's at- Traditional defini tions are no longer ity of qualified critics. The Eisenstein or tempted yo-yoing at the Grand Ole Opry; applicable to the quality of contemporary Vertov of video has not yet appeared. But a wrestling match on Mexican TV in which experience. What is often overlooked is the neither has the Duchamp or Warhol-the one wrestler descends into the ring in as- environment as it actually exists, and as it kind of artist who can confidently trans- tronaut's gear; Agnew, at a golf tourna- affects our day-to-day existence. \" The Telethon idea deserves our serious at- form and transcend popular culture and ment, beaning a spectator with his tee shot; the hysteria of game shows and tention. It confronts-as the stuff not of classical art through modernist strategies. beauty pageants. anthropology but of art-our living envi- • The editing and straightforward jux- ronment and the electronic medium which One group of artists has, in several ways, confI:onted commercial TV and its taposition define the true nature of com- informs so much of it. Their videotapes products both on and off the video screen. mercial television. These tapes focus not and environments make us aware of the The Telethon collective, working out of Los only on the obvious but on the unnoticed; cliches, the quality of television informa- Angeles, has included among its members and by isolating many of these forgotten tion, the very way the TV screen and set Billy Adler, John Margolies, Ilene moments, they break up the continuous function as a piece of anonymous furni- Segalove, and Van Schley. Telethon's pro- flow of information and electronic energy. ture. jects accept and reveal the miriad con- The simplicity of the tape's structure belies By documenting and critically analyzing tradictions of commercial TV by approach- what it reveals . It brackets the moments commercial television, and by confronting ing its content through a variety of selec- and preserves the real television time of the medium within the museum (the space tive procedures. The group has produced a events. Seeing these tapes on a television of cultural appreciation), Telethon creates a series of videotapes (RICHARD NI XON; set makes us conscious of the world-image new context for America's TV living room; 1968-1974; GAME SHOWS AND SPORTS TITLES; that television has generated. it becomes a found object of awesome and 1972 COMPOSITE BEAUTY PAGEANT, among The living room of Billy Adler's house in all-consuming proportions. Will it be in other titles) which are composed of se- Los Angeles contains the perfect kitsch col- such a contradictory enclosure that we will quences taken directly from commercial lection of objects seen in popular see the artist's and documentarian's mes- TV and edited together to form a series of magazines and won on game shows: the sage in the future? Telethon tells us that, tapes. overstuffed sofa, florid wallpaper, framed \"With the continuing growth of television, Telethon's COMMERCIAL TELEVISION COL- reproductions, birch logs in the fireplace, it will become more and more difficult to LAGE is a collage tape that skillfully edits and a Real Uve Cocker Spaniel. Inside ths separate what is inside and what is outside together a series of images and moments masterpiece of Levittowniana, Adler col- The TV Environment.\" It is for the artist and from game shows, wrestling matches, lects the images for his group's video col- activist to heighten our awareness of this political events, and other TV staples. It lages. It also acts as a model for another ever-expanding \"environment.\":{· Left : Nam June Paik's GLOBAL GROOVE. Above : TV content transformed in Telethon 's tape collages of such figures as Dr. Campbell (A Los Angeles dentist) Billy Gray (of F th Knows Best), and Richard Nixon (in 1971). ' a er FILM COMMENT 39

~~HN S~HLESIN\"ER by Gene Phillips Filming has gone so well that I am won- live on the fringes of Hollywood: would-be I have been blessed with fine technicians stars like Fa ye Greener [Karen Black], on this film . Conrad Hall, who has photo- dering if something has to go wrong. This has-been actors like Faye's father Harry graphed some fine films, is really first-rate. is the first time I have worked in Hol- [Burgess Meredith], a studio bookkeeper He knows what lighting effects you want lywood right under the noses of the studio like Homer Simpson [Donald Sutherland], before you even make any suggestions. executives, but they like what they have and a studio artist named Tod Hackett The editor is Jim Clark who edited DARLING seen of DAY OF THE LOCUST so far. Jerome [William Atherton] who wants to be a great for me and worked with me on my seg- Hellman [the producer] and Waldo Salt painter. ment in the omnibus film about the 1972 [the screenwriter] both worked with me on Munich Olympics, VISIONS OF EIGHT. MIDNIGHT COWBOY. We wanted to do this When I first brought the property to right after COWBOY, but the project was Paramount there was not too much en- In that short film, called \"The Longest,\" I turned down by another company, so I thusiasm about it, but Waldo and Jerry and chose to intercut shots of Ron Hill-the .went on to other things . Now Paramount I went on pretending that it was all going British entry in the Marathon Race, around to happen and Waldo and I continued im- whom I built my episode-which were has backed it. I like working with Jerry and proving the ~cript. Bit by bit the script for filmed during the long term of preparation Waldo again. If you work with people you LOCUST got better and better, and the and training for the event with material know, you don't have to start from scratch studio got more interested. The firsf real filmed during the actual race. This way Jim building a working relationship every time indication that we got that the production Clark and I felt we could give the whole that you start a new picture. was going to go ahead was when the episode more depth. studio had our offices redecorated. The first time I came to America was as a After the tragedy of the murder of the Is- student actor, playing in Lear and The Op- The film is not just about Hollywood, al- raeli athletes by a group of Arab terrorists I timist throughout the Midwest. We mo- though the image of Hollywood as the at first refused to go to Munich . I was ap- tored across the country the way that Joe dream factory that turns out seductive fan- palled, in fact, at the decision to continue Buck traveled cross country at the begin- tasies for its audiences is there in the story. the games. Ron Hill said that he personally ning of MIDNIGHT COWBOY in a bus. The . But it is also about the funny, touching los- wanted the games to go on-and, on one characters in LOCUST, by the way, are very ers and dreamers who live on the fringes of level, I could understand his feelings. But much related to those in COWBOY. They are any big city. The original title of Nathanael the Olympics are ~o nationalistic, so far all desperately searching for some kind of West's novel was 771e Ch eated, which indi- from what they are supposed to be. That is identity as they try to cope with unsuccess- cated how people come here to fulfill their why I comment on the sound track at the ful careers in the movie industry. They all dreams for success and are frequently dis- appointed. West drew his characters with a cold, satiric eye, but we are making them more pleasant and likable in the film. I love these characters; I can identify with them. We have developed the personalities of the major characters into more complex human beings than they seemed to be in the book. Faye Greener, for example, is a part-time bit player and perhaps a call girl whom the male characters pursue but never catch without paying for it one way or another. In the book she is beautiful and sexy but I felt that she should be funky and funny as well, a touching victim of her own dreams of romance and beauty. I chose Bill Atherton to play Tod Hackett partly because I like to mix relative new- comers with established stars in my films-as I did before in pairing Julie Chris- tie with Dirk Bogarde in DARLING, or Jon Voight with Dustin Hoffman in MIDNIGHT COWBOY. But also, when I do this, there is always a reason for it that is tied in with the plot. Since Tod is a stranger in the Hol- lywood milieu I thought that I should get someone with a fresh face for the part. It would be hard to make an audience accept Warren Beatty, for example, as a person unfamiliar with Hollywood. John Schlesinger, on the PARAMOUNT PICTURES DAY OF THE LOCUST set, directs Karen Black

beginning of \"The Longest\" that I made hatchet lady to cut the film. I told them that could be turned into a good screenplay, the film because I was fascinated by the in- I could have done it in a way that the miss- and I got Waldo Salt to do it. Except for my dividual effort of the Marathon runner, ing footage wouldn't even be noticed . first film I have developed a project that I who trains alone for years and has to com- Since then I have gotten tougher contracts wanted to do and then found a writer that I pete with so much more than the race it- every time I sign to do a film. For one thing felt could do this particular property In the self. I don't allow theater previews because best way. I work with the writer while he is Making VISIONS OF EIGHT took me back they induce a lot of pressure, and this is doing the script. twenty years, to my early days of doing made worse by the fact that frequently Collaborating with other people on a documentaries for BBC-TV. When I started studio people don't tell you what they re- movie is a real challenge. Everything is fine out in television one was thrown out on his ally think, so that often yo u don't know at the outset, but as work on the produc- own to do a little film , perhaps with a where you stand. tion progresses, egos assert themselves one-day shooting schedule, for a news I resist compromise terribly because I re- and tempers can flare. Nevertheless I think program. I lost my job eventually because I ally am a perfectionist. If I don't get some- a director should listen to the people he is insisted on supervising the rrlixing of the thing right while I am shooting I do it over working with, even though he does not film myself-I knew what I wanted the until I do get it right. We rented a house in always go along ultimately with what they finished film to look like while I was shoot- the Hardy country when we were filming have suggested. A producer, for example, ing it. From that earliest time I fought to get on location, but the cameraman took so can help the director when the la tter loses final cut on any movie that I have made, long to light the little rooms in the house objectivity because he has become so in- long or short, and I have managed to do that we were using that we rebuilt some of volved with the film . The producer must so. Executives don't grant it in the contract the rooms in a local bicycle shop to shoot protect the whole project and see the pro- usually because they are afraid that giving you final cut will set a precedent whereby other directors will want it too . So they ap- pend it to a letter so that you will have it in writing but it will not be visible in the con- tract. I enjoyed doing documentaries but I pre- fer to direct fiction films in which I can tell a strong story and manipulate characters ac- cording to their individual motivations. A KIND OF LOVING was my first chance to di- rect a feature film . When I was looking for an actress to play the girl who works in the same factory with the hero, I actually did interviews with girls as if they were apply- ing for a secretarial job. They didn't know what questions I was going to ask and so they had to react as they though t the character would. When you are casting you have to know how an actor will come over on film. Bill Atherton, for example, comes over even more strongly on the screen than he does in real life . On the other hand, an actor may read the part well but not be right for it when you see him in Donald Sutherland and Karen Black in THE DAY OF Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman in MIDNIGHT the screen test. Some times you reject one THE LOCUST COWBOY. person for a part, try several others, and some of the interiors there. Shooting on 10- duction as a whole. Sometimes he can en- then come back to the individual that you courage you to stick with an idea when started with. Julie Christie didn't get the c'ltion can be very expensive-trooping you want to scrap it because it hasn' t part of the girl friend in BILLY LIAR right around with all of that equipment and all worked for you on the first try. By the same away, but eventually I decided that she of those people. I am leaning more and token, although I supervise the editing of a had done the part better than anyone else. more toward doing as much in the studio film, I first let the editor put the footage to- as I possibly can, because there you can get I did three pictures in a row with Julie. total concentration. That is why we have gether his own way before I make sugges- After BILLY LIAR, which brought her into built a Los Angeles street on the Para- tions, because he can sometimes give me prominence, we made DARLING, for which mount back lot for DAY OF THE LOCUST- something quite brilliant which I might not she won an Oscar, and then FAR FROM THE right near where De Mille parted the Red have thought of. This is certainly true of MADDING CROWD. The latter was a beauti- Sea for THE TEN COMMANDMENTs-even Jim Clark. ful film but the performances were in diffe- though we are working in Los Angeles . Because a film is not shot in sequence a rent keys . Only Peter Finch, as the rich • director must carry the overall plan of the man hopelessly in love with the heroine, They say in the film business that you movie in his head so that he can locate the lent to the film that sense of classic doom are only as good as your last picture. On actors in a scene in such a way that they which hangs over the characters in the the plane to Los Angeles for the premiere will know where they are supposed to be Hardy nove!'. of MADDING CROWD I was sitting next to a emotionally in the moment of time that is At the New York premiere a lot of ladies publicity man for the company. We knew being filmed . We started shooting COWBOY with blue rinsed hair were saying at inter- after the New York opening that the film in New York City in wintertime, with the mission that the picture was too slow. I was not going to be a great success, so he scene in the cemetery where Ratso takes thought that maybe it was too long for said to me, \"Be careful what you do next. Joe to visit the grave of his father . We American audiences and suggested that I What is this MIDNIGHT COWBOY thing? It worked in the studio in the Bronx for a sweat some footage out of it; but the front doesn't sound very promising to me.\" while and then went to Texas and Florida office said, \"No, give it time. It will catch Nevertheless I was able to persuade Unit- for location work while new sets were on.\" Then I heard later that they had got a ed Artists that James Leo Herlihy's novel being built in the studio. FI LM COMMENT 41

I at first had doubts about using Dustin I like to rehearse a scene but not neces- . sarily in the exact way in which it will be Hoffman in the film: THE GRADUATE had filmed . I always look upon the script as a ing. For example, what would two people blueprint that must be flexible enough to living so close together discuss: their per- just come out, and I was concerned that incorporate the things that develop onCE sonal habits, their likes and dislikes, their the production gets underway. We impro- religious beliefs? Then we took bits of what the screen image which Dustin had de- vised certain scenes in COWBOY with a tape had been said by Dustin and Jon on the recorder running. Waldo and I were both tape and put it into the dialogue. veloped in that film would militate against there, listening to see in what direction the dialogue between Ratso and Joe was go- We used the same method in creating his playing the bum Ratso in COWBOY. But some of the dialogue in SUNDAY BLOODY '\" SUNDAY, such as in the scene in which Mur- Jerry ,Hellman told me to go and meet him ray Head keeps Glenda Jackson waiting ~ for four hours and she explodes at him because he had seen Dustin in a play off- when he finally shows up . The last speech tJ of Peter Finch's in the movie about loneli- Broadway. Finally Dustin donned a dirty ness, which he addresses directly to the ~ audience, was not improvised, however, raincoat and took me on a tour of Forty- as some critics assumed. It was in the first 5 draft of the screenplay, and it was precisely second Street and Greenwich Village, vis- this last scene in the script that attracted ~ me most of all when I read Penelope Gil- iting all sorts of pool halls and dives. By the ~ liatt's first draft. I originated the basic idea of the film , about a man and a woman both end of the everting I was convinced that he a.. falling in love with the same young man. I had dinner with Penelope and the pro- was right for the part because he had Top: Peter Finch in FAR FROM THE MADDING ducer Joseph Janni and we threw out ideas CROWD. Middle: Dirk Bogarde and Julie Christie in that we might be able to use in the film, proved to me tha t he could fi t into tha t DARLING. Bottom: William Atherton in THE DAY OF and then she went off and did the script, THE LOCUST. which we then went over together and re- milieu very well. vised in various ways . We tested several people for the part of SUNDAY got good notices but did not do Joe Buck. During the tests Waldo Salt especially well at the box office. The dis- tributor's opening the film in English uni- would throw questions at the actor being versity towns during summer vacation didn't help; but I nevertheless think that tested as if the latter was a real midnight when I made it I knew that it was a piece of chamber music that would not appeal to cowboy that had been brought in off the everyone. As I said earlier, in the movie business you are only as good as your last street for the interview. He would ask the picture, so I had difficulties launching actor about his John Wayne outfit, and we another project. I worked for a long time on a screen ver- eventually worked some of this material sion of Peter Luke's play Hadrian VII, had a right into Joe Buck's monologue in the film marvelous script about this mad individual who fantasi zes that he is the pope, and about how proud he is of his outfit, how even had Dustin Hoffman test for the part. But the studio that commissioned the sure he is that it appeals to women, etc. We script finall y dropped it. In order to get LOCUST approved for production at thought we finally had the right name for Paramount I even acted out for the com- pany president the film's finale-the riot the part-but his agent tripled the salary and the fire-and that clinched the deal. we had originally agreed upon when he After LOCUST I want to do Evelyn Waugh's novel A Handful of Oust, which is heard how interested we were in this actor. a modern classic just as Day of the Locus t is. It is all about a man who leads an artificial So we looked at the tests again. Jon Voight kind of existence in England and escapes to Brazil to find freedom; but once there he had been a close second to the other actor, falls into the hands of a maniac. When we did the Hardy novel we were intimidated and we finally decided to use him. And, of by the fact that we were filming a classic of fiction: people do have preconceptions of course, he was absolutely perfect. what the film of a given classic should be. I have learned by that mistake, so we will be Dustin did tests with several of the ac- a little more free in adapting A Handful of Du st, just as we have been to some extent tors who were trying out for the part of Joe freer with our adaptation of Day of the Lo- cust. The goal of a film made from a novel is Buck because he wanted to work up his to capture the spirit of the original. I am confident that we have caught the spirit of portrayal of Ratso and how he would in- Day of th e Locus t and made a film that should nevertheless be an entertaining teract with Joe. We did a lot of makeup and moving experience in its own right. (: tests on Dustin because we wanted him to look homely but not grotesque. The makeup man and Dustin's own dentist made a dental plate for him in order to give the impression of Ratso's rotted teeth. They put in little bits of black here and there, seeing how little we could get away with and yet get the impression that we wanted . In making a movie you always start with too much and pare away what you don' t need in the performances- makeup, etc.-until it looks right. For example Ratso was supposed to be lame but I didn't want Dustin to make him too crippled; in the end Dustin's sugges- tion of Ratso's lameness was just right. In the scene where Ratso gets up on a chair to pull down the blind in his dirty flat, Dustin thought of the detail of Ratso lifting his leg with his hand in order to get up on the chair to pull down the blind. Just the right touch. I respect actors, you see, because I know what they are up against. Jon Voight took a tape recorder with him when we went to Texas, and he recorded the voices of the Texans whom we interviewed for bit parts in the picture. tThhe etnapheesdirnocveessuasnatillymoandtbhye playing back way back to New York. But he did get his Texas drawl down perfectly in the bargain . 42 MAY-JUNE 1975

Nathanael West's Th e Day of the Locust is away. The book ticks with the harmless, bles some vast Biblical epic about the part- ing of the Red Sea; one strains one' s eyes something of a literary curiosity. If we ac- muted sound of a pocket watch, but we are for a glimpse of Charlton Heston as Moses . cept it as a classic, we do so perceiving that always nevously aware that it is, in fact, a Scene after scene is blown up, pushed to an extreme moment, and then held it is a classic of a very singular sort. In one time-bomb; when the planned-for mo- through many frames; by such extravagant means, a cock-fight becomes a dazzling of the most celebrated misjudgments ever ment arrives, it will detonate with terrify- but irrelevant Turneresque study of flung and scumbled pigment. No doubt in hopes made, Dr. Johnson, speaking of Tristram ing effect. of future sales to TV and the like, LOCUST had to be shot in color (though one misses Shandy , opined that nothing odd can last. Locust amounts to an optical illusion: it is the homely modesty of Thirties black- and-white); still, the picture need not have Well, Tristram has lasted splendidly in smaller than life-size and yet large enough been made to run as long as it would take many people to read the book. spite of the Great Cham, and Locust, which to risk comparison with the grotesques of A number of other things have gone is many ways is as least as odd as Tristram , Daumier and Goya, whom West himself awry in this big Paramount production; LOCUST is as strangely cast as it has been gives ample evidence, having survived cites in describing the ambitious intentions strangely puffed up out of shape. Faye Greener, the tough little on-the-make over thirty-five years, of becoming immor- of Tod Hackett's projected painting, \"The blonde heroine, is carefully noted by West to be seventeen; there is no way on earth to tal. We do well to take it seriously, stop- Burning of Los Angeles. \" Writers like to make us believe that Karen Black is in her teens, or even in her twenties, and her ping somewhere this side of piety; and the conceal the springs of their inspiration (Dy- constant refusal ofTod amounts to a repel- lent sexual perversion, of which her more closely we study it, the more clearly lan Thomas used to pretend that he de- babyish daydreams are a disconcerting symptom . Donald Sutherland is also mis- we will be able to see what has gone wrong rived from Hardy!) , and one suspects that cast, for the opposite reason: he looks far too young to be the fat, sedentary, with the movie that John Schlesinger has it was Bosch whom West took for his secret middle-aged Homer Simpson. Schle- singer has encouraged Sutherland to play made from it. master in writing Locust; certainly the last Homer as if he were a cretinous Lennie out of Of Mice and Men , and he is no such chapter, a written·analogue of Tod's apoca- thing; he is a man of normal intelligence and appetites, who is unable to exercise lyptic holocaust, owes more to Bosch than them-a plight far more dreadful than Lennie' s. William Atherton is fugitively to any other source. West wishes us to plausible as Tod; the light in his eyes seems to go on and off from one scene to the next, believe that Tod is genuinely talented and as if from a lack of confidence in what it is that he is intended to feel. Burgess that his painting, when completed, will Meredith makes a big, bow-wow thing of his role as a down-at-heels, dying ex- prove admirable; at the same time, he de- vaudevillian, and Geraldine Page appears briefly as a kind of Aimee Semple McPher- picts Tod as a gawky, conventional young son evangelist-a role that was written into the script by Salt and does it no harm. Yale man, drawn into set- and costume- The photography is by Conrad Hall, who takes skillfull advantage of opportunities designing in Hollywood almost by chance, for showing off that ought never to have been permitted him. for want of anything more compelling to ~ do. Tod serves as West's Stephen Dedalus, Henry James said of the ancient Romans ~ and his education takes place among the that a people who can make nothing small -:-_,, .._ .... g pimps, whores, failed clowns, angry are at least as defective as a people who can ~ dwarfs, slick screenwriters, and timorous make nothing big. It is the occupational -0 hazard of moviemakers to be Romans: ....y Cj Iowa exiles who people the dinky, sun- Romans who fail .•;..~. ~ burst canyons of L.A . Tod' s education is ~ often painful and ignominious, but then William Atherton, Burgess Meredith, Donald what education, whether one is young or Sutherland in THE DAY OF THE LOCUST. old, is not? Perhaps the oddest thing about Locust is Now, in trying to make a movie of Lo- that it is a big novel on a very small scale. cust, one should take pains to preserve Indeed, at first glance it seems scarcely West's irony by preserving his intimate more than an extended novella, consisting scale and coolness of tone . One should of twenty-seven chapters (some of which keep at a distance from the physical and are but a couple of pages in length) that psychological mutilations dealt with in the total fewer than sixty thousand words. But story; the monstrous in West's Hollywood the degree to which the book is com- is vivid not because it is rare but because it pressed is precisely the degree to which it is commonplace . Mysteriously, Schle- achieves an uncanny power. Because it is singer and his screenwriter, Waldo Salt, so brief, it looks modest, even diffident. have failed to grasp this obvious fact. Fol- The author begins in an off-hand manner, lowing the story-line of Locust with a urging us, in effect, not to give him our full sedulous fidelity, they transform every attention: \"Around quitting time, Tod lightly sketched episode into an opulent Hackett heard a great din on the road out- set-piece and thereby destory it; we find side his office.\" As an opening sentence, ourselves in a world where De Mille would this doesn't compare to \"Call me Ishmael\" be all too comfortably, grandly at home . or \"For a long time I used to go to bed The collapse of a canvas-covered hill in a early,\" and West knew it; a young foxy studio scene of the Battle of Waterloo takes grandpa of a writer, he took care to set his a couple of hundred unexcited words for scene as if with something readily thrown West to describe . In the movie, it resem- FILM COMMENT 43

The current rush in Hollywood to film work as necessary background for The Day Lonelyhearts in 1933, West went out to Hol- adaptations of novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald of the Locust, just as the novel' s protagonist lywood to write an original screenplay for (Th e Great Gatsby, The Last Tycool1) and Tod Hackett had done . Columbia. According to Martin, West Nathanael West (Th e Day of th e Locust, A submitted two scripts, an involuted social Cool Million) is more than a little ironic, But the filmography provided by Jay comedy called BEAUTY PARLOR, and a rural considering the ragged careers these two Martin (in his biography of the writer) drama called RETURN TO THE SOIL. Al- brilliant American writers had in the movie connects West with some twenty-seven though West quickly became accustomed films in the seven years from 1933 until his to the specific nature of writing for film, colony forty years ago. Their literary col- . death. Even accepting that some of these leagues back East seemed to have thought projects were never completed, that others and quite enjoyed the opportunity to in- Fitzgerald and West went to Locustland to were revision jobs and still others were dulge in inconsequential fantasy, Colum- molder and die-which they did, within a taken away from West and passed on to bia did not share his enthusiasm: neither day of each other, at the end of 1940. numerous hired hands, it is inconceivable that some of West's expansive talent and screenplay was ever filmed. Soon after Fitzgerald's tenure in Hollywood (as individual viewpoint did not come West submitted a third draft of his second pieced together by Aaron Latham in Crazy through in the work he devoted so much script, his contract was terminated and he Sundays) was marked primarily by extreme of his time to. And when one reads some soon returned to New York, discouraged frustration, while West's was more a mat- of his existing screenplays, sees some of not only by his failure to crack the system, ter of reluctant accommodation to the his finished movies, and closely studies his but also by Alfred Werker's watered-down realities of the industry. As part of the writings, these suspicions become at least film version of Miss Lonelyhearts, retitled B-picture assembly line at Republic, Col- partially confirmed . For as routine and ADVICE TO THE LOVELORN, and released at umbia, Universal, and RKO, West enjoyed mechanical as many of the films West a fairly lucrative career, if not an estheti- worked on were, one can still faintly dis- the end of 1933. cally fulfilling one; and an examination of cern thematic patterns and preoccupations the conditions under which he worked unique to his personal vision. • and the films produced inthis environ- ment may be rewarding as a study both of This is not to suggest that Nathanael A few years later, West felt prepared to the second-line Hollywood hierarchy and West is an unacknowledged auteur of the take on Hollywood once again and went of a large body of work by one of America' s Thirties whose work is a consistently out to work at Republic, a prolific most original and corrosive talents. thoughtful body of films that reflect his B-production studio where West appar- personal philosoph y, but tha t when a ently thought he could function compe- • writer is as good as West was, almost no- tently and anonymously. With this at- thing he touches is of no literary worth. titude he swiftly became an active force in The general consensus among those ·Unfortunately, the lack of serious attention the Republic factory. His first script to be who've attempted an analysis of West's paid to the B-film, and West's biographer's produced was TICKET TO PARADISE, a farce film career in the conte~t of his more am- relative non-interest in West's cinematic comedy about an amnesia victim, directed bitious printed output is that he actually contributions, make a thorough evaluation by Aubrey Scotto. The complicated plot- preferred to work on low-budget movies, of his work in this field quite difficult. We involving a young businessman made to since they demanded considerably less of do know that, following the sale df Miss think himself a cabdriver and caught up in his creative energies and left him time to a maze of situations-has, in very concentrate on his novels . It is also stripped-down fashion, the same mixture suggested that West tolerated the film of fatalism and finance that marks A Cool Million (1936), whose Algeresque hero 44 MAY-JUNE 1975

meets with one setback after another. In with Samuel Ornitz, and directed by Phil Boulevard. This is possibly due to the con- the true Holl ywood mode, TICKET TO Rosen) failed to please the critics or reach ta gio us nature of West's integrity, but PARADISE ends with the restoration of the public. Perhaps because of this disap- more likely a protective reaction to the ac- pointment, West would not again attempt cusations of shoddiness from those who memory and marriage to a millionairess, such overt explorations of his own political would evaluate Republic's low-profile but West would often return to this matter ideology and would become even more musicals alongside those of the major of the American Dream and the achieve- enmeshed in the intrica te screenwriter studios. For w hat it is, RHYTHM IN THE ment of success. cross-breeding at Republic. Although he CLOUDS is fairly diverting, with sporadic would only receive official screen credit on touches of the West wit and his excellent From all reports, West's follow-up ef- a few more Republic features, Jay Martin ear for dialogue. fort, FOLLOW YOUR HEART, (also directed by documents his contribution to numerous Scotto), did not even attain the stature of \"class\" Republic pictures, notably the There are a couple of songs in BORN TO BE its modest predecessor. This 1936 operetta, rather high-priced GANGS OF NEW YORK , WTLD (directed by Joe Kane), but it could like PARADISE a collaboration with other (directed by James Cruz from a story by not accurately be called a musical. This Republic staffers, was unanimously Samuel Fuller) and LADIES IN DISTRESS, (di- snappy, durable little film is primarily a panned by reviewers at the time, with rected by Gus Meins) . West's term at Re- truckdrivers-on-the-road vehicle, wherein much of the critical anger aimed at the public substantially concluded with a pair the suspense is derived from their poten- screenplay. His next film, his third that of films, the first an adaptation and the tially explosive cargo, which they initially year for the studio, was for Republic a pre- second an original screenplay that was his believe to be lettuce . This 1938 film-a stigious project both in terms of budget only solitary effort at the studio. low-budget ancestor of Clouzot's WAGES OF ($100,000) and property. FEAR-was designated a \"Jubilee Feature\" RHYTHM IN THE CLOUDS (directed in 1937 by Republic, due to its higher than usual THE PRESIDENT'S MYSTERY (directed by by John H . Auer) was a low-budget musi- budget (in the neighborhood of $150,000), Phil Rosen), was the closest the company cal, a genre in which West worked three and not to its cast (Ralph Byrd, Doris Wes- had come to a pre-sold film, due to its germ times in his film career, including the ear- ton, Ward Bond) or to the box-office poten- of an idea from FOR and its subsequent lierFOLLOW YOUR HEART and, at RKO, LET'S tial of the story. Because the script, fast- exploration in a series of short stories for MAKE MUSIC. This little Tin Pan Alley with paced and casual, was for once his indi- Liberty magazine. In this film and his next, Patricia Ellis and Warren Hull is serviceable vidual creation, West received prominent IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU, West was able to enough, but West surrendered to the de- billing in some ad displays, and studio proclaim his Leftist political/economic al- mands of the genre and allowed his publicity highlighted what they felt was legiances. In these two films he dealt with natural inclination to study the grim the novel construction of the script, that of seriously what in A Cool Milliol1 and to a realities of a starving songwriter about to placing the heroes in danger from the be- lesser extent TICKET TO PARADISE he had be thrown out of a rooming house for not ginning of the story to the end instead of treated humorously, namely the inequities paying her bill-a situation with which building to a climax. of the American system and the deceit in- West was quite familiar. Still, even in this herent in the American Dream. West and film fluff, West's sympathies with the • co-writer Lester Cole turned the raw mate- downtrodden artist can be seen beneath rial of THE PRESIDENT'S MYSTERY into an in- the surface gloss; and the concluding suc- Within the year, West left Republic and dictment of congressional and capitalist cess (like that in TICKET TO PARADISE) is un- began entering into shorter, more reward- oppression, and drew the attention and felt, pat, and perfunctory. So this \"mad, ing relationships with other studios, praise of such influential critics as The New merry, musical fun, ridin' the sky in high\" namely RKO, Universal, and (again) Col- York Times's Frank S. Nugent. The film is (according to studio publicity) takes on a umbia . As he began his career in Hol- also noteworthy for West's incipient use of second, admittedly buried, level of skepti- lywood by submitting unused scripts to purely cinematic devices in his screenwrit- cism that brings the clouds a little closer to that studio, so would his last screen ing, such as the juxtaposition of newsreels earth. assignment (with Boris Ingster on Col- and voice-overs. umbia's AMATEUR ANGEL) be incomplete at Significantly, in their pressbook promo- the time of West's death. • tion Republic played up the sparseness of its production, proclaiming proudly that In between BORN TO BE WILD and But a year later, the melodramatic IT \"It's not colossal ... not even one million- AMATEUR ANGEL, the classification of the COULD HAPPEN TO YOU, dealing (like dollar dance sequence ... but it's got every films West worked on as exclusively Sinclair Lewis's It Can 't Happen Here) with entertainment element your audience ever B-movies becomes more difficult. Cer- the rise of fascism in America, was a near- wanted\"-an uncharacteristically candid tainly FIVE CAME BACK (directed by John total failure. West's origin'al screen statement concerning Republic'S tendency Farrow for RKO in 1938) has a somewhat story-which proclaimed the virtues of to stretch a dollar the length of Cahuenga blurred distinction so far as production immigration and the evils of power- values are concerned. Martin calls it a grabbing-was downbeat material to \"high budget, B-quality movie,\" while begin with; and his screenplay (written Left: Elizabeth Risdon and Jean Rogers in LET'S MAKE FILM COMMENT 45 MUSIC. Center: Eunice Healy in FOLLOW YOUR HEART. Right: Roger Pryor and Wendy Barrie (on merry-go-round) in TICKET TO PARADISE,

Don Miller sees it as a \"low budget produc- With semi-potent box-office juveniles together on various projects until West's tion . . . 'all-star' B film. \" Whichever is the Jackie Cooper and Freddie Bartholomew in fatal accident, and one can only guess at actual case, it was for West an important the cast, the studio was not all that stingy what the team might have been capable of film, although after he completed the first regarding production costs. The story is producing had death not brought their dra1t, Jerry Cady and then Dalton Trumbo remarkable only for the transparently cyn- promising partnership to an end. worked it over. While the result is some ical patriotism heaped on the script by confusion as to individual contributions, West. After a written dedication \"To our fu- • FIVE CAME BACK can certainly be scored as ture citizens ... our country's youth . .. an asset in West's Hollywood portfolio: a LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF In the final analysis, the only true mas- suspenseful, well-crafted film . HAPPINESS .. .,\" the script goes on to tell terpiece that can be said to have emerged of a sarcastic Depression kid (Cooper) who from the more than five years that Other RKO films of this period-MEN is sent to military school and learns that Nathanael West spent adapting his craft to AGAINST THE SKY (Leslie Goodwins), I \"There will always be things worth fight- STOLE A MILLION (Frank Tuttle) , and LET'S ing for, sir, even worth dying for.\" Some of admittedly second-rate films was not a film MAKE MUSIC (Leslie Goodwins) can be the early scenes are very well-drawn and at all, but a novel that would not have been called B-movies only by letting the defini- sharply observed, but the film illuminates possible had West not spent so much time tion out a little at the sea ms. (None appear little more than West's ability to accommo- in the lower rung of the movie colony. Th e in Miller's comprehensive study of the date to studio requirements and turn out Day of the Locust so intensely evokes the B-fil.m.) The wide range of reviews of the reasonable, if insincere, product. desperate, dense air of the Hollywood former two films would seem to indicate substrata straining for first-class status that that RKO had fairly high expectations that Much more interesting in terms of only someone who had struggled so long they would catch on; I STOLE A MILLION, at West's career in the B-film was his relation- in that environment could have captured least, was a solid commercial success. By ship at RKO with writer-director Boris Ing- it. The bit players, cowboys, hack screen- counting LET'S MAKE MUSIC as a routine ster. Their first collaboration was an adap- writers and agents that inhabit the studios programmer designed as a vehicle for Bob tation of Francis lIes's Before Tbe Fact, which of National Films cannot be very different Crosby, the remaining two films were went on to become the basis for Hitch- from the people encountered by West at quite definite steps up the Hollywood lad- cock' s SUSPICION. Later on, West was Republic. If the only way that Nathanael der for West. brought in to do revisions on Ingster' s West could have produced The Day of the STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR Although Locust was to have sweated in a writer's The same can be said of Universal's the film was written by Frank Partos ITom cubicle over hand-me-down pages, then his own story, and it is clear that he is enti- the unproduced scripts, creative frustra- SPIRIT OF CULVER Goseph Santley), a 1939 tled to his screen credit for the script, it tion, and FOLLOW YOUR HEARTS were all West collaboration based on an earlier film. might be revealing to speculate on what worth it. .'{.. West's polish job might have entailed. The depressing rented room and the characteristics of the grotesques who in- habit the building are little atmospheric de- tails that are familiar from West's work, particularly his two major novels. Also, the cynicism of the older reporter (who recites such lines as \"If life wasn't a joke it wouldn' t be worth living,\" and \"There's murder in every intelligent man's throat\") is recognizable not only as a cinematic con- vention but as the grim humor and aware- ness of potential violence so central to West's vision. And the term \"surrealist,\" often applied to West's novels, would not be inappropriate to the sequences in which the hero imagines his conviction and execution. While none of these points substantially affect the plot and thematic content of the film, which apparently sprung from the original writer, they are sufficiently West- ian as to make questions of authorship more than just academically intriguing. The great compatability of West and Ings- ter, furthermore, suggests that the director might have found in the rewrite insights and details that he could effectively seize upon. In any case, the two men worked Left, top to bottom : Peter Lorre and Margaret Talichet in STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR ; Betty Furness and Henry Wilcoxon in THE PRESIDENT'S MYSTERY; Claire Trevor and George Raft in I STOLE A MILLION. Right, top to bottom: Freddie Bartholomew and Jackie Cooper in SPIRIT OF CULVER; C. Aubrey Smith, Lucille Ball , Joseph Calleia, Allen Jenkins, and Chester Morris in FIVE CAME BACK ; Warren Hall and Joyce Compton in LET'S MAKE MUSIC.

DU5J\\N flJ\\IV\\VE]EV INTERVIEW by Edgardo Cozarinsky and Carlos Clarens By far the most stimulating fare to be found SWEET MOVIE: Anna Pru cnal, captain of the Ship Sur- for the French; and from the hindsight of at the Cannes Film Festival is at the youthful, April 1975, SWEET MOVIE suddenly seems to politically unbiased Quinzaine des Realisateurs vival. have arrived too early rather than too late. which programs films hardly conforming to There are signs of detente in censorial ma tters the socio-political chic of the main event, or to Makavejev supporters were confused and since Michel Guy took over the post of Secret- the requirements of that other splinter festi- disappointed by the film: to the Americans it ary of State for Cultural Affairs. In March of val, la Semaine de la Critique, which limits itself may have seemed a belated, Mittel-European this year, political censorship was relaxed to seven features by new directors . The Quin- yippie yell. The French, as usual in such somewhat to allow the release of Stanley Kub- zaine easily accommodates such disparate ef- cases, came up with vague rhetorical reviews, rick's lS-year-old PATHS OF GLORY, a test case, forts as MARJOE and CELINE ET JULIE, Bresson's but since the picture was being talked about it for no ban really existed, only a conservative FOUR NIGHTS OF ADREAMER and Schrater's EIKKA was decided to release it immediately. When notion that the film offended national honor KATAPPA. It is also here that the yearly succes de it opened in Paris a few days later, filmgoers and dignity. Pornography is something else, scan dale usually takes place, before a large, were treated to a process rarely seen on th e yet hopeful distributors have optioned a young, unpaying audience enjoying a tem- screen since the early days of FATIMA'S BELL Y number of American hard-core films, both porary surcease from the vigilance of the DANCE (and also used to mask nipples and straight and gay . PINK NARCISSUS, gay, soft- French censor. Last year, the odds favored pubic hair in Godard's VIVRE SA VIE): black SWEET MOVIE, a Canadian-French coproduc- stripes, vertical or horizontal according to the core, and four years old, opened last De- tion directed by Dusan Makavejev. There was case, covered the offending parts so that a cember to good reviews and attendance. considerable expectancy fanned by word- visual pun on GOLDFINGER was totally lost of-mouth reports that the film featured scenes along with many a plot pOint. There were cuts Makavejev's own special brand of sexual of vomiting and defecation as part of a group as well, but such was the censorship situation reportage and political allegory would un- therapy session organized by Otto Muehl in France last May that audiences flocked to doubtedly have benefited from the new poli- whose own SODOMA SUITE had been the con- see the film at least during the first two weeks. cy. The director now lives in Paris and prefers versation piece of the Quinzaine back in 1970. Afterward, the attendance petered out and to work outside his native land. His relations SWEET MOVIE closed . with Yugoslavian film officials are friendly, at This was the first time that Makavejev least on the surface, but WR: MYSTERIES OF THE worked outside his native Yugoslavia, with an The picture has yet to be released here, al- ORGANISM remains banned back home. Despite international cast that included Carole Laure though Makavejev garnered some attention the relative lack of success of SWEET MOVIE, and John Vernon from Canada, and Pierre last summer as one of three directors to be in- there have been offers, the least likely being a Clementi and Sa mi Frey from France. Also in- vited to the First Telluride Film Festival in Col- John Milius script, APOCALYPSE NOW! , which triguing was the fact that Ms . Laure had orado, along with Leni Riefenstahl and Fran- Coppola offered and w hich Makavejev walked out in mid-production alleging that cis Ford Coppola . In Berkeley, the film turned down. certain scenes were damaging to her dignity, aroused vivid controversy; for American au- both womanly and professional, a hazard that diences, its interest obviously resides in its The following in terview took place in necessitated her replacement by a French- political rather than its erotic content. Not so Makavejev's Montparnasse apartment last Polish stage actress named Anna Prucnal not to mention a revision of the original July . screenplay. On the screen, SWEET MOVIE un- folded in the fragmentary structure of previ- • ous Makavejev efforts such as LOVE AFFAIR OF A SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR and WR: MYSTERIES OF Doyou know the latest definition ofhard-core THE ORGANISM, with documentary interpola- pornography, by Justice William Rehnquist? tions breaking the original narrative at \"Representations or descriptions of ultimate strategic points: a Nazi newsreel depicting the sexualacts, normal or perverted, actual or simu- exhumation of a mass grave containing the lated, [orl masturbation, excretory functions elite of the Polish army is a factual footnote, and lewd exhibitions of thegenitals.\" and so is the sequence at the Otto Mahl com- mune although skillfully inserted in the de- What do they mean by \"lewd\"? velopment of the story. The two leading Well, they would be able to define it. But ladies appear in separate contexts, Laure as then, again, no two persons would agree as to the definitive sex object defiled by men from whether a certain \"exhibition\" is or isn't. Well, I'm afraid this is not a very good Montreal to Paris; Prucnal as a socialist earth time for critical filmmaking. It goes very mother dispenSing candy and death along the canals of Amsterdam. And there is the usual much in cycles, and in general-not just in robust Makavejev humor: Laure and Sami a particular country, though of course in Frey, who plays a charro pop-singer, become very different keys-the present mood is stuck in mid-fuck like dogs in heat and have to oppressive and repressive. be disentangled by solicitous bystanders, among them a flock of nuns on a visit to the SWEET MOVIE, though, gets away with the Eiffel Tower. first cock on a French screen, perhaps because it's a gallan t quote from GOLDFINGER-the In Cannes at least, the one scene that really \"goldcock. \" seemed to shock the audience was that of Prucnal, in the near nude, attempting to Oh, I didn't think of it that way. Anyway seduce a group of prepubescent children, a I didn' t worry about that; being satirical disturbing but valid metaphor. Even former you 're always allowed to go a little further. I worried more about Pierre Clementi a well-known actor, performing in the nude. The \"goldcock\" is just an insert, a kind of comics-like joke. Clementi instead is doing FILM COMMENT 47

his own performance, his own contribu- he never made any of his therapy public, German scientist doing his experiments tion to the film, and we are recording, al- never did any group therapy, always up in the hills was perfect for the part of most documentary-like, that performance. worked on a person-to-person basis, he Monster. They even invented that Reich But what seems to have angered some hated homosexuality. So he had a number was keeping children in cages for scientific people most are things that are not at all of his own hangups in spite of being such a purposes! sexual. They have felt attacked for instance great pioneer and breaking through much by the commune scenes. As soon as they stronger than any other in his time or Like Jewish ritual murders, in the anti- since. But this breakthrough led him di- semitic mythology. By the way, were any objec- see others playing with food, some people rectly to what people considered to be lu- tions risen to the scene in SWEET MOVIE where get petrified, much more than with sex, nacy. He was so alone with his knowledge . Anne Prucnal seduces the children? like Carole Laure putting Cachorro's cock His understanding of the connection be- against her face and playing tenderly with tween biological individual well-being and The French censors were very nice about it. Actually this is covered by a black stripe a political social behavior was so unaccept- it, they said they couldn't deprive adult in the print now showing in Paris. As you able that he was just left alone. He lived in French moviegoers from seeing this kind know, Carole Laure objected to two tiny a kind of ghetto, boycotted in a kind of in- of \"research film.\" They just had us put a bits of the film and we had to remove them visible cage. warning in all the publiCity, that some temporarily. As to this particular shot: she scenes may be provoking or hurting to had seen the rushes back in November '73, In his writings of the last period, before many people's feelings . and only six months later she started legal he was \"railroaded\" and put in jail, he dis- action . cusses more and more this invisible An Argentinian film censor was asked once enemy. He had this theory that \"HIGS\" why he didn't allow on a cinema screen some Perhaps she needed some time to think it aver. were against his work, and \"HIGS\" were footage that had been on TV screens. His answer I suppose so. Actually this is not sex or \"Hoodlums in Government.\" And the was that even if more people, in figures, depiction of sexual activity but a kind of truth was that there were, of course, but he watched TV; they watched it in isolation, never very playful, childish, sensual contact, was always trying to define, to create new more than four or five, while a cinema audience coming as it does after she has been concepts to explain his predicament. He develops agroup feeling, and if somebody booed nursed, breast-fed, all in the same vein. speaks of Moscow agents being sent from or shouted at the screen others might follow and Only Cachorro's self-castration \"number\" Washington; they were actually sanitary a riot could start. That's a man who knows his strikes a different note, being a parody of agents from the Food and Drug Adminis- job! \"macho\" attitudes. But as soon as the tration, former Navy men mainly chaSIng commune starts playing about with food, Somebody told me that the last military and they start vomiting, pissing and all, people who were selling rotten food and putsch in Brazil started as a right-wing people feel attacked . This is a kind of dangerous cosmetics-you know, pretty reaction against some kind of left-wing un- documentary about a therapy session, and tough guys. And they were happy to find rest among navy cadets who had been people just won't admit that into a fiction this spectacular case of a crazy scientist up watching POTEMKIN . It sounded so film . They feel attacked because we're north in the Maine hills, who according to fantastic-Brazilian cadets only a few years shifting the ground and they are not able to rumors had patients masturbate in strange ago watching POTEMKIN! We have here keep the compartments closed, uncom- coffin-like telephone booths. They again the boomerang effect: positive action municated. Stick to fiction, they say. thought they were going to find something triggering negative reaction. But you didn't fake the pissing or shitting. sensational, and there were federal agents In action films where you have fight all over the states renting orgone ac- Though WR is more developed and aggres- scenes, the actors or their stuntrnen some- cumulators, trying to get people tb testify sive, ofcourse, the basic approach of that film is times get carried away and really beat each about the atrocious goings on at Reich's. much the same as in THE SWITCHBOARD other; sometimes it's very difficult to draw OPERATOR,. yo:~r second feature. Did it shock the line between faking and real beating. In the documentary part about Reich at the people in Yugoslavia back in '67? There, of course, is the excuse that it's the beginning of WR-MYSTERIES OF THE OR- eternal moral struggle of good and evil. It is GANISM, all the people interviewed in the SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR was widely ac- as if violence was OK as long as it's not town near where he lived, look rather funny: cepted by critics and audiences . It became serving any kind of liberation. You're sup- small-town American-Gothic types. They re- a box-office success and was part of a new posed to accept things . You're not sup- mind one of those science-fiction Hollywood trend in non-linear story-telling, mixing posed to throw out. You're supposed to mavi15 of the early Fifti15, where there always documentary and fiction all the way. Also swallow everything that's pushed down were small communities endangered by giant in its fresh approach to subject matter: sex, your throat. The real problem is what to do ants, things from outer space, monsters from everyday life, the relationship between with biology in this context, what to do the black lagoon, what you will . And in that work and love and History, and so on. The with this kind of new knowledge about footage you got in Maine, a community was interesting thing in this experience is that if where our problems are really located. seen acting in the same way - only The Thing you have fiction alone, or documentary In Character Analysis, Wilhelm Reich had been Reich . alone, the audience is geared to this par- states that our typical phases proceed according ticular genre or level of communication, to a definite plan which is determined by the What's extraordinary is tha t these but if inside a fictional story you insert structure of each individual case . He lists : people in American towns in the Midwest documentary fragments they become \"loosening of the armor, breaking down the live in a very good relation to nature-- more documentary than in a purely character armor which is definitive destruction fishing, hunting, swimming. But in a social documentary film. Being geared to watch of neurotic equilibrium, breaking through of sense they are completely Isolated in a kind fiction you start discovering in documen- deeply repressed and strongly attached material of dreamland of permanent security. tary certain qualities that would have with the reactivation of infantile hysteria\"- These little towns are the proletarian passed unnoticed otherwise, but you also this is where Otto Muehl and your film come dream: these people have been poor, or start recognizing in fiction all this marginal their parents were, and came to America documentary remains-the way people in-\"working through of the liberated materials and found little plots of land and built dress, move, eat, their homes. No matter Paradise there . Living always in this kind how transposed on a fictional level, they without resistance, chrystalization of the libido of permanent security, their own economy keep a value as expression of a certain cul- from pregenital fixations\" -this is also in supporting them nicely, getting a fairly ture, of a given moment in history. SWEET MovIE-\"reactivation of the infantile good education, feeling defended by gov- genital anxiety, appearance of orgasm anxiety ernment and army-anything from out- Anyway, I was happy to get many and establishing of an orgastic policy . . .\" side that doesn't conform to their way of people to watch SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR life is bound to be monstrous. This strange even without this intellectual frame of ref- The interesting thing with Reich is that erence . I feel that all of us, those who started making films after 1960, were con- demned to represent what's called \"au- 48 MAY-JUNE 1975 SWEET MOVIE: Heroic tableau in the Eiffel Tower (Carole Laure, Sami Frey).