VOLUME 11 - NUMBER 03 MAY-JUNE 1975

thor's cinema\"-a kind of intellectual black leader instead of the questioned with their babies, who feel this lack of eye contact. The first basic contact of course is filmmaking . It's difficult to liberate oneself . parts. This made a very awkward impres- that of mouth sucking, and then comes eye contact more like social exchange, like from this, and try to be just entertaining. sion and was a powerful argument against reading into somebody's eyes. The great quality American movies had in censorship. Finally Mr. John Trevel ya n, The idea in the film was to start a series of healing experiences, having people do their best days was to be made under mar- the censor, gave his imprimatur and the things without her really reacting, then having the first reaction in her eyes, that ket dictatorship. They were not afraid to film was released except for this one min- change of focus as an indication of the fact that she is looking at som ething, then at please the market, and just had to be in- ute with the old \" pornographic\" movie . something else. And all the time with her eyes straight into the camera, which can be teresting all the time. If they felt like mak- Now it is back on all prints, in England. In very affecting because you feel the contact and the loss of contact as it happens be- ing some intellectual comment, they had France it was never allowed, so the dis- tween her eyes and yours. From this she would pass to touch experience, food to infiltrate it. Besides, ourselves being tributor tried to get the censorship visa by communication, and to a more meaningful kind of group experience. filmmakers from marginal countries as far putting a black stripe over the visible geni- What happened with Carole Laure? as film industry go, we are supposed to tals, which was then considered too nar- I really don't know if she was playing scared or if it is because she is so incredibly express our national cultures. And being row, so he had to put a rather larger one narcissistic. At the beginning I thought she was well cast, being beautiful and an able interesting becomes a kind of secondary running across the center of the image. actress. But she only is able when she is alone. She had no problem getting into the duty. Speaking of things that Reich would never suitcase, but in the chocolate bath, for in- stance, she was supposed to be with a Take westerns, for instance . Take horses, have mentioned, there were transves tites in partner but couldn't do it with another person, so finally we had to do it with her landscape, trains, guns. These are WR-Jackie Curtis, for instance. alone. Whenever she was with other people she became extremely upset and documentary items, and there is real action I myself was in a kind of permanent awe made up incredible hysterical situations being done with them, in them, though before Jackie, as religious people might feel instead of saying she couldn't cope with them. All of this went on and on, until we the framework may be purely fictional. in the face of Jesus . Because this awe, this arrived at the commune, which is a self- You get this strong impression of a life diffused erotic feeling, leaves you de- supporting group. At first I thought Carole Laure was a lit- force at work, and bad guys against good fenseless, as if you were going to be swal- tle afraid, but then she was each time more guys become just a very simple excuse for a lowed, destroyed in your individuality. difficult, claiming she didn't understand things, not wanting to undress, afraid that kind of biological display. Like the fantastic People feel aggressed by it and react by parts of her body would be exposed, then not even wanting to undress in order to get chases-real people , real horses , real being aggressive and saying \"You're ag- into a bathtub. I finally realized she was re- ally incapable to feel, as well as having this rocks-this is behavior on an ecological gressive with your clothes and your be- terrible non-professional attitude. Like most hysterical people she had a patholog- level. It's something we've come to havior.\" When you analyze it you can't ical fear of contact, and there she was, fac- ing that fantastic group that worked so reevaluate after these years of intellectual understand why somebody who is quite smoothly together, sexually free, even act- ing irresponsible or freakish if they felt like, perversion in movies. Going back to roots . well-defended with his own armor- and she couldn't stand the confrontation: somehow it destroyed her narcissistic fan- And the roots, of course, are in American phYSical and psychical, clothes tasies. Supposed to join them, she started pulling back, and got worse and worse movies, the only film industry in the world and social status, and can't ever until she only cried and stood in a comer. that is supported only by the public. get into any unpleasent situation-may Shooting with her had to stop, and the group decided to try and find out some Already in SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR you still feel invaded by somebody who's free . way of helping her out of that state. So they all undressed, took her to a table, had had short snippets of what could pass as belle There's obviously some little cracks hap- her lying on it, stretched on a white layer of flour, and all of this pleased and appeased epoque pornography: that couple doing tab- pening in that armor. They don't know her-being in the center with everybody around. Otto Muehl, the organizer of the leaux vivants on a revolving platform. how to control their own system, and so commune, hoped that after her ego had received this bit of food she might be able This one-minute piece is perhaps one of they react with anger. to join them. But it wasn't so. After a short moment of appeasement she became irri- the oldest \"pornographic\" films, and may How was the heroine supposed to react to all tated and refused any contact, not just physical but intellectual as well. It was at have been made in Germany. It was kept this in SWEET MOVIE? that moment that she broke with the film . in a special can in the Yugoslav Cinema- By being healed. In the script, after being theque, unlisted in the catalogue, some- catatonic after her varied sexual and social thing not to be shown. I was delighted to experiences-rape, transportation in a have it because as you say it's so belle suitcase, the Eiffel Tower episode, all kind epoque, so innocent now, but qualifying at of manipulative things-she was sup- the time it was made as pornography, even posed to arrive to the commune with no if now, inserted in this fiction film of 1967, sense working, and there undergo a series it becomes something of a dream . of group experiences and actions, starting Curiously enough, this short scene was with the eyes. According to Reich the eyes the last piece to be liberated by the censor are incredibly important, and never in England, where the film was not shown treated well in modern medicine or even for years, then passed with heavy cuts. psychoanalysis . I mean the relevance of After the big anticensorship action, some eye contact. The roots of schizQphrenia sequences from the film were shown on seem to lie in poor eye contact between TV, which is not under censorship rule- baby and mother . Embarrassed and un- first as they are on the original, then with happy mothers often do not communicate FILM COMMENT 49

Shooting stopped and I had to rewrite the script for two months. We tried with her again in February, but we only could shoot a few dose-ups. She was utterly incapable of understanding, in the way that people who are not stupid but hysterical just close themselves to certain subjects, people or situations. In what sense could SWEET MOVIE, where she was the heroine, threaten her narcissism? She only wanted to seduce people and protect her beauty and sex ual status. When she arrives to the commune, having been in a garbage dump, she is supposed to be ugly. This raised a terrible make- up problem because she would say OK and then run to the toilet and add make-up on her own just before shooting. Her boy- friend Gilles Carle, the Canadian director, somebody in whom initially I trusted, was here during the whole shooting, always present. He wanted to persuade me that having such a beautiful complexion she couldn't possibly look ugly, no matter what make-up we would tryon her. This incredible behavior of hers, almost therapy. He is not much of a theory man . Top left: Carole Laure in the chocolate bath . Extreme psychotic, was so strong that it had got He has read Reich and likes him but he is top right : \" Research film \" in which Anna Prucnal hold of such serious professionals as Carle another thing; his degree was in defectol- seduces a Quartet of prepubescent boys. Top right : Otto ogy and he worked on play-therapy for de- Muehl 's \"Primal Cream\" therapy. Above: Post-therapy and Pierre Lamy, who acted as her agent fective children, involving their parents celebration in the Milky Way Commune. Below: Dusan and tried to destroy my film! When, in the and family. But his is a classical education. Makavejev. story, she arrives to the commune she has Also he is a painter, so he is used to dealing to face very simple innocent communica- with materials and feels at ease with tion. People in the commune wanted her them-he has been through happenings to become their baby. At first, she showed and psychodramatic playing. He is not at great interest in what Otto was doing. She all theoretical in his work. Rather than looked genuinely interested. But the mo- speak about it, he'd rather accept you in ment she entered therapy she just couldn't the commune so you can explore for your- goon. self. What did Doctor Muehl do to infuriate her so? What Otto generally does is to have people lying on their backs in a very de- fenseless position and then he starts slap- ping them-not hurting, just a kind of ag- gressive play. After some time they become uncomfortable, and when they start react- ing, instead of stopping, Otto goes on stronger until they become each time more aggressive: because aggression is regression. And as it is very difficult to be aggressive if you are not standing but lying on your back, people go back very soon to an infan- tile helpless attitude. They start crying and screaming. Thus, Otto produces a \"primal scream\" type of reaction incredibly quickly. When Arthur Janov was in Cannes I told him I had wanted to call the commune Primal Scream, or Primal Cream, something around the concept. I also asked him how far he goes with his patients, down into in- fantile level: if people are screaming, are they also vomiting and shitting and piss- ing? Oh no, he said. He is too deep in pri- mal scream, and goes very far in the primi- tive infantile level, in ideas and feelings, but not in terms of action, of actual be- havior. And it is this last fortress or armor that Otto tries to break. Otto does a very pragmatic kind of 50 MAY-JUNE 1975

My way of working with the commune a confrontation experience that is, let's say less traditional properties of science fiction, was to tell them what I wanted to do and twenty-two minutes long and quite suspense, very easily moving from one then have them come up with their coun- terrifying-so in-between please go out style to another. This is something Richard terproposal. I had said to Otto-for in- and smoke your cigarette and then come Fleischer, the director, does very well. I stance, just \"Let's have a Day of Sex and back if you feel like-then we would have liked his BOSTON STRANGLER because it another Day of Blood\" -and they came metaphorical suspense and would be intel- holds two visions at the same time; intro- back with an elaborate scene that included lectually relieved. ducing a kind of schizophrenic vision in all girls naked taking part in the killing of a very normal, commercial cinema, always lamb, spilling its blood on themselves Is that why you planned the film with such a keeping in focus the two sides of the while shouting \"I killed my mother, I killed solid story-line, more than any of your previous strangler'S personality. He was moving my mother!\" Such a combination of gen- ones? toward this kind of multiple-layer vision. tleness and aggression, dealing with the in- credibly ambiguous feelings girls have to- This was to be the story of a woman un- SOYLENT GREEN also raises the question ward their mothers. Otto is the man who dergoing different changes. But then of recycling corpses. I was thinking this in can produce this kind of complicated event when Carole Laure failed to act anymore, relation to the Katyn sequence in SWEET and handle the most delicate feelings- Anna Prucnal jumped in and the film MOVIE. Everybody of course has skeletons killing something that is nice and warm shaped itself anew into two related stories, in closets; we all live with corpses around . commenting on each other, but The Katyn killings are there on film, but and lovable. separate-again like all my other films. there are so many more killings that were I saw him in Amsterdam four years ago. He recorded nowhere, all the invisible mur- In the original plan how would Carole Laure ders of Stalinism and countless other was on a stage and was going to copulate with a have ended? regimes-all Spain is filled with corpses goose and cut its head offin the middle oftheact. from the civil war. And all these are unrecy- 771e English poet Heathcot Williams-a fabulous Like the enlightened Marxist militant cled corpses, which is something against na- creature but ridden with all kinds of problems- prostitute in Amsterdam running her boat ture. Corpses have to molder, to be eaten jumped on stage, took the goose, apd escaped to like a kind of clinic or haven for sexual pro- by worms, to tum into flowers and fruits or the canals of Amsterdam, taking the goose with letarians, immigrant workers and others, plain dust and we have to understand and turning her whole life into a permanent share in this process. him. feast for the deprived. Now, Anna sur- The question always is-if some people vives being free to become crazy, she ac- On the other hand we have this fantastic cepts departure from normality, being dif- corpse of Lenin, mummified and kept hate what they are seeing, why don't they ferent. Carole instead is somebody who right in the center of a huge empire of more leave? Isn't it that people really enjoyed after having been manipulated all the time than two hundred million people. They their anger? Many people need good ex- striving for success ends suffocated in don't allow him to die, he still seems to be cuses to get angry, because it allows them chocolate. I think these opposed fates are ruling the country, which lives under his to get in touch with their feelings, even on quite defining. I myself am not clear about spell. Famous Russian joke, quoted in a a secondary level. So it happens that you what the solution may be. Some problems newspaper: why are the beds so wide in do something useful for people, and their can be solved, others can not. And lunacy the Soviet Union? \"Because the great anger stops this initial action through court is part of a problem that has to be turned Lenin is always with us ... \" If they joke processes, censorship, and so on. In the into part of a solution. Once we get this, about it, it is because they feel this tension case of films with this kind of free we have not solved the problem butwe are and want to be relieved of it. It's really the structure-a bit like projective tests, that on a good road. old Cult of the Dead. Also, the corpse can allow people to express or handle marginal feelings they rarely explore-you find You can't discuss Richard Nixon, for in- be seen rarely, only a few hours a day, and again that everything marginal is cor- stance, and not enter into what kind of people are lining up outside as a kind of rected. People keep inside limits and pro- pathological personality he is. You know, ritual. This is exactly what my Canadian tect those limits. So you believe you are he's anal in a quite classical psychoanalyti- distributor does sometimes: selling only a going to touch one thing, and anything, cal sense: everything he does is connected hundred tickets in the middle of winter, just anything comes up and out. Effects are with money, dirt, and shit. This obviously having the cinema almost empty and the incalculable, like chain reactions. That's tells in his face-he has a visible gut prob- people standing outside, almost freezing, why simple story lines can be a good rein- lem. But if we understand that shit is a until the interest for some film develops to forcement. People then say \"Oh I saw a legitimate human problem we can under- a pitch of intolerable intensity. A question film about this and that,\" and they pin it stand him too, as the expression of a of demand and supply: shortening the down thanks to the story, leaving their greedy society manipulating money, try- supply in order to increase the demand . emotions aside. There are things that in ing to get always more power. All power years of high school you discuss once or that is keeping power, fixing power, has to And with Lenin of course there is also twice, when you study Rabelais for in- do with constipation in a way. Nixon's another side, a very nice visual thing con- stance, that display of instincts is OK for main problem was leaking! The function of nected with it. You have this ugly little one day. So to make my next film, to be \"the plumbers\" was simply to keep the constructivist building and the corpse in- able to make it, I'll probably have to resort toilets from spilling the shit; then Nixon side, charged with enormous emotional to a fictional genre, so that everything may had to face the problem of controlling bad power, right there in the center of a stage be digested. smell. If we accept sickness and lunacy as a that's not just the city but if you like the normal part of humanity as it is today, we'll whole world. And then there is this per- Perhaps if in SWEET MOVIE I had warned be in much better shape. At least we'll manent little stream of people, always people from the start-this is a light com- have some hope of a way out. edy later changing into a political thriller moving, that ant line that acquires differ- and horror movie-then perhaps critics Is all of this going to be in your next movie? ent shapes and always changes, kept alive might decide it's \"an experiment in style\" Do you think that the American movies you and moving as it were by the still center and accept a shifting tone. I always fail to admire deal with these subjects? toward which they direct themselves. So I understand how can they say something is offer you now another interpretation, not a impossible if it's made. With SWEET MOVIE When we raise such matters it always critical one but an archetypical one: life al- it worries me that some people follow the looks as if we were confined to a kind of au- ways goes on even if you're nailed down film two-thirds and then lose the trace. So thor's cinema. But it isn't so. American by one powerful corpse. That moving line they get the idea the film falls apart, be- films deal with these matters in highly fic- is an image of life, it's beautiful, and I think comes incoherent. Instead, if told in ad- tionalized terms, very narra tive in ap- it tells something about the relationship vance that after sixty-five minutes there is proach. Last night I saw SOYLENT GREEN, which is quite simple as a film and delivers between life and death. ® a very simple message, with the more or FILM COMMENT 51

Four sma rt p eople call on a friendly cou- native. Inconsequential whims and mental the film its uniquely allusive style. The ple for a dinner party and find they've blanks replace even nostalgic yea rning. rumble of distant artillery is ominous; and come on the wrong night. They repair to a the sudden appearance of an army in battle res taurant and leave because the owner's The film draws also on another source of dress may suggest either civil war in our corpse is laid out in the back of it. A tea- mental dilatation . Frederic Vitoux: mythical country, or Algerian paras re- room has been strangely busy and h as run \"November 1970. Luis Bunuel and Jean- turned to France to roost, or ma ybe mer- out of tea, coffee, milk, and anything ex- Claude Carriere are collaborating for the cenaries going off abroad . But our army is cept water. One meal is disrupted by a fifth time, on a scenario which still has to only on maneuvers, and the process of social call by a Colonel and a roomful of find a title. They enter a restaurant where a anticlimax continues. The troops' weak- soldiers; a nother by an irascible police- table has been reserved for them. The re- ness for marijuana recalls the legendary commissioner who arrests everyo'ne; s taurant is almost empty .. .and s uddenly inefficiencies of the American army in Vie- another by the arrival of gangsters who the Maitre-d'hotel brings them a news- tnam. Indeed, the y also behave Iil(e the exterminate everyone ... paper and announces sole mnly, ' De sensitive, humane army of TV recruiting Gaulle is dead .' Suddenly something commercials. And what is more appro- The spectator who prefer;; easy butts can clicks, and abruptly they find the title for priate-since the cultured bourgeoisie easily dismiss these characters' commen- which they have been seeking.\" quite agrees with Surrealism about the salist nosta lgias as simply sume insect- poetic content of dreams-than that dance, or a deluded and delusive ritual of An alertness to subtle incongruities solidarity, or an essentially egoistic need drives humor as it goads logic-w hich this amazing best of all possible armies for reassurance of social acceptability. Yet may be why humor a nd logic so often should tarry to hear a sergea nt tell his dinner parties are a resid ual-and a poten- seem mutually exclusive options, and yet dreams? Thus the film ironizes over the tially mea ningful-form of potlatch. * And, so often go well enough together to in spire paradoxes of a peacetime army (and con- even if it's hopeless, it's only human to satire. The affinities of Bunuel and Swift attempt to recapture a tribal fraternity by are worth a passing thought. Both are scription) continuing twenty-eight years s uch psych ological surrogates as the gang, theologians Illanques, both concerned with after the \" last\" war. And it also gratifies the clique, the set. Part of the irony is that the thin line between madness and sanity. our Marxist (tell dnnce Groucho) anarchism real needs are denied, and the quest is switched from solidarity to food-seve n THE DISCREET CHARM guests in search of a Hos t. of the BOURGEOISIE Some doubtless hurried critics have im- by Raymond Durgnat plied that Luis Buiiuel's THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE depicts a As Bufiuel's THE MILKY WAY is to A Tale of with images of military chaos for which cOlltinuous s tretch of time, but such a form a Tub , DISCREET CHARM is to \"Genteel and so me sort of mythic correlative exists in would have been pointlessly contrived. Ingeniose Conversation .\" Both are tragi- The characters certainly eat between meals comedies of mediOCrity, and it's intriguing M*A*S*H. they miss; and Bunuel ha s selected only to imagine what might happen if the The hilarious idiocy of everyday chit- those meals whose bill of fare-or circums- hitch-hikers of Bunuel's theological satire tances, or relationships with dream, love, were to encounter the hosts and guests of chat is s urely not overplayed, but merely or business -illustrates how a round of its profane successor. deprived of its ballast (or roughage) of dinner parties can do as little to preserve se nse. M. The'ienot recommends a re- their participants from the emptiness The DISCREET CHARM scenario identifies s taurant to his friends . When they find it which society has sowed within their the local country as \"Miranda,\" and under new management, he's exasperated hearts as communing with nature could do specifies that military uniforms, auto into lamenting the impossibility of eating to redeem the Victorian middle class number plates, etc., will be \" indefinite,\" well in restaurants . His companions find from its materialism . Nonchalance where presumably so that no particular city the reaso nable prices and the absence of concern should be has long been a (country) can be identified. Jacques Perret overcrowding an ominous combination. mainspring of Bunuel's method; certainly, is probably right in assuming anti-pre- The color of the wine determines the here, passages of dialogue evoke Ionesco, censorship precaution s. In certain scenes, choice of dish. The candles, which nor- the theater of the absurd , and a livelier, however (notably the seizure of the mally suggests an intimate, indeed aph- less stylized MARIENBAD. g uerilla girl), a typically Parisian street- rodisiac atmosphere, are disquietingly plaque is conspicuously visible, and rein- Not that his culinary pilgrims are a band forces every spectator's im mediate as- large- -almost funereal. And in one of a of Sancho Panzas looking for a Don Quix- sumption that PariSian-speaking, series of logically impeccable, but subtly ote, or Che Guevara, or Godot, or Lefty, or Parisian-styled actors imply Paris, France. absurdist ironies, the new owner is newly Haggerty, or even some Jesus-Sade to turn And isn 't Paris, France, still, in man y dead, so newl y that he's lying on a table in a their wine to blood. Bunuel has conspicu- ways, the cockpit of Europe, and thus back room . (There are meats and ously spared them so me \" typical\" vices of Europe's spiritual capital? meat ... .) their class. There's no structure of mutual betrayal, no conspicuous pecking order; The interplay of ambiguities and incon- If this is a variant of the old folk joke their plague is not the Exterminating Angel gruities, of trivialities and dreams, permits about the hidden corpse (used by Tati in but the Interrupting One. As a French critic JOUR DE FETE), it's a new variant on it, for it observed of Res nais' MURIEL, \"Ln vie lIlod- depends on the incompatibility of erne est faite de ruptures .\" Distraction, rather than prohibition, is the conspicuous mode of modern repression. Conversely, their personal neuroses can interrupt normal social discourse, but can propose no alter- * potlatch: a ceremonial feast among Indians living on the Pacific Coast of Washingto n, British Colum- bia, and Alaska, at the end of which the host gives valuable material goods to the guests who belong to other kin groups, o r destroys property to show that he can afford to do so. 52 MAY-JUNE 1975

bourgeois \"business as usual\" and them by a persona I morality. \" Failing would require (or allow) for some sort of bourgeois-peasa nt respect for death, both which, she remains at least as forlorn as the decision (or resolution), and because he's of which attract the derisive laughter of the Symbolist girl in the street in UN CHIEN too ashamed to confess that he doesn't Surrealist and the picaro. First of many ANDALOU, who was partiall y liberated (for, know what a \"so urcique\" is, allows his deaths, this is the film' s only natural one. though she is fastidious, she is also un- suspicions to be quickly lulled, thus allow - The association of empty commensalism, squeamishly fascinated by human m eat), ing his wife and her lover time for another of mankind as carnivore, of a well- but can go no further than a dead ha nd, high-speed coupling. We suspect that the tempered cannibalism, hovers over this and a death wish of which Florence's Ambassador h as inven ted the word first supper as well as over the la st: the heavy drinking is a more respectable, sourcique, which sugges ts sourire, sllrcasti- Ambassador crouches on all fours , like an gradual counterpart. que, sourci! (raised eyebrow?): the mocking animal, under a table, while one almost The Senechals Oean-Pierre Cassel and laughter which the bourgeois fears so autonomous hand-groping, like the Stephane A udran) represent the much, particularly when confronted by beast with five fingers, for the leg of mut- bourgeouisie at its most yo uthful, flexible the aristocracy. Indeed, Thevenot so fears ton above him-betrays him to his unin- a nd engaging. But they take everything for the Ambassador that he dreams he is the vited guests. granted, including a lighthearted skepti- Ambassador; to be precise, the Ambas- The film 's structure is a matter much less cism, and remain rigidly within its limita- sador dreaming of a reception where of allegory than of such association- tions. They too begin by going through the everyone so ins ults him that he loses his atmospheres, implications, expectations. motions of spiritual emancipa~ion, and diplomatic cool and outrages every canon We are made to expect that Florence (Bulle rush off into the shrubbery for a quick of respectable violence-he shoots the Ogier) will turn out to be the anarchist, the copulation before their g ue s ts Colonel almost without warning and al- rebel, the agent of an at-Ieast-briefly- arrive-much as a heroin addict might flee most in the back. But Thevenot is the man saving disorder (like Sylvia Pinal in THE to the john for a fix, and maybe for much the Ambassador is cuckolding; and EXTERMINATlNG ANGEL). One shot care- the same reason. Sexuality can be short- Thevenot ought, by the Mirandan code, to fully emphasizes her sullen, desperate, circuited into a tranquilizer quite as effec- have challenged the Ambassador to a duel. In such ways, the film scrupulously ob- serves Freudian theories of dream as wish fulfillmen t. In status, in style, in age, in cunning and in self-assurance, the Ambassador (Fer- nando Rey) marks the apex of the little group. He is the least confused and the most violent. (In Buiiuel, the two charac- teristics often go together.) His apparent mixture of paranoia and megalomania fits reality surprisingly well. His friends think he's mad when he levels his rifle at a street ~ vendor's furry toy. But he was right: its ~ seller wns spying on him . His mental devi- ~ ousness appears in largely triumphant LJ forms, as in his cat-and-mouse game with e~z; the too-innocent, too-honorable and, to judge from her friend's car, too-bourgeois • ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~a~~in (aU~~h ~e com~~ vffy favorably with another yo ung apostle of lively face, and its potentialities are em- tive as, albeit more cumbersome than (to violence). The Ambassador is not the vic- phasized by her status as a semi-outsider, quote M. Thevenot) a dry martini. tim of his own hypocrisy. Thus, after a her willfulness (snatching a bouquet), her The Thevenots (Paul Frankeur and Del- complex game of gallantry, seduction , and tipsiness (apparently chronic), her unsen- phine Seyrig) are a few years older. Less superiority, he delivers the girl to a couple timental indifference to the corpse's pres- capricious, more dignified, companiona- of heavies . Many critics have understood ence (like that of Bui'tuei's Young One). ble rather than passionate, they are what them to be the plainclothes police, al- Our expectations are further aroused by the Senechals will become. They may though the implication that the French Bulle Ogier's previous roles, by the frail , seem the most colorless and stable of the police may extradite her into the hands of sad, mutinous insolence which has such group; in fact, they are the champions of their Mirandan colleagues, for Brazilian- meaning for Women's Lib; her name is one the conversational volte-face, of incon- style torture, may be mistaken. Perhaps of those litanized in Monique Wittig's Les spicuous disorder, of confusion of appe- they are simply Mirandan agents, operat- Guerilleres . tite . Just when they glimpse a reality that ing with or without the tacit consen t of the But all these possibilities fritter away in demands emotional a uthenticity, they re- French authorities. her mixture of alcoholic befuddlement and tire into a tactful imperceptiveness that is In his nightmare, the Ambassador suf- vague illogic. Directly after the company similar to Sartre's idea of \"bad faith .\" fers from a very animal passio n: hunger. has got the maid's age wrong by thirty Madame Thevenot's affair with the Am- For, as the Marseilles gang guns his years, Florence enquires the date of the bassador has nothing to do with pas sion, fellow-guests down , he permits his hand Ambassador's birthday. The Zodiac or even with modern permissiveness. It to stray upwards for a leg of lamb, as his character reading to which she then treats resembles elegant adultery in the style of prudence is overwhelmed by the combina- him hilariously whitewashes his \"well- LA RO NDE, aUhough its elegance is under- tion of physical hunger, spirituality (over- adjusted\" mixture of paranoia and mined by something obstinately natural, confidence), and professional deformity megalomania, except that it suddenly realistic, and physical-a disfiguring skin (diplomatic immunity). The gangsters are switches into what would be very good rash which ma yor ma y not be described as our friends ' rivals in the advice if she took it herse lf: \"Your se nsitiv- psychosomatic. heroin business. If they prevail against the ity harmonizes with your humanitarian Madame is very sensitive about it; with Ambassador it is partly because they, like conscience. But if yo u wish to rise above her hypocrisy goes sha me. And M. him, are outside the law-although below commonplace ideas, yo u must replace Thevenot, rather than face a fact which it rather than above it-and because their FILM COMMENT 53

ferocity is undiluted even by his dissimula- sibilities are only too obvious, especially ever one psychologizes this moment (and tion . The film's progression to this climax since he whimsically find s his way as far as it would surely be unnatural to feel no ge nera tes premonitions that so me the toolshed. A few steps more a nd he'd curiosity about what's going on in the apocalypse is in fhe offing for this coterie, find his employers-to-be in a situation Bishop's mind at this point), BUlluel's ex- and for the style it represents; but it turns which, though it isn' t illegitimate (since ternal approach and the Bishop's impas siv- out that the return of the repressed has they're bound in holy matrimony), also ity make the murder look almost as been indefinitely postponed-for lack of isn't sinless (since they' re enjoying it) . The matter-of-fact as any weeding process. interest?-and the dreamer awakens to e mbarrass ments of their encounter might Perhaps it IInplies the apogee of raid the fridge for a midnight snack. generate an intriguing aftermath, w hich \"o the rworldliness \" -a mixture of Bunuel sacrifices to a brilliantly devious somnambulist's calm and madman 's de- The Ambassador's closest rival, in devi- throwaway: the new gardener respectfully liberation . ousness and in immunity, is of his genera- picks a blade of gra ss off his employer's tion also. The very phrase \"worker- coat, gardening that and suspecting no- The insanity resides not in the revenge bishop\" is an oxy moron, and possesses a thing. but in the lack of passionate expression, plenitude of ironies. \"Workers\" classifies and the Bishop's calm complacency, even bishops (and priests) with the unproduc- Later he is the victim, or beneficiary, of a after the act of murder, isn 't at all illogical. tive, the parasitical; while \"bishop\" obsti- second piece of split-second timing . Just as For he can be pretty sure of absolution in nately asserts hierarchy while parading a he is expounding his ideas for improving his tum, his being the most filial of crillles climax of democratiza tion. We ma y re- the f10werbed s beside the drive (thus passiollels. And he can also evince the member how effectively the hierarchy completing nature's transformation into a fatalism of a peasant observing the code of crushed the worker-priest movement matter of social appearances), the horticul- the peasa nt feud-although, of course, he about twenty years ago. Now this bishop tural has perforce to yield to the agricul- is a peasa nt only by virtue of his surround- Oulien Bertheau) applies for a job as a gar- tural: conscience bids him rush off to a ings and, maybe, of the church's oft- dener, in a home exactly like his parents', farm to hear a dying man's confession. The proclaimed affinity with those who work thus remaining within his own class, fanner turns out to have been the Bishop's the soil and follow its conservative code of which negates the purpose of the parents' elY-gardener, whose '''devotion '' \"talllil/e, travail, patrie\". At any rate, the worker-priest movement. He acquires av- would seem to have influenced the farms where food is grown get him to the uncular status at his employer's table, ac- Bishop's choice of lay vocation. Now, nitty-gritty quicker than the ornamental cepts a little glass of whiskey \"exception- dying, he confesses that he hated his emp- suburban gardens.' ally\" in almost every scene, and secures loyers, who made him work too hard, al)d the union rate-which his predecessor poisoned them . The Bishop, with uncanny The fact that the victim is a dying man was sacked for demanding. In a film of plot objectivity, gives the farmer absolution anyway both mitigates the crime and ag- rather than of ruptures, we might have -and only then, it seems, ha s the idea of seen him creep as relentlessly back to his picking up a handy shotgun and blastin g 1. From L' AGE O ' OR we may remember the dominant status as Tristana's uncle's the farmer's head off. gamekeeper shooting his son in park land while the priests. lovers vainly seek fulfillment in the shrubbery. Veg- Perhaps the act resulted from a rage etation imagery is reiterated as a hanging flower-pot The Bishop's earthly toil is little more which, crystallizing more slowly than the intensifies the hero's mental strain. He comes closest than a rich amateur's hobby, for which, in impersonal reflexes of duty, only slowly to happiness in the mud, and again, later, in the style of rich amateurs, he contrives to get penetrated the crust of mechanical for- garden, with its broad pathways and its statues. The paid. With the patness of a dream, he in- giveness which is his professional defor- Senechals' manicured garden may resemble that quires for the gardener's job just as the mity . Perhaps it's absurdist, res ulting from one, but it comes nearer the desert than the mud, or Senechals have slipped off to commune the coincidence of an otherwise illsufficient than the jungle luxuriance of other Bufiuel settings with nature, belly to belly. The comic pos- rage with the sight of a shotgun. But how- for passionate fulfillment: MEXICAN BUSRIDE and LA MORT DANS CE JARDIN, where the \" garden\" of the 54 MAY-JUNE 1975 title is a jungle.) L'AGE O' OR begins in mud and ends in snow. One might hazard the continuity; jungle-warm mud-garden-desert -stone-snow. Where stone-and-shrubs gives way to park land , a gamekee per kills his so n . Where a manicured gar- den gives way to a farm yard , a ga rdener kills the ga rdenerwho killed his parents. To note this si milar- ity isn't to s uggest a rigid meaning for the ga rden-desert antimony. The setting is only one of many factors in the sce ne. For this reason, the de- gree of desert is not a direct index to the degree of spiritual sterility represented by the action. All the other aspects of the scene h ave their part to play . In the sa me way, the Bishop is more than just a varia- tion on the theme of \" Bishop.\" Not only does the very idea of a va riable theme suggest internal counter-tendencies, but the variation s may arise by borrowing from other themes. Thus the Bishop's residual ability to wreak a point-of-death reven ge is a point in common with Jesus-B1angis, who is gen- erally considered as a transformation of the rebelli- ous hero in L'AGE O'OR, and this Bishop's action is certainly more heroic than a nything achieved by the bishop skeletons on the rocks of the island of the Golden Age. A structuralist analysiS of a n author's schematic can't remain content with single an- timonies, but must cope with the existence of mosaics (many themes intertwining, yet constantly transform ing themselves by lending aspects to one another). In a tightly constructed film like this, each sce ne represents an unstable equilibrium between seve ral tensions, and the sequence of scenes will arise from constantly changing permutations of the sa me ba sic elements or \" particles.\" Thought isn't just a \"bisociation\" of two themes, but a continuous reorganization of the multiple aspects of its themes . Fernando Rey, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Paul Frankeur.

gravates it, re nders the revenge both more de fend b.oth the existence and the legiti- sh op s- like -a -church (th e eccl esias tico- unrele nting a nd more petty. These co n- macy of IIIcestuo us e motio ns agains t the tradictio n s add their g rueso mely co mic taboos under w hich they labor. Certainly capitalis t complex), he is alone, and he is tensio ns to the scene. The act of vengea nce the Oedipa l tria ngle offers a hand y schema ca lling, not fo r his girlfr ie nd, but for his might be redell/p tively passionate, and one fo r the co mplex weave o f desire, taboo, mo ther, as if a confused re pression were wo uld ce rtainly expect it of a mag nificently a nd d ea th . And the three d rea ms in und erway. \" bla ck ,\" Bufiu elia n ro m a ntic h ero lik e DISCREET CHA RM o ffer three solutio ns- or . At leas t, .in this drea m, any father- figure Heathcliff. (Buiiuel' s 1953 film , CUM BRES dissolutio ns- of its Gordia n knot. IS prese nt m the much less authoritaria n BORR ASC OSAS, is a n a d apt a tio n o f g ~seof\" m a tes. \" But, co min g a nd going in Wu theril1g Heights.) But the Bishop remain s I. The Bishop wh o is d esex ualized al- ~~IS maze, ~~ ey h ave n' t the solid arity of ~on s picuous ly uncha nged , unlibe rated by ways speaks of his parents as a pair. His It. Perhaps he has briefly beco me the vic- choice of job, a nd the o utrageo us speed co mra d es, a nd they p rovo ke him to a tim of confusion of codes (clerical vs. peas- with which he adopts a gardener'S robes futile deto ur. In this drea m, all hostility is ant); perhaps his reve nge represents no t a (o r at leas t ap ro n) , s ugges t a childhood softe ned , altho ugh the girl's calm con fir- moral e mancipation but the filial-Oedipa l identification with an id eal ized serva nt. 3 ma tio n o f h e r ea rlie r in d iffe re n ce may mamte na nce o f a falsely id ealized child - The Bishop's murderous ye t glib reaction evo ke the indiffe re nce o f the yo ung hoo d ho me. 2 If he beco mes briefl y free to d isillusio nm e nt sugges ts a n o nl y- m.other to her so n in LOS OLVIDAOOS . Is the from the tyrann y of legalism (\"Vengea nce too - e ffec ti ve s ublim a tio n o f his ow n Sergeant's absence of rep roach exem- is mine,\" sa ith the State), he complace ntly rivalry with his father. Here, a murder by returns to it. Still, \"A little reve nge is more p01SOlllllg p rovokes a murder by shootillg. plary? Or is it a hint of a certain wea kness? human than no revenge\"- so Nietsch ze. The equal and opposite excess, on impo- . To indica te the ra nge o f poss ible at- II. The Lieutena nt' s d rea m shows a far tent fury with the beloved , lead s o nl y to an htudes, let's imagine that a similar situa- less co mplete, far more tortuous, pattern alternative impasse, the love -hate halluci- tion had befallen Bufiuel's Archibaldo de la o f re pressio n s . As a child , h e was in- natio n o f Wutheril1g Heights. Cruz, after his liberation from the musical structed by his mother's ghost to poiso n box a nd its repetition-co mpulsio n . I can her husband, who, in a d uel, has just killed Altho ugh the drea m ca n thus be imagine that Archibaldo wo uld pick up the her lover (a nother lieutenant and the boy's moralized , ro ughly in ter ms of the e thic of gun, leave chance to decide w hether it' s rea l father). The situatio n co ntras ts two CE LA S'APPELLE L'A URORE, one ca n' t dis- loa d ed or e mpty, pull the trigge r, and , conceptio ns o f the fa mily: the husband 's miss the more tro ubling overtones in the smiling ironically at the \"click\", return it to (bo urgeois- feudal, based on appearances e.vasion of fraternal abrasiveness, of poten- its place. This acceptance of chance wo uld and ho nor) and the mo ther's (extralegal, tia l n va lnes for o ne wo ma n . While this imply a proper disrespect for all possible based on love and biology). This real fa mily evasio n is o f a piece w ith the drea mer's codes and' taboos, and indicate a nihilism ave nges itse lf but ca nn ot reco nstitute it- rank, it al so avoids a real crux, just as Sur- fro m whose va ntage- point an acceptance se lf. And the Lie ute na nt w ith the sa d real is t moralizin g te nded to be ro ma ntic o f the entire personality and a new, more ro mantic eyes is left, helplessly, dependen t ra ther than realis tic, and al tho ugh it raise d human, \" Surrealist\" morality beco me pos- o n three bourgeois wo me n w ho d on ' t the issues it didn't ad equately d iscuss the sible. know what to say to him beca use the cur- inevitable conflicts invo lvin g I'a l/ /O ur fo u, rent dissolutio n of cod es makes comment revolutionary so lidarity, and jealo usy vs. The Bishop's filial revenge climaxes a almost impossible. His drea m leads no- fraternity. The Sergea n t's ran k suggests a trio o f episodes centering on the theme of where. Here, a killing byshootil1g provokes lower- class o rig in . Hi s drea m co m es dea d parents. All originate from tradition- a murder by poisoll illg. neares t to bein g a no n-hierarchica l. a ll y monosex ual gro ups (the clergy, the Pe rh a p s tha t' s w h y, o f the \" pa re nta l\" arm y)-as if, in this debilitated wo rld, the III. In his drea m the Sergean t meets a d:e~ me r~, the Sergea nt is the leas t clea rl y tra n sce nd e nce of the na tu ra l o rd e r is los t love (who once repul se d him, but now d lstmgw shed fro m his surro undings, and aba ndo ned, by marital co mpl ace ncy, to seeks him), and two old friends. In his at- from the mass of soldiers who are his false conclaves o f deprivation and reaction from tachment to his equals and his peers, in a friends. Almost free, yet just as los t, he which, alas, it ca n't break free. On the o ne street w hich is like an indefinite sp ace, the re mains part of the machine, to the point of hand, the Surrealist must seek liberation ~rea m co mes closest to that image of tenta- securing p ro motion within it. 4 fro m the pi~ us e motions conve ntion ally tive ca marad erie which crow ns Buiiuel's assoCIated With the (bourgeois) famil y and CELAs' AP~ELLE L'AURORE. The atmos phere The trio o f masculine -world dreamers the (C~ristia n ) afterlife; the two converge IS that of hmbo; at any moment we expect abo.ut parental dea ths becomes a quartet if m the Idea of God the father, the sacrificed t~e drea mer to be to ld tha t his girl, his we mclude father-figures and so admit the Son, and the Virgin Mother. But, on the friends, and he himse lf are dead . Instead , l ege n ~ -cum-drea m o f th e Bl ee din g other hand , all \" primitive\" people believe he leaves her to search for his friends. His Bngadler (a lay co unterpart of the Bleeding m ghosts, especially those o f their a nces- concern for the m is p reced ed by a cutaway Nun). The zea lous excesses of this feroci- to: s; and the Surreal is t may well w ish to re- to a corpse topped by a crucifix- as if to o u s co p h ave reg ul arl y sa bo tage d the tam the freedo m to \" hal lucinate\" the after- sig nify tha t this e motio n is \" Christia n\" polic.e's atte mpts to be well loved by the life of the dead , or so me transcende nce of (that is, in suffidentl y animal), and tha t, if pubhc, and hiS ghost now atones fo r his sepa ra tio n in tim e. Simila rl y, howeve r he were worth y of ['all/our fou, he wo uld d y.sfunctional severity by releasing all the ulllve rsa l o r loca l the Oedipus co mplex have no tho ught to s pare fo r the m a nd pnso ners m the jail, o nce a year, on the may be felt to be, the Surrealist will wish to wo uldn't a ba ndon the sea rch for his be- 14th ofJune. The date may sugges t the 14th loved even fo r a mo ment. This \" Christ- of Jul y, fa mo us for dancing in the streets 2 As so of te n , th e a pp a re nt abs urd iti es of like\" solidarity, going with the meekness and as a fiesta o f national recondliation. (In o f the Sergea nt's style, is as distractive as a very interes ting review of the film , Irving Buiiuel's fil ms have real-li fe counterparts. For many the call fro m the Minister of the Interior in L'AGE O'OR, and only superfidally like the 4 Maneuvers leave no time for him to tell his second yea rs Lord ReIth , the Jo hn Grie rso n o f the BinBtee~cdaerd- ~uad and ferocious solidarity of the Doctor dream, th~t of \" the train.\" Addicts of micro- symbols ried in his pocket a w rench wi th w hich he III CELA S'APPELL E L'A URORE . Whe n the may SurITU5e that the train is a social collective w hich Se rgea nt re turn s fr o m a la by rinth o f can ' t quite go o ff the rails, o r at leas t, not for to kill the hit -and - run d ri ve r w h o ha d kille d his long--:-although a streetcar enjoys a stealthy vagabon- '. A serva nt as fa ther-figure is as easily understand- dage 10 an earlier Buiiuel comedy, and the viJlage om- fa the r. Had Lo rd Reith met that ma n, how much a ble as, in En g la nd , Na nn y a nd mo th er - fi g ure. nibus of MEXICAN BUSRIDE wreaks its picaro -anarchic A no the r co nve nie nt a nalogy exists in the Ro na ld ravages Wlth the company timetable . Ideally, perhaps, wo uld his be h~vi o r have diffe red from the Bisho p' s? Neame film ca lled, pally, THE SPANISH GARDENER. the Sergeant's train would have cut loose and sliced r:eatly through a bourgeois houserold, where a recep- [ take It , IO c.,de nta ll y, th at th e Bis h o p ' s s ta tu s tIOn wo uld be 10 progress, proving as splendidly omni- and auto -destructive as that in The Marx Brothers' Go guarantees h,s Immunity fro m circum sta ntia l evi- Wes t. d e nc~. Or that, to avoid a sca ndal, the police would claSSIfy the ~ime as \" unso lved .\" O r, at least, that the BIshop thm ks thi s. FILM COMMENT 55

Louis Horovitz does in fact substitute \"J uly pointment, rather than running for cover Indeed, this dream anticipates the din- behind an indiscriminate approbation of ner, in strict accordance with the common 14\" for the script's \"June 14\".) everything Builuel does, observe that, like or textbook rules for anxiety dreams about During the Brigadier's lifetime, his most of the film 's other \"shock-images\", events scheduled for the foUowing day . this one doesn't work, and looks like an hatred was turned against the agent of \"academic citation.\" I'm not sure how it Far from arriving too early, as the dream another kind of street liberation, a demon- would strike the 99.9 percent of the predicted, they are affably reproached for strating student. Our first DISCREET CHARM audience who haven' t being too late, but having quit the realms of associations-provided by his long hair, seen UN CHIEN ANDALOU, but I'm inclined eternity, it is only to be caught in an exper- and by the freshness of our memory-will to defend it as a matter of Buftuel's wryly iment with time-for, exactly as predicted be with the events of Paris in May 1968 (to observing that violence now has no by the dream, Napoleon's hat is in evi- which Bunuel paid a graceful, but not op- liberating meaning in a world whose style dence, except that this time it's on timistic, tribute in THE MILKY WAY). But of hypocrisy ha s changed, and aiming ac- Florence's head, on whom it sits almost as Bunuel's memory is long, and he acidly cordingly at disquiet rather than shock. incongruously as it had on M. Senechal's. evades any sentimentality about students The Bishop 's head fits it well enough , as a class being the vanguard of the pro- The theme of supernatural father- however, and Madame Thevenot observes letariat, or the spearhead of spontaneous figures undergoes a further modulation, in that it's a \"bicorne\", which may remind us uprising, or the conscience of the country. the \"theatrical\" dream (apparently M. of a cuckold's horn. (In this respect the un- This one behaves like a sa intl y Senechal' s). Awaiting their host the Col- conscious mind of her husband, whose martyr -idiotically-and the dialogue onel, our friends find a globe, and a hat of dream this will turn out to be, is more alert leaves the possibility that his crime is in fact Napoleon's worn in battie, which than his conscious mind is to her adulter- terror- bombing 11 In OAS (a right- wing ous liaison.) colonialist terrorism in which schoolboys Senechal impertinently claps first on his and students were extensively involved) . own head and then on the Bishop's. After But, as throughout this pair of dreams these sacred relics come the props, the ser- the hat goes from head to head, so do the Not that the police come out of things vants bringing chickens which, spilled, thoughts . This second dream's emphasis well. Although the police elaborately make bounce on the carpet but ar~ nonetheless (as well as our identification) promptly de- a scapegoat of the ferocious Brigadier, the served, with a relentless bl a ndness at serts Senechal to follow the Colonel, and policemen under his command show no which the guests hardly dare protest. (We as briefly deserts him to finally come to rest reluctance at all to obey his orders, and in- may be reminded of Jan Namec's REPORT with the Mirandan Ambassador, who, deed it is they who maintain the theme of ON THE PARTY AND THE GUESTS, which in suddenly and suprisingly, feels obliged to parenthood: they threaten the student's some ways is this film's soul sister.) The defend his brave new world against all genitals, while tauntingly enquiring if he horrors of a gourmet's Marienbad an- comers. The Colonel rudely repeats ha s a girlfriend, and discussing a nounce another: one wall rises like a cur- rumors that the Mirandan government tor- colleague's wife's pregnancy. tain and they realize they are on a stage. By now we are all accustomed to parodies They lay their victim on an electrified of role-playing in reality-and in reality's unreality-and Buftuel doesn' t bother to piano, like the dead donkeys of UN CHIEN develop such reflections any further. ANDALOU (but in a prone position like the priests); his screams may recall the amp- It must have been tempting to show our lified Jesuit orchestra in L' AGE D' OR. One friends exposed, not to cil1erl1a-verite, but to may reasonably free-associate in several theatre-verite; feeling required to entertain directions: backward in musical styles to the public (vox populi, vox dei) by witty im- the Bourgeois Concerto (music, being the promptu conversation; and panicking at most abstract a nd rarefied of the arts, is no- the prospect. Theoretically, this might be thing but the beautified anguish of the moment in which an enforced ex- sublirnination-repression); sideways to hibitionism reveals, to them or to us, their the electric-organ music of St. Simon's inner emptiness. And even though thi$ New York; and forward to the death-by world looks like the world of fashionable pleasure-machine in which Vadim's Bar- theatergoers (the world of people like barella Oane Fonda) is ensheathed, like a themselves), the public could function as a kind of alter ego-a vast, unknown Super- Vibrator. monster-mass onto which the hapless ac- tors project their fears (which is, of course, But these pial10s aqueue have \"elec- the mechanism of stage fright) . But the ef- fect is too easy, and wouldn't prove any trified \" tails , like scorpions. The inner emptiness-for who wouldn't be startled at being in such a situation? ants-in-the-hand recur, as insects scurry- Buftuel prefers absurdity to facile moraliz- ing out of the keyboard, played by hands ing. like Tristana's. The script specifies \" bees\"; electric shocks can feel rather like The guests are expected to know their bee-stings, which is how another donkey text by heart; and the reference to Don dies, in Buftuel's LAS HURDES (LAND Juan's dining with the Commander's WITHOUT BREAD). Most critics, myself in- statue brings ghosts, sex, and guilt back into the picture (as well as relating the play cluded, interpreted the insects as beetles, to L' AGE D'OR, whose heroine must suck a or cockroaches. And though this detail statue's toe while her beloved converses struck some of my coUeagues as arbitrary, with his conscience). The Bishop, being one would, realistically, expect such a used to obediently reciting things, obe- torture-machine to be inhabited by insects diently repeats what the prompter whis- which scurry out when disturbed, provid- pers. But as the others hurry off, Senechal ing another mode of dream-realism. (That awakes, just in time to go off for dinner the electrified piano is not a very real idea with the Colone 1. wouldn't matter; the less real the idea is, the more it needs authentication by physi- cal detail . Siegfried Kracauer's Th eory of Filll1 is useful here.) Ginette Gervais, who is honest enough to write about this film with frank disap- 56 MAY-JUNE 1975

tures students (which the French police cusation which the Ambassador, losing a by Michel Piccoli, the Co mmunists' mas- will be doing in the next dream) . The Am- short sharp struggle within himself, re- termind in TOPAZ; a nd in an ea rlier speech, bassador succeeds in defendin g himself nders all the more plausible by drawing a some of which was also d row ned by pas- diplomatically enough , and observes that revolver and shooting the Colonel three sin g airplanes, the Ambassa dor ob- rebels a re part of Miranda's folklore-a times, a murder which, occurring after se rve d th a t for ty kil os o f heroin we re second thoughts and a slow burn, pairs found on his U.S . co unterpa rt. Elsewhere, neat tilt of Che Guevera's functions in with the Bishop's double-take. a joke abo ut \" Quaisi-Cola\" par aphrases student hagiography, which prepares the both the fa miliar French gibe \"coca- introduction of the ambivalent, or roman- It may look like an explosion of rage, a co lo niza ti o n \" a nd the Fre nch w in e - tic, or confused student in the dream of the scandalous self-liberation, like the slap in grow ers' contentio n that o ne bra nd o f Bleeding Brigadier. In both cases mention the salon in L'AGE n'OR. But it's really an A merica n Co la co ntain e d in ordin a te of students is followed by references to in- atavistic resurgence of an obsolescent code amo unts of a n addictive drug . sects . (\" We swat malcontents like flies,\" -not, in this case, that of peasant ven- says the Ambassador.) The train of tho ught is revived wh en, dettas, but of aristocratic dueling (recalling But this diplomatic calvary has scarcely Don Lope in TRISTANA , or the lieu- just after the Colonel' s guests have been begun. The Bishop gets with his church's o ffe re d no t w in e but (u g h) C o la, the evolution by observing that, in Miranda , tenant's mother' s husband in this film) . Pro mpter wh ispers, \"Yo u put us to sleep the rich get richer while the poor get This skid-around dream eventually with a narcotic drug.\" Not that BUl1uel' s p olitics a re o ne -sided , since the Bishop poorer. (If Miranda is beginning to sound locates itself in the head of M. Thevenot, re minds us that, in the First World War, like LAS HURDES, it's also true that large who perhaps because he's the most French soldiers were us ually iss ued with tracts of South America are like LAS HURDES .) \" anonymous\" of our little group, is also w ine before bein g se nt over the top, al- The Ambassador makes a quick getaway the most confused as to which member of tho ugh he puts it in a hilario usl y garbled only to come to face with the Colonel' s it he is . At any rate, the pair of nightmares form: each soldier was required to drink brother-officer, whom the script calls \" The are complementary: one is a social fiction th ree' liters of wine a d ay . The refere nce to Commandant\", as if to recall the Com- where almost everyone is struck dumb, d eserters which got PATHS OF GLORY ban- mander in the play-within-the-other- the other a social function where almost ned in France is bro ught to the point of sac- dream. He accuses Miranda of police cor- everyone speaks the truth. rilege w ith \" It's even said that it happened ruption, which does sound plausible, since a t Ve rdun .\" Th e t roo p s' imp e nite ntl y it's an increaSingly evident problem in The attribution of dreamer and dream smoking marijuana on maneuvers is jus- man y countries . By now fuming, the Am- grows wilder as we're plunged into the tified by the American preced ent in Viet- bassador again encounters the Colonel, dream of the police commissioner (Claude man . Madame Thevenot, an amoralist of who observes that Miranda has the world Pieplu) who doesn' t appear in reality until the old schoo l, hazards that this was prob- record for the number of homicides, an ac- after he wakes up from it. Contrasting w ith ably w h y the Am erican s bo mbe d their the Ambassador's paranoia, his is cast in ow n troops once a week. But the Colonel, the petit-bourgeois mold. From the furious defending not so much marij uana as pro- way in which he both rails against and fessio nal honor among soldiers, feels that tramples on the civil rights of his social if they did that they must have had their superiors, he seems animated by either an reas on s- w hich the Bish op provides, idealistic moral rage, or a petty bourgeois weighing in with rumors abo ut gend armes resentment of the idle rich, or the fantastic shooting deserters by the hundred. notion that rich and poor are equal before the law, or all three . His dream of the All in a ll, the film 's overtones abo ut the bleeding brigadier is another anticipatory anxiety dream, and it comes as true as morale of the West are enough to make a Napoleon' s hat: when he awakes from it, drillsergeant weep , while reminding the the Minister of the Interior insists he free spectators that the modern military the Mirandan Ambassor and his friends machine is as big a threat to its own sol- immediately. The Minister's explanations diers' a nd limbs as any ene my in front. In are drowned by the noise of typing, or criticizing France and stressing the need airplanes, which exasperates the Com- for drugs in wa r, the Bishop ma y seem to missioner; but they' re hardly likely to be be a doptin g a pro pe rl y Christia n line , true anyway, since the Commisioner' s tendin g to pacificism and unpatriotic im- suspicions that our friends are engaged in partiality. But his use of the word fu yard, heroin trafficking are perfectly correct. It's with all its implications of cowardice, re- only his style that's paranOid, although his veal him as chauvinistic haw k rather than moral rage suggests that he is also Christian d ove. Doubtless he would have paranoid in fact, even though he doesn't despised German deserters just as much; suspect his superiors (the Ministers) enough. God, as usual, is on both side s, just to be sure of winning. Heroin, that apparently esoteric and exotic drug, marks the rendezvous of three ~uch sequences of rapid, subtle, dizzy- themes : food (insofar as it is ingested by ing dissonances and incongruities-in ef- the body), complacency (for heroin pro- fect, twists-give the film that hilarious vokes illusions of detachment, immunity, onirism which is also close to the uncer- invulnerability), and politics . In a sense, tainties and ambivalences of real or feigned DISCREET CHARM is a parody-retort to two attitudes in informal, off-the-cuff, oral cul- American accusations of France's moral- ture. The themes of food and drugs mod- political fibre , TOP AZ and THE FRENCH ulate into that of poisonings, and the film's CONNECTION-the first directly inspired by subtitles might be \"You are what you eat\" France's refusal to toe to C.I.A.'s Cold War and \" You dream what you aren't .\" line, the second making France a scapegoat and overlooking the Indochina The threats of violence intimated by the U .S .A . supply-route . Just to clarify the military and then the police are consum- point, the Minister of the Interior is played mated with the appearance of the gang- sters. Their leader's dyed hair evokes a cer- FILM COMMENT 57

->«' ~j 3 i;; u: 3 0''>\"\"- ~ ::;: ~ 0::;: z Above left: Luis Bunuel with Delphine Seyrig and Fernando Rey. Above right: Fernando Rey and - Stephane Audran . Below left: jean-Pierre Cassel , julien Bertheau, and Stephane Audran. Below right (front to back): Delphine Seyrig, Stephane Audran , Bulle Ogier, jean-Pierre Cassel , Paul Frankeur. tain type of muscular homosexual, or sism suggested in his dandy style. Their caught playing things his way. They're the maybe the gangsters of bad French films . ultra-vulgarity makes them the climax of a series of gatecrashers, all from The abstraction of these \"scorpions\" sug- Ambassador's antithesis, his nightmare the lower orders. It began with the gests that they stand in for a universal ten- alter ego; and it's just because they're vul- would-be gardener (who isn't really from dency in human nature generally, as well gar and brutal that they suceed where the the lower orders at all) and includes the as for something particular to the Ambas- intelligent, dedicated guerillas failed . chauffeur and the maid. The chauffeur un- sador (in whose dream they appear) . suspectingly wishes his patrons good Maybe the y're his \" Mr. Hyde\" : the repres- The gangsters have no more idealism health, not realizing that he's being used as sed roots of his violence, and of the nards- than the Ambassador, and don't get a demonstration of how not to savor a dry 58 MAY-JUNE 1975

martini; this may be why the guests are anima which isn't quite able to break free the usual sense, since the strain comes punished, in their turn, by being exhibited from a world w hich nonetheless it can't precisely from maintaining two con- on a theater stage. The maid, assumed to endure. Perha ps she is Bufiuel's auto- trad ictory va lu e -sys te ms a nd pe rso na l be about twenty years old, turns out to be caricature-a portrait of the artist had he styles, in hi s mind and his behavi0r. This fifty two, which may suggest just how time never exposed himself to Surrealism. may be why a sense of silent resistance, of mental labyri nth s, of precarious flies w ith respect to someone who's be- Fl ore nce is ofte n placed in a special re- comm unica tio n, is so strong in so many film s by Resna is, Marker, Fra nju , and come part of the furniture and is just as lationship w ith the Ambassador. Since other veteran le ft-of-cen te r d irectors . functional. Its sudden temporal jolt, care- Fe rna ndo Rey is one of BUilue l's s tock At any rate it may explain how Irving Louis H orowi tz ca n determine th a t in fully underlined by exact instructions as to company, a ute ur the o ry a nd p os t- DISCREET CHARM BUilue l at las t relents. H orowitz feels tha t Bufiuel sh ows his cooking time, preludes the climactic dis- Fre udi a n common sense wo uld con- erstw hile enemy, the Bishop, a friendly respect for hankering after the simple ruption of order, and combines the themes ve rge to s u ggest tha t h e represents life; \" The exi le d ge niu s h as a t la s t made his peace with Spain under Franco.\" of time and heat. A concern with the latter a no ther a uto -carica ture: an as pect of Perhaps the Bishop has left his Palace for the middl e-class garden , li ke Opus Dei. was intimated in Piccoli's concern with Bufiuel's internalized father-figure, a n But s ure ly this film is more of a cry of de- s pair at the s urvi va l, for ne a rl y fort y central heating in BELLE DE JOUR (as if he identification, a rasca ll y sympath y, from years , of the \"a nac hronistic\" Franco re- gime, and of the Fascism w hich it re pres- were a cold-blooded animal); here, the which Bufiuel derives an inspiration that ents. For despite the Parisian references, Bufiuel's nationality, the VIRIDIANA hot-cold game lends a tactile dimension to is at once continuous , critical, and de- affair, and the Amba ssador's sty le, all ensure a diffuse but ge nera l a tmosphere the sensuousness of taste . tached . w here by Miranda is more tha n Spain or Mexico or some ba na na republic. If DISCREET CHARM briefly lends itself to a Obviously, as pects of Bufiuel in the Perhaps the touchstone of the co mmon structural analysis of sensation s, it 's film are o nl y fragments of the total pa t- market bourgeoisie is the s urvival, at its head or heart, of a n elegant Fascis m that perhaps by way of a parody of TEOREMA; tern of the film; and that, in turn, is o nly isn't quite so obsolete as we may easily as- sume. For seven years, the Greek Colonels the Bufiuel film constitutes the reverse a p art of the Bufiuel who makes the film . repeated Fra nco's success, and while they ruled there were lively fears of their effec- angle to Pa so lini's highl y theoretical The cellist's ha nd which h orrifie s Flor- tively supporting a Fascist co up in Ita ly. The Algerian Colonels nea rl y brought o ff a erotico-political Q .E.D. Bufiuel has even e nce (provoki ng na usea and evasion , but co up in France. The film's anachronisms are also a useful warning that reactionary amused himself, and us, by concocting a not r evo lt) a n tici p a tes th e t or ture- te ndencies, far from being spe nt, may e njoy a rebirth at any moment, and that bizarre configuration in which the Ambas- pianos . But perhaps its closest recall is the excl usion of reality from the dinner- tables of the bourgeoisie is a sign of weak- sador explains overpopulation to Florence the Ambassador's hand , slyly creeping ness or blindness in what purports to be a liberal, stable, apolitical center. by holding a globe up near the fire. Later, up for the meat, and be tray ing him to the Horowitz is quite right to sense a per- far from the fire, he puts his hand on gangs ters whose brutal directness is a ll sonal, Bunuelian anachronism about as- pects of the film . No doubt its Madame Thevenot's back, during a dis- the guerilla girl lacked. The deftness of Amba ssa dor's style is anachronistic when compared with that of, say, the executives cussion of the exact glacial temperature at figures is also pro minen t in testing the of multinational corporations such as I.T.T. Nonetheless the persistence of the older which a dry martini should be savored . heroin, and in the Colonel's preparation style, in Latin America as in Spain, is indi- cated by Glauber Rocha' s film , LAND IN A This almost constitutes a diagram of the of marijuana. So we're probably right to TRANCE. The ge nera l line of DISCREET CHARM wouldn't be incompatible with a solar system, with the earth near the fire be re'minded of similar gestures in earlier story in w hich international connections involving heroin were replaced by interna- and the outer orbits frozen; Florence's in- films a nd of their Freudian associations tio na l connections in volving oil. If the Ambassador (the film 's one anachronistic terest in the zodiac adds to the imagery. wi th m as turbation-includin g pure character) is also its most lucid character, its most duplicitous, its most ferocious, One can't put it past the man who gave us tho u ght, o r all futile activities. Either a nd a foreigner, it's beca use he's the closest to the \"gangster-generals\" w ho, at the anti-Last Supper photographed way, they' re a psychic s urroga te for th e right m o me nt, might decide to dis- pense with diplomacy. Diploma t and through a beggarwoman's vagina. touching reality-or for clenching into a ga ngs ter a re Je kyll-and -H yde, yin and ya ng, A.C. and D.C. of a world w hose While the film is structured on the eccen- fist. libe ra!iza tio n is, as u su a l, indefinitely tric orbits which these earthly bodies fol- Such the me-images are far from being pos tponed. ® low through the outer space of bourgeois merely personal feti sh es. Everything politeness, it also includes cutaways to the s u gges ts that Bufiuel , in o ne way or six principal characters strolling along a another, ha s a n exceptionally easy access country road . Modified by Bunuel from an to (and knows the importance of) h y p- early version in which they become prog- nogogic mental strata which most of us ressively more exhausted with each shot are too bu sy, materia listic, or incautious (and so paraphrase the burial-in-the-sand to investigate. Far from taking them to an of UN CHIEN ANDALOU), these interludes a nal ys t for \"cure\", he is pa rticularly at- now look more like a \" time out,\" a country te ntive to their closeness with \"ra tiona l\" walk in which the very blankness of their conversation, conscious thou ght, a nd minds brings the characters as close as p e rceptio n of social reality. Where we they'll ever come to freedom, nature, and systematicall y choose the socia lly relev- unself-conscio usness . Not for them the a nt remark and for ge t the others, pilgrimage of THE MILKY WAY, or the gueril- Bufiuel' s films also follo w up the alterna- las' last stand in L' AGE D' OR. tives w hich (und erstan da bly) we don ' t The ironic distance of the \"citation\" from speak of, but (suicidally) forge t-thu s UN CHIEN ANDALOU recurs insofar as Flor- progressivel y obliterating a full reality ence is the chief custodian of the imagery that mig ht help u s replace the li vi n g of Bufiuel's first two films. She keeps wor- death of hy pocrisy by a patient, tolerant, rying about some otherwise inexplicable ferocio us lucidity. The rad ical opponent cyclists, and expresses her revulsion at the o f a system, even the Marxist or Sur- ugly hands of a cellist. She's half tipsy realist in a \" free\" society (though film s throughout-which may recall Bufiuel's a re h a rdl y fr ee), lives und er constant humorous confessions of dipsomania. mental strain . Especiall y if h e is an intel- Many authors incarnate themselves as lec tual or a filmmaker, h e mu st often women in their work; and both UN CHIEN -not just in ord er to live, but in order to ANDALOU and VIRIDIANA deal quite freely say an ythin g- force his mind to appear with transvestisms of various kinds. It' s to function a lo ng line s he abhors, and possible to see (though one obviously maintain a tactful fa<;:ade w hile keeping wouldn't want to impose this view) Flor- an alterna tive va lue-syste m clear in his ence as a figure of something in Bufiuel's mind . One ca n' t sp eak of alie na tion, in FILM COMMENT 59

THE NEW FI LM INDEX Richard Dyer MacCann and Edward S. Perry An invaluable aid to film research, this masterful bibliography of forty years of magazine articles (1930-1970) covers a great deal of material on the cinema heretofore inaccessible, unevaluated, and often unknown. There are more than 12,000 annotated en- tries arranged in chronological order under 278 categories that are divided into the following main subject areas: Reference; Motion Picture Arts and Crafts; Film Theory and Criticism; Film History; Biography (includes information on directors, actors and actresses, producers, and writers); Motion Picture Industry; Film and Society; Nonfiction Films; Case Histories of Film Making. Teachers, students, writers, librarians, and general readers will find this an indispensable informational tool. RICHAR D DYE R MacCANN is Professor of Film at the University of Iowa and author of Film: A Montage of Theories. EDWARD S. PERRY is Chairman of the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. 522 pages. $35.00 THE BIRTH OF THE MOVIES D.J. Wenden A fresh and unusual study tracing the motion picture from its origins in 1895 to the coming of the talkies in 1927. Professional historian D.J. Wenden opens up a whole new range of insights by considering how the development of the cinema in this period influenced social, economic, and political events in Europe and America. 112 photographs. $5.95, paper KI NGS OF THE Bs: WORKI NG WITHI N THE HOLLYWOOD SYSTEM Todd McCarthy and Charles Flynn This marvelous collection of articles, interviews, and original es- says explores the depths of the American B (and C and Z) movies -the Westerns, gangster fl icks, horror and sci-fi movies, the teen- pix - and the more recent \"exploitation\" films ranging from \"rock,\" \"wild youth,\" and bikini-beach surfing pictures to soft- core porno, horror, and \"black pride\" mini-epics. Includes an in- valuable filmography listing credits for 325 directors. 75 photographs. $12.50, cloth $6.95, paper duttona~1f~ 201 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003

EAST COAST JOURNA L CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4 street and Spry Funeral Home are still in- ca n' t las t profitably thro ug h th e movies tac t. tha t most people see. Is th ere a conn ec- da y's New York Tim es, John J. O'Conn or tio n? As OUT ONE/SPECTRE suggests about a The Shoals Theatre-w hich my gra nd- lot of things, I suppose there is a connec- thoughtfully warned everyone that \"even fa ther also built, and later sold-has been tion and there isn't. And whatever people modest expecta tio ns will be disappoint- re m od eled , an d I go to see Vince nt are seeing-now that America seems to be ed\"; yet it seems plausible that on a large McEveety's THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE in ching its way ever so slowly toward the screen before a reaso nably discerning au- WORLDthere mainly in order to take a look. exp erie nce of most of th e res t of th e clience, even major expectations would n' t Oust my luck: Jim McBride's HOT TIMES has world-I guess it mea ns something that be. G oddam all critics who split up meas- apparently come and gone in this area, and people are going to movies again, proceed - ured a nd co h es ive work s a nd th en ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE is the ing wherever the money trail takes them. evaluate the separate pieces-the witty or n ex t a ttrac tio n .) Th e cash ier's b oo th , My fam ily's th ea ter business racked up which used to have two wi ndows to con- during the las t Depress ion , a n d un witty lin es of Ja m es Cos ti ga n , th e for m to the Jim Crow laws-the one on her maybe- wi th a lot of lu ck an d \"good\" or \"bad\" perfor mances- to prac- left accommodating the black customers, fo rbeara n ce - a few good fi lmm akers tice Criticism Among the Ruins! Whatever wh o went up to the balcony for ten or fif- its shortcomings, this movie is a whole a nd teen cents less-now only has one. For a won't starve to dea th d uri ng this one. ® deser ves to be seen tha t wa y ... .Wh en certain period after th e Civil Rights Bill will we see it again? Only the money trail went into effect, both windows and price Monthly lists of scarce cinema knows. ra nges remained to allow the old habits to books & magazines sent airmail - $5 .00 yearly . March 8: With a brother and sister- in - linger, alth o ugh theoretica lly an y black law in Washington, D.C. , I finally catch up could pay a little more and sit downstairs, A. E. COX, 21 Cecil Road , Itchen, and conversely, any white could pay less South hampton S02 7HX, with THE HARDER THEYCOME, Perry Hen- and sit in the balco ny. Now the balco ny's ENGLAND. zell's fabulous Jamaican political musical, closed, everyone sits downstairs in fewer in a battered pock-marked print. Wh at and wider seats, and a large appreciative \" .. . all at most reasonable immedia tely grabs me about this rough a uclience gets all that ca n be gotten (a nd prices.\" jewel, a p art fro m Jimmy Cliff's p ow - then some) out of a few formula live-action erhouse songs, is the elusive and elliptical Disney antics. International Film Gu ide . ecliting of the narra tive away from and into stray details, the grainy color that gives a Despite the heroic and successful efforts downhome ra t's -eye view of what slick- of Eve Arden to remain herself in spite of ness looks like to p owerless people, and everything, I leave after an hour a nd walk the raw, melodious beauty of the non- home, wondering how crazy it is to write actorly voices, which evokes some of the about movies most people can't see w hen I warm vocal sounds in Renoir's TONI. THE HARDER THEY COME is getting shown often Super Deluxe in Washington, and has already attracted a Gold Lined Labels visible following; it' s evident that many spectators a t the Outer Circle midnight Only $2.00 show are seeing it for the second or third Dr. J ohn Leonar d t i m e. 2545 Walnut St r eet For all its marked di fferences, I think Anywhere, Cali fo r ni a 94544 that John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon's wond erful sci-fi co med y, DARK STAR- 500 GOLD LINED which I saw in London last month, and has RETURN ADDRESS LABELS yet to surface in the states-deserves an equivalent \"cult\" sta tus, because it also Quick and easy way to · put your Name and Return address on letters, books, records, etc. Any Name, gives an unforced expression of a clistant Address and Zip Code up to 4 lines beautifully printed ethnic sensibility: in this case, that of a par- ticular kind of California freak. The Na- with large Gold Strip. 500 labels only $2.00• tional Film Theatre auclience I saw it with loved every minute of it, and if there's any Dublin Valley Press, 11683 Betlen Drive, Dublin, Calif. logic or justice in the money trail, so- 94566 . eventually- will you . March 9: Fl yin g south . So m ew h ere down there, in whatever state of coher- ence or incoh erence, co mpletion or in - completion, fulfillment or unfulfillment, fidelit y or in fideli ty to Altma n's movie (which is somewhere else now, in cans), is Nashville. March 10: Flore nce, Alabama. Lots of urban renewal has been going on in my home town over the past few years, a nd n ow that I've sp ent exactl y h alf of my life- sixteen years- away from it, some of the streets are only semi- recognizable. The town's first large movie thea ter, which my grandfather helped to build in 1919, was leveled long before my last visit to expand the parking lot behind the First Presbyte- ria n Church , a nd the paw nshop a block away has become the House of Guns; but the plastic flowers and Muzak on the main FILM COMME NT 6 1

ROTTERDAM JOURNAL CONTI NUED FROM PAGE 2 A New School Film Series ruSE; if not, I can' t imagine what it's there The American Hero for. In short, for me MARTHA had neither the intensity nor the compassion of PETRA, Goes to War ALI , or THE MERCHANT OF FOUR SEASONS. In its place he offered only virtuosity and a Instructor: JOHN F. MARIANI few camp conceits: Martha's last name, we are told, is Hyer. These screenings and lectures show how American filmmakers have treated the wide-ranging subject of the Much better were Werner Herzog's two American hero who goes off to do battle for honor, glory films-a forty-minute TV special on the or misguided beliefs. Discussions will follow screenings. world champion ski -jumper who in pri- vate life is a wood- carver (the film is accu- June 19 CASAB LANCA (1942) . Hum phrey Bogart , Ingrid Bergm an. Pau l Henre id . A rately titled THE GREAT ECSTASY, OR WOOD - pivotal film for und erstanding the ambi guous character of America on the CARVER STEI NER), and a feature film abo ut eve of its entrance into World War II . Directed by Michael Curtiz. Kaspar Hauser, with the title EVERY MAN THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON (194 1). Erro l Fl ynn , Olivia deHaviliand, FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGA INST ALL. Sydney Greenstreet. The American hero at his most romantic in a g lor ifi cation of the war aga in st the Indians . Directed by Raoul Walsh. Hauser was a historical phenomenon of the nineteenth century-a kind of June 26 SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBB ON (1949) . John Wayne , Victor McLaglen , Ben grown-up wolf-boy who suddenly turned Johnson . A sympathetic view of the old professiona l soldie r on the verge of up in a smaIl German town without a ny retiring into uselessness . Directed by John Ford . memory of what he had been doing for the first twenty years of his life. Herzog uses THE RED BADG E OF COURAGE (1951) . Audie Murphy , Bill Ma ul din , Andy the story to contrast the mores of bourgeois Dev ine. Ba sed on Stephen Crane 's novel . Examines the them es of bravery society with the superior morality of this and cowardice in an im pressionistic style. Directed by John Hu ston . supposed child of nature; but the film is most fascinating when Herzog lets go and July 3 VICTORY AT SEA (Prod uced by Henry Sa loma n) and WHY WE FI GHT: plunges us into Kaspar's dreams and fan- WAR COM ES TO AMERICA (Produced by Frank Capra). Two outstandi ng tasies. Like ski- jumper Stein, like the docu mentaries whic h dramatically illust ra te the temperament of the dwarfs and deaf-blind woman of his earl- American Peop le du r ing World War II . ier films, Hauser is a marginal character in a n extreme si tuation. That is obvio usly July 10 THE BIG PARA DE (1925) . John Gilbert, Renee Adoree . One o f the first films what obsesses Herzog, and he succeeds in to come to grips w ith the tragedy of Wo rld War I in the sto ry of an American making us share that obsession with the do ughboy who fights on foreign soil . Directed by King Vido r. edge of the abyss. BATTLEGROUND (1949) . Van Johnson , John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban. A • naturalistic film illu st rating the day-t o-day life of foot soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge. Directed by William Wellman . Ousmane Sembene's new film XALA is at present banned in his native Senegal; and Jul y 17 A IR FORCE (1943) . John Garfie ld , Gig Yo un g, Arthur Kennedy. Exp lores the it's not hard to see wh y, howevermuch com mon man character of the crew of a B-1 7 bomber at the beginning of one may deplore the ban. Much more than Wor ld War II. Directed by Howard Hawks. in MANDABI, Sembene really lets loose at the \"black bourgeoisie\" of his country in a ATTA CK! (1956 ). Jack Palance , Eddie Albert , Lee Marvin . A psycho logical hilarious tale of a crooked businessman drama studying the incompetent leadership of officers during World War II . who ruins himself in the process of acquir- Di rected by Robert Aldrich. ing his third wife while still supporting the first two. But Sembene is skillful enough to Jul y 24 PORK CHO P HILL (1959). Gregory Peck , Harry Guardino , Rip Torn . A be able to make us end up sympathizing st unn ing indictment of the vagaries o f fighting th e Korean War . Directed by with his anti-hero when he meets his Lewis Milestone. downfall at the hands of others even more corrupt than himself. THE GR EEN BERETS (1968) . John Wayne , David Jansen. An action-packed defe nse of the Viet nam conflict. Directed by John Wayne. Raul Ruiz, the Chilean director, also walks a tightrope in his film DIALOGUE OF Course 6305 . Thurs ., 7 :00 P.M ., $12 EXILES. Using non-actors and a few well- Films will be shown at the Fifth Avenue Cinema at Th e New School. known French stars (Daniel Gelin, Fran- ~oise Arnoul), he manages to tell us a lot Other film series this summer will include: about Chile before and after the fall of Al- Film Series 22 Course 6300. Wed ., 8 :00 P.M ., $8 , William K. Everso n lende in a series of conversations held to- gether only by the slimmest of plot lines. The Cinema 01 the Fantastic and Supernatural Co urse 6310. Mo n., 7:45 P.M., $12, Not a documentary, the film mixes factual Donald M. Spoto elements with fictional ones, just as it Film s will be shown at the Fifth Aven ue Ci nema at Th e New School treats a serious subject in a refreshingly ebullient manner. \" Culture Shock\"; The Art and the Entertainment Film Combined Course 6315. Tu es., 7:45 P.M., $12, James Harvey Finally, a real weirdo: Joseph Despins' Films wi ll be shown at the Fifth Avenue Cinema at Th e New School MOON OVER THE ALLEY, a British film which also hovers between the serious and the Send for the free illustrated Summer '75 New School Bull etin or ca ll 741 -5690. comic, between drama and musical; for this portrait of life on and off the Portobello PHONE REGISTRATION Road boasts songs by Galt MacDermot (who wrote the songs inHair) . The result is You can register by telephone lor any 01 these courses il you are a something like an up-dated Three Penny Master Charge or BankAmericard holder. Just call 741-5610, 10 A.M.-7 P.M., Mon.-Fri. Opera. A first feature, it is both original and The New School NS entertaining. ® America's First IJnitlersit~ tor Adults 741-5690 62 MAY-JUNE 1975 66 WEST 12 ST NEW YORK 10011

DELHI DALLYING organizers as much as the crippling restric- Oshima, such young directors as tions for competitive festivals forced upon Krzysztof Zanussi (Poland, ILLUMINA- by Suzanne Charity them by the International Federation of TION), Shacti Abdel Salaam (Egypt, NIGHT lnctia is a country of vast contrasts, and Film Producers Associations (F.I.A .P.F.), OF COUNTING THE YEARS), and Dariush its commercial film industry is no excep- which wields power over film festivals Mehrjui (Iran, THE cow). The general level tion to the rule. Although Inctia vies with through the real or implied threat of of quality in the Information Section's Japan for the record in annual film produc- telling national producers' associations films contrasted embarrassingly with tion, very few of the four hundred fifty or not to cooperate in submitting films. those in the main event. But the exhibition so features produced in India each year F.I.A.P.F. controls the dates that Festivals did serve to give Indian filmmakers and ever reach foreign auctiences, with minor are allowed to occur, only allows participa- audiences an opportunity to see some of exception in the Middle East. In India a tion of films produced within two years of the outstanding films that they had missed voracious film-going public, with virtually the event, and at the same time refuses to since the importation ban went into effect no TV industry for ctiversion, fills the coun- permit a film that has been in competition in 1971. try's 7,800 cinemas (admission : about Among the Indians who participated ac- twenty cents); but internal consumption in any other festival to be invited to com- doesn't help to fill the foreign exchange pete in a subsequent festival, regardless of tively in events throughout the Festival coffers. And although the technical skills how different the auctiences are or how far were representatives of an emerging and equipment are there, the broad-based apart the events in miles or time. As a re- group of young filmmakers whose films lnctian auctience doesn't demand much in sult the Inctian Festival, which occurred in were screened in the \"Panorama\" section. terms of artistic quality. The result is a late December by Federation decree, was Several of the films shown in this section lavish system that rivals the heyday of Hol- were also examples of the work supported lywood sixty-five to seventy per cent of the severly limited in its choice of films . budget of a film going to overpaid The Golden Peacock was awarded to by the Film Finance Corporation. The FFC superstars and music directors, and the Janos Rozsa' s DREAMING YOUTH was established several years ago by the rest to underpaid film directors, screen- (Hungary)-a film notable for its lush Indian government in an effort to encour- writers and supporting staff. The indus- cinematography, but rather pedestrian and age serious film production of artistic merit try's formula films are long on running emotionless. Much more impressive was where the commercial industry had failed . time and short on artistic merit-hardly Zelito Viana's ALMA (Brazil), winner of the Among the films in this section deserving the quality product on which to build a award for best direction. Set in Sao Paolo mention are Atwar Kaul's 27 DOWN, con- strong national reputation and an active in- in the Twenties, ALMA tells in a fragmented cerning the alienation of a young, middle- ternational market. style the story of a prostitute (Isabel class, working man from an urban envi- Ribeiro) whose sadomasochistic lifestyle is ronment; Shyam Benegal's ANKUR, the The Indian government has recently at once enticingly decadent yet tragically story of a servant girl and her young feudal made efforts in several directions to try to unfulfilled. India's official entry, Girish landlord evoking the beginnings of social Karnad's KAADU, was an interesting study change; and Mani Kaul's DHUVIDA, a bridge the vast gap between the vora- of rural India coping with the encroach- strange and stylistically fascinating film cious native appetite for Indian films ment of the modern world; it owed much based on a folktale about a ghost who falls and the international inctifference toward . in love with a newly married young them, by encouraging films of quality to the films of Satyajit Ray. instead of a quantity of films . These As a welcome relief from the relatively woman and assumes the shape of her ab- efforts were manifest in the Fifth Inter- lackluster competition films, festival par- sent husband. national Film Festival held in Delhi from ticipants and the general public had an op- Within the next few months it is ex- December 30th through January 12th. The portunity to select films for screening in pected that several of the most interesting festival was the first to be held in India the Information Section that covered a of these Indian films will be available to since 1969, and the first to be organized wide range of cinema. This category in- American universities and museums under the newly created Directorate of Film Festivals, established to streamline cluded recent films ineligible for competi- through a program of New Indian Cineina Indian participation in foreign film festi- vals and institutionalize holding ofinterna- tion (AMARCORD, THE GOAT HORN , A arranged by Susan Hines as consultant to tional festivals in India. CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and THE GODFATHER) the UCLA Film Archive. If the Indian Di- and retrospectives dedicated to Chaplin, rectorate of Film Festivals and the Film Fi- It has generally been considered the Russian cinema, and the Swedish nance Corporation are on their toes, they (though never actually proven) that com- petitive festivals are more effective than cinema. There was also an opportunity to will continue to reach for the goals em- non-competitive ones in attracting com- mercial interests (the presumption being see the praiseworthy work of many of the barked upon at the Delhi Film Festival, and that all the distributors will flock to the winners and the lucky producers will get members of the impressive Festival jury, assist this and other efforts to gain expo- fat on their golden bears or golden lions-or golden peacocks, if they win in chaired by Satyajit Ray and inclucting in sure for Indian films of merit as yet un- addition to Frank Capra and Nagisa known in the West. ® India). Thus the Indian organizers ~~ •~•\"••\"•\"•\"•• ~ launched a major competitive festival, Radio,Television, Film and Theatre with the emphasis on commerce rather Production Acad,emy of London than artistry. To round out the program, the Festival Directorate arranged an In- formation Section open to the public at Day, Evening & Weekend courses, one pound sterling for prospectus. theatres throughout the city, a Panorama of New Indian Onema for the benefit of FIlm ProductIon 16mm foreign delegates, and an open market sec- tion for the industry members . Television Direction/Production Name.. .... ...... .. ...... .... ............ .. Address .. . ... .. ... ...... .. ... .... .. ... ... . To the extent that the commercial and ar- PTheOIatv~lgSrloaPnhBYroad . d . .. tistic aims were somewhat incompatible, it casting an Interviewing was perhaps not the fault of the Festival Drama Classes for T. V .• Film and Theatre Scriptwriting and 'Play Writing .. .. .. .... .. .... .. .. ...... .. .... ............ ... . Musical Composition for T. V .• Film and Theatre Telephone .... ........ .... .... .. ......... Journalism 41-43 Fouberts London W1. Tel. B1 FILM COMMENT 63

BACK versities, some with other organiza- COMING ATIRACTIONS PAGE tions-and each has a distinct focus and Articles on John Ford, George Stevens, direction.) The network would have to be AFTER THE AFI . .. loose enough to allow for each group's Jerry Lewis, R.w. Fassbinder, Raoul Walsh, idiosyncrasies, flexible enough to adapt to by Austin Lamont the member organizations' range of needs, Louis Feuillade; interviews with Michel- and strong enough to unify the member angelo Antonioni, Alain Resnais, Jack With the defeat in Congress last De- groups if the need arose. What remains to Nicholson, Sydney Pollack; Robin Wood cember of a bill designed to turn the be seen is how this network would work on Chabrol and McCarey; Raymond American Film Institute into a federall y with existing specialist organizations, and Durgnat on Thirties Populism; James funded film leviathan,* two things became if it can work once it is actually set up . McCourt ~Jn Susan Sontag's PROMISED clear: that the AFI's days are numbered (except possibly as a film school in Beverly The second proposal-of central offices LANDS.~ Hills and a movie house in Washington); coordinating various specialties-might and that the non-theatrical film commu- develop like this : There would be a na- THE FOREMOST AUTHORITY ON nity now can and mu st decide for itself tional organization for each specialty, each whether or not it wants a film institute, and with a national office. There would be FILM CARE AND REPAIR what it should be like . Independent communication among the offices, possi- filmmakers and film scholars have been bly through a news periodical. And there SCRATCH REMOVAL. INSPECTION meeting over the past few months to dis- might be an annual conference for mem- COMPLETE FILM REJUVENATION cuss priorities. The Association of Inde- bers to discuss problems and find solu- pendent Video and Filmmakers is sponsor- tions. PEERLESS PROCESS FOR NEW FILM PROTECTION ing informal seminars this spring in New York; a major conference is contemplated The third-or do-nothing-approach is FILMTREAT INTERNATIONAL for the fall. based in the belief that any central office, 730 SALEM ST • GLENDALE CA 91203 • 213/242-2181 no matter how benign, has the tendency to 250 W64 ST • NEW YORK NY 10023 • 2121799-2500 Representatives of the film community assume power. Even now there are many have expressed several common concerns. ways to cooperate and coordinate, and York University One is for an information center and coor- these avenues should be explored fir...st, in- Faculty of Fine Arts dinating office-not a monolithic organi- formally. If an organization is then needed, Program in Film zation with centralized programming and it should evolve naturally. Summer '75 responsibilities, but a loosely organized federation that could prevent wasteful These three proposals (and others that Credit courses are bei n9 offered duplication of effort; the federation might may emerge in the months ahead) have in in the Department of Film be structured around existing or proposed common the desire for a stron ger and (studio and non-studio) and regional media study facilities , each of more effective non-theatrical film com- will ::ommence July 2 _Other which would fulfill several different func- munity. The perennial problem, of course, credit courses are also available tions for its region. Or a central office could is money; but a united film community is in DANCE, MUSIC, THEATRE, coordinate a variety of speCialized groups more likely to find seed money-and to and VISUAL ARTS. (archivists, filmmakers , teachers, dis- satisfy its other urgent needs. What's im- tributors, etc.) . Or those involved might portant is that the film community now For further information: just let things cool down a bit, let events would rather pitch in than fight within it- Summer Studies '75 take their course, and try not to impose self, and that, united, it can reasonably Faculty of Fine Arts any form of organization on anyone. hope for control of its own destiny.t% Fine Arts Phase II York University The Committee on Film and TV Re- CO NTRIB UTO RS 4700 Keele Street sources and Services (The Mohonk Con- Downsview, Ontario ference) , which played an important part Carlos Clarens is the author of George M3J 1P3 in defeating the AFI Bill, has been working Cukor, to be published later this year in the or call (416) 667-3636. since then to develop these and other Cinema One series. Mitchell S. Cohen has ideas. The Committee was formed to learn, written for Take Ol1e and Americal1 Report. from the people in each non-theatrical Edgardo Cozarinsky is the Argentine di- field, what was needed and how it might rector of DOT DOT DOT Raymond Durgnat's be attained. Representatives of regional most recent books , Jeal1 Rel10ir and Th e study facilities suggested a communica- Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock, will be re- tions center that would not interfere with viewed in the next issue of FILM COMMENT each group's autonomy. (At present, no William K. Everson, the prolific author and two facilities are the same; some are af- peripatetic lecturer, teaches film at most of filiated with art museums, some with uni- the universities in the New York area. John G. Hanhardt is Curator of Film at the 'See FfLM COMMENT, January-February 1975, for Whitney Museum of American Art. Austin Lamont's report on the Congressional vote; Richard Koszarski studies and teaches at and USGPO document 42-830 for transcripts of the New York University. Austin Lamont, the hearings. former managing editor of FILM COMMEN1; is co-producing a documentary film for the Bicentennial. Gene Phillips, S.J., is the au- thor of Graham Greene: The Films of His Fic- tion. Elliott Stein, who translated and ex- panded Leon Barsacq's Le Decor du Cinema for publication this summer by the New York Graphic Society, writes for Sight al1d Sound and The Financial Times.'~ 64 MAY-JUNE 1975

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