VOLUME 11 - NUMBER 05 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

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FILIVI CIOIMIMIEINIT publi shed by THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER VOLUME 11 NUMBER 5 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975 STAFF CONTENTS editor Journals page RICHARD CORLISS L.A.lStephen Farber London/Jon athan Rosenbau m 2 associate editor Cannes/Mary Corliss 4 BROOKS RILEY Annecy/Leonard Maltin 6 8 director of finance & production Postwar Japanese Cinema SUZANNE CHARITY Samurai by Alain Silver graphic design Samuraifilms, p. lO page 10 GEORGE SILLAS Kon Ichikawa SUSAN DOBBIS by William Johnson page 16 contri buting w riters RAYMOND DURGNAT Hitchcock's Family Plot Andrew M eyer on the set STEPHEN FARBER page 21 ROGER GREENSPUN JONATHAN ROSENBAUM Sydney Pollack interviewed by Patricia Erens RICHARD ROUD page 24 ANDREW SARRIS Against Conclusions AMOS VOGEL by Robin Wood ROBIN WOOD page 30 contributing editor STUART BYRON advertis ing manager Midsection page TON Y IMPAVI DO SydneyPollack, p. 24 Media/Stuart Byron 33 Square vs. Hip/Stuart Byron 34 research assistant Television/Renee Epstein MARY CORLISS N .V Film Festival Preview 35 The opinions expressed in FILMCOMMENT Exhibition/Rich ard Corliss 36 Story of Adele H .lRi chard Roud 37 are those of the indi vidual authors and do not Grey Gardens/Charles Michener 38 necessaril y represent Film Society Independents/Amos Vogel 39 of lincoln Center policy or the opinions Working-Cass Films, p.47 Ford's War Documentaries of the editor or staff of the magazine. by Tag Gallagher Frank Mouris, p. 54 page 40 FILM COMMENT,September-October 1975,volume 11 number S, published bimonthlybythe Film Societyof Lincoln Center, Working Class Films 186S Broadway, N.Y. 10023 USA. by Tom Reck page 47 Second class postage paid al New York, New York and additiona l mailing Miklos Jancso's ELECTRA offices.Copyright © 1975 by The Film Societyof Lincoln Center.All rights by Graham Petri e page 50 reserved . Thi s publication is full y protected by domestic and international copyright. It is forbidden to duplicate an y part of thi s publ ication in any Frank Mouris way withour pri or written permission from the publishers. by Michael Kerbel page 54 Subscription rates in the United States: $9 for six numbers. $1 7 for twelve numbers. El sewhere : $10.50 for si x George Stevens, Jr. numbers, $20.00 for twelve numbers, pa yable in US funds onl y. New interviewed by Austin Lamont subscribers please include your occupati on and zip code. Subscription page 60 and back issue correspondence: FILM COMMENT. 1865 Broadway, Books page New York, N.Y.10023USA. Sexual Alienation/Greg Palokane 62 Film Bibliographi es/Richard Koszarski Editorial correspondence: Kuleshovon Film/Stuart Liebman 64 FILM COMMENT, 1865 Broadway, New York, NY 10023 USA. Please 66 send manuscripts upon request only and include a stamped Back Page page 72 self-addressed envelope. Microfi lm editions available from University Microfi lms, Ann Arbor MI 48106. Printed in USA byAcme Printing, Medford, MA. Distributed in the USA by Eastern News Company.1S5 West 15th Street, New York NY 10011 . Interna tiona l distrib ution b y Worldwide Media Service, 386 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016 USA.FILMCOMMENT participates in the FIAF periodical indexing plan.ISSN:0015-119X. Libraryof Congress cardnumber 76-498. on the cover: FayeDunawayand Robert Redford in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (paramount) on thi s page: The sword as sacred objed : the moistening of the blade in Ito'sTHE AMBITIOUS (photo:Silver); SydneyPollack on set ofTHE YAKUZA (Warners); Ann Sheridanand George Raft in THEY DRIVEBY NIGHT (MOMA); Herman Costa licks off his mustache in Frank Mouris'sSCREENTEST (Mouris). Michele Godbout helped the Film Society in many ways, not least as an enthusiastic and persuasive vendor of FILM COMMENT at last year's New York Film Festival. In everything she did, Michele embodied a spirit of freshness and openness to adventure that films, film magazines, and film people strive for but rarely achieve. Her presence, and that spirit, will be sorely missed . This issue is dedicated to her memory.

JOUR- director. If reviewers think the response is Isn't it possible to write a favorable but difficult to achieve, that is simply because balanced review of a movie like NASH- NALS they haven't seen every two-bit horror VILLE, honoring its achievements without movie from AlP and Hammer Films. ignoring its weaknesses? I was exhilarated L. A. JOURNAL by the richness of NASHVILLE and im- After panning some of the biggest com- pressed with Altman's skill in controlling by Stephen Farber mercial successes of the last few years, the such an intricate narrative. I was also frus- critics may have wanted to prove that they trated and dissatisfied by a few shaky pas- When film was regarded as a second- can enjoy the same junk as fifty million sages. Although the film succeeds at cap- class art, critics may have felt compelled to other Americans. They are tired of being turing the spirit of an entire community, exaggerate the virtues of many movies known as elitists; they want to rejoin the some of the individual portraits (Lily Tom- they were reviewing. But now that movies herd . What is obscene about the reviews of lin's character, for example) are inevitably have achieved intellectual respectability, JAWS is their thrilled, delirious tone, the too abbreviated. A more troubling failure is there is less justification for overpraising exultation with which the critics describe the ending. At the moment when Altman films. Unfortunately, critical hyperbole is a the movie's box office clout. The smell of tries to make his definitive statement about disease that has reached epidemic propor- money seems to arouse the critics, just as violence in America, he only reveals the tions. The reviews of two movies released the promise of blood excites the goons in shallowness of his own thinking . As a mat- this summer-JAWS and NASHVILLE- the audience. Once JAws-mania dies down ter of fact, the political subtext of the movie illustrate the problem. in another few months, the critics are is glib rather than enlightening. If these going to be very embarrassed by their re- flaws are not fatal to such a savory pot- The rave reviews for JAws-a routine views. pourri, they do require some analysis. The monster movie turned into a gigantic adulatory reviews of NASHVILLE do no ser- blockbuster by relentless advertising-are Yet the orgasmic reviews of NASH- vice to Altman, who already seems to re- at once astonishing and depressing. When VILLE-an infinitely better movie than gard himself as some kind of pop guru I saw the movie at a sneak preview two JAws-are equally disturbing. At a time beyond criticism. months before it opened, I knew it was when most movies are coldly mechanical, I going to be a smash hit with undemanding can understand the critics' gratitude at Critics sometimes justify their excesses audiences; but even though I hold a very finding an innovative, provocative, by asserting that mild reviews will not per- low opinion of the critics, I honestly suade people to see an unconventional thought they would see through this The victory of JAWS. movie. In defending her overenthusiastic shabby piece of factory-constructed Grand review of LAST TANGO IN PARIS, Pauline Guignol. Instead almost all the critics-not genuinely contemporary American film. Kael told a New York radio audience that just the regular screamers like Judith Crist However, when critics call NASHVILLE the she sometimes avoided mentioning her re- and Bob Salmaggi, but intelligent review- best American film since CITIZEN KANE, or servations about a movie so as not to dis- ers like Richard Schickel, Gary Arnold, compare it to Joyce's Ulysses, the acclaim courage people from seeing it. Kael and and Frank Rich-have acclaimed the film loses all meaning. And in the long run, this others might argue that, in an environ- as a classic suspense melodrama . If critics kind of overpraise backfires. The rave re- ment dominated by hardsell advertising, a can fall for such a crudely calculated, ma- views may convince people to see the critic also has to oversell a little in order to nipulative scare show, then there really is movie, but a lot of them feel they've been get people into the theaters. Unfortunate- no chance to buck high-powered advertis- had, and they come out feeling bewildered ly, in response to these pressures, critics ing. and disappointed. There are hisses-along have begun to write reviews in the style of with applause-at the end of many shows advertising blurbs. This in tum makes it How could the critics have overlooked in Westwood. How can people help being that much more difficult to reach people the glaring flaws in the movie-the paper- disappointed when the movie has been with a sensible but measured review. thin characterizations, the clumsy, labored exalted in terms usually reserved for a Nevertheless, cool, temperate, reasoned plot construction, the shameless mugging Shakespearean tragedy or a Beethoven evaluation is the only kind of writing that by Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss? symphony? (Film critics are not the only deserves to be called criticism. Once critics JAWS is a predictable horror picture with- reviewers guilty of overselling their wares. start designing their reviews for numb, in- out a trace of wit or imagination or visual When I was in New York recently, I felt a sensitive, advertising-battered readers, beauty; and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK comparable sense of disappointment after they've surrendered to the marketplace, LAGOON had more sinister, mysterious un- seeing A Chorus Line-a good, modest just like the filmmakers who calculate their derwater scenes. Steven Spielberg's direc- musical that had been proclaimed as a effects for the broadest possible audience. tion of the mechanical shark is competent; revolutionary breakthrough in the thea- his direction of the actors is cretinous. Yes, ter.) Kael herself has offered this caution: the movie has about four effective shock \"Honor in the arts-and in show busi- cuts, when I jumped along with everyone ness, too-is giving of one's utmost, even else in the audience. I can understand that if the audience does not appear to know those few jolts might be enough to satisfy the difference, even if the audience shows the teenagers who are looking for a mild every sign of preferring something easy, sadistic tum-on, but aren't the critics any cheap, and synthetic. The audience one more demanding? Making an audience must believe in is the great audience ... .\" jump on cue is the easiest trick for a schlock Kael was talking about filmmakers, but the statement could apply to critics as well. Even in an atmosphere polluted by hype, a critic has to write for the ideal reader, an in- telligent reader who doesn't have to be oversold on a movie to conclude that it is worth attention. Actually, the sincere desire to persuade people to see a worthy movie is one of the nobler motives for critical over-statement. There is a less admirable motive: Critics CONTINUED ON PAGE 68 2 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

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JOU& certainties with flourishes of climactic NIA SPLIT, and NASHVILLE comes directly rhetoric-the somewhat platitudinous from the messy overlaps and overflows, NALS American flag flashed on like a visual aid in the things which irritate and \"don't fit\" as the last reel, as well as the wonderful well as the things that tickle and do. What LONDON JOURNAL songs-that can absorb, distend, or emo- matters most of all are the processes and tion-ally dissolve these question marks unforeseeable movements of this magical by Jonathan with an illusory sense of collective cer- u~verse, as Its dancing parts converge and Rosenbaum tainty, the very stuff that Hollywood disperse, cohere and divide, clash and dreams are made of. (PLAYTIME uses some synthesize, always expanding. Or should I call this my NASHVILLE Jour- of that rhetoric, too, but in long shot rather nal? On March 19, I saw a monaural print than dose-up, meaning that one can \"iden- To presume that this plenitude of in London at a private screening. Writing tify\" with it only on a philosophical or over three months later, shortly after its metaphorical level; SPECTRE goes in the privileged moments all has to mean some- New York opening and a projected five be- opposite direction, finally settling on an thing (and MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER apart, fore it's supposed to surface in the rural undifferentiated, anti-rhetorical street God help us all when Altman thinks he West End, I can only wish it well on its comer that screams as loudly as Altman's knows what that something is) is to hustle way. Regular readers of this column may overdetennined American flag-but only the director into an auteur theory where he froth at the mouth if I drag Tati and Rivette as a consequence of its semantic function clearly doesn' t belong, except as a kind of into the case once more; in that case, froth in the overall design, and not through any personalized clearing house. An \"Altman away, folks-I'm sorry, but it's Altman's intrinsic significance of its own.) At its movie\" is pre-eminently a matter of the doing, not mine. In one fell swoop, the worst, NASHVILLE overreaches itself by im- ringleader's capacity to animate, measure, fleeting, juggling, and fluctuating visual plying that its songs and flag emblem can and mix the creativity of other people, reference points of PLAYTIME are echoed- explain and encompass all the rough edges along with certain bright ideas of his own, in the extraordinary highway pile-up and loose threads in its fabric- in a series of evolving yet perpetually un- sequence, at the airport and in the night- kaleidoscopic joys which need no justifica- stable balances-just like most other clubs, among other places-while the tion, and ideally could have run on for movies, only more so-and \"personal vis- shifting relays between two dozen charac- days. At its best, itcombines its shifting em- ion\" is a question of seeing and hearing, ters who are simultaneously \"connected\" phasis with its rhetoric-as in Keith Car- not a state of being or a Chinese fortune and estranged, interrelated and unrelated, radine's nightdub performance with three cookie designed to supply movie critics are similarly reflective of SPECTRE. or four of his ladies in attendance, w hen with their leads. In this respect, Altman his song becomes the catalyst of our rest- firmly belongs to the Renoir tradition, ask- Reflective, yes, but far from identical, less focus, subtly changing its meaning ing us to respond to his movies like human and there is certainly no doubt that each time it becomes juxtaposed with a dif- beings, not university professors. The NASHVILLE is astronomically more accessi- ferent listener. same goes for his actors: the world as show ble than either of my favorite movie biz is a conceit that can be sustained only as hobby-horses. Many people who can't Will the English go for this marvelous long as its perpetrators really believe in it profitably sit through PLAYTIME or SPECTRE hootfest? There will likely be some an- (d. THE GOLDEN COACH, FRENCH CANCAN), even once will likely be returning to noyance felt about Geraldine Chaplin's rather than propound it like a thesis. Altman's movie several times, and the last highly improbable \" BBC-reporter,\" al- \"Rivette can learn a lot from Altman,\" a thing I want to do is be a spoilsport about though on reflection I find that .the relative friend of mine remarked, \"but Altman it. Indeed, next to the shallow, two- \"unreality\" of her part in contrast to many can't learn anything from Rivette,\" and I dimensional pyrotechnics of THE PAS- of the others (such as the remarkable Lily know exactly what he means. It's precisely SENGER (literally shallow, if one measures Tomlin's) is partially indicative of what Altman's theoretical innocence that gives its uncomposed freize-like surfaces against makes NASHVILLE such a heady mixture. him such an openness of response, a the brilliantly balanced choreographic play Much as Rivette in SPECTRE and CELINE ET largesse that can enclose a multitude of between background and foreground in JULIE VONT EN BATEAU effectively explodes contradictory stances and stresses without early Antonioni), where everything- conventional barriers between \"good\" and any intellectual self-consciousness; at least Borgesian ambiguities, Third World \"bad\" acting by forcing together seem- until he arrives at his would-be Fellini generalities, graceful time-shifts, seven- ingly incompatible playing styles and then codas, which contrive to inflate his ter- minute Michael Snow Simplifications, and watching them crackle, much of the ex- mites into white elephants-a feat which blindman parables alike-is virtually pre- citement in THE LONG GOODBYE, CALIFOR- Rivette and Tati, unlike Altman, have the interpreted before an audience can even equipment to bring off. As for the begin to sink its teeth into it, NASHVILLE corning-out of the movie's closet assassin, represents something new and alive in the Parthenon and Greek chrous (\"It Don't commercial cinema because you have to Worry Me\") notwithstanding, I'd rather play with it in your own sweet way, stake regard him as nothing mere than yet out your own points of entry and intersec- another unforeseen and magical explo- tion and your own kinds and degrees of sion, like the orange-throwing madwo- response. man at the race track in CALIFORNIA SPLIT. Altman gets away with this on a box- And I'll gladly stick with the Altman ter- office level by spacing out his exquisite un- mites as long as he trusts his instincts and keeps them around, hoping that he'll lease out his elephants (if and when he finds them) to Messrs. Kubrick, Coppola, Schlesinger, Bogdanovich and Co., who'll certainly know what to do with them and feed them all the hay necessary to keep them alive and overbearing. April 13, Paris: Eighteen months and ten issues ago, I reported in these pages that at least one or two more viewings of Orson Welles' F. FOR FAKE is a function of the vir- CONTINUED ON PAGE 70 4 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

o FILM COMMENT 5

JOU& audiences as VERITES ET MENSONGES. and perform other tedious daily tasks for Another more surprising popular success four hours without putting all but the most NALS was Werner H erzog's AGUIRRE, WRATH OF masochistic to sleep. GOD, which had played to bewildered au- CANNES JOURNAL diences at Cannes two years earlier. But The piece de resistance de Seyrig was Cannes '75 revealed a new, more lucid, by Mary Corliss beautifully told, and unusually accessible Marguerite Duras ' INDIA SONG, which Herzog film: EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND boasts a memorable score (three songs, re- The Cannes Film Festival is a delightful GOD AGAINST ALL. It's a retelling of the peated endlessly), a lovely decor (one and maddening paradox: a two-week legend of Kaspar Hauser-a young man room, which we are fprced to examine for event, held in one of the world's sunniest who appeared mysteriously in a Bavarian the worse part of two hours), handsome and most attractive towns, at which one is town, seemingly ignorant of his origins, actors (four, all of whom are forbidden by compelled to spend the major part of one's and who struggled to become what the script to do any acting), and a melo- waking hours in dark rooms. And al- nineteenth-century Germans considered a dramatic plot (in which, among other inan- though the fifteen hundred accredited crit- human being. Herzog is mainly interested ities, Delphine must reject the attractively ics who attend the Festival each year are re- in the psychology of this child-adult (su- threatening Michel Lonsdale, who bears a luctant to admit it, the conflict between in- perbly embodied by the enigmatic Bruno remarkable resemblance to a distinguished door duty and outdoor pleasure is fre- S.) and in the attempts made to teach him New York film critic). The Festival Jury sur- quently resolved by leaving a three-hour contemporary moral and social standards. rendered to her extraordinary presence in Algerian film for the soleiI and the salade The film could be called \"The Education of four less-than-extraordinary movies, and nir;oise. This year-at the request of the Kaspar Hauser\" -or, better yet, \" The awarded Mlle. Seyrig a special acting Festival Administration, no doubt-the Education of Werner Herzog,\" since EVERY prize. Cannes Chamber of Commerce provided a MAN FOR HIMSELF is a true masterwork, a week of chilly, rainy weather at the outset, formally perfect work that summarizes The prize for Best Actor went to Vittorio leaving the disgruntled journalists little Herzog's career-long concerns with sacred Gassman, for his bravura performance in choice but to see a few films. misfits in a profane world. Dino Risi's very amiable AWOMAN'S SCENT; but awards might also have been given to And when the sun came out and the The Festival had its own sacred the leading actors in two of the Festival's big-money critics took off for the Carlton misfits-worthy films that were ignored most diverting films, Vilgot Sjoman's GAR- Bar and the Plage Sportif, enough well- or scorned by the Cannes critical estab- AGE and Robin Davis 's CE CHER VICTOR, wishers and sight-seers were left to em- lishment. The giggles and yawns -that both of which dealt in fairly straightfor- bark on a pilgrimage to the other side of greeted King Hu's TOUCH OF ZEN were only ward linear fashion with the suspicion of town to see Orson Welles' legendary FAKE. the latest curses in a seven-year plague of adultery. In GARAGE, the wife's adultery The skeptical have suggested that Fran,>ois commercial adversity: the original dis- triggers attempts on her life; in CHER VIC- Reichenbach, the French documentarist, tributor of this three-hour \"ghost story\" TOR, the wife has been dead for years be- not only shot most of the film 's original set in medieval China first released the film fore her \"sin\" has been discovered-or, footage (of art forger Elmyr deHory and his in two installments, then re-cut it into a rather, invented! For Sjoman, his exercise sorcerer's apprentice, Clifford Irving) but two-hour version, then withdrew it en- in Chabrollian melodrama gave evidence edited it in the style of Welles' European tirely, and is now making it difficult for the that a director who seemed fatally linked to period-in short, that Orson Welles' FAKE director to have the film shown in Europe the heavy-handed, heavy-breathing, is a fake Orson Welles. If this is true (and and America. Nevertheless, TOUCH OF ZEN socially-conscious Sixties could expertly the film suggests that nothing is true), then brings a haunting beauty to the martial arts accommodate himself to the cooler, more FAKE can at least stand as Reichenbach's genre; unquestionably, it was the Festival's cynical Seventies. only great film . most breathtaking visual experience. Another controversial Festival regular, Nevertheless, FAKE reverberates with so The Festival's most breathtaking-and Miklos Jancso, reworked the Electra myth many Wellesian eccentricities and obses- ubiquitous-star was Delphine Seyrig, in his new film, FOR ELECTRA. The Jancso sions that it's one of his most personal whose quartet of films comprised a mini- controversy has been raging for so long works, whether it's \"his\" or not. One such festival of their own. In Guy Gilles' LE JAR- that little hope remains to persuade com- echo (of Hank Quinlan'S epitaph in TOUCH DIN QUI BASCULE, a kind of minimalist PRI- batants to call a truce and see this mes- OF EVIL: \" What does it matter what you say VATE PROPERTY, she toys with a couple of merizing fresco with open eyes and minds. about people?\") is heard in the remarkable The style is inimitable Jancso . And the sequence dealing with the anonymous adolescent halfwits; in Liliane de Ker- opening (ten-minute) shot-weaving and craftsmen of Chartres, when Welles ends a madec's ALOISE, she plays a luscious circling and swooping over a Hungarian rumination on authorship with the words: feminist prototype but is smothered by the plain as actors, soldiers, and horses move \"Maybe a man's name doesn't matter- film's overlush production; in JEANNE in complementarily complex patterns not much.\" The name on FAKE (Welles' or DIELMAN, Chantal Akerman 's pseudo- within and outside the frame-is dazzling Reichenbach's) doesn't matter as much as documentary, she proves that no one- cinematic choreography. If subsequent the cathedral of mirages and revelations it not even an actress as enchanting as movements don't quite measure up to this contains. herself-can stoically knit, brew coffee, passage, ELECTRA still stands as testimony to Jancso's superlative technique. FAKE was something of a hit in Paris / cinemas this spring, p}aying to responsive CONTINUED ON PAGE 71 6 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975 Orson Welles in FAKE.

Movies guaranteed to expand your mind, twist your psyche, and warp your soul. PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE - He sold his soul for rocl~ 'n roll. ''A crazy savage film- iconoclastic and truly liberating:' - Time ZARDOl -I 've seen the future and it sucl~s. \" Zordoz exists at a twilight level of the dream and unconsciousness:' -Chorles Champlin, Los Angeles Times FREAKS -A journey into a seporate reality. \" The most compassionate movie ever made about the humane condition:' -Andrew Sorris PRIVATE PARTS PIED PIPER -Don't see it on a full stomach. \" Private Ports scored -Donovan gets mellow yellow with rots. the shit out of me:' \"A medieval Willard :' - Village Voice BLiNDMAN - Vi llage Va~ -Oeing without eyes is one thing , but without thot ... phew! \"Once in 0 while, someone in Olindman says somethin and then it's most likely to be 'you dirty s.o.b.-I 'II break you r assl' \" SHANKS -Jerry Parl~er, Newsday -A grim fairy tole for adults. \" Grim it is:' -New Yorl~ Doily News DON 'T LOOK NOW -A cinema of disquieting beauty and dreamlil~e dislocation. \"The most subtle and sophisticated horror film ever mode:' -New Yorl~ Times Get these movies from FILMS INCORPORATED Northeast Division 440 Pork Avenue South New York City, N.V 10016 212/ 889-7910 Southeast Division 5589 New Peachtree I'.ood Atlanta, Georgio .30.341 404/ 451-7445 Central Division 7.3.3 Greenboy I'.ood Wilmette. illinois 60091 .3 12/ 256-6600 West Division 5625 Hollywood [loulevord Hollywood, California 90028 21.3/ 466-5481 FILM COMMENT 7

won the citation for Best Children's Film, already being distributed in the U.S. by an area in which there was considerable competition. Although hardly memorable, Pyramid Films. PUNCH is quite plea sa nt children's fare with certain charm for adults. The Annecy Cine-Club presented two JOU& Prize for Best \"First Work\" was deser- awards, to a strange French film called vedly given to L'EM PREINTE (THE FOOT- NALS PRINT) by Jacques A . Cardon . The film 's OISEAU DE NUIT/NIGHT BIRD (directed by strength lies in the fact that its haunting ANNECY JOURNAL premise is a visual one, bereft of the pro- Bernard Palacios, who teaches at the selytizing and arrogance found in many by Leonard Mallin other \" message\" films in competition. School of Fine Arts in Annecy), and to a Cardon 's comment on oppression is dis- Films don' t exist in a vacuum , but many armingly simple, and incredibly effective: well-received Canadian film , Caroline who attended this year's animation festival a young boy wears an awkward harness in Annecy wish they did. Soggy weather, on his back, covering both the torso and Leafs THE MARRIAGE OF HIBOU, based on indifference and hostility from the locals, back of his head . It is finally removed, to awkward scheduling of films, complaints reveal a deep footprint which is matched an Eskimo fable and executed by painting over the selection committee's choices for by the boot of his oppressor, who makes inclusion and exclusion, and the boorish him kneel as he re-inserts his heavy shoe. on glass. behavior of the paying audience (with no The boy then peers through a door to find word of reprimand from Festival officials) thousands of others in the same position, Some other films worth knowing about combined to make the five-day festival filling the landscape as far as the eye can more a chore than a pleasure. see. that did not win prizes: MICKEY'S NASTY There were very few films that gener- The Best Commercial Film award looked TURN (Jeff Goldner, England), a thirty- ated real excitement, and the prize- to me like a diplomatic nod -toward Cana- winning selections were mostly self- da, which provided so many entries but no second gag film involving a familiar car- evident. Still, there was a healthy variety other winners this year. There can be no of films on every program, ranging from other explanation for having chosen Lynn toon star; THE MIRACLE OF FLIGHT (Terry the obvious to the obscure, with motives Smith's very ordinary anti-smoking ~om­ ranging from political to poetical. mercial over such impressive competitors Gilliam, England), a typically funny series as Rowland B. Wilson's superb Trans- Grand Prize went to LE PAS (THE STEP), a Iberian Express commercial for Count of vignettes from the Monty Python show; French film by Piotr Kamler that seemed to Pushkin vodka, or Bob Kurtz's handsome me to be little more than an animation Levi's spot in the style of Frederic Rem- A POET' S LIFE (Kihachiro Kawamoto , exercise, albeit a beautiful one, showing ington. flat square strips flying off a cube and resol- Japan) , a sophisticated film in content and idifying to form another similar cube. CLOSED MONDA YS . Norman McLaren, where are you? technique, creating a haunting mood but To my mind, the best film of the week The first Special Jury Prize was awarded was an American entry that won the Inter- falling short of the mark in making its to a deft but low-key Russian short, THE national Critics' Prize, CLOSED MONDAYS, HERON AND THE STORK (1. Norstein), by Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner. This re- point; DA DA DA (Peter Hudecki, Canada), adapted from a popular story about the markable clay-model animation film , hot-and-cold love affair of two elegant about a drunk who stumbles into a another fine little gag film; BUTTERFLY BALL birds. Ornately designed and skillfully museum and hallucinates, is the kind of animated, the film was a crowd-pleaser richly imaginative work one hopes to see (Lee Mishkin, England), a delightful color- despite its delicate atmosphere . more of at these festivals ... and a film that warrants repeated viewings. Lacking the ful children's film with anthropomor- Second Special Jury Prize was taken by slickness of the European puppet- Alison DeVere's CAFE BAR, a British film animation films in the festival (a fine Czech phized characters in a love-rock setting; that deserves (and should easily win) wide film, PLEASE EXCUSE ME , a skillful East distribution in the U.S. In five minutes Ms. German entry, NOVELLE/SHORT STORY), this PERSPECTIVES (Georges Schwizgebel, DeVere illustrates the far-flung fantasies one easily eclipsed them all with its inten- and barriers between a man and woman sity and uncanny reproduction of a human Switzerland), solarization-type animation who meet for a drink. Elegantly charming, face on the central character. This short is CAFE BAR was one of the real \"finds\" of the of figures walking; THE ACTOR (Jean- festival. Fran~ois Laguionie, France) , a beautiful- Third Special Jury Prize was given to Taku Furuwaka's PHENAKISTOSCOPE , looking film with a somewhat obvious which he described as a \"small visual dic- tionary intended for animators,\" bringing comment on the role an actor plays in life; one of the motion picture's ancestral forms to life again on film, showing the succes- THE MINER'S ROSE Oiri Brdecka, Czechoslo- sive movements of various figures in a cir- cular wheel-of-life. vakia), a lovely rendition of a familiar tale A Czechoslovakian television cartoon about a miner and his sweetheart, beauti- executed in paper cut-out style, PUNCH, JACK, AND THE DRAGON (Josef Sramek) , full y understated in its sentimentality. THANKSGIVING (Ken Wallace, Canada) was one of the big crowd-pleasers of the week, a somewhat amateurish but defi- nitely arresting stop-action film about a turkey who escapes from the oven and tries to leave the house where he is due to be cooked. With a pair of grotesque eyes and amazingly adroit movements, the in- animate turkey come to life is an incredible screen figure . . There was widespread feeling that the French selection committee had relegated many worthwhile films to the out-of- competition screenings, but one can well imagine the difficulty of retaining any criti- cal perspective in sorting through some seven hundred entries. At mid-week, a petition was circulated protesting the French government's threat to discontinue its support of the Annecy festival. Although many people signed, in deference to the city's ten-year history as an animation center and host to many fine festivals past, it seemed pretty clear that the event has outgrown Annecy. The necessity of three screenings of each show and the spreading of guests among a dozen or more hotels (some of them far out of town) are but two indications that a more practical setting is required. There was nothing approaching a communal feeling this year, since everyone's schedules were staggered and accommo- CONTINUED ON PAGE 68 8 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

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Fireleaps fro l11 tlleir swords, Histori cally, th e first bushi derive fr o m the Th esparks of their own anger fa ll upon them like rain, Japanese aristocracy much like the first occidental knights but th e Japanese never came to rega rd Sea 111i, Tsune1l1asa knight-hood with a purely cavalier attitude. [n the founding centuries of Japan , the sa murai per se For anyo ne w ho seeks to und erstand the inbred played little part. Th e heroes were princes and cultural foundations of the Samurai film , the prob- dragon slayers, not duelists or men renowned for lems rese mbl e those associa ted with dramatiza - their struggles against human opponents. When ti ons of the more famo us Greek or Ro man war- political intrigues and us urpations bega n to un- riors, of Western knights-at-arms and Crusaders, dermine the absolute authority of the Emperor, the or of the America n gunfighter. The Samurai is a power base shifted to the aristocracy. The various fig ure ground ed in histOlical rea lities but embel- baro nial clans or families united und er daimyos lished by oral traditions, isolated diachronically in (provincial lords) and ,bega n to vie for control of an unfa n1iLiar past, a nd elevated through repea ted what was formerl y public land. representatio ns in ar t to the level of myth , As the possession of land and the ability to ta x Separa tin g th e actuality from th e mi s ts of th e serfs w ho farm ed it we re th e eco nomic legend s is, if possible at all, no simple task. Like mainsta ys of a n unproductive ruling class, the Ac hill es and Ae neas, Roland a nd Arthur, Jesse mod e of government which evolved during the Ja mes and Wya tt Earp, the record of Japan's heroic Na ra (650-793 A.D.) and Heian (794-1185) eras was bushi (warriors) is fill ed with personages who are one of classical feudalism. Each retainer-the orig- substan tiall y larger than life. Moreover, the real or inal meaning of the word \"sa murai\" itself is \"ser- fabled events which und erlie the art are all rooted vant\" or \" retainer\"-was invested by and pledged in a homogeneo us and unbroke n code of culture allegiance to his immediate overlord in a system of built up over more than a mill e nium , a nd in a diminishing fiefdoms, [n exchange for service in a socio-political stas is w hich e ndured ce nturies daimyo's personal guard , a knight was quartered beyond anything rese mbling it in the West. As a and provisioned, (The karoku or stipend of the first res ult, the sam urai as a character in a particular _sa murai was paid not in gold but in rations of rice.) type of film is inextricabl y bound up not just with As sons replaced fath ers in a particular lord's re- the sa murai as he was when still a viable, societal tinue, attachments between famil y and dai117yo be- in stituti o n but also w ith all the perceptions of ca me part of a valued inheritance, Japanese society, both past a nd presen t, whi ch color the individual fictio nal d epictions of that in- Tashiro Mifune and s tituti o n, Tatsuya Nakadai in Kobayashi 's REBELLION . by Alain Silver

Japan's medieval years-the Kamakura the samurai in the era was kirisu togomen. Kurosawa's surreali sti c visuali zation of death . Above : (1186-1336) and Ashikaga (1337-1573) Under this sanction, the swordsman had The mud battle in THE SEVEN SAMURAI. Panel below: eras-are not directly analogous to any in the right to kill instantaneously and with- The \" fount ain of blood\" from the loser's chest in SA N- the West; but in terms of the fiction of the out warning any low-caste person whom JURO . cinema, this span of centuries which cul- he thought had given him insult-a right minates in an Eastern Hundred Years War which, needless to say, alienated him (the Senkuko wars, 1467 to 1574) is as in- further from those below him in the caste frequently used as a background as the European Dark Ages. Although these eras system of Japanese society. mark the refinement of the methods of war, the organization of quasi-nationalistic All that stood between the samurai and armies to repel two incursions by the an indiscriminate exercise of his power Mongols and launch an invasion of Korea, were two cults: bushido or \" the way of the and a swelling undertide of identification warrior\" and Kendo or \" the way of the with the nation rather than the province sword. \" Although much has been written overseen by a clan Lord, the most familiar concerning bushida in modern times, this image of the samurai-the archetypal but Japanese code of ethics, like the Western slightly anachronistic man of action-is conception of chivalrous behavior, was es- almost always associated with the long na- sentially a common law. tional peace of the highly repressive To- kugawa Era (1600-1868). In the feudal period bush ida was unwrit- ten but specific, intangible, but ever pres- The reasons why this era is the most ent in the mind. Structured in this way usual setting for the samurai film are com- and reinforced by a class order which ele- plex and varied. To begin with, the virtu- vates the samurai to quasi-aristocracy, ous, unworldly heroes celebrated in the bushido might also be compared to the epic sagas and scrolls of the Minamoto- Western notion of l10blesse oblige. There is, Taira wars of the eleventh and twelfth cen- in fact, nothing mysterious or unique (in turies were displaced and elevated in suc- ceeding periods to a mythic, idealized pos- the sense of being unknown to Western ition, where they became (in light of the history) in any aspects of bu shido con- bloody realities of unabating internecine cerned with moral rectitude; and it is these warfare) as functionally irrelevant to aspects which have resisted codification, everyday life as Don Quixotes. When which are no more part of formal statutes Yoshitsune successfully led the Minamoto in the East than they are in the West. against the Taira at Dan-o-ura in 1185, it was still possible to believe that, in a con- For a low-caste yojimbo or bodyguard frontation between two courageous foes, such as Izo Okada, in Hideo Gosha's TEN - fate had rewarded the greater valor. By the CHU (HITO-KIRI, 1969), it is a source of time Ieyasu Tokugawa carried the field at major self-esteem to be the owner of a the battle of Sekigahara in 1600, it was in- genuine Masamune, one of the finest and escapably clear that victory was now the most famous long-swords in Japanese his- product of sheer force of arms. tory. The reasons for his pride are not merely the excellence of workmanship The most renowned survivor of Sekiga- which went into its making (one of the hara was Miyamoto Musashi, who re- film's most subtle ironies is that in the nounced all allegiances to make a reputa- course of an assassination, Okada' s tion and a fortune solely by means of his Masamune is nicked) but the complex of swordsmanship and cunning. The exam- traditions which conspire to attach the ple he set, gaining both notoriety and epithet, \" the soul of the samurai, \" to the wealth in a series of ruthlessly fought duels sword. with master swordsmen, coupled with the existence of a national economy which de- For Okada, who is low-born, mastery of voted fortunes to waging wars but toler- ated repeated famines, and which attempt- any sword represents power and oppor- ed to inculcate the notion of caste priv- tunities for advancement; the particular ilege in the minds of the war-bled \"have- renown of his weapon adds a level of pres- nots,\" inspired numerous low-ranking tige which he lacks as a person no matter samurai and ronin (masterless swords- how skilled. Combined, they give him, lit- men) to share Musashi's mercenary out- erally, a sense of existence. I3ut both Okada look. the fictional character and Miyamoto Musashi the historical personage advance Musashi is also reputed to be the first socially without challenging or subverting \"two-sword\" man, who fought with two the system; on the contrary, they recruit blades drawn and wielded simultaneous- and acquire the objects and skills which ly. The Tokugawa regime ordained that society prizes most. The question of why only a samurai could be literally a \"two- the sword and, more significantly, why sword\" man by forbidding members of the swordsmanship are so highly valued by lower classes to carry more than one the culture is more complex . Only the weapon and that only of limited size. sword is worshipped; only the swordsman Perhaps the most awesome prerogative of ever inspires that peculiar combination of fear and adulation, in legend or in fact. In the master syllogism of the samurai's life, bush ida governed his behavior and he governed his sword; as the latter expressed ALL PHOTOS UNLESS OTHERWI SE NOTED : MU SEUM OF MODER N ART/ FILM STILLS ARCHI VES

NARRATIVE AND CHARACTER MOTIFS IN THE POSTWAR SAMURAI FILM NOBLEMEN /SAMURAI • • •A.LAIIIIN SILVER COMMONERS members of the ruling c lass by birth kyokaku (swordsmen) who are not members of the sam urai class Free-thinkers and Revolutionaries Against the Established Order The Ambitious (who seek to attain social advancement through their swordsmanship) TA LE S OF THE TAIRA CLAN (M izoguchi ) TENCHU (Gosha) REBELLION (Kobayashi ) RED LION (Okamoto) DESTINY' S SON (M isumi ) HAWK OF THE NORTH Uuich i Kono) various versions of the Musashi legend YOUNG LORD (Ka zuo Ikeh iro) MUSASHI MIYAMOTO (Yasuo Kohata) and in the Meiji Restoration (Bakumatsu) SAMURAI I, II , III (lnagaki) MUSASHI MIYAMOTO I-VI (Tomu Uchida) THE AMBITIOUS (Daisuke Ito) BAND OF ASSASSINS (Tadashi Sawashima) Assassins (who kill for political or monetary motives) TENCHU (Hideo Gosha) THE ASSASSIN (Masahi ro Shinoda) Abusers of Privilege SAMURAI ASSASSIN (Okamoto) GATE OF HELL (K inugasa) SWORD FOR HIRE (Inagaki) THRO NE OF BLOOD (Ku rosawa) UNDER THE BANNER OF THE SAMURAI Stray Dogs (itinerant swordsmen who often find temporary employment as assassins or (In agak i) bodyguards) PORTRAIT OF HELL (Shiro Toyoda) THREE OUTLAW SAMURAI (Gosha) Obsessive Killers SAMURAI WOLF (Gosha) SWORD OF DOOM (Kihachi Okamoto) THE AMBUSH (Inagaki) HOODLUM PRIEST (Kimiyoshi Yasuda) DAIBOSATSU PASS (Kenji Misumi) SWORD OF VENGEANCE I-VI (Misumi ) ILLU sioN OF BLOOD (Toyoda) the KYOSHIRO NEMURI series (11 features directed RONIN (liMEN ON THE WAVE\") variously by Misumi, Ikehiro, Mori , Yasuda, Tokuzo Tanaka, and Akira Inoue) forme r samurai who are economically or politically disenfranchised YOJIMBO (Kurosawa) SANJURO (Kurosawa) Disillusioned Rebels GOYOKIN (Gosha) Outcasts, Bandits, Gamblers BLOOD END (Satsuo Yamamoto) Members of the Subculture of hinin (non-men) HARA-KIRI (Kobayashi) RASHOMON (Kurosawa)-bandits BANDITS ON THE WIND (Inagak i) Men Betrayed by Their Own Clans GAMBLER' SCODE (Ikehiro) or by Co-conspirators THE GAMBLER (Tan aka) INN OF EVIL (Kobayashi ) SECRET OF THE URN (Gosha) BURAIKAN (S hinoda) TANGE SAZEN (Seiichiro Uchikawa) the ZATO ICHI SERIES (26 features directed SWORD OF THE BEAST (Gosha) va riously by Misumi, Ikehiro, Mori, Yasuda , SAMURAI ASSASSIN (Okamoto) Tanaka, Yama moto, and Shintaro Katsu) Idealists/loyalists Ninja (\"Spies\") THE SEVEN SAMURAI (Kurosawa) Black-clad Figures with Quasi-magical Abilities THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (Kurosawa) NINJITSU (lnagaki) THE MEN WHO TREAD ON THE TIGER' S TAIL MISSION (Mori) IRON CASTLE (Mori ) (Kurosawa) THE LAST IGA SPY (Mori ) CUT THE SHADOW (Ikehiro) Perpetrators of kataka-uchi (\"vendetta\") BLACK NINJA (Junji Kurata) for Murdered lords or Clansmen SAMURA I VENDETTA (Issei Mori) Women and Children VENDETTA (Tadashi Imai) QUICK-DRAW OKATSU (Nobuo Nakagawa) SWORD OF THE BEAST (Gosha) WOMEN NINJAS (Sadao Nakajima) WOMAN GAMBLER (Tai Kato) various versions of CHUSHINGU The CRIMSON BAT series (4 features directed rTHE LOYf-L 47 RONINl i (lnagaki by Teiji Matsuda and\\H irokazu Ichimura) Tatsuo Ohsone; Kunio Watanabe) NINJA BOY (Sadao Funadoko) TRAIL OF BLOOD (Ikehiro) SWORD OF VENGEANCE (Misumi) 12 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

him, so it must have also expressed the pals of SEVEN SAMURAI, for instance, are and lighting, slowmotion, optical print- tenets of chivalry. It is no exaggeration for not clan retainers but rOl1in-he must be ing, and all manner of other special effects the clan retainers in Masaki Kobayashi's armed. In this manner, the sword may be become the common and precise choreog- HARA-KIRI (SEPPUKU, 1962) to be horror- seen as chambara's fundamental icon and raphy of a deadly ballet. struck on learning that a ronin has pawned the whole genre as a manifestation of that his swords to support his starving family. ideal which regarded the swordsman and The analogy to the Western is, of course, When he exchanges steel blades for those his weapon as one. In a very real sense, the not perfect; but in sociological terms it is an of bamboo, he reduces himself analo- mere sight of the man with a sword in his intriguing analytical device, particularly in gously. For them, the true samurai is only sash even standing with his back to the such cases as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN as resilient and unbreakable as his blade; camera against an undefined landscape-- he is his sword. In selling it, he forfeits not as in, for example, the first shot of (1960, direc ted by John Sturges), an merely his honor but also his very being. Kurosawa's YOJIMBO (1961) , or Gosha's American production derived from Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI, or A FISTFUL • THREE OUTLAW SAMURAI (SAMBIKI NO OF DOLLARS (1965 , directed by Sergio Leone), an Italian Western adapted from In fiction, and more specifically on film, SAMURAI, 1964)-is enough to identify the YOJIMBO (also Kurosawa). It is even applic- the history of the samurai, bushido, and the film generically. It is not inconceivable that able to the concept of serialized characters, icon of the sword are subsumed into a for many viewers the sword alone could with recurring personalities such as the genre tradition. Naturally the simplifica- convey the anticipation that a samurai film Three Musketeers , Re x Allen, and Roy tions introduced in order to mold a fic- was to follow. tional character either from a broad con- Rogers in the U.S. production of the Thir- ception or an authentic personage distort There are, of course, a range of sub- ties and Forties finding their equivalents much of the social and ethical heritage. Yet sidiary expectations which such initial im- over time and space in the Crimson Bat, the fact that the film samurai follows ages engender. The main elements are the Three Outlaw Samurai, Zato-Ichi, and chronologically in the wake of the social Kyoshiro Nemuri in Japan in the Fifties reality does not prevent the former from simple and might be explained by analogy and Sixties. re-writing history to fit the need of the fic- tional persona. The purpose here is not to to an Occidental genre, the Western. The Since the War, the samurai film has un- explore the \"accuracy\" of any motion pic- second half of the nineteenth Century in dergone a significant stylistic and thematic ture with a view toward using faithful- evolution, moving away from the rela- ness to history as a measure of dramatic Japan was (like the post-Civil War United tively actionless jidai-geki or simple period merit. The question is rather how a type of States) a period of social and political flux. film as exemplified in certain pictures of film identified with a particular country re- In the post-Tokugawa re-assessment of Kenji Mizoguchi. (Civil war is a disruptive cruits elements from both that nation's governing principles and the transition but marginal consideration in UGETSU past and its other modes of fiction to con- from isolationism into imperialism in the [1953]; the few battles in TALES FROM THE stitute a vital genre in its own right. modern sense, the feudal daimyo and their clansmen tried unsuccessfully-like the TAIRA CLAN [SHIN HElKE MONOGATARI, If the ~ost-1945 samurai film does pos- monopolistic \"cattle barons\"-to keep the ses:; a dramatic equation for bridging that Japanese equivalent of the homesteader at 1955] end quickly and, practically speak- distance between mythic object and spec- bay with the threat of violent death. ing, bloodlessly.)New directors working in tator which its predecessors in motion pic- the genre have formulated a different ver- tures, art, or legend did not, then violence Like the bounty hunter or hired gun, the sion of Japan's lengthy feudal history. The is its key exponent. In fact, with increasing swordsman (whether a true samurai or white powdered and periwigged warriors frequency and graphic detail, the contem- wandering mercenary) may align himself of the Kabuki drama and the paste\\' full-lit plation of violence has lately become a with either of these factions. This same major factor in all motion pictures, both figure may be either good or evil or morally sets, where action was more often talked Eastern and Western. The reel-long inter- ambivalent depending more on individual about than portrayed, have given way to a lude at the conclusion of THE WILD BUNCH, characterization than genre typing be- large number of dark, nihilistic motion pic- punctuated by scores of surreal, slow- cause, like the Western's scruples against tures which re-paintJapan's past in blacker motion shootings, has become an ar- never drawing first or back-shooting, hues. chetype for screen massacre; yet much of bush ida is not always unswervingly Peckinpah's orientation toward killing as adhered to by either hero or villain. Like Although Western audiences, even in an integral part of human affairs and his the gunfight, an encounter between the decade since his YOJlMBO, remain most visual stylization of it derives from the swordsmen frequently serves as the climax familiar with the films of Akira Kurosawa, work of Akira Kurosawa, with the most of the film , the event toward which most many other directors in that same span of obvious analog to THE WILD BUNCH being of the early narrative and character de- years have continued to extend the limits the latter's SEVEN SAMURAI (SHICHI- velopment is genotypically directed. Just of the samurai film . Their new genre NIN NO SAMURAI, 1954). For Japanese as six-shooters may be tied down or heroes are physically or psychologically cinema as well as Japanese metaphysics, cross-drawn, fanned or cocked and fired, the qualities of death and violence have the samurai has a variety of mountings and scarred, ostracized, and stigmatized by always been essential to understanding styles for his sword. their peers. Aware of the intransigent na- life, to its transcendence and its destruc- ture of society's judgments, their violent tion . There is in most films a considerable responses are invariable and understand- able both as generic constructions and Narrative and Character Conventions; amount of preliminary swordplay in simple, desperate acts. The primary genre expectation of cham- which protagonist and antagonist may bara (sword films) is quite obviously the display his or her prowess by defeating a In Kurosawa's case, whether it is a body swordsman. Whether this character is de- number of non-principals as preludes to falling in slow motion or bandits writhing veloped as a hero or an anti-hero, his phys- the final duel. Here, two opponents whose in mud as a score of villagers descend upon ical introduction into the scene and the skills have been established as roughly them with bamboo spears in SEVEN viewer's apprehension of him as the po- equal meet with attendant ceremony to SAMURAI, or the fountain of blood that tential dramatic center are basic to all settle the question of who is best. Because samurai films . While this character does the long-sword is a slashing as well as gushes from the chest of the losing duelist not need to be a true samurai- the princi- piercing weapon and because most fight- at the end of SANJURO (1962), the visualiza- ing methods incorporated downward cuts tion of death is manipulated so as to be at the head or shoulders and forward beyond strict conventions of realism . thrusts to puncture the chest or stomach, Nonetheless, in these pictures and in this climactic duel between masters often YOJIMBO, Kurosawa helped to bring the receives a very particular and highly genre to maturity not merely by injecting it stylized visual treatment. Unusual lenses with wry humor but also by fashioning heroes more intent on anonymity than vainglory, more concerned with conceal- FILM COMMENT 13

ing their martial abilities than displaying final duel of GOYOKIN) which leaves dark, visual expression that may affect the man- them. red blotches in fresh snow, a new type of ner in which a filmmaker inscribes his samurai is defined: pitiless, obsessive, frame . The pen-and-ink simplicity of ter- In the same vein, Masaki Kobayashi's perhaps more alienated than any other rain, a fondness for mists, and line draw- HARA-KIRI and REBELLION (JOI-UCHI, 1967) genre hero. are a manifestation of developing anti- ings which emphasize the interfacing of feudal themes. The extreme cynicism of With the identification of this new breed earth, sky, and sea are other qualities of both films is focused on the oppressive of fictional samurai who are somewhat less traditional Japanese landscapes which concept of clan loyalty, to the point where than noble and may have flecks of rust on often find equivalents in film images. the bushido ideal of a noble---or, in Western their formerly untarnished weapons, of terms, tragic-death is rendered contextu- ronins less stalwart than the legendary Finally, there are a number of aesthetic ally impossible. All lives and deaths in an principles, such as Sean-u's notion ofyugen impersonal and meaningless social order Forty-seven , the classical linutations of the (literally \" mystery\") in which forms an- become inevitably impersonal and mean- genre have been expanded but not entirely tecedent to the film are grounded and ingless as well. The reward for obeisance superseded. Both independently and as a which contribute to an organicist concep- or rebellion is ultimately the same, indis- whole, the postwar samurai films may tion of art, to a belief that within the intro- tinguishable annihilation. The hopeless- make a disturbing impression on the West- spective and empirical totality of a work, ness of the title action in REBELLION does ern viewer not merely because of their vio- an author's style may be \" mysteriously\" not negate the ethical \" rightness\" which lent content and visceral style, but also be- transformed into viewer emotion. motivates it; but Kobayashi's bleak, over- cause their directness runs counter to riding determinism will not permit the those cliches of ambiguity and under- None of this is to say that the samurai \"rebellion\" to assume more than a per- statement which the West has formulated film, particularly since World War II, has so nal significance, will not allow his for the East, because the consistent display been shackled by a host of aesthetic pre- characters to genuinely threaten the estab- and ultimate impotence of these films' vio- scriptions, that any filmmaker has n-usta- lished order. lence are as difficult to accept as the idea of ken his method of expression for the scroll contemplative men being cold-blooded kil- landscapes of Sesshu or the Noh drama of Like Kurosawa, Kobayashi remains lers . Sean-u. Most of these extrinsic, formal prej- Kobayashi' s cynical anti-feudalism. In both REBELLION (left) and HARA-KIRI (right), oppressive clan loyalty makes udices have, under the shadow of Occi- the ideal of a \" noble death \" impossible. As the lead character in HARA-KIRI says, \"Swords are use less tokens.\" dental film production and as part of the indigenous evolution of the Japanese mo- traditional, in that he stages his scenes rela- Visual Conventions. Visual style in the tive to thematic constants; they derive samurai film, as a number of examples al- tion picture, been thoroughly transmuted from and outline a consistent world-view. ready suggested have contributes to and or entirely discarded over the last few dec- Since YOJIMBO and HARA-KIRI, directors reinforces narrative and character de- ades . The same is true of factors which in- such as Masahiro Shinoda, Hideo Gosha, velopment, but does not constitute a genre trinsically affect the basic images of the and Kihachi Okamoto have made action convention in the same sense as these samurai film-usages such as wide-screen (i.e., violence) into a more purely expres- others. Certain motifs which do reoccur in aspect ratios and color film, to which all but sive component in their films . As their the work of various filmmakers-such as a handful of Japanese productions have characters are estranged from their envi- the use of slow motion or elaborate special conformed since the early and late Sixties ronment, violence functions as both exis- effects in the sequences of combat-are respectively, or the predominance of long tential affirmation of their being and the heavily predetern-uned by an iconic typing focal length lenses . Both pre-Modern most direct method for delineating their which has no visual specificity. As the aesthetics and postwar technology con- oppressed relationship to that environ- sword, for instance, is an icon, its treat- tribute to the genre's imagistic conven- ment in film is associated with both kendo tional imagery; but neither does so in a ment. style and the sword-dances of classical don-unant way. Oka moto' s SAMURAI ASSASSIN theater. Any film 's visualization of swordplay is highly derivative from these, If, in fact, the samurai film contains a (SAMURAI, 1964) and SWORD OF DOOM or primarily an elaboration of previous us- (DAIBOSATSU TOGE, 1966), Gosha' s SWORD ages, both social and artistic. visual genotype, it may be related as much OF THE BEAST (KEDEMONO NO KEN , 1965), to the ideographic nature of the Japanese GOYOKIN (1969) , and TENCHU, and Shino- Second, a set of purely formal conven- language as it is to aesthetics or technolo- da's ASSASSIN (ANSATSU, 1964) and tions, rooted in earlier visual arts, may in- gy. All of these are involved in the complex SAMURAI SPY (IBUN SARUTOBI SASUKE, 1965) fluence how a given icon is renderei:! on question of how film generates figurative all possess the same \"anarchic\" qualities . film. For example, the assumption of the meanings. The development of color, Through unnervingly orchestrated sound Oriental landscape painter that the spec- wide-screen, and lenses of greater focal effects of steel ripping into flesh and im- tator is not standing in an ideal spot merely range control in an obvious way the pro- ages of spurting blood which stains clo- observing the work but is actually within its duction of any given film image. A step thing or (as in both the murderous battle topography contributes to a heritage of which closes SAMURAI ASSASSIN and the further along, aesthetic considerations may be overlaid, and a filmmaker's fond- ness for the flat primary colors of Utamaro may relate to the actual colors employed. But the conceptual thought which sup- ports that production is intricately bound up with certain perceptual dispositions. On a superficial level, the conventions of \"squaring\" written characters which are themselves patterned after a rough sketch of the object represented-for example, the ideograph for \"sun\" which was origi- enally drawn as0 is squared off to become -produces in most Japanese films an emphasis on straight lines and angular compositions over curves and circular forms . Since words are read from left to right and top to bottom, an image may be scanned similarly. As a consequence, if persons or objects are \"stacked\" from 14 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

Above: Hirosh i Inaga ki 's HOROZO NMA I. Below: The consensus of the film sa murai's dis- films of the early Seventies-are furth er Masa hiro Shinoda's THE ASSASSIN . illusionment is clear. Since World War II, symptoms of postwar moral decay. It's pre- both his attitude and the alienating visual cisely because the filmmakers of the Sixties style of the film s in which he appears have used the genre to penetrate the preva rica- been sharpened and refined. If such \"clas- tive facade of bushido a nd to expose th e sic\" productio ns as Mizoguchi's TALES OF sham of honor which shackled the hi stori- THE TAIRA CLAN or Teinosuke Kinugasa's cal samurai that wha t viewers wa nt from chal17bara has changed, that they expect the GATE OF HELL (JIGOKUMON, 1953) are now part of an \"old school\" of filmmaking-if new hero to ma nifest his rejectio n of those their full-lit, muted color and understated false sta ndards not merely with words but action give a sense of slow pace, wordi- with actions. If such a hero is ruthless, it is ness, or a heavy emphasiS on tragedy that is too artificial-it is quite obviously be- because survival is the onl y value he has. cause standards of producing a nd wa tch - Accord ingly, th e form er kaishaku, ltto ing films have altered grea tl y. This is not to Ogami, after deciding to give up his priv- ileged position in SWO RD OF VENGEANCE I say that hard light, frequent cuts, or any (KOZURE OHKAMI, 1972, directed by Kenji other facet of modern cinematic style have Misumi) , offers his infant son a choice be- twee n a ba ll and a sword, pl ann in g a effected the change alone. The misguided \"mercy killing\" if he chooses wrongly. If passion and subsequent contrition of the s u ch a h e ro is ca ll ed a \" m o n ste r\" or love-struck Morito in GATE OF HELL might \" beas t\" it is because th e realities of th e we ll see m as anomalous in a pitil ess p eriod have pl aced that brand on him. \" hero\" of current chambara as a fade-out would in its visual usage. From Rentaro Mikuni as Miyamoto Musashi , to Toshiro Mifun e as Kurosawa's Nor is it merely a result of new directors yojil17bo, to Shintaro Katsu o r Tatsu ya imposing their world- views on the genre. Nakadai in Gos ha 's films, the directors Daisuke Ito and Hiroshi Inagaki are men whose careers have spanned several dec- a nd actors have crea ted a co nsistent ades from the silent period to the present. characteriza tio n in this regard . If such a In his few samurai film s, such as THE AM- hero ca nnot lay down his sword , it is be- BITIOUS (1970), Ito's mise- en-scene ha s cause he is locked into a time w here to d o been anything but old-style. Even Inagaki, so is to perish . who in the three- part life of Miyamoto Musashi (1955-56) and as late as CHUSHI N- Itto Ogami does not savor his odyssey GURA in 1962 did p erpetuate the stylistic but believes rather that he has \"entered the and narrative preferences of the pre-wa r road to Hades .\" Having just killed dozens school, had up-dated his methods of ex- of men with what he sarcastica lly terms his position and visualizatio n co nsiderably by \"seagull style\" of sword play-in which he the time of UNDER THE BANNER OF THE may leap high in the air to cut down at th e SAMURAI (FURIN KAZAN, 1969) and THE AM- head or even th row his weapon in order BUSH (MACHIBUSE, 1970). Not onl y is im- to wi n-Itto turn s at th e co nclusio n of proved techn ology evide nt in the long focal length lenses and metallic colors of SWORD OF VENGEANCE \" to face a master swords ma n whose employer has already perished . \" Was dying with him,\" Itto asks foreground to background in a Cinema- The recurring questio n of the pursued ronin , posed by Gennosuke Yuuki (Mikijiro Hira) in Hideo Gos ha's SWORD Scope frame, the stage line linking them OF THE BEAST (1965) as he stands among the dark constri ct ing timbers of a mill. will most often recede from right front to left rear or top front to bottom rear. UNDER THE BANNER OF THE SAMURAI, but his oppo ne nt after delivering the fatal the film's rea listic detailing of a central blow, \" the way of the sa murai?\" The highly metaphorical way in which character whose qualities a re less than the ideographs themselves are constructed noble is in marked contrast with the heroes \" Explain it to me, Itto Ogarni, \" the loser may have implications for the creation of of SAMURAI and CHUSHINGURA. Action questions in turn , \" the real way of th e visual metaphors in Japanese film . Eisen- which at o ne time mig ht ha ve seemed sa murai ?\" Like Bokuden-convinced that stein argues in \"The Cinematic Principle grossly evil is perfectl y acceptable for the he will continue to prevail because it makes and the Ideogram\" that the ideograph is a new hero. no difference whether he does or not-like linguistic analog to the process of mon- Nemuri, like Sanjuro or Tsugumo, like tage, since each combines sub-units or It is easy for so me to conclude that such Tange Sazen or Gennosuke, like all the sub-images to produce a higher meaning. an increased tolerance for less-than- scrupulous heroes-and the cynicism and alienated figures that survive or perish in Can Japanese film, as Ernest Fenollosa violence which culminates in the chambara th e sa murai film , Itto sm iles wry ly and suggests of ideographs, \"bear its metaphor gives the final answer: \"To live prepared to on its face\"? Clearly, any film viewer, East- die.\" t;~' ern or Western, from a phonetic or heiro- glyphic linguistic background, can habitu- ally search for visual meaning from within (in mise-en-scene or the interaction of fig- ures within the shot) or from without (in montage or the interaction of separate shots). But if Japanese filmmakers have a greater general tendency towards condi- tioning their audience to the form er method than their Western counterparts, it is not apparent from their films . FILM COMMEN T 15

There is no obvio us claim to depth o r A simpler reason is that few Westerners Venice-largely, I suspect, for the obvious origi nality in Kon Ichikawa's 1973 film, THE have had an opportunity to see more than nobility of its se ntiments . WANDERERS (MATATAB I) . Set in rural Japa n a fraction of that work. (Even with assidu- in th e turbul e nt years of th e ea rl y ous foll owin g o f fil m- socie ty and o ther FIRES ON THE PLAIN (from a novel by nineteenth century, it draws on many ele- sp ecial scree nin gs, I have ca ug ht o nl y Ooka Shohei derived from his own war- ments of the sa murai film. But its total ef- about one-third of his output.) Of course, time ex periences) tells a more abrasive fect is much more: co mic, elega nt, mor- this is true of most Japanese directors; but story. Japanese soldiers are stranded on da nt, heartbreakin g, breathtaking. It's the handful of Ichikawa's film s that have Leyte without supplies, and the dramatic easy to appreciate the technica l mastery had theatrical showi ngs in the States can crux of th e film is whether the central behind the film-an almost fl awless sense give a particularly exaggera ted impression character, a private named Tamura, will re- of timing a nd imagery. It's less easy to see of his di ve rsity. The one w hich had th e sort like others around him to cannibalism; just how this criss-cross of moods attai ns widest distribution was a documentary o n he refuses and dies. The film won a prize at such cumula tive power. Indeed, full un- the 1964 Olympic Games, TOKYO OLYMPIAD Locarno, but many American reviewers derstanding requires a broader persp ec- (1965)-and that came in a butch ered dismissed it as a gratuitous stomach- tive, since the intricate balance of forces in American version. There were lirnited re- wrencher. THE WANDERERS is so me thin g th at Kon leases of only three film s in their original Ichikawa has bee n wo rking toward for a form: THE BURMESE HARP (1955), KAGI (1959; It's true that the situation is gruesome, long time. show n here as ODD OBSESSION) , a nd FIRES and that Ichikawa evokes a powerful sense ON THE PLAIN (1961). of bleakness from the barren landscape In a directorial career tha t spa ns more across which the doomed men wander, than a quarter of a century and so me fifty THE BURMESE HARP a nd FIRES ON THE but he does not rub the viewer's nose in . films, Ichikawa has shifted unpredicta bl y PLAIN both deal with the experiences of de- repellent details . A careful look reveals that between s tyliza ti o n a nd natura lism and feated Ja pan ese soldiers in th e fin al the film d epends largely on stylized between gravi ty and offbea t humor, often months of World War II, but there the re- closeups of Tamura's face and, in general, incorporating both opposites in the sa me se mbla nce seems to end. In the fo rm er underscores the symbolic nature of his film. Unlike other well-kn ow n Japanese (based o n a novel by Michio Takeya ma speech and behavior. Conversely, a closer directors such as Ozu, Kurosawa, and originally intended for children), a private look at THE BURMESE HARP reveals that even the much yo unger Oshima, Ichikawa named Mizushima decides to stay o n in Ichikawa has punctuated its idealism with ca nnot be associa ted wi th a single dorrun- Burma disguised as a Buddhist pries t in sharply naturalistic touches: a buzzard ant tone. This elusiveness is no doubt one order to devote the rest of his life to bury- flapping up from a corpse, Mizushima reason w hy Western critics, w hile lavi sh- ing the war dead, and Ichikawa makes no wincing at the smell of a funeral pyre . It ing praise o n some of his individ ual film s, a ttempt to concea l the symbolis m of the begins to appear that the two films differ have rarely a tte mpted to eva luate his work soldier a nd his mission . The film won con- not so much in basic ingredients as in the as a whole. sid era bl e prai se, as well as a priz e at proportions in which these are rruxed. KAGI, however, seems to spring from an Kon Ichi kawa (in 1964), and a scene from his 1973 film, THE WANDERERS (MATATABI ).

• entirely different source. It is set in a well- film was Kurosawa, who d emanded a big- the dark side of life; yet the \"dark\" KAGI to-do household in present-day Osaka. A and FIRES ON THE PLAIN were followed by middle-aged man tries to stimulate his ger budget; the Japanese Olympic Board the \"ligh t\" ALONE ON THE PACIFIC and AN flagging potency by examining and photo- then made the same offer to Ichikawa, ACTOR'S REVENGE. graphing his wife's naked body when she's who accepted. He seems adaptable not asleep, and by making himself jealous of only to working conditions but also to sub- As to style: Ichikawa ente red filmmak- their daughter's boyfriend. He resorts to ject matter determined by other people: ing as an artist in a cartoon studio and his these subterfuges because his wife, though most of his films are based on novels, and first directorial effort was a puppe t highly sexed, was brought up in the strict he has even referred to himself as an \"illus- film-which indicates that he was accus- Japanese tradition of female modesty and trator.\" cannot respond directly (a point that URMESE HARP (BIRUMA NO TATEGOTO ), emerges more clearly in the novel by Yet all of this gives a misleading impres- 1956, with Rentaro Mikuni Junichiro Tanizaki than in the film, despite sion. In his quiet way, Ichikawa has as- the helpful casting of Machiko Kyo, who serted an impressive independence. He tomed from the start to keeping tight con- combined tradition and sexuality in such turned at least one of those \"routine as- trol over composition and rhythm. Yet his films as RASHOMON and UGETSU). The hus- signments,\" AN ACTOR'S REVENGE (I first noteworthy film, PU-SAN (1953), about band's plan succeeds too well: his wife is haven't seen the other two), into a dazzling the misadventures of a Harry Langdon- liberated with a vengeance, she and the triumph, and allowed no sign to reach the like figure in postwar Tokyo, came across young man become lovers, increased sex- screen that the budget of TOKYO OLYMPIAD with clear and realistic sobriety; while A ual excitement gives the husband a heart might have been inadequate. Most of the BILLIONAIRE, made on a similar theme a attack, and the wife deliberately kills him novels he has adapted have been of his year later, evinced a surreal ebullience that by overstimulation. own chOOSing; his wife, Natto Wada, has anticipated such films as SHOOT THE PIANO worked on most of the scripts, and he him- PLAYER and PIERROT LE FOU. Any simple It's easy to imagine a director milking self has collaborated on many. And the curve in Ichikawa's development can be this story of its potential for pornography, magnificent THE WANDERERS has an origi- abstracted only from a zigzag of continual moralizing, or horror. Ichikawa discon- nal script by Ichikawa with Shuntaro explorations. He has always been willing certs the viewer by endowing it with Tanigawa. to take chances, to tryout new mixtures of beauty-a rhythmic flow of elegant com- stylization and naturalism, of gravity and positions, in wide screen and color, which When Ichikawa 's other films are taken humor, in percentages that run almost the distantly suggests Alain Resnais and into account, the link between his three whole range from zero to one hundred . which can be enjoyed as an audio-visual features released in the States no longer symphony (there is a fine music score by appears tenuous. In style and content, There is also a less elusive continuity in Yasushi Akutagawa). Yet from time to time ENJO (CONFLAGRAnON, 1958) stands almost Ichikawa's work. Nearly all of his films can this stately flow breaks up into splashes of midway between THE BURMESE HARP and be found to revolve around a recurring set offbeat humor. A tense family discussion is KAGI. Adapted from Yukio Mishima's of themes. I have already pointed out a interrupted by the arrival of a masseur, a novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion , it sinister Hitchcockian figure in dark glasses concerns a young Buddhist monk, shy and who proceeds to twist and pummel the stuttering, who loves the temple both for husband while the discussion continues. its traditional quietude and for its associa- And in an epilogue (not in the book), the tions with his dead father. Goichi's young man informs us through an interior superiors, however, seem more interested monologue that the daughter has in attracting the tourist trade, and the out- poisoned the family meal and he is now raged youth ends by destroying the temple dying. With his elegance, Ichikawa en- with fire. courages the viewer to see that life even at its most perverse can be beautiful; with his Stylistically, ENJO pivots between the humor, he discourages blind infatuation. simple narrative flow of loose composi- tions in THE BURMESE HARP and the brilliant Stylistically, then, a tentative link visual orchestration of KAGI. In wide- emerges between KAGI and the two war screen black-and-white, it tells its story films: all three combine detachment with a through flashbacks within a flashback, and realism that may be grim or comic. But it rises from time to time to peaks of visual does this have any more meaning than the splendor (such as an extraordinary long superficial resemblance between KAGI and shot of the night sky filled with sparks LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD? Or between a from the burning temple). At the same thriller and a historical epic both made by time, Goichi is clearly a more somber ver- the same Hollywood workhorse? sion of THE BURMESE HARP'S Mizushima: noble determination, triumphant in the There appears to be something of the earlier film, gives ground in ENJO to neuro- workhorse in Ichikawa's own career. In the tic obsession. The husband in KAGI com- middle fifties he joined the fashion for vio- pletes the reversal of values, since he be- lent \"juvenile delinquent\" films with comes incapable of caring about anything PUNISHMENT ROOM, which (though it sur- except the satisfaction of his obsessive sex- vives better than a pretentious \"youth ual desires. Though differing sharply in drama\" of the late Sixties like ZABRISKIE mood and style, the three films can be seen POINT) remains trapped within the exag- to belong to the same continuum. gerated melodrama of the genre. In 1962 Ichikawa ran over budget on THE OUTCAST The comparison of these films may while waiting for the right location suggest that the diverSity of Ichikawa's weather conditions, and his production work results from a general progression company took revenge by giving him three toward more somber subjects and a more routine assignments-which he accepted. controlled style. This is roughly true-but The first choice for making the Olympics very roughly indeed. Some years ago Ichikawa divided his fil ms into the categories of Light and Dark, and stated that he had come to see more and more of FI LM COMMENT 17

s imilarity between Mi z u shima in THE AN ICHIKAWA SAMPLER. Left row, top to bottom: THE LOVER (AI-JIN) , 1953 ; MR. PU (PU-SAN), 1953; BURMESE HARP a nd G oichi in ENJO. Many PUNISHMENT ROOM (S HOKEI NO HEYA), 1956. Right row, top to bottom: CODE OF WOMEN OOKYO), 1960; of Ichikawa's protagonists share in thi s CONFLAGATION (ENJO), 1959; the tragic flaw of halitosis in THE MEN OF TOHOKU (TOHOKU NO ZUN- kinship, being innocen ts, little men, mis- MUTACHI), 195 7. fits , o utsiders, chi ckens s urround ed by foxes. Mr. Pu in PU-SA N establishes the pro- freaki sh people in rather freakish cir- Ichikawa's film s are set amid the break- totype. A shy and ga ngling schoolteacher, cumstances. But mos t of hi s characters down of some kind of moral, social, politi- he respo nds to most of the unpleasa nt seem unusual only because they lack the cal, or cultural order. Beliefs, customs, and s urpri ses in hi s life w ith a patient \"So veneer of sophistication with which most laws are called into question; they shift, des'ka?\" (Is that so?), foreshadowing th e of us ma sk our naive ties and obses- collide, collapse. Sometimes the process selflessness of Mizushima . But there also sions-and w hich Ichikawa removes in ma y be muted and s ubtle , as in KAG I , are hints of the more aggressive and unbal- order to focus more clearly on human which implies rather than underlines the anced behavior of Goichi: occasionally Pu realities. At the same time he chooses cir- breakdown of traditional famil y relation - gives way to ineffectual a nger, as when he cumstances that will throw light on social ships . In other film s collapse is explicit: clutches his desk to try a nd prevent the realities. If the foreground events some- FIRES ON THE PLAIN hinges both on the de- principal from firing him , and at one point times look bizarre, it's because they stem feat of militaristic Japan and on the break- places a cabbage on his head to see if he from an all-tao-familiar tension in the down of moral and human values among might escape from his troubles by feigning desperate survivors . in sanity. background. This is the second element in Ichikawa's Ichikawa does not reduce his pro- Some of Ichikawa's protagonists are so tagonists to passive figures in a panorama innocent that they survive without scars. recurring set of themes: an environment of collapse, any more than he reduces his The nai ve young tax collector in A BIL- which threatens his characters, buffets filmic environment to a backcloth for LIO NA IRE cannot understand why his in- them, takes them by surprise. Most of sistence on honesty annoys his superiors as much as th e ta xpa yers . The h ero of ALO NE ACROSS THE PACIFIC, w ho cas uall y sails his boat out of Osaka harbor early one morning, heading for San Francisco, suf- fers less from the ma ny hardships of his voyage tha n from the few embarrass- ments, as when an America n on a passing liner shouts, \"Do yo u have a visa?\" The spoiled eldest son in BONCHI (1960) drifts through thirty years of famil y and national upheavals with hardly a dent in his savoir- faire. Other protagonists are more vulnera- ble. In THE OUTCAST, which focuses on th e burakum in (untouchables) of Japan at the turn of the century, the involuntary out- sider is torn between pride in his parentage and fear of revealing it. In ME N OF TOHOKU (1956), abo ut a group of outcasts in a re- mote village, the protagonist is an un- happy outsider among outsiders, notori- ous for his bad breath . One reason for the richness of THE WAN- DERERS is tha t it centers around three dif- fe rent inn oce nts. They are tosei nin- peasant imitation s of masterless samurai who wander from village to village, ready to work or fight for anyone who will give them food and lodging . Ichikawa does not try to make them superficially distinct from one another, like Lester's Musketeers; in fact, the three are physically quite similar and walk and talk in much the same way, so that their appearance quickly estab- lishes the m as an \"all for one\" trio. But Ichikawa soon draws out unmistakable differences. Genta is closest to the Goichi type of innocent, being most vulnerable to emotion; Mokutaro has more of the calm and self-as s urance of Miz ushima; and Shinta, the most pragmatic of the three, has a foot in both camps. The film gains considerable depth from this double image of the toseinin , as they respond both cor- porately and individually to the turbulent events around them. I may have given the impression thus far that Ichikawa's interest centers on rather 18 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

left row, top to bottom: AN ACTOR'S REVENGE (YUKINOJO HENGEl), 1962 ; TOPO GIGIO, 1968; FIRES ON never settling into an y formali s t ri gidity. THE PLAIN (NO BI), 1959; Right row, top to bottom: THE SIN (HAKAI), 1962; BRIDGE OF JAPAN (N IHOM BASHI), This is the secret of Ichikawa 's styliza ti o n: 1956; Junko Kano pornographs his sleeping wife Machiko Kyo in ODD OBSESSION (KAG I), 1959. he takes it just far enough to achieve great visua l clarity, to open up the viewer's eye larger-than-life characters; he fuses the cliches back to life. Kurosawa has done it and imagi nation. two elements into a dynamic whole. In THE by stressing involvement in the action: WANDERERS he does this with magisterial telephoto lenses suck the viewer into the Thus the story of THE WA NDERERS ease. Dispensing with \"establishing shots\" muddy battles of THE SEVEN SAMURAI; emerges in brief, graphic, sometimes ab- of the world his wanderers live in, he fol- wide screen and quick cutting amplify the rupt vignettes. At first the adventures of lows their adventures and misadventures sword whacking in YOlIMBO. But in em- the toseinil1 are linear, and shared. They are in such a way that the larger picture stead- phaSizing the foreground, Kurosawa lets given shelter at one house and help repel ily accumulates. I cannot recall seeing any the background fade away; th e social con- an attack by the owner's enemy. They other film which so brilliantly combines text shrinks into a pretext. move to another h ouse and take part in microcosm and macrocosm. another fight. They chase away a group of Ichikawa takes a very different ap- gamblers and seize the aba ndoned stakes. This is all the more remarkable be- proach . In THE WANDERERS (as to a lesser But now this simple plo t breaks up III to cause the late feudal era has been as happy extent in AN ACTOR'S REVENGE, also set in apparentl y unconnected subplots. The to- a hunting ground for Japanese directors as the late feudal era), he gives an ironic, de- seil1in lodge with a ga mbling boss; one of the late nineteenth-century West has been tached view of the foreground action. The the boss's debtors is a mean old man wi th a for Americans, and its salient features have fights, for example, are stylized, some- you ng wife, Okumi; the debt collector is been trampled into cliches . Of course, times evoking a rhythmic dance, some- trying to sell the boss out to a rival. Then some directors have set out to bring the times the flicker of an abstract film, but connections appear. Genta rapes OkUl1ll and asks her to go off with him; the debt collector turns out to be Genta's runaway father; the boss, learning about the be- trayal, requires Genta to execute revenge. After h esi tation , Genta does kill hi s father-whereupon the boss evicts the 10- seinin on the grounds that he cannot con- done parricide. The three of them, with Okumi, go back on the road. Their experi- ence becomes linear again, but now it is running downhill. They travel to Genta's home village to find out what happened to the rest of his family: his mother has moved away, leaving neighbors to look after a you nger son (who refuses to recog- nize Genta) . Shinta, who has cut his foot while on the road, dies of an infecti on. Since Genta is wan ted by the police, he \"places\" Okumi as a B-girl at an inn, prom- ising to return for her when the heat is off. He and Mokutaro move on. They lodge with a lord who is about to be betrayed by his steward . Mokutaro wants to kill the steward, but Genta violently objects; in chasing after Mokutaro, he falls over a cliff and is killed. Even this synopsis shows how the sense of a disintegrating society is embodied in the characters and the action . The toseinil1 have left their village homes for a precari- ous way of life-which suggests that a peasant's way of life is even more precari- ous. Similarly, Okumi's readiness to go off with Genta indidates how little she has to lose. Political life is glimpsed as a series of petty power struggles between local bosses. Ties of blood, loyalty, and friend- ship continually fall apart: a father aban- dons his wife and children, a mother leaves her young son, a wife runs away from her husband, retainers betray their masters, the two surviving toseinin come to blows-and, most flagrant of all, a son kills his father. Here Ichikawa plays brilliantly with one of the stock elements of the Japanese period film (and also of Japanese litera- ture): the conflict between two different obligations, or between obligation and de- sire. Normally such a conflict would FILM COMMENT 19

dominate the action; in THE WANDERERS it sparks; then a lamp is lit and, in its soft seems to drop out of nowhere, allowing glow, Genta tenderly lays out his father's Genta little time for prior soul-searching. body. While it may be going too far to He confronts his father with drawn sword, equate the sparking of the flame with the and hesitates; Shinta blurts out \"It's the kindling of sorrow within Genta, the vis- code!\" and Genta strikes. In the final quar- ual surprise followed by the warmth of the rel , Mokutaro accuses Genta of having lamplight directly establishes a new and wanted to kill his father; but his is beside gentler mood. In similar ways, Ichikawa the point. The real conflict that Genta faces focuses sharply on the satisfactions which goes beyond any obvious duties or desires remain amid all the instability: not only and involves the whole meaning of his food and sex but also the pleasurable way of life. awareness of being alive, as reflected by shots of the toseil1in walking against a Ichikawa prepares this conflict right backdrop of misty mountains, or through a from the start. The film opens with the forest flecked with snow, or past a tranquil three toseinin presenting themselves to the pond with an expanding ring of ripples. steward of the house where they hope to Such scenes are commonplace in Japanese be lodged . Shinta rattles off a lengthy ritual films when they are used to express aware, greeting and offers a token gift (which he the nostalgic perception associated with makes sure to retrieve). Then Genta steps haiku poetry; but instead of lingering on up and repeats the whole procedure. them, Ichikawa summons them up briefly Mokutaro is about to do the same when and dynamically, stressing the moment's the steward says \"Why don't we stop all joy without its melancholy. this? \" Nevertheless , the toseinin go through the repetitious formula at each Although THE WANDERERS contains house they come to. They. cling to it be- hardly any camera movements and no cause it helps elevate their random merce- flashy cutting (restraints which might nary transactions into a lofty and universal suggest the style of Ozu, the master of film- code. ic aware), it crackles throughout with a dynamism which sets it quite apart. Some- They cling to this code not because it flat- times the compositions are oblique, ters them but because it injects at least the offbeat: Ichikawa shows us only half the semblance of order and structure into the ripples in the pond, or sets up a torturer chaos of society. When Genta is assigned chopping off a man's finger with the visual to kill his father, he has to weigh the objec- elegance of a jeweler cutting a precious tive value of the code against this subjec- stone. More often he gives an equivalent tive value. Objectively, the code has no twist to the structure and rhythm of the meaning; but if he rejects it, he strips the film: he cuts in on some scenes in mid- meaning from his own life . He cannot bear action and pares away explanations, so to think of this enormous disparity for very that the full grasp of a scene may be de- long; hence his almost involuntary re- layed; and he either omits linking scenes or sponse to Shinta's cry. But the conflict does reduces them to brief vignettes, letting the not end there . Much later, when Mokutaro film skip elusively through time and space. goes after the treacherous steward, Genta While these devices never approach the does reject the code: one cold-blooded point of obfuscation, they help keep the killing for its sake was too much, and he viewer slightly on edge and off balance, cannot allow another. Appropriately and thus induce an alertness and concen- (though Ichikawa does not emphasize the tration quite different from the contempla- symbolic connection), this decision leads tive mood of Ozu. at once to Genta's death . Ichikawa's dynamism springs most of all THE WANDERERS may sound like a from his mating of opposites (stylization gloomy film relieved only by the imper- and naturalism, humor and gravity) with- sonality of Ichikawa's style. But this is out upsetting the film's formal and emo- doubly wrong. Much of the content is not tional balance. Often in THE WANDERERS gloomy at all, and the visual clarity of the opposites appear together, creating Ichikawa's style often intensifies the dense and vivid signs-comparable to the viewer's emotional response . There is con- Sino-Japanese ideograms which unite two siderable warmth in the relations of the or more disparate concrete terms (fire, major characters. The solidarity of the to- water) to create a new and larger concept seinin, however shaky, is real. Thus (disaster). Mokutaro does his best to cure the dying Shinta, and at the end, not knowing that The most dramatic fusion of opposites Genta has fallen to his death, calls for him takes place with the killing of Genta's in a friendly voice. Okumi is accepted as father, where comedy joins with horror. As part of the group, and Genta shows Genta strikes, blood spatters his face; genuine affection for her. Of course, these Shinta, whose cry triggered the act, scam- relations spring partly from the horror of pers away like a small boy who has broken loneliness; people are something to cling a window; the father's obtuse mistress ap- to, like the code. But this is where Ichika- pears in the doorway, shrieking, and wa's clarity adds weight to the positive Genta turns on her; there is a ludicrous chase between blood-spattered Genta and side. the fast-waddling mistress-who gets After the killing of Genta's father, a away. With these few rapid strokes scene opens in darkness punctuated by

Ichikawa depicts the appalling deflation of A woman in a long blond wig, wide- which the various shots will appear on the brimmed hat, and tan trenchcoat is stand- screen. No matter that this may require the code. ing beside a black Lincoln Continental in- constant setting down and re-arrange- More typical is a recurring scene which side a garage cluttered with shovels, mops, ment of lights and consequently more rakes, pitchforks, canvas, and cans of shooting time . It is all part of Hitchcock's shows the three tOSeil1il1 on the road. They paint. Everyday objects under most cir- demand for order, clarity, and precision. wear wide-brimmed wicker hats rather cumstances, but in this garage--a set con- like inverted salad bowls, and they walk as structed on a Universal Sound Stage for HITCHCOCK'S FAMILY PLOT (formerly DE- briskly as they can over the rough terrain. Alfred Hitchcock's latest film-their lethal CEIT) is based on 771e Rainbird Pattern by the Ichikawa films them from the front with a prolific English mystery writer Victor Can- long-focus lens, accentuating both their potential is almost palpable. ning, and was developed by Hitchcock jerky, almost mincing gait and the wabbl- The master himself is seated in a direc- with Ernest Lehman, who previously ing of their hats. Though the scene is wrote NORTH BY NORTHWEST for him. The thoroughl y naturalistic, it also comes tor's chair, framed by the borders of the protagonists are a phony medium, across as stylized and comic, since the men garage and silhouetted by the studio lights Madame Blanche Tyler, and her boyfriend, look very much like puppets; and the total from within. His distinguished drawl can a would-be actor turned cabdriver named effect goes further, with the oversize hats be heard clearly throughout the stage: \"All George Lumley. The couple is hired by a standing in for the invisible burdens under right Karen, you're cautiously looking wealthy woman to track down her missing which the three men are struggling to around to make sure they're not watching heir. The villains are Arthur Adamson and you. Now let your eyes go to the left. This his girlfriend Fran, who kidnap prominent survive. scene will be the same as we've done be- individuals and collect their ransoms in fore, only in three cuts. Ac-tion.\" A few diamonds . The complication is provided This dense yet crystalline image sums seconds elapse. Karen Black, the woman by the fact that Adamson is, in fact, the up Ichikawa's vision . In all of his films- in the blond wig, moves her head almost missing heir. and with dazzling success in THE imperceptibly. \" Cut. Fine. All right now, WANDERERs-he sets out to bring the we have a close-up of your hand moving Originally set in London, the story now struggle of life into the sharpest possible over the doorknob.\" takes place in an \"anonymous American focus. He embraces both the general and city\"-a patchwork of Northern and the particular, conjuring up formal ele- Lights are re-arranged and the camera is gance without betraying the sheer gritti- moved to a new position. The close-up is Southern California locations. After TORN ness of the phenomenal world. He refuses shot and the camera is moved again, Since CURTAIN (Germany), TOPAZ (Cuba and to exaggerate either the good or the bad of Hitchcock usually dispenses with master Paris), and FRENZY (Covent Garden), FAM- shots, I have trouble determining exactly ILY PLOT marks a return to contemporary mankind and of society; and he also re- what's going on in this scene. It all seems America, where kidnapping, jewel thiev- fuses to imply that the bad is susceptible more like an assembly line procedure than ery, and psychic practice is no longer as either to a panacea (the activist's tempta- movie-making. unusual as it once seemed. tion) or no cure at all (the escapist's). Yet he also triumphs over the occupational This is very much what I had expected to The leading players are distinctly \"New hazard of the moderate, who may end up see on a recent visit to the Hitchcock set, Hollywood,\" and anti-establishment to defined only by the extremes he is trying to for it is well known that his films are men- boot: Bruce Dern and Karen Black, as Lum- avoid. The most positive of moderates, tally prepared down to every single cut be- ley and Fran; kookie Barbara Harris, who, Ichikawa works from the conviction that fore shooting has even begun. In fact the despite her blond hair, is an odd fit for the nothing is more important than to see. shooting for each individual scene pro- typical Hitchcockian heroine; and William ceeds, shot for shot, in the sequence in Devane, who exploited his familiar re- In THE WANDERERS, this insistent vision strikes a powerful sense of immediacy out THE 6pIOI' of remote characters and events. I find that the film touches me far more closely than THICKENI most American attempts at \"relevance\" -especially such period pieces as TELL by Andrew Meyer THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE and BONNIE AND CLYDE, in which anachronistic attitudes are poured over superfluous historical details. Willie Boy and his counterparts are way out in never-never land; it's the toseil1il1 that are here. They are here in a society that is cracking up-where the law has lost its vigor, where people clutch at illusions and brief satisfactions-and yet where life obsti- nately goes on. Ichikawa doesn't draw any parallels with the world of today, but there's no need. He has captured the es- sence of almost any society under pressure to change. THE WANDERERS is a tour de force that looks simple. In it, the polar opposites that have marked all ofIchikawa's work meet in a consummate point of balance. In it, too, this sixty-year-old filmmaker has achieved a remarkable fusion of technical mastery and creative vigor. It is a film to be seen and vividly remembered by anyone who cares about the cinema, people, society, or sur- vival. At this writing, no American distributor has any plans for its release . ~'

semblance to the Kennedys in MacBird! bara recalls, \"a nd he said to me, 'You have pupils include the cast, the crew, and me. (Bobby) and The Missiles of October (Jack). too many dog's feet.' As a professor, Hitchcock is both en- Harris and Devane are sitting to the side \"'Wh at do you mean?' I asked. lightening and entertaining. So, several of the set waiting to be called as Black \" 'Pa use,' he said. \" minutes later, Hitchcock sits with the ac- finishes her scene by the car. I ask Devane tors and furth er expounds on film theory if Adamson is in th e g reat tradition of The two actors are called to the set to do while the crew sets up the lights for the charming Hitchcock villains. \"Absolute- a scene with Karen Black. Adamson and next shot. ly,\" he answers. \" If Jam es Maso n were Fran are in a hurry to drive off in the Black twenty or thirty years younger, he would Continental to deliver their latest kidnap- \"The object of film is to annihilate time be playing this part. That's the type of vil- ping victim, th e Bishop of St. Anselm's. and space,\" repeats Barbara, like a school- lain I am: suave, smooth, continental. I'm They are accosted by the bothersome girl reciting her lesson. definitel y not the psychotic type, like Tony Blanch e, whose car is blocking th eir Pe rkin s in PSYCHO or Rob ert Walker in driveway. As she comes into the garage to \"Yes,\" Hitchcock continues. \"That's the STRANGERS ON ATRAIN.\" speak to them, the back door of the car ac- power of film . That's why it's a dying art. cidentally falls open and the head of the Most films today are just photographs of Barbara Harris is n o t so familiar with uncon sc io us Bis h o p falls into view. people talking. \" Hitchcock's previous work-she admits to Blanche sees th e head . Adamson and Fran having been too scared to see PSYCHo-but see her see it. Blanche turns to run. Adam- Even as he speaks, a set is being readied she has as much admiration for th e per- son reaches into the car and grabs the re- for the instant nostalgia of GABLE AND LOM- sonal guidance and comfort he gives her as mote control mechanism that closes the BARD on another corner of the same sound most moviegoers have for hi s ability to garage door, locking her inside with them . stage. The vast filmmaking apparatus on provide horrifying frissons. \" I love work- It's a brief but complicated bit of action. the other stages of Universal Studios is ing with him ... it's so serene,\" she ex- being devoted mostly to the prodUCtion plains, careful to find just the right word to \"It seems to me I'd be concerned with of such television series as Kojak , Co- describe the experience. \" Everything be- the reality of seeing Blanche, rather than lumbo, and Medical Center. The publicity of- comes so simple. H e's like a teacher. He bothering to look at the Bishop,\" objects fices in the black tower down the road are likes to explain things .\" Devane, in response to Hitchcock's direc- manically churning out daily announce- tion to him to look down . \"The Bishop is ments of the latest records being broken by One scene called for her to be in a trance out cold . He's not going anywhere. Since I JAWS. In the midst of the faceless film fac- which she had no idea how to do . He told only have a moment to react, I should be tory, this modest garage set presided over her to pretend she was blind. It turned out looking at Blanche, to see what she's going by a distinguished English gentleman to be just the right image for h er to work to do. \" seems very much like an oasis of sanity with. \"This isn' t like being in a movie,\" she and sensibility. says finall y. \" It's like being on a field trip Hitchcock calmly lights a cigar and ex- into filmmaking. \" plains that this is to be a montage scene, The set has been lighted for a scene in with the action being broken down into a which Adamson and Fran prepare to drive Harris and Devane have generally had number of separate images, more than off with the still unconscious Bishop in the could actually be happening consecutive- back seat, Blanche having been taken care plenty of freedom to invent and improvise ly. It's one of those moments when, in real- of by a shot of sodium pentothal. DeVane on the stage (DeVane has also directed); ity, everything would be happening at and Black are in place, in the front seat of and in their respective films (NASHVILLE once but, on the screen, will be going on the car, and the camera rolls. There is no and MCCABE AND MRS . MILLER) for Robert for much longer. \"After all,\" he says, paus- dialogue in this shot, but the distant, des- Altman, they virtually invented the ing as he builds up to his main point, \" the olate expressions on the actors' faces ex- characters they pla yed. I ask how they object of film is to annihilate time and press a sinister force beyond words. Karen have been able to adapt so well to Hitch- space.\" picks up the remote control mechanism cock's controlled shooting plans. and pushes the button, releasing the ga- On another set this difference of in- rage door behind them . I imagine that re- \"Actually-you have more freedom ,\" Bill terpretation between actor and director mote control button resounding on the suggests, \"beca use you trust the person in might have turned into a confrontation. screen with the impact of the cymbals in charge. Because he knows what he's doing But Hitchcock is so positive of the effect he THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH , or the and he lets yo u know what he's doing. wants, so lucid in explaining why he wants combination lock to the ·safe in MARNIE . He's a good carpenter. He shows you what it, that Devane cannot but defer to him he's building. There's never any doubt once he understands his reasoning. Again, the scene takes no more than a about what he wants. But he likes things to There is no taffy-pull of egos here, no ques- few seconds. Assistant Director Howard be light. He doesn' t like to take things too tion of who is right and who is wrong. The Kazanjian moves in to prepare for the next seriously. He doesn't want a heavy, pon- needs that are being served are not those of shot. \"O.K. This car out. Mustang in. Bill derous atmosphere on the set. He com- actor or director, but of film itself. Hitch- and Karen goodnight,\" he calls out. \"Now municates in terms of jokes, for cock speaks not as a dictator, but as the one we'll set up for the next shot of Bruce arriv- instance--what was it he said to you the among us who best understands the ing.\" other day, Barbara?\" medium. He is not directing by an exertion of will; he is simply teaching a lesson. His \"When was the last time you seen a cab- \"Well, I was rehearsing this scene,\" Bar- bie looking like that, in a James Cagney 22 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975 Barbara Harris as Blanche, the phony medium.

film?\" jokes the departing Bill Devane to cussion is necessary for each set up. It' s not written as a comedy but it's a very, The next shot Hitchcock has in his plan very funny sequence. We h ave a lot of Bruce Oem who has just appeared in clas- freedom in things like that. There's all the sic cab driver drag: a bow tie, a tan jacket is a close-up of the keys in the ignition of freedom in the world once you see what and a cap inscribed with the words \"Cen- Blanche's car, from Lumley's point of view. the rules are, once you see w ha t the area is tral Cab.\" But because it's an insert shot needing that you h ave to be busy in. And it was neither his own nor Oem's presence, he to ugh at tim es for Barbara; she's had as \"All right now. Forward, forward,\" decides to save it till the end of the day. tough a time as anybody adaptmg, but Hitchcock calls to Oem. In the course of the sh e's good at it. She's done a very good scene he is supposed to arrive at Adam- \"Now Bruce, you react to the sight of the son's now deserted and locked garage, keys in the ignition,\" he says, guiding the job. notice Blanche's white Mustang parked actor like a parent gently helping a child to \"You have to be exact; he sees every- nearby and begin to search for her. \"All walk. \"That's odd, that she would leave right now, stop there . Bend down and look the keys inside like that. Now you tum and thing exactly. He's exact in his h ead and he inside toward the ignition. Now, head and walk over to the garage door. Maybe it will knows every cut in this film , h e knows shoulders is what we want to see,\" he ad- open. Bend down and try to open it. Go exactly what he wants this film to say a nd vises Leonard J. South, director of photog- ahead-pull. No, it won't open. All right what it's set up to say. If you listen to him raphy. South has functioned as camera then, you give up on that. \" talk you think, 'Gee whiz, it sounds so or- operator on Hitchcock films for many ganized, h ow can it be good?' Well, that's years, so only a minimum amount of dis- While the camera is moved to another because we're used to listening to a lot of angle for the next shot, I ask Bruce Oem directors say, 'Well what do yo u think (whose first role for Hitchcock was that of here?' and 'How could we . . .' the murdered sailor in MARNIE) if he has experienced the sa me sort of conflicts with \"He knows exactly wha t he wants to say the director that bothered other \"method\" so it doesn ' t sound like it's going to be fas- actors such as Montgomery Clift and Paul cinating, it doesn' t sound like anything. Newman. He has a lot to say on the sub- What it is, is a labyrinth of connecting ject. ideas, each one leading to the telling of a brilliant story. H e takes the most standard \"Well you have to understand you can' t form and a kind of standard story and he lay your trip on somebody like Mr. Hitch- makes it suspenseful. cock. You gotta let him lay his on yo u be- cause he's a master and we're trying to be \"At times everyone gets a little dow n masters and you can't get hung up on and says, 'It's going slowly toda y .. .' Well semantic battles with him. So every actor it just appears to be slow because yo u're he tells what to do in his own way-like not getting big master shots in the report- 'walk here, do this.' I have a method in ing room of the Washington Star with Bob order to do that. I'm just not going to dis- Redford and Dustin Hoffman and eighty- cuss how I get it done with him, you know. five reporters and the most exciting project He'd be bored to death with that. He just in years. What you're getting is a master a t wants it done and he doesn't care how it work, a genius ... and he is really a gets done. genius!\" \"That's really where the big breakdown Bruce is called back to the set for one comes between actors and directors, when more shot. He is supposed to notice a the actor feels, 'Well, he doesn't under- streak of white paint flowing out of the stand me,' or ' He abuses me.' That's all garage, bend down and examine it. \"Ac- bullshit. He doesn't abuse anybody. He's tion .... Cut.\" The shot that took twenty as flexible a director as anybody that I have minutes to set up is filmed in twenty sec- ever worked with. He just is flexible in his onds. fann. In other words, he has a very strict form, but his form is so good and so right Bruce is through for the day and Hitch- that it enables an actor who is willing to cock prepares to go home himself. But take a few chances a certain amount of there is one more set-up to be done-the safety features . You can afford to fail with insert shot of the keys in the ignition that Mr. Hitchcock, as an actor, because you're had been put off earlier. \"Now Lenny, I in a pretty dam good form. The architec- want you to fill the screen with those ture of it is designed so that you can try to keys,\" explains Mr. Hitchcock on his way do things within it as long as you're within out. It seems like a boring and inconse- his design. quential shot, but it's one more link in the labyrinth of ideas. \"So one of the nicest things about work- ing with Mr. Hitchcock , besides its just The day ends as quietly and matter-of- being such a wonderful experience be- factly as it began. Just another day's work cause he's such a good guy and such an en- for the crew. A day on Hitchcock's set tan- tertainer, is the fact that an actor has to gibly conveys the precision and clarity that worry about nothing but his acting. Every- is unique to his film style. But the emo- thing else is taken care of. His technicians tional content, the sense of terror and un- are the best. The crew is the best. The ease, is nowhere to be found here. people that surround him are the best. And he is the best. \" The thrills and excitement will not be experienced until many months from now, I ask Bruce to what extent he is able to after the strips of film have been joined to- improvise or to contribute to scenes. gether and projected in a theater. That is when the real core of meaning behind \"Barbara and I have a long scene in a car Hitchcock's dry method will be revealed . going downhill that's gone out of control. As he has said many times before, it is not She's climbing all over me because she's the actors that Mr. Hitchcock is really di- terrified while I'm trying to drive the car. recting. It is the audience ..~r:. FILM COMMENT 23

Outside of France, little oitical writing exists the two have remained close perso nal friends tic senSibility, his world is not one of Edenic in- on the work of Holl ywood director Sydney Pol- nocence, but rather the rootless desperation of lack. Yet Pollack's work revea ls a compelling, and have joined forces on several projects. Red- the Depression, the chaos of World War IT, the perso na l vision a nd a distinctive visual sty le. ford has starred in four Pollack film s: THlS PROP- schi sms of the McCarthy Era. In this respect the Within the space of nine years he has created a ERTY IS CONDEM NED, JEREMI AH JOH NSON, THE uncertainties of the past bear witness to the body of work which bears hi s individual sta mp WAY WE WERE, and DiREE DAYS OF TIlE CONDOR. present. and which demonstrates a consistent, thoug h constantly developing, philosophic stance . With Following WAR HUNT, Pollack continued act- Structurally, Pollack's works reflect hi s thema- the release of DiREE DAYS OF DiE CONDOR, Pol- ing and directing for televi sion . To his credit are tic concerns for man 's fate in an impersonal lack's ninth H ollywood feature, it seems ap- episodes of 777e Naked Cihj, The Defenders, and world. Typified by circular patterns, the charac- propriate to reassess hi s past creative achieve- Chnjsler T77eater. Along the way he picked up a n ters pursue physical or spiritual journeys, only ment. Emm y for a special with Kim Stanley. In 1966 to arri ve where they began. Whether historical Pollack was given an opportunity to direct hi s western heroe s (in THE SCA LPHU NTE RS and Pollack wa s born in Lafaye tte, Indiana, in 1934 first film , THE SLENDER THREAD. JEREMIAH JOH NSON) or Rooseveltian romantic and g rew up in South Bend, where his father lovers (in THE WAY WE WERE), these protago nists practiced pharmacy . He first became interested As a group, Pollack's film s are informed by a are tra pped by their inability to understand their in theater in hig h school, a nd at seve ntee n he pervasive skepticism concerning man's ability to past; thus they are doomed to repeat it. took off for ew York, where he enrolled in San- discover a mea ningful existence, which reaches ford Meisner's eighborhood Playhou se. Pol- a climax in hi s mos t pe ssimi stic work, THEY Visually, Pollack's world is characterized by lack studied under Meisner (whom he credits for SHOOT HORSES, DON'TTIlEy7 And yet, despite the broad panoramic la ndsca pes balanced by inti- influencing hi s work as both actor and director) self-deception of characters like Alva in THIS mate, often claustrophobic scenes. The settings from 1952 to 1954, and then served as Meisner's PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED or the cynicism which mirror the psychological nature of Pollack assista nt unti11960. ma rks Gloria in HORSES, Pollack never dem- characters, serving as a n extension of their per- onstrates a detached contempt. Rather, his film s sonalities rather than as a determining influence. While teaching a t the Nei g hbo rhood reveal genuine sym pathy for the frailities of hi s As such, the decaying Southern town in DiiS Playhouse, Pollack also acted in several Broad- characters. Since HORSES Pollack's outlook has PROPERTY IS CONDEM NED, the circular dance hall way productions a nd did a heavy load of televi - mellowed , although THE WAY WE WERE and DiE in HORSES, and the expansive mountain peaks in sion work. Among Pollack's plays were Harold YAKUZA both portTay the tenuousness of human JEREMIAH represent the interior states of the pro- Robbins' A Stolle For Da/llly FisHer and Chris- relation s h i p s. tagonists. Contrasting the naturalism of location topher Fry's T77e Dark is Light Ellough. After a two shooting, Pollack's work contains a recurring year stint in the U.S. Army, Pollack accepted a All but three Pollack films (hi s first, DiE SLEN- sense of surrealism. Such scenes as the trial in job in Holl ywood as dialogue coach for John DER THREAD, and hi s two most r-ecent film s, TIlE HORSES, the bakery in CASTLE KEEP, and the in- Frankenheimer on DiE YOUNG SAVAGES . The film YAKUZA and THREE DAYS OF TIlE CONDOR) are re- troduction in DiE YAKUZA suggest a dream qual- featured Burt La ncaster a nd Shelley Winters, creations of past eras . Yet des pite his continual ity. To achieve this effect, Polla ck h as e x- two sta rts whom Pollack would later cast in his foraging into the past, Pollack obliquely ad- perimented with a wide range of technical de- own work. Encouraged by Lancaster, Pollack dresses himself to the prese nt. As a commen- vices, including slow motion, innovative light- stayed in Hollywood, landing an acting job in tator on the American experience, he ha s-been ing, and helicopter shooting. Denis Sa nders' low-budget WAR HUNT (1962). particularly concerned with man's search for Also a ppearing in hi s first film was a yo ung actor va lues in a disintegrating world. In addition, Pol- Pollack, who started his career as an actor, is named Robert Redford . Although both men lack has been obsessed with the cultural clashes particularly sensitive to the needs of hi s per- subsequently chose separate professional paths, which fonn the basis of so much American his- formers. Since 1966 he ha s directed many of the tory, and which continue to tear at the country screen's most prominent star s in some of their today. Al though Pollack demonstrates a roman- SYDNEY POLLACK THI WAYWIARI by Patricia Erens Sydney Pollack during the shooting ofTHREE DAYS OFTHE CONDOR .

best roles Gane Fonda in HORSES, Robert Redford Semple, Jr. He made it work as a film. I much like the speech Robert Redford gave in JEREMIAH, and Barbra Streisand in THE WAY went back to the same writer I've used on in the railway station near the end of THE WE WERE). Most especially, he has managed to almost all my films, David Rayfiel. David WAY WE WERE. draw finely tuned performances from his female stars. His aim has been to expose contradictory is a playwright whom I met in television in S.P. Exactly. I don't think that there is characteristics within one personality. At the 1962. He's done all the final rewrites for me anyone truth. There are only different same time Pollack takes care to develop among except THE YAKUZA, although he's never truths. I'm not making a plea for amorality, his performers a sense of ensemble, so as to pre- gotten any credit. David started a very ex- disinvolvement, or noncommitrnent. I' m vent audience sympathy from gravitating to- tensive rewrite and we hit upon this really only saying there's no true picture without ward one actor. By avoidance of typing, he far-out plot about a radical CIA group the other side. One side is only one side, manages to concentrate on the complex areas ot within the CIA. This group feels crippled and that's not enough. human experience which defy easy definition. by the exposure of what's happened as a result of Watergate and has decided to con- P. E. What was your decision abQut aerial At best Pollack's works possess an internal tinue operations secretly. In this case, it is a pace, often slower than other Hollywood fea- tentative plan for an invasion in the Middle shots in THREE DAYS? You've done some tures. This succeeds in HORSES, where fatigue is East. We thought it was a really wild idea spectacular sequences in THIS PROP- integral to the narrative. It also befits the con- until we started to read the newspaper ERTY and THE SLENDER THREAD . templative mood of JEREMIAH and the romantic headlines while we were in the middle of tenor of THE WAY WE WERE. The measured pacing S.P. I've used a few, but not too many . is less effective in action films like CASTLE KEEP shooting. Shots like that become faddish, and I'm as and THE YAKUZA, and has led critics to dismiss P.E. What other changes were made much victimized as anybody else by styles. much of his work as ponderous and talky . I feel that I used aerial shots to the point during the adaptation? where I'm self-conscious about doing it For the most part, Pollack swims within the S.P. I suppose the major change was in again. It's like slow motion. I like slow mo- mainstream of the Hollywood cinema. He has tion. I love aerial shots. I like seeing a place worked in a wide variety of genres: melodrama, the conception of the characters. I wanted from far away, seeing the world in which comic western, war film , romance, mountain to make a film about suspicion and how the characters are going to play out their film, gangster fi lm. His newest work, THREE destructive suspicion really is, because it's drama. It gives a broader significance to DAYS OF THE CONDOR, is a suspense thriller. But the opposite of trust which is the basis of what's going on. unlike Bogdanovich (with his homages to the society and all relationships. Eventually past) or Mel Brooks (with his facile parodies), you have to trust somebody or you can't go P. E. Most of your films are set in the Pollack is committed to the continuing vitality of on living. Initially Kathy, the Faye Duna- past. THEY SHOOT HORSES was one of the Hollywood's cinematic vocabulary. While re- way character, is a suspicious girl. Joseph, first big films to capture the Thirties' nos- specting the conventions of the past, his films db played by Robert Redford, is just the op- talgia, if you can call pessimism nostalgic. not copy conventions so much as they assimilate posite. As the film progresses they shift them. In this respect Pollack shows his indebt- roles. This happens during the short How did your feeling for time past affect edness to the classic tradition and the films of period of their relationship-about Elia Kazan and George Stevens. twenty-four hours. the way you shot HORSES? S.P. In THEY SHOOT HORSES I was in- Pollack's work has received systematic and P.E. What were your reasons for casting sympathetic attention only in France. Gean A. John Houseman and Max von Sydow in terested in all kinds of time-real time, GiJi's monograph on the director was published the supporting roles of CIA officials? psychological time, future time-not just in 1971.) In America, although both JEREMIAH past time. In the novel the story is told in and THE WAY WE WERE appear on the list of the S.P. My relationship with Houseman flashback, beginning at the murder trial. I fifty all-time box office grossers, Pollack has not goes back to TIllS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED. wanted to maintain the immediacy of the generated the publicity that surrounded George He was the producer. John has this tre- marathon so we treated the story in the Roy Hill following the success of THE STING. Nor mendous kind of authority and dignity. present and used flash forwards for the has Pollack been given the serious attention It's almost European. It's impossible not to trial. We restructured the narrative so as to which has benefitted cult directors like Robert listen to him when he talks. He's always maintain literal time. This helped create Altman and John Cassevetes. Falling into had that kind of quality. He was perfect for the feeling of claustrophobia that I wanted. neither camp, Pollack has landed, all but un- the part of the Harvard professor in THE noticed, in the middle. PAPER CHASE. We wrote in a part for a top In the original script there were a lot of CIA official and we needed someone who sequences which took place outside the P. E. THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR is a con- could really carry the weight. I knew I dance hall. The characters walked around temporary suspense drama, a novelty for wanted Houseman all along. on the beach during their rest periods. I had an intuitive feeling that I could never you. What made you decide to take the With Max von Sydow we get into the make audiences accept the limits to which project? gray areas. In the book the villain is a hor- these people put themselves if I even rible, horrible man-a pure mercenary opened up the world, so to speak, and let S.P. When I first read the story I thought who kills strictly for money. He was the anybody out. it was absolute nonsense. However, I liked kind of mustache-twirling villain that just it because it moved very fast. Besides the bores me. So we began to construct a man I thought an audience would have diffi- fact that it was contemporary, there were a whose amorality was more solvent than culty believing that when the siren went lot of things I had never done. I thought it the CIA morality. The von Sydow charac- off everybody would walk back inside in- would be nice to go to work someday and ter is an honest bad guy, which I prefer any stead of walking right down the beach. So I not have to worry about what everything day to a lying good guy. Now I'm not say- pulled everything in, even the seduction meant or whether or not I was being a Fas- ing its better to be a killer and admit that scene which takes place under a pier in the cist. I liked the idea of just being able to you're a killer than to be the CIA. What I book. To emphasize their feeling of being concentrate on making a sequence daz- am saying is that this man knows that trapped, I had all the exit signs made in red zling. In the end, however, we worried economics determines who are the good about ten times larger than normal. In about all the same problems anyway. We guys and who are the bad guys, if there are most of the shots you can see the sign, tried to stay within the original form and any such things. Therefore he chooses to even when it's out of focus . But behind the narrative line, but we ended up changing isolate himself from society and make his characters there was al wa ys that Ii ttle characters and reinventing new ones. We own morality. He relies only on his own arrow which said somewhere there was tried to get away from the adolescent con- excellence. There's no cause to believe in; still a little promise-a way out. cept of the original novel. no side to take. Today one country is right; tomorrow it's another. P.E. I understand that you shot the film P. E. Who was responsible for the in sequence, which isn't done very often changes made in James Grady's Six Days of P.E. That philosophy sounds very and usually ends up being very costly. the Condor? S.P. Right. We tried to capture a sense of S.P. The first shot at the screenplay was fatigue in the dance sequences. The prob- done by a very talented writer, Lorenzo lem was we couldn't go an hour and fifty FILM COMMENT 25

minutes and then take off ten, like those project. There was supposed to have been kids. I had to create the illusion of a long another director on it and things didn't time, so that in the following sequences I work out, so I got the job. The same thing could just shoot a piece of it and jump back happe ned on THE YAKUZA and THREE DAYS and forth whenever I wanted from the OF THE CONDOR. * The funny part was that I dance floor to the rest area. I tried to set the even had two go-arounds with that. Iorig- tone by running the first dance sequence inally started work on the film in 1966. The for about eight-and-a-half minutes with- man who owned the novel wanted John out a break. After that we never went for Frankenheimer, but he wasn't available. more than three or four minutes. I did the They got in touch with me and I put a sa me thing with the derby races. The first screenwriter named Charles Eastman on derby is pretty close to real time; just under it. We had a few meetings and then the nine minutes. The second is shorter. man went bankrupt, so the rights reverted back to the previous owner. P.E. I remember the first derby very viv- idly.1t was unbearable. I had the sensation P.E. No doubt it was fated tha t you ge t it that I couldn't breathe. You shot that film in the end. Some of your aerial shots have in Panavision-which seems ra ther a wa y of sticking in the memory. I wonder strange, considering there were no out- if yo u would discuss so me of the technical door sce nes or pan ora mic landscapes. aspects, especially of THIS PROPERTY. I'm particularl y interested in the scene where S.P. I've shot every film since THE the camera pulls away from a close up of SCALPHUNTERS in Panavision, and every- Na talie Wood looking out a train window body has fought me on that since HORSES. and pulls up to show the train crossing the It's funny. But I have my reasons for using brid ge and the entire lake. Panavision which have nothing to do with Hollywood or being grand. · Hollywood is S.P. It took a full da y to make the begin- the most anti-Hollywood place in the ning of tha t shot. First the helicopter had to world, and the most crassly bold pro- ge t very, very close to the train going at just ducers love to consider themselves anti- the right speed , and then get Nata lie in just Hollywood. The minute you say to them the right position with tears on her face, you want to shoot a picture in Panavision, a nd then work in the helicopter. The they say, \" What are you talking about? helicopter was so close that the blades were This is an intimate story between people. \" overlapping the top of the train car. We also had a problem ge tting the helicopter to But the fact of the matter is that Panavi- go fa ster. If we slowed the train down it sion is the only medium you can work in was unsteady. You know that the minute w here you never lose the sense of envi- you zoom a lens out to a very long focal ronment. It's so structured that even in the length, every little movement shows. We tightest close-up you spill off the edges of tried to counteract that by using a special the face and you spill off to a sufficient de- mount for the camera-a stabilizer. gree to know where you are. You never have a face in limbo in Panavision. When I We wanted to pull all the way up, roll worked in flat ratios yo u could cheat over the top of the train, and then spin the close-ups all over the place. picture around in the frame. That means the helicopter has to have enough speed Essentially Panavision is a two-shot when it makes its tum to roll over on its medium. It's a terrific medium for relation- side in order to shoot straight down, be- ships. You get the same size image of a cause you can' t tip the camera down. If yo u close-up face with the space for a second try leaning out the door you'll just photo- face . In a close-up of one person you al- graph your feet and the skids of the ways get the sense of the other person, helicopter. A ve ry good pilot can get even if it's just the back of the head; the enough momentum to roll over without presence is always there. banking it. It was really difficult, but we P. E. The property for THEY SHOOT got it. HORSES had been around Holl ywood for P.E. What about the shot at the begin- years . Why do you think no one filmed it earlier? Was it too much of a downer for ning of the film which connects the pro- Hollywood? logue with the main story? S.P. Perhaps. I think the studios were S.P. Actually that shot was the most dif- afraid to gamble on such a depressing film. ficult technically, although it' s much less I'm not sure. But you're right about the spectacular. It begins as Willie [Robert novel. It was owned by some twenty Redford] starts to walk away from the rail- people. The first of them was Charlie road tracks and the camera pulls back and Chaplin. I'm still bumping into people back a nd back and then rises all the way up who say, \"You know I owned that prop- until you see the whole city and Willie is erty in 1942.\" I just sort of fell into the just a tin y figure. What we had to do was extremely dangerous . We had to land a Left, top to bottom: Natalie Wood and Robert Redford helicopter on a flatcar which we made. It in THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED; Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce De rn , Ja ne Fond a a nd Red Button s in THEY \"Initially Robert Aldrich was to direct THE YAKUZA and SHOOT HORSES, DON 'T THEY ?; Faye Dunaway and Peter Yates was slated for THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR. Robert Redford in THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR; Likewise, on THIS PROPERTY John Huston had already Ossie Davis, Tell y Sava las, and Burt Lancaster in THE started shooting with a different cast before abandoning SCALPHUNTERS; Barbra Streisand a nd Robert Redford the project. For screenwriter James Poe's account of his in THE WAY WE WERE. removal as director of THEY SHOOT HORSES, see FILM COMMENT, Winter 1970-71 .

was no bigge r than a table . We had to hold the killer, the liver-eater aspect. I was more P.E. What about the lighting in HORSES? the skid s down . ow the blades of the interested in the choices that a man makes, It seems to me tha t yo u used a lot of re- flected light. helicopter were blowing Willie's hair so we and how Jeremiah ends up victimized in a S.P. Yes, that's true, but you also get a had to s ta rt the blad es turnin g in fl a t sense by his own choices. very harsh look in HORSES . It's a result of pitch-para llel to the gro und-so th ey The picture is also about the illusion of two things. We pushed the film one stop to made no wind. Then we had to push the trying to get away from it all. I feel you make it look grainier a nd a little dirty. It's hard to make so me thing look dirty in a fl atcar away, which gives the start of the have to make it work where you are. There color film . You can photogra ph the ugli est dolly, and then get far enough awa y tha t is no getting away. You have to go too far to alley in Harlem and it'll look like a beautiful the wind wouldn't blow her. When the get away. The original ending of JEREMIAH painting . We also had to light from above helicopter lifted off the fl atcar we had to showed him as an exact duplication of the for many of the shots. I used a lot of 360- degree pans which mea nt I couldn 't use push the car half a mile down the track to frozen man with a gun. H e climbs higher fl oor units . In fact, if you remember, the dance opens with a 720-degree pan get out of the way of the shot. and higher. First he turns his horse free, around the hall, which was murder on the cameraman. Lig hting from above casts P.E . Were there any special considera- then h e begin s to eat s now. He keeps shadows in the eye sockets. Usually you wa nt to avoid that kind of effect, but for tions in working from a Tennessee Wil- going higher, getting more and more dis- this film it worked to our advantage. liams work? tant in long, long shots until he almost ctis- P. E. Your films seem to fall into two categories: female melodramas and male S.P. No, not especially. The entire story appears in the clouds. The la st shot shows adventure stories. THE SLENDER THREAD, THIS PROPERTY, THE WAY WE WERE are all was only about ten or twelve pages. I liked him encased in ice - a kind of pathe tic romances of a sort, w hile SCALPHUNTERS, the idea of reconstructing Alva [Natalie monument to himself. But I decided it was CASTLE KEEP, JEREMIAH, and THE YAKUZA are male-dominated, action films. Like Wood] from little suggestion s by Willie. excessive, and nobody understood it, so I Robert Aldrich, you've had successes in both areas. You've worked with a lot of Despite all the talk about gentlemen call- took it out. strong actresses: Anne Ba ncroft, Jan e ers, Alva is really just a hooker . You're P.E. Your films show a great deal of con- Fonda, Barbra Streisand. With all the criti- cism about the lack of women's roles and really getting the story from Willie's eyes . cern for color, especially in creating a kind about directors indulging their own egos by creating extensions of their own per- There's a ke y scene cu t ou t of the film. of dominant tone for a scene. sonalities, it seems to me that you have After Alva runs out in the rain she comes S.P. Well, I am fascinated by the techni- created a fair share of memorable women's back home . You see her looking very much cal side of filmmaking . It's like learning to parts. I also feel you're particularly sensi- like Willie a t the end of the film with a make a terrific color if you were a painter. straw ha t and ripped stockin gs. Although I've done a lot of experimenting with light she's still talking about the white sky yo u and color, especially to create mood . For see her picking up a traveling salesman . instance, in JEREMIAH I used a greenish The producer compl a in ed abo ut too tone in the scene where Jeremiah return s many enctings, so he insisted that I cut tha t to find the settler in the cabin where the one . I have a proclivity for multiple end- crazy woman had liv e d. Often I' ll r e- in gs . It drives people crazy. The sa me balance the colors in th e lab after the thin g happened in JEREMIAH JOH NSON. I shooting-pushing the colors more to- must have had twenty-seven endings . I ward the warm or the cold side. It's hard to ha d a sce ne with the crazy woman, a explain what is so sad about this scene . lovely scene. Jeremiah comes back after hi s Part of it is the greenish hue. wife and so n are dead. He finds the wo- In CASTLE KEEP I aimed for a different ef- ma n, but she doesn't even remember him . fect. Inside the castle I used warm tones; I He tell s her that her son is well, but she just went toward the rose color. For the exterior stares at him with cobwebs in front of her shots I wanted cold tones. In a picture you eyes, so to speak. Bob ctid the scene beauti- usually strike a balance and stay with it; fully. I hated to cut it. No body forced me you don't jump around. The labs don't like into it, but I knew I had too ma ny endings. it and it's hard to control. P.E. In the novel Moul1tail1 Mal1 by Var- dis Fisher, Jeremiah is a rather unusual man, very learned . It contradicts our con- cepts of the rough-and-ready men who went west to live on the mountains. What were yo ur rea so ns for not depicting that aspect of Jeremiah7 S.P. First of all it has to do with the way Takak ura Ken in the project developed. The essential mate- THE YAKUZA. rial I worked from was an original screen play by John Milius. Secondarily I read the Thorpe and Bunkerer books, and only lastly did I read Fisher' s novel. It turns out they' re all from the same source. Fisher' s novel is very stylize d a nd he draw s Jeremiah like a Paul Bunyanesquecharacter. That's not the way I saw the picture. Moul1 - tain Man has some wonderful lyrical verbal passages-very rich stuff. I just dug it out and used it wherever I could. But I still felt he missed for me in some very human areas. The section with the wife lasted a very short time in the original material. We en- larged that enormously in the film . Perhaps not enough, but it was a question of objectives. Fisher was more interested in

tive to the subtleties in a female character. ROBERT REDFORD ON thought the politics were phony, but Syd- S.P. I have worked with many strong, SYDNEY POLLACK ney felt the material had great possibilities independent women . That goes back to On Actor Directors: Selfishly, being an as a love story. Sydney said \"Trust me; it my days in television, directing actresses actor, I think it helps to have a director with can be good, and I think it's something you like Shelley Winters and Kim Stanley. But a~ting background. Too many of the young ought to do.\" One of the reasons Sydney not all actresses are alike by any means. directors are obsessed with celluloid ob- wanted to do it was that he identified with However, one of the reasons I like working sessed with making beautiful films. the character of an uncommitted man. Fi- with women is that they are much less em- Filmmaking is a whole piece and that in- nally, I just took the part on faith . Together barrassed about revealing their emotions cludes the actor. I think you can get some we totally reworked the character of Hub- than men . That's not true of Bob and Burt very exciting camerawork, but it lacks bell . Lancaster, but most actors are always on heart. guard, protecting their image, and they Critics: Critics had trouble with THE WAY don't give you color within a scene. Working With Pollack: Sydne y'S the WE WERE because they won't own up to Women are more immediate mirrors to one director that seems to read me best. their own emotions. They feel that it's got what's going on. More of what I do, with less effort, is made to be off-center or bold before they can ac- visible. He is able to extract more solid stuff cept it. THE WAY WE WERE is about two P.E. What seems most exceptional about than other directors . There are certain people who come together and why it goes your women characters is that they are things that I'll try as an actor that will go wrong. Intellectually you know they never one-dimensional. That's particularly past others, which never make it to the shouldn't be together, but on a gut level true of Streisand in THE WAY WE WERE. screen. Sydney seems very sensitive to it you want them to make it because you like and he'll pick on it, even accent it. One of them and because they like each other. S.P. I was very objectively going for that. Sydney'S strongest points is his sense of That's a fair emotion. I was determined not to let her be \"La rhythm. One of the reasons we get along Streisand\" in this picture. I wanted people so well is that we read each other. As an THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR: We usually take to forget she's Streisand-which of course actor I have more faith in him and more something nobody else wants to do . they never did-and see her as Katie trust in his directing me than anyone. It's JEREMIAH was in existence as a script for a Morosky. She's a very talented girl, but be- largely due to trusting his sense of rhythm . long time. THREE DAYS was a project that cause she started as a performer she relies was not a very good book and a script that on performance devices rather than on the JEREMIAH JOHNSON: JEREMIAH was my pro- no one liked at all . Sydney and I wanted to reality of the scene. She's capable of acting. ject. That was one that was really close to attempt a thriller. We wanted to do a pure I think she is very, very good in the picture. me; it took place where I live. The reason adventure film, but gradually we got into Sydney was so good on it was that he un- the area of paranoia. Again we got to the P.E. I understand there was a big chunk derstood how I felt. We went through a lot area where there just aren't simple taken out of THE WAY WE WERE at the insist- of anguish on that picture. It went on for answers. For instance, you're hired to pro- ence of Ray Stark. Is that true? What was months. We'd talk and talk and argue and tect the interests of the country. Can you eliminated? we could never articulate what we wanted. spare seven people and lose eight million? Choices were made by both Sydney and It's an easy thing right now to take a cheap S.P. Yes. Ray Stark fought very hard to myself that just weren't explainable. The shot at the CIA, just like it's easy to do a eliminate a center section in the film. How- crew didn't know what we were doing. It hatchet job on Raquel Welch. Both Sydney ever, had I been totally convinced that he was just me wandering through the moun- and I come from backgrounds that are con- was wrong, he wouldn't have. The section tains and then suddenly it was put to- fusing in terms of what we are now and dealt with the backgrounds ofboth people. gether and there it was. The idea was what we were . Things were wrong. We Hubbell's parents, his fantasies as a child, about a man who decides he doesn't want were both unhappy in misfit situations. Katie's father, and her other men. to live by someone else's code. He wants to That's why there's always a complexity in create his own. He happens to go where the point of view in all of Sydney'S work, We imagined that in Hubbell's fantasy as the Indians were. It wasn't that he was at- and a look backwards to the past. a kid he might have wanted to be a bird, an tacted to the Indian way of life. He just eagle. It was a comic scene, but with truth wanted to go off by himself. Romanticism: Sydney is melancholy, in it. Katie asks Hubbell if he loved his but he's getting wiser about using that in parents and it occurs to him, as though for THE WAY WE WERE: I turned that project his work. He used to let moments go on the first time, that he has never thought down two times. In the book the character too long; but now his experience tells him about it. He tries the phrase on for size, but is shallow and synthetic. It was written by when to cut things off. Basically he's a the words seem strange in his mouth, and a man who didn't understand men and romantic. I think that's one of his virtues. their strangeness disturbs him. didn't know how to write about a real There aren't many men around who can man-woman relationship . We also say honestly and openly, \"Isn't that a P.E. Except for JEREMIAH , yo ur male beautiful scene?\" films haven't had the same critical and public attention as your women's films. For Robert Redford and Sydney Pollack on location for THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR. instance, your last film, THE YAKUZA, was poorly received. S.P. When I first read the original screenplay, which was written by Paul Schrader, a talented young critic, it was in very rough form. However, I felt it con- tained a very powerful idea. I think I ulti- mately chose to do the project because of the last scene, which is an ultimate connec- tion and reconciliation of two people of ab- solutely opposite cultures-one eastern and one western. It was a kind of under- standing, totally emotional and non- verbal. I kept thinking of the poem by Robert Frost: The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep .... In Japan I suppose you would translate 28 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

that as giri- duty, honor, and obligation. through paper walls, crashing through S.P. I started Syd ney Pollack Produc- In my terms it was just tremendous respect them swinging his guns, whereas in tion s in 1969 when I wa s workin g on and the limits to which one will go to keep another room Ken is poised, kind of cat- HORSES. Then a second company, Sanford one's word. like, dealing with a whole group. Productions , came into being in 1971 . I formed that with director Mark Rydell. We P.E. Actually most of your films center P. E. Another problem film is CASTLE developed a nd produced five film s. Two around a contrast or conflict between two KEEP . You mentioned in a Positif interview we directed ourselve s; we a lso put to- people of different cultures who try to find that it was your favorite film . What were ge ther SCARECROW with Ge ne Hackman a common meeting ground. you trying to do in that picture? a nd AI Pacino, the new Arthur Penn film, NIGHT MOVES, a nd a picture called HARRY S.P. In a sense that's right. However, in S.P. The central question w hich is raised SPIKES , done by the Ramiri s Company. THE YAKUZA, the three characters are very is whether it is worth saving man, or the Then we disbanded the company because much alike even though they come from best that man can do. Now the answer in of financial complications. Ultimately di- different countries. They are really three the material is that it's man. Sooner or later rectors are not great businessmen and antiques, three people who are over the you have to take a stand, no matter what is probably shouldn' t be in that kind of busi- hill and existing in a world that has passed destroyed; otherwise you have Nazi Ger- ness. For a company like tha t to run you them by. They still live by a set of moral many. It doesn't matter w hat has to go. need a third or fourth person who is really standards which have become outmoded. What matters is that man survives . In a minding the store . sense Major Falconer's point of view wins P.E. Did you film THE YAKUZA along the out, but of course, it's not ever so simple. P.E. Most of your work has been shot on traditional lines of the Japanese geme? Furthermore, people are always doing the location. Do you h ave a ny comments right things for the wrong reasons and about that? S.P. No, I didn't. I did film it at a slower wrong things for the right reasons. It's like pace than most of the films that I do. I that in THE WAY WE WERE as well. S.P. Yes. In a way I've come full circle on staged it much more formally, much more that. Initially when I started directing I stylized. That's set in the opening scene. P.E. What about the holocaust at the end thought every picture should be made on of CASTLE KEEP? location. Ultimately you got more out of it. P.E. What were some of the problems or But I've revised my thinking a little bit. I advantages of shooting in Japan? S.P. Well, for me that was a way of indi- still think it's absolutely essential today to cating that neither side was right and there shoot exteriors on a live location . But S.P. I think one of the advantages was has to be another way-a better way. whenever possible I prefer to do interiors just being in the country, getting a feel for on a se t. That way I can control what's the place and having discussions with real P.E. The film has a very surreal quality. going on. It's a combination of many yakuza. I had a Japanese crew and Partly you accomplish this in the dream- things. H alf of it is concentration. If I'm cameraman for the film . They were won- like images of the countess, or the Volks- doing a love scene with very complex e mo- derful to work with. For the American wagen floating on the water. But there is tional reactions, it's really much better on a scenes I used an American cameraman so tig ht set. Also, if I want the freedom to you actually get a subtle difference in style. also something unique about the composi- move a camera freely, I need to be able to The way they do things in Japan is radi- tion of the shots. take out a wall or to move somethin g cally different than what we are accus- around . You' re limited by reallocations. tomed to here . For one thing the camera- S.P. I kept trying to find visual ways to man in Japan operates the camera himself. reinforce the sense of the surreal. I tried to P.E. You ha ve used many of the sa me ac- For another, they don't have large lighting visually create a sense of imbalance. The tors over and over again. Do you prefer units like we have, so they light the way traditional framing, and particularly in an working with a modified repertory com- they paint, an area at a time. They might anamorphic set-up, is that when a charac- pany? take a frame of film and start in the upper ter is looking from the left side of the frame left-hand corner and just work their way toward the right side, you keep a lot of S.P. It's great. The problem is that people across to the right and then go back to the space in the direction that they're looking. like Tell y Savalas and Bruce Oern and left again. By the time you finish there will In CASTLE KEEP I did the reverse, which others are now big stars in their own right, be thousands of very small units. tends to make the viewer feel slightly un- so they wouldn' t be willing to do the kind comfortable. We also tried to light the film of roles I'd like to cast them in. P.E. I was really impressed by the fight- in a non-realistic way. So if an actor walked ing scenes, especially the last ten-minute into a close-up where the left side of his P.E. What's in the offing for your next sequence. I thought it captured the rituali- face would be very close to a lamp, we project? zation of the violence in Japan, and that it would key-light him from the right, which also revealed your training in dance. is again something viewers are not con- S.P. I'm reading an original screenpla y sciously aware of but which doesn't jive. by William Goldman, who did BUTCH CAS- S.P. Some of the action sequences are When you look at it you don't know quite SIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and THE GREAT very balletic-deliberately so, because you what's different, but you respond on ·an WALDO PEPPER. Bob owns it and is in- can't do anything else with sword work. unconscious level. terested in filming it. It's about an Ameri- They don't contain the staccato impact that can historical figure like Jeremiah. His western fights contain. Gun shots and P.E. I had considerable difficulty with name is Manning Tom Horn. He was punches are very staccato; they're over in a the film because it was so talky. America's first cowboy and was responsi- second. There is no grace necessarily con- ble for bringing in Geronimo. Like nected to it. But sword work is different. I S.P. Part of the reason it's so talky is that JEREMIAH, the script is very mythic. had to learn a whole new way ofshooting. both David Rayfiel and I had such rever- ence for the novel. It's a great work and we P.E. There are so many younger genera- P. E. Some of the critics felt the fight were so in love with it. That's one of the tion directors that have come to Hol- scenes were too bloody and violent. great tragedies of the motion pictures. You lywood via television . What do you feel are Others criticized them for not being bloody spend all this money buying a great book the pros and cons of such training? enough. and the best of it never gets into the pic- ture. Rayfiel and I would come across S.P. For me it was great. The stakes were S.P. Actually the attempt was not to be passages which were absolutely glorious not high and so I could experiment and bloody at all. What interested me was the pieces of writing. Then we kept putting learn without worrying so much. I would counterpoint in the fight. I kept cross- more and more in. I agree that it's a very do twenty shows in a year. I would make cutting between Mitchum and Takakura unrealized film, but there are still many them one week and see them a week later. Ken. Mitchum is an absolute bull and Ken things about it that I really like. Thatwa y lwa sa lways in touch with whatl is like a matador. They're both doing the was doing. Now it's a year before I see the same thing, but Mitchum is going about it P.E. Could you tell me something about results.,*- in a pragmatic way while Ken is much your production company, Sydney Pollack more artful. Mitchum literally walks Productions? FILM COMMENT 29

AGAINST CONCLUSIONS by Robin Wood F.R. Leav is KEYSTO NE which is fundamental to my sense of life, J.-L. Godard FRENC H FILM O FFICE art, and criticism . Man himself appears a In two recent FILM COMME NT articles system of tensions: between angel and dev- bound up with the concept of ideal democ- (May-June and July-August) , Robin Wood il, superego and id, reason and instinct, racy. Democracy is not only a means of took iss ue with the \"Marxis t-semiological\" social-political organization; it is also a school of film criticism. In the following essa y intellect and emotion . The structural op- state of mind, the leading characteristics of (from his collection Personal Views: Explora- positions on which we, like works of art, which are an openness to heterogeneous tioll s in Style , to be published by the Gordon are built, are probably not reconcilable but and possibly contradictory experiences Fra ser G a llery, London) , Wood define s hi s can be held in balance-what we mean , and a guarded willingness to be influenced critical position in relation to that of F. R. surely, by talking about a \"balanced\" per- by them. Leavis, the Cambridge University teacher and son. critic . According to widespread assumption I One might describe valid criticism as seem to be cast for the Leavis role in British At the end of TOUT VA BIEN , the two cen- developing out of a tension between sub- film criticism (which is rather like casting tTal figures (Yves Montand and Jane Fon- jective and objective poles, and personal Mickey Rooney as Tarzan) . I am worried da) have evolved to the point where the y response as an intercourse between emo- by this on two counts. First, I am afraid that realize that they must learn to \"live histori- tion and intellect. I think our relationship my own inadequacies, indecisions, uncer- cally\"; to define them selves and their role with works of art can be defined in similar tainties, may be used to discredit the in relation to the movement of society and terms. There is, on the one hand, the pro- Leavis position. Second, I feel that the the progress of history; to reconcile and cess of assimilation, of emotional and intel- \"Leavis position,\" in its pure and integral make coherent private and public life, per- lectual absorption, without which art has form (with which I seem to be associated in sonal relationships and social function , sex no purpose. Against this must be set our people's minds, though my actual writings and politics. Through its open-ended sense of the work's \" otherness,\" our scarcely support this), is no longer tenable. stTucture, through a method and style that awareness of modes of thinking and feel- The diSintegration of civilization-of continuously invite the spectator's active ing quite different from our own, whose Western civilization as we know it-has participation, the film clearly constitutes a difference we should respect without gone too far; the collapse of standards has challenge to its audience analogous to the wishing to change it. become too absolute; the possibility that challenge confronted by its protagonists. the only realistic alternative to total break- What I am describing is something very down may be some form of Marxist society The confluence of the recent cinema tic like an ideal personal relationship, and I forces itself too powerfully on the con- and critical developments I have examined think the analogy has partial validity. We sciousness. in the last two issues of FILM COMMENT don't, ideally, demand that our friends be (not to mention the wider social-political- mere reflections of ourselves; we try to un- Yet if the choice really proves to be be- cultural context within which those de- derstand and accept them as they are. The tween the \"mere anarchy\" Yeats saw as velopments have their meaning) makes it more we know about them the better; \"loosed upon the world\" and the \"rough impossible today for any critic to evade there is no value in friendship built on illu- beast\" whose birth the anarchy makes tha t challenge unless he is willing to resign sion or on a lack of understanding of what possible, then it is at least arguable that the himself to life on a private island. That I the other person really is. But as soon as only decent response is to withdraw into feel my own role both precarious and dif- the essential spark of response dies, it is no despair. Despair-at least in the public ficult to define will perhaps by now be suf- longer proper to speak of friendship. realm-is for me (and, I imagine, many ficiently clear. My relationship to the others) a permanent temptation, the desire tTends I have been considering is not one Similarly with art and criticism: the work to retTeat into a private world very strong. I of simple antagonism; my attitude to any- that is coldly inspected only for its ideologi- am saved from it less by any optimism thing that challenged the prevailing critical cal assumptions or its possible contribu- than by a certainty that personal happi- establishment could never be that. tions to knowledge has become a corpse ness, if it is purely personal, can't exist- on the dissecting table, and we are no that happiness depends always on a sense A regular attendant at a series of lectures longer critics but anatomists. The aliveness of function . I gave reported to me that my favorite of the work is lost to us. As with people, word was clearly \"ambivalent\"; when I the relationship is a living one or it is This is why the e nding of TOUT VA told this in turn to a close friend he said, nothing-if we are concerned with art as BIEN-with its challenge to \"live histori- No, my favorite word is \" um.\" I have a feel- art, not art as data. cally,\" to define a function for oneself that ing that both are becoming supplanted by the word \"tensions.\" It points to a concept The necessary end of criticism is evalua- tion; but evaluation must always remain an open-ended process. The process itself is characterized by a tension between our sense that a work of art is unique and in- comparable and the necessity of continual comparison, the setting of this experience beside that. It is a process that implies a sense of the multiplicity of life, and a ready acceptance of that multiplicity. It is closely 30 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

implies the personal and the public-has My own inferiority is perhaps suffi- come to mean so much to me.-And I may remark in passing here (though it is but ciently recognized in the term \"disciple,\" cold comfort) that I have come to wonder whether Godard and I are really so far which is commonly applied to me. Yet it is apart as I had supposed, and as the politi- cal dogma and rhetoric of his recent films not a term I like, at least with the connota- insistently asserts. In the factory scenes and workers' monologues/interrogations, tions it commonly carries: uncritical fol- despair rises dangerously near the surface. The speakers argue themselves towards si- lower, one who \"spreads the word\" of the lence, toward a recognition that the fun- damental issue isn't being faced. Master. I see my work-for all its manifest Godard, with his probing honesty, is inadequacies-as developing out of driven to the point where it becomes evi- dent that the real object of protest is not Leavis's; and it is development that seems to capitalism, or the class system, but the technological society itself; that, whatever me crucial. For Leavis is not a dead end, as the social arrangement, the great mass of humanity will still be committed to the the Marxist-semiological school appears to routine performance of boring jobs in which they can feel no human or creative imply (largely by ignoring him). A line of involvement. And Godard, of course, knows that no alternative to the technolog- descent must be preserved . His essential ~ ical society any longer exists, that there can concerns are not outmoded and have u:: now be no turning back. One would like to never been discredited. How could they know why, since TOUT VA BIEN, he has be, given that the central concern is with >< himself been silent. life, the value of life , the quality of life? 'o\" It is necessary, at this point, to develop further the statement that I find Dr. >- Leavis's position, in its pure form, no longer tenable. The ways in which my own ~ differs from it seem to me pretty obvious, but-to judge from remarks about my z own work both in and out of print-they are not obvious to everyone, and had bet- (Though this is not noticeably a concern of Jane Fonda and Yves Montand with the factory workers ter be made explicit. Leavis is a great critic, the Marxistisemiologists, bent on making in TOUT VA BIEN. and a great man-although a critic, one of the great creative minds of the century. (The of criticism a \"science.\" For them, it is There is, perhaps, no point where I can remark will not appear paradoxical to merely \"within the ideology,\" along with disagree with Leavis cleanly and com- those familiar with Leavis's own use of the the individual creativity from which it is pletely; to dissociate myself from certain word \"creative\" in the indispensable Nor insepara ble.) aspects of his thought is consequently a Shall My Sword.) delicate operation. One such aspect, how- But \"development\" suggests change ever, is that suggested by the term \"per- It is not a matter (as is sometimes given and transformation, and brings me to missiveness. \" I always feel uneasy at those out) of his telling us which books to read those areas where discipleship becomes points where Leavis uses it, because I think and which not to, \"prescribing\" this and something different-where my \"Yes, he treats the issue it indicates too simply. \"proscribing\" that; it is not simply a matter but\" answers the \"This is so, isn't it?\" that For Leavis, it seems to mean simply \"mind- of \"literary values.\" For many students and less promiscuity,\" and a trivializing of sex- readers (myself among them, though I Leavis proposes. I take my stand on fun- ual relationships. One can hardly doubt never, to my now deep regret, made con- damental Leavisian principles. Like that the move towards \"permissiveness\" tact with him beyond the lecture theater), Leavis, I believe that\" 'Life' is a necessary in our society carries these dangers, but it he has given life value, or revealed its po- word\"; like him, I can think of nowhere but cannot simply be equated with them. tential value. I, on the other hand, am not in individual lives that \"social hope\" could an original thinker, and I have never be located; like him, I find all questions of As a homosexual (for the sake of hon- achieved the purity and integrity that artistic quality inseparable from a concern esty my personal interest in the issue must Leavis so impressively represents. with the quality of life-both individual be made clear), I am profoundly grateful lives and the life of the culture within that my adult life is being lived now rather That the point needs to be made at all which they develop. And, as a university than fifty years ago, when I could scarcely testifies only to the injustice that is com- lecturer, I endorse unreservedly Leavis's have written these words or found a pub- monly done Leavis, by distortion or view of the university's function as \"a crea- lisher willing to print them. The failure of simplification. Like the work of a great art- tive center of civilization,\" with the full creativity that Leavis diagnoses in E. M. ist, Leavis's writing cannot be reduced or force he gives to the word\"creative.\" Forster cannot be explained simply in paraphrased; yet it is through paraphrase, Leavis's indispensability can be summed terms of \"coteries\"; one can trace through- usually amounting to parody, that it seems up by saying that he stands for all those out Forster's work the blocking of creative most current-certainly in film circles. As aspects and potentials of critical discourse energies by a self-imposed (but socially de- for the force and cogency of Leavis's argu- that Screen appears bent on suppressing. termined) censorship. That I am able to live ments: where, indeed, are the Snows of (My choice of word is deliberate. It is not happily and openly with another man, yesteryear? Yet it is distressing that simply that Leavis's concerns are ignored: without fear of police harassment and acknowledgment of that cogency remains one of the effects of the critical language without the least sense of social ostracism, largely tacit. The figures Leavis demolishes that the Marxistisemiologists are seeking to is a phenomenon that I take to be insepar- are quietly dropped, but the \"culture\" they impose is to make discussion of them im- able from the development of \"permis- represent stubbornly continues. possible.) My view of art and its function has been sufficiently defined, in FILM COMMENT and elsewhere, for further recapitulation to be unnecessary; the reader will be aware, at least, of broad areas of common ground I share with (or have inherited from) Leavis. And yet, while insisting on the necessary centrality and dominance of questions of value and quality, I feel there are perfectly valid interests in art which Leavis's approach (while it doesn't ~ preclude them) doesn't actively favor: an ~ interest, for example, in the way in which ~ the development of popular genres reflects u:: the essential movement of the society that produces them-an interest .that would >< involve the exploration of areas and levels that the Leavisian concern with value 'o\" tends to reject wholesale. >- ~ z &aII~;\"':3I!!I\"\"L.JII\" Tensions in TOUT VA BIEN: Jane Fonda and Yves Montand FILM COMMENT 31

siveness.\" I offer it here as one small con- tion, because it separates art-expression own proclivities here are doubtless influ- crete example of potentialities for life that from our normal primary means of com- enced by the fact that music, rather than the relaxing of social taboos has made pos- munication (we cannot talk to one another literature, has always been for me the most sible. (Society still has a long way to go; I in images). Yet the cinema has established personally important of the arts. am well aware of that. My own relative itself-beyond dispute, I think-as a freedom is dependent upon the circles in medium for total human expression as It will be recognized that these are not which, as university lecturer and film cri- complex and comprehensive as the drama simply local differences. They inevitably tic, I move.) or the novel. I would not want to argue affect, directly or indirectly, every area of that the English School to which Leavis as- my own work; and I cannot but suspect More widely, those potentials must be cribes \"a central function\" in the university that, from Leavis's point of view, they are seen in relation to the way in which the should be superseded by a School of Film; I sufficient to place me in the enemy camp, traditional notion of marriage-and-family would certainly wish the two to exist in as an agent of dissolution. But, like a great has relaxed its ideological grip. In a trul y close and fruitful partnership, and a artist, a great critic doesn't have to be fully healthy society (or so it seems to me) , partnership in which the junior member agreed with to be accepted as a major force marriage-and-family would be regarded would gradually rise to a level of equality. in one's life and values. Leavis is one of the as one of several possible options; a society The presence of such a School of Film great radical minds of the twentieth that insists upon it as the one true norm would enormously facilitate the work of century-by which I mean that he con- and a society that regards it as outmoded liaison to which Leavis (rightly, of course) fronts us, everywhere, with the essential and ridiculous should be equally unac- attaches such importance-film relating issues about art, civilization, and life. ceptable. Deliberately childless marriage, naturally, by virtue of its hybrid charac- celibacy, impermanent unions, homosex- teristics, to so many seemingly disparate As I write this, I am planning my univer- ual union , would be other options ac- disciplines. sity course for next year; and its basis, I cepted by society and open to its mem bers. know, must be a confrontation of Leavis So, if they ever proved workable, would Third, if Leavis came to acknowledge and Godard. Nor Shall My Sword will be an the importance of film, he would be forced obligatory text, and TOur VA BIEN an ob- more complicated setups from the menage a to modify his position vis: a-vis national ligatory film . What will arise from this vital culture, and his emphasis on continuity tension is not yet clear to me. But what is trois to the commune (which might itself within a peculiarly British tradition. Claims clear is that therein lies a challenge that contain all the various possibilities within for the universality of film have perhaps makes most of the current fuss about criti- it) . I don't see that an emphasis on the in- been exaggerated, and problems of trans- cal positions seem merely trivial. The chal- cultural understanding correspondingly lenge lies, essentially, in the necessity for dividual and social need for responsibility played down. Paul Willemen clarifies the attending to both voices without facilely re- in life and in relationships is incompatible issue admirably in a useful article in Screen jecting the one or the other-in placing with such an ideal. Whereas Leavis's ten- (Winter 1974175): oneself at the center of a fruitful dialectic dency is to discriminate against \"permis- that will have as its unifying focus a sense siveness,\" mine is to discriminate within it. \" . . .The film maker cannot but organize of human needs. the text in function of his own internal • speech . If the director is Japanese , the I have no wish to set myself up as the Japanese language will be present in that enemy of social revolution. Capitalism, The other area where I find it necessary film, even if it is utterly silent and without with its combination of injustice and ineffi- to dissociate myself from Leavis is, inevit- any intertitles . ... On the other hand, the ciency, could only seem desirable as the ably, the cinema-though the implications reader cannot but have recourse to his least of possible evils. Besides, the go far beyond a fondness for films . About own, necessarily limited, knowledge of capitalist system is obviously entering the the cinema, Leavis is silent; for me, it has languages to activate the signifying struc- phase of final disintegration . I believe that become the central focus for creativity in tures of the text. It should be stressed that revolution may come, and there are many the twentieth century, taking over from the this does not mean that it is impossible to compelling reasons for welcoming it. I see novel as the novel took over from poetry in read a text which was composed within my own role, however (because-deter- the nineteenth. There seem to me three the domain of another language, as the mined, no doubt, by the \"dominant ideol- main reasons why Leavis should find it code of internal speech is only one of the ogy,\" by the complex cultural tradition that convenient to igno're (or should choose to many codes at work in the text, the vast has produced me, and to which I am in remain unaware of) the achievements of majority of which are cross-cultural. But many ways unrepentantly grateful to film, and between them they cover the this presence of internal speech, tied to a belong-I am what I am), as existing out- cinema fairly comprehensively. specific verbal language, nevertheless side the revolution. I see my work as an at- deals a serious blow to any notion of the tempt to uphold values widely regarded as First, he would be forced to redefine- cinema as some 'universal' language. . . .\" irrelevant or retrograde but which, and in far more complex terms-his at- nevertheless, seem to me still worth pre- titude to twentieth-century popular cul- Despite the doubts this raises, it is obvi- serving, if they can be preserved. ture . There are immense differences be- ous enough that a foreign film can com- tween the Elizabethan drama and the Hol- municate on the visual (and, dialogue Perhaps the revolution, when it comes, lywood cinema (and they are mostly to apart, auditory) level without the inter- will sweep these values away, together Hollywood's disadvantage); if the cinema mediary of a translator. We do see with everything that I understand by the has produced its Shakespeare, it is not Mizoguchi's images; we don't read term \"art.\" (Those who have really ex- within the English-speaking world . Yet, if Tolstoy's words. Hence an interest in film posed themselves to Godard's recent one is looking for something one might (especially since, if the critic is British and films, for example, will not, I hope, regard reasonably call \"Shakespearean\" art (in the centrally concerned with value, he will this as mere hysteria .) On the other hand, sense in which Leavis sees Dickens as its find little to sustain him within the cinema revolutions are seldom so absolute and last representative), one would do better to of his own national tradition) is likely to permanent, and our Marxists may not find explore THE SEARCHERS, RIO BRAVO, and take in, and even be centered on, such fi- it so easy to impose, universally, a single VERTIGO than to await the emergence of a gures as Renoir, Godard, Chabrol, way of looking at the world-especially new popular novelist, dramatist, or poet. Bergman, Satyajit Ray, Ozu, Mizoguchi; where other highly developed cultural and this will inevitably threaten one's traditions are still strong. Second, the fact that film represents a sense of the integrity of a national culture. movement away from language to The film critic tends necessarily towards I believe in art, in democracy, and in the images-a dislodging of language as the the international and cosmopolitan. My value of the individual life-the three go- prime means of creative communication -would constitute a serious obstacle to ing, for me, indissolubly together. ® Leavis's acceptance of it as the central art form of our time. That dislodgment clearly has far-reaching consequences for civiliza- 32 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

MEDIA: Stills, sound, and film are most com- anonymous Boston voices to provide a plexly used by the team of John Butman, SHOOTING MINUfEMEN Dick Carey, and Paul Johnson for THE running commentary. CONCORD CONSCIENCE at the Permanent Russell, not a Bostonian (he's done THE ON SPUT SCREENS Bicentennial Memorial Arts Center in that suburban (really exurban) town, no doubt NEW YORK EXPERIENCE, THE SAN FRANCISCO by Stuart Byron because they want to make the most com- EXPERIENCE, and THE HAWAII EXPERIENCE) plex point. To them, Concord is America's and therefore not partisan, is remarkably Remember 1967? The New York Times and symbol of dissent, going way back to King honest and fair-or at least he seems so other trend barometers all told us how the Philip's War in Colonial days-when In- when compared to propagandists like On- split-screen shorts in the pavilions at Expo dians rebelled against the Puritan tario's Chapman. Every celebration of Bos- were going to revolutionize Hollywood intruders-on through the celebrated ton's Brahmin heritage is matched by a filmmaking. Directors like Norman Jewi- Revolutionary Battle and Thoreau's civilly questioning of its provinciality. The ethnic son and Ralph Nelson made the trek to disobedient night in jail, until that time, unity of South Boston or Roxbury is bal- Montreal and came back to report that they just this April, when the People's Bicen- anced by the city-wide divisions they pro- had seen the light and that it came from tennial dissented from the official one that duced during last year's busing brouhaha. twenty different projectors running at the President Ford (dis)graced with his pre- Good urban renewal (Ada Louise Huxta- same time. sence. ble's pet project, Government Center) is followed by honest admission of bad (the But split-screen usage proved to have This mannekin of British Lieutenant Colin Townsend is notorious Charles River Plaza). The post- limited application to fiction film. By defin- part of White Oak Design ' s THE WHITES OF THEIR war transformation of its metropolitan area ition, split screens are anti-linear; they are EYES, at the Raytheon Bunker Hill Pavilion. into the technological center of the country designed to express simultaneity, and is correctly seen as having been Boston's more often than not just bring narrative The point made comes across as unified economic salvation following the mass films to boring halts; failing that, they do rather than simplistic, achieving that effect exodus of the textile and leather the opposite-make points much too ob- not so much by words as by split-screen industries-and then correctly seen also viously or symbolically to suit the relatively visuals; it makes sense that a still of an In- as having made the city particularly prone leisurely pace of the feature-length fiction dian on the left and one of an April dis- to recessions. Which brings me to the prob- movie. (Yes, we know that Thomas senter on the right should enframe some lem with this dazzling extravaganza: it's Crown's appeal is athletic as well as sexual; actor dressed up in Revolutionary garb in too honest. In bending over backwards to yes, we know that most of Superfly' s center screen. But perhaps because they be fair, WHERE'S BOSTON? comes across in cocaine is bought by whites in parts of aim so high, the makers of THE CONCORD New York other than Harlem.) CONSOENCE are the least successful of the its entirety as made by a group of comput- three; when you zigzag through centuries, ers and calculators with cybernetic per- But I've always felt that the technique, you lose the internal coherence of more sonalities. So Rusty Russell's profes- theoretically at least, should work in a limited visions. Mundane faults are more sionalism is both asset and liability in this short format; after all, the obvious for- isolated, thus more accentuated, such as nonetheless extraordinary film. malism of rhyme and meter is wrong for bad acting (with which THE CONCORD CON- the novel but the very stuff of poetry. Yet, SCIENCE is rife) or limited camera viability But the most solid success without leaving aside the underground cinema, (you don't have much choice of placement question-the one, I think, that will be- the examples I'd seen had disappointed when you're in the tiny rooms of restored come a multi-media classic-is White Oak me-most especially Expo's most honored Puritan houses). Design's THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES which sensation, Christopher Chapman's was constructed by Raytheon, in the Oscar-winning A PLACE TO STAND, with its In contrast, Rusty Russell's WHERE'S Bunker Hill Pavilion in the area of Boston pedestrian shots of farming and skyscrap- BOSTON?, at Prudential Insurance's Bicen- known as Charlestown. Stills, voices, ers demonstrating to us the diversity of tennial Pavilion in downtown Boston, is maps, sound effects, flashing lights, even Ontario as some imitation of the Robert more limited in scope but, perhaps for that life-sized mannequins are employed to re- Shaw Chorale sang the provincial anthem reason, more successful. As opposed to produce the 1775 battle in a way that man- on the soundtrack. Yuccchhhh! the other Bicentennial films, WHERE'S BOS- ages to be both immediate and reflective in TON? is strictly contemporary in subject the space of twenty minutes. Without the Now, however, and with almost no fan- matter, its seven screens of constantly soundtrack once departing from period fare outside the city, three excellent exam- changing still photographs representing documents (mostly letters written by ples of multi-media presentations are on today's city while the soundtrack leaves it British and colonial soldiers), the film view in Boston in the various pavilions to a cacophony of real-life and mostly clearly presents itself as having been made scattered around the city and its environs within the shadow of Vietnam. All of that for the Bicentennial celebration. And they noise, blood, death, and agony produced a do prove that what seems obtrusively poe- Pyrrhic victory for Britain, and by the time, tic in the prosaic fiction feature can be near the end, when a British lieutenant economical and just in a short which tries writes home that \"there must be some way to bring together different levels of experi- to fight this war without battling over ence, be they historical or sociological. every little hillock,\" you've both thought Perhaps that demonstration had to wait for about and felt the extent to which the a celebration in a place which is proud of its American Revolution was the first guerrilla avoidance of celebration. One of the films war. (I'll call them that, despite their usage of still photography and live mannequins in Ironically, THE WHITES OF THEIR EYES some cases) was made on a grant from the sabotages its own reason for being, ex- state Bicentennial commission, the other plains why this Bicentennial is a flop. (Bos- two sponsored by corporations-but the ton tourism, for one, is running about half makers of all three were remarkably free to of expectations.) Who wants to celebrate be dubious about this country's two hun- us doing to someone what someone else dredth birthday. They end with questions just did to us? At least the Bicentennial has rather than answers. produced three excellent split-screen movies, and it's worth going to Boston just to see them, even if you skip the U.S.S . Constitution and the Old South Church.'$ FILM COMMENT 33

FILM SQUARE VS. MOVIE HIP by Stuart Byron TELE- I recently discovered the list below in an old notebook. Physical evidence suggests that VISION I scribbled it down one day in 1963 or 1964 as a graduate student at Columbia University's Department of Film, Radio and Television in what was then called the Graduate School TVTV of the Arts, where I felt very lonely indeed as the sole \"auteurist\" of any kind . (This was some five years before Andrew Sarris's entrance into the Department.) by Renee Epstein It's an imitation of the celebrated divisions of the whole world into Hip and Square \"Video Programming or Non-Fiction categories by Norman Mailer in his Advertisements for Myself (1959) . Mailer's hilarious list television is the form that TVTV has cho- was sometimes obvious (Square: programmatic; Hip: inductive), sometimes obvious sen since our porta-pak coverage of the after a moment's thought (Square: Aldous Huxley; Hip: D.H. Lawrence), sometimes 1972 Democrat-Republican Conventions playful (Square: Single Wing; Hip: T-formation), sometimes cleverly canny (Square: in Miami, Florida. We have chosen this Marx as a sociologist; Hip: Marx as a psychologist), sometimes cosmically canny (Square: focus because television is the most impor- Protestant; Hip: Catholic). tant information form in our culture. TV viewing has become a ritual with connota- I doubt if my own attempt achieves such variety, but I publish it now more as a histor- tions beyond the actual content of the ical document-one which catches, I think, that moment in the history of film criticism programming. The act itself has value in- when an Establishment was bracing itself for an attack from a rude intruder. Some of it, of dependent of the content. course, is dated (SUNDAY IN NEW YORK was taken up by Movie, and its director, Peter Tewksbury, considered promising for a while; Ealing comedy is now seen, even by au- \" In late 1969-with the availability of teurists, as the most important British cinema after Hitchcock; Bergman would soon porta-pak-and early 1970, the means of begin a new period with PERSONA), though even today most film criticism is \"square\" on television production were radically de- the journalistic level. In any case, I have made no attempt to update it. How could one? In centralized, thus creating groups of inde- the academy, at least, auteurism is the Establishment defending itself from the Semiolog- pendent television-makers. At that time, icalonslaught. we thought that the means of distribution were also going to decentralize. But we The polarizing state of mind that goes into all this categorizing is, of course, what miscalculated. And so we decide to build Robert Frost wrote about: \"I never dared be radical when youngl For fear it would make an enclave within the existing system and me conservative when old.\" work toward revolutionizing the medium. We are concerned with technological ex- SQUARE HIP perimentation and are, in effect, inventing a tradition.\" Pudovkin Dovzhenko Eisenstein's silent films Eisenstein's sound films Michael Shamberg, the articulate camera movement spokesman for one of the most successful editing Hitchcock as a metaphysician video groups actively working in the coun- Hitchcock as a technician film as a mixed form try, TVTV (for Top Value Television), be- \"pure filmic expression\" Arthur Penn lieves that television-making is a political Stanley Kubrick ILLICIT INTERLUDE process that affects the artists as well as the THE VIRGIN SPRI NG Ford's influence on Welles viewing public. The first stage of \"con- Eisenstein's influence on Welles Valerio Zurlini sciousness-raising\" was to inform people Ermanno Olmi Minnelli's dramas working within the industry and the pub- Minnelli's musicals Technicolor as a lic that a new technology was available . Technicolor as antipathetic to Low cost portable video, the time-base cor- neutral factor rector (which solved the problem of broad- \"serious\" filmmaking the cinematic challenge of confining casting non-quad formats), and the cur- the cinematic challenge of finding rent research on a color porta-pak (which a play to its one set will equal the cost, flexibility, stylistic ad- a way to \"open up\" a play Manny Farber vantage, case of operation, and size of off- past film history as a the-shelf monochrome models) have now James Agee led to the second stage: the awareness that past film history as a series of tradition video technology can be used to expand Rossellini perception. This involves the active par- contributions to film language BREAKFAST ATTIFFANYS ticipation of the viewing public in their crit- Lang after FURY ical evaluation of the content of program- DeSica Vigo as superior to Clair ming. But what information conveyed by SUNDAY IN NEW YORK THE BIG SLEEP the medium is valuable, and what kind of Lang before FURY good direction of otherwise bad actors entertainment enhances their awareness Clair and Vigo as equals John Wayne as both symbol and actor instead of numbing it? THE MALTESE FALCON Bogart's good fortune in working good acting in otherwise bad films \"My theory about television,\" Sham- John Wayne as a symbol with great directors berg says, \"is that it is basically a behav- Bogart's transcendence of his Bergman before SMILES OF ASUMMER ioral medium, and not analytic. You can NIGHT see this evidenced in news reportage. It directors Ford after 1948 has been found, for example, that news- Bergman after SMILES OF ASUMMER Losey before EVA casters speak with an inflection that is in- Michel Deville NIGHT Claude Chabrol Ford before 1950 Otto Preminger Losey since EVA THE CARDINAL Philippe de Broca good films and bad films Louis Malle American comedy 1935-41 Andre Cayatte nonsense The Deputy Kenji Mizoguchi entertainment films and art films genre seen as helpful to British comedy 1948-53 self-expression slapstick Akira Kurosawa Griffith's growth \"t\"f. genre seen as detrimental to self-expression Griffith's decline 34 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

digenous to no region in the United States. department was there. What this meant is wonderful and we thought that it would Political reporting has been either stand- was that the entire nation's television news be an entertaining and informative exami- up journalism, where someone stands up system was focused on this site. This was nation of a small pocket of American cul- and tells you what is going on, or sit-down our opportunity to test both our tech- ture. It was Paul Goldsmith, the camera- analysis, where someone sits in a swivel nology-style and our viability as an alter- man, who suggested the idea. The tape is chair in a studio and tells you what has al- nate news service which would be a video virtually all in color and we took great ready happened. Talk show personalities analog to the so-called 'News Journalism' pains in the quality of our sound and video are people whose personalities are solely of print recording. My 'Washington recording. But Paul is concerned that the geared for television performance. Bureau' would be an experiment in alter- show does not show the affection that we native ways to run a news gathering or- felt toward the people which is a crucial \"Format is the language of television. It ganization. Our coverage of the Conven- element in documentary.\" varies from the news, to The Tonight Shaw, tions resulted in two one-hour programs to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It is the for- that cost $15,000 an !hour.\" This raises an important question about mat that the viewer remembers-not the the process of the genre itself. Non- content, not the characters, not the story- In January of 1974, NET-Channel 13 fictional studies are dependent upon the line. And it is because of this stylization New York aired \"The Lord of the Uni- ability of the entire crew to gather informa- that no behavioral models are given that re- verse\", a sixty-minute documentary about tion from subjects. It is also a self-reflexive late to our real life. What we have tried to \"Millenium 73,\" which took place in the behavior study of the documentary team do in our documentaries is to project the as it interacts with its subjects. This prob- point of view of the subject, to try and get Houston Astrodome in Texas. It was a be- lem of the psychological inter-relations be- as dose as possible to the behavior as we havioral study of the sixteen-year-old tween subject and interviewer was raised found it. The bias that we bring to the Guru Maharij ji and his followers. The film in TVTV's controversial sixty-minute tape, material is hopefully the bias that is in the won the DuPont/Columbia University \"In Hiding,\" an interview with Abbie material itself. award for Excellence in Broadcast Jour- Hoffman. nalism. Following this production, David \"We work in pure television. When we Loxton, director of NET's Television Lab, \"I was attracted to the Abbie Hoffman look at the rushes, we are looking at televi- contracted TVTV to do five hours of pro- project because a political fugitive makes sion. When we are making aesthetic gramming. They were given $185,000, for an interesting story. I was also curious judgments, we make them on the basis of $45,000 of which was kept for NET post- to find out whether this was going to be a what will make an exciting and honest pre- production work and hardware costs. catalyst for radical political activity in the sentation. Because video is more economi- 1970's. I wanted Abbie to take us through cal than film, we have more freedom and The first program under this contract the process of going underground. I control, in terms of style. If you can shoot was Gerald Ford's America, a series of four wanted him to extrapolate from that and unlimited footage in a natural situation, tapes that examined the power bases in do an analysiS of the underground as an you tend to get more spontaneity from the Washington D.C. during the first one organizing operation, and then I wanted subject. You tend to receive a different hundred days of the Ford administration. him to give a radical's analysis of the politi- kind of behavioral response. After all, tele- \"WIN\" dealt with the nature of the Presi- cal state of the country. If you look at the vision is about interaction: subject/camera, dency and included coverage of the Fall out-takes-I don't have a copy because subject/environment, and subject/subject. campaign; \"Second Hand News\" they are hidden away-you will see me examined the coverage by the White firing questions along these lines, which \"My 'political' interest in video involves House Press Corps; \"The Hill\" focused on he did not answer. I tried to provoke him examining power centers, and stripping il- the Congress and its role in the political and they resulted in good interchanges. lusion off of power. TV1V has tried to be process. Shamberg says, \"Only one of the But on the whole, he ignored my questions 'political' in its choice of production in Washington tapes, I think, is a totally good and the performance strain on both of us order to have an effect on the industry it- show, 'Chic to Sheik.' It is a heavy infor- caused people to comment that I was hos- self. After doing a lot of theoretical work mational tape that reveals the behavior of tile to him. and informal tapes, we decided to see if we Washington society in an almost value-free could work with video professionally out- anthropological way.\" \"My feeling about Abbie is that people side the networks. And so, in 1972, we have a very heavy stereotype of him. I went to the Democrat-Republican Con- Another \"anthropological\" study is found out that it cuts both ways. When we ventions. This was the first time, inciden- \"The Good Times Are Killing Me,\" a showed the tapes to people on the left, tally, that half-inch tape was processed sixty-minute program which has been they were angry because we had disturbed through the time-base corrector to give it aired on public television. It is a tape about their myth which is Abbie: a humorous, broadcast quality. Every network news the Cajun people which was filmed on lo- insightful, courageous, respected political cation in Mamou, Louisiana. \"Their music activist. On the other hand, there is Abbie the media freak, who will stop at nothing Cameraman Allen Rucker films \"The Good Times are to get publicity. My feelings about Abbie Killing Me\" for TVTV. fall somewhere in between. He is a courageous political figure who deserves the same kind of scrutiny that would be given to any other serious political person- ality. There is another aspect to Abbie. He is a thirty-eight-year-old man who is appa- rently going through personality changes and he is using politics to work it out. This is an era of psychological transformation which is independent of his politics. I found the encounter fascinating. \"1 think that Abbie wanted to do the in- terview for several reasons. He wanted publicity. He wanted to make a statement to let people know that he was alive, and I think that he wanted to check out his act. CONTINUED ON PAGE 38 FILM COMMENT 35

NEW YORK FILM until we hear her monologue being under- simultaneously gives her greatest perfor- t cut by other voices, other moods. Some- mance and slides into some kind of mysti- FESTIVAL PREVIEW: times this is Davy's commentary, through cal trance in which self-absorption be- J his mise-en-scene, on the action (one out- comes self-illumination. Davy treats the Richard Corliss on doorsy scene, in which Claudine and Did- scene as if he were Freud and Claudine I ier walk along holding hands and whisper- were Anna O . being hypnotized before re- EXHIBITION ing endearments, is shot as a parody of vealing her darkest secrets. And sure Lelouch romanticism.) At other times, the enough, Claudine finally tells us that her EXHIBITION comes to the United States tension comes directly through the mater- uncle raped her when she was fourteen, with a misleading reputation as France's ial. The interview between Claudine and and that to cover for him she was sent to first hard-core sex film. There are, in fact, her mother begins with la mere Beccarie reform school. five or six hard-core sex scenes in the film. trying valiantly to appear blase and liber- But, for a start, EXHIBITION is-in the ated (\"making love is part of life\" ). But Two things make this scene interesting: words of its \"star,\" Claudine Beccarie- gradually, as the story of Claudine's in- Davy's filming of the entire sequence- \" not an erotic film but a film about the pro- carceration emerges, and as we learn that masturbation and confession-in one fession of an actress who makes erotic her mother rarely if ever visited her, the ten-minute take, which underlines the films.\" As such, it's very much in the strain becomes more palpable-and more sense that a force of nature is being documentary tradition. You get the usual veritable, since it is expressed not through watched unawares; and the fact that it's accumulation of \"found\" information and some Odetsian family explosion but in the hard to be sure just how much of nuances; the usual footage of the subject at sudden glazing-over of the mother's eyes. Claudine's confession is true. Like her work (performing sex for fame and profit); mother, Claudine seems to be \"acting\" the usual waiting around (not so much Even the sex scenes tell us something most aggressively when she's \"being within a sequence as within a single shot) about Claudine that she never articulates: real\"-when she's talking about her life for something interesting to happen; and her preference for mirror-image sex. In the and hard times. It's when she performs the rare \" privileged moment\" when (again first scene-an \"audition\" with a nervous that she's most spontaneous and persua- within a single shot) something unusual young man-she is a fault-finding, ulti- sive. Vladimir Nabokov once argued that happens-with the cinema verite camera mately castrating taskmaster, asking the the problem with sex films is the lack of not provoking but heightening the sense boy sarcastically why he insists on \"knead- training most hard-core actors have had in of discovery on both sides of the screen. ing\" her breasts (\" I was a baker in my expressing emotions through their actions. youth,\" he answers lamely) and charging Claudine's performance here refutes the Second, the French accent in EXHIBITION that, \"If you really wanted to please me, I'd point; she could easily be the Stanislavsky is less that of porno postcards and the want you.\" With Benoit, a fellow sex-star, of porn. Like Fred Astaire, it's when she's Folies Bergere, and more the image of her attitude is one of professional respect not \"in motion\" that she's out of her ele- France projected by the Nouvelle Vague and camaraderie; one might almost call it ment, and most vulnerable to provoking and its succeeding ripples: the image of Hawksian. In a group scene with Fred- misunderstandings. self-involved, aggressively articulate young people, and of a bourgeoisie defin- enque, whose auto-erotic performance Eric Bentley said that criticizing stage act- ing and defending its territory against the Claudine encourages and then joins, she is ing is difficult because it's like \" walking encroachments of age and insecurity. If for the first time both passionate and affec- over live bodies\"; and writing this kind of Claudine Beccarie is an interesting subject tionate; her \"oui,\" in response to the off- dossier on the subject of a documentary for a documentary, it's partly because she screen director's question, \"Would you has the same pitfalls. But it's a measure of contains both of these images, and because like to kiss Frederique?\", is spoken with a Davy's (and Claudine's) achievement that her attempts to resolve them, or even live naive tenderness she hasn't shown before. Claudine has the rich complexities of a with them, are mostly unconscious. She's character out of the best fiction, and that an attractive bundle of contradictions Playfulness gives way to a startling in- one is challenged to delineate these com- which she herself seems hardly to tensity in Claudine's own masturbation plexities in writing about the film . For, fi- understand-but which the alert viewer scene. The genial (if quietly disturbing) nally, EXHIBITION is an act, not of ind~cent can , through the psychological over- tone of the preceding ninety minutes is exposure, but of human revelation.~-;. exposure of cinerna verite. dropped, and for seven minutes Claudine Crisscross strands of puritanism and libertine-liberation are woven throughout the fabric of her personality. As Claudine tells her own story, she was born into a strict Parisian family, was a Girl Scout and a Cadet of Mary, was forbidden to date boys-but at fourteen, was sent to a re- form school. Upon her discharge five years later, she drifted into brothels in Grenoble and then in Spain, where she also made some \"legit\" films. Back in France, and after a brief marriage, she began acting in soft-core sex films, including a few (PRENEZ LA QUEUE COMME TOUT LE MONDE and BANANES MECANIQUES) directed by EXHI- BITION ' S Jean-Fran~ois Davy. Today, at thirty, proud of her bisexuality, her young boyfriend Didier, and her status as France's premier porn star, she is \"very, very happy.\" We tend to believe this picaresque tale (\"The Fall and Rise of Claudine Beccarie\") 3 6 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW: Richard Roud on THE STORY OF ADELE H. \"It is unbelievable that a girl who is so much a slave that she can not go out alone for five minutes to buy a paper should walk on the sea, cross over the sea, pass from the old world to the new world to re- join her lover: but that unbelievable thing I will do .\" These are the words of Adele H ., l the subject of Fran~ois Truffaut's newest film; and the story of how these words came down to us could make the subject of J another film. Adele H . was the daughter of Victor Isabelle Adjani in THE STORY OF ADELE H . Hugo, and although her elder sister at- tained immortality through her tragic death by droWning and her father's sub- sequent commemorative poem, the story of Adele is known by hardly anyone. She did leave behind an enormous intimate diary, but it was written in code, and has only recently been deciphered and printed thanks to the efforts of a Mrs. Frances Ver- nor Guille, professor at Wooster College in Ohio! Her field had always been the Hugo family, and while working on her doctoral dissertation, she became aware of Adele's diary which had been dispersed over the years: part of it even turned out to be in New York at the Morgan Library. It was over five years ago that Truffaut (an om- nivorous reader) came across the pub- lished portions of the diary, and decided then that he would some day make a film Isabelle Adjani and Franc;ois Truffaut. about Adele. \"Up until now,\" he has said, \"I have always made films about children be read in the next century: \"I am a woman help us swaJlow the enormous contradic- or films about love. But the love films were of the nineteenth century who is addres- tions of this complex character. And she about two people, sometimes three (juLES sing herself to the twentieth.\" And phrases succeeds to a degree one would not have & JIM, lWO ENGLISH GIRLS) . What I liked in like \"I find marriage a humiliating thing for thought possible for such a young actress . the story of Adele was the possibility of a woman\" have a definitely twentieth- Truffaut hasn't given us such a complete telling a love story with only one person. century ring to them . Indeed, she wanted woman character since JULES AND JIM . But And indeed, it is a one-sided love story. to write a book that would help to liberate the two films THE STORY OF ADELE H . re- Adele had followed her father into exile on women, \"a book which would not be sembles most are TWO ENGLISH GIRLS in its the island of Guernsey, and there she feJl laughed at-in a hundred years.\" emotional quality, and THE WILD OiILD in in love with a young English lieutenant. But at the same time, she very much its simplicity and rigor of treatment. He was attracted to her, but when his reg- wanted to marry her lieutenant. Another \"I don't know why I have made a film iment left the island, the thing, for him, paradox: although in her journal she com- like this-a film so sad,\" Truffaut has said. was over. Not so for Adele, who foJlowed pares the state of married women with that \"But an ideefixe has something vertiginous him first to Nova Scotia and then to Bar- of prostitutes-whom she also considered about it and I think I must have been drag- bados. Hers was not the typical romantic her sisters-she went to incredible lengths ged into that whirlpool. To reinforce the obsession, for she remained very much her to achieve that state. And of course she obsessional nature of the story, I avoided a own woman even when, paradoxicaJly, failed; that she will fail is clear from the be- lot of historical baCkground. I wanted to she was throwing herself at his feet. She ginning of the film . create a climate that would be stifling, and dressed up as a man in order to meet him An extraordinary woman, and an ex- at a baJl, and she even arranged for him to that is why almost the whole film is shot in sleep with a whore (whom she had paid) traordinary actress had to be found to play interiors. It's a film about claustrophobia, so she could watch. the role. Truffaut found her in the person loneliness, and passion.\" Small wonder then that the strain even- of IsabeJle Adjani, a twenty-year-old girl Never before has Truffaut gotten so tuaJly became too much for her, and in who was already a pensionnaire at the close to the end of the abyss as in this film, Barbados she went mad. J3rought back to Comedie Fran~aise, and had one film (LE France (she was forty-two by then), she GIFLE) and a lot of television work behind and some may find themselves wishing for spent the last forty years of her life in an in- her. Her performance is such that it seems the light tone of DAY FOR NIGHT or STOLEN sane asylum, dying only in 1915, forgotten to me clear that she is destined to become KISSES; not I. This is Truffaut's fourteenth by everyone. But her journal stiJI existed, one of the big stars of the Seventies. She feature, and it shows us another side to that journal which she prophesied would has to carry the whole film, to make us his genius, one which we have indeed sympathize with Adele's obsessions, to glimpsed before, but which is here fuJly realized. ~. FILM COMMENT 37

FILM FESTIVAL of the film's many moments of gently exclaiming with real passion to the prompted revelation, the Maysles brothers filmmakers: \"I love you.\" Scornful at first, PREVIEW: observe the old lady sitting in her bed lit- then finally outraged as she sees her ward tered with the debris of years, wearing a attempting to escape, Mrs. Beale rises from Charles Michener on huge straw sunhat and singing, in a per- her bed and demands over and over again fect echo of Gertrude Lawrence, \"Tea for that Edie shut up. As the battle of nerves GREY GARDENS Two.\" In another, she grandly encourages and wills rages, what has been implicit all one of her cats to relieve itself behind a dis- along becomes dear: if the Maysles have Cinema verite, which has fallen into low carded, gilt-framed oil portrait of herself as been exploiting their subjects, the subjects estate in recent years-thanks to the likes a glamorous society woman of the Twen- have been exploiting them as well. And it's of public television's An American ties. In one breath, she rhapsodizes about a tug-of-war of equals, for in Edith and Family-is triumphantly vindicated by Al- the beauty of her daughter as a young New Edie Beale, the Maysles are luckily con- bert and David Maysles's GREY GARDENS, York debutante; in the next, while Edie tending with subjects that every cinema an extraordinarily crafty invasion into the preens before the camera, she maliciously verite film must have to succeed-brilliant, lives of Edith Beale and her daughter Edie, makes fun of her daughter'S spreading better known as Jacqueline Onassis's im- frame. genuine performers. 'f-Ii poverished aunt and first cousin, whose own fallen estate in East Hampton, Long With a mother who at best is an amusing CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35 Island, made gossipy headlines a few tyrant, Edie Beale herself is at best a valiant years ago. After a Wellesian nod to those victim. Her face carefully made up, her Watching the video was a form of feed- headlines and the local scandal that gener- head swathed in a succession of tight- back for him. I had a small monitor set up ated them, and after a graceful, passing fitting scarves and hoods (which leads one for him. It was an experiment for him and a admission of their own presence as to wonder whether she shaves her head), learning experience for me. If I had the filmmakers, the Maysles brothers prowl she emerges as a self-made nun in heat. As whole thing to do again, I would have the dilapidated Beale manse with an un- a debutante in a fascinating series of old stopped in the middle and asked Abbie to blinking cool-underscored by an ironic, family photographs, she was indeed sit down with me to discuss what we each growing compassion-that achieves what beautiful-a vivacious, leggy girl with wanted from the interview. I think that we cinema verite aims for but seldom conveys: a Miss America looks. Now, as seen by the made some stylistic errors and that we sense that the material is telling itself. Maysles, she is a still-handsome enlarge- could have found a more effective way of ment of herself, a cut-up in thickening presenting our information. What we tried In the course of the film's feature-length middle age. Turned on by the presence of to do in Abbie's segment of the tape was to running time, that material becomes the camera and the unobtrusive but unrus- be as fair as possible to his presentation. In hypnotic-as much so as the story of the guised encouragement of the Maysles, she our segment, we intentionally took an ad- stunted lives of Miss Havisham and her mugs shamelessly as she rambles on about versary position in order to balance the ward Estelle in Great Expectations, or of her former promise as a cabaret performer, piece with our critical statement.\" Faulkner's ghoulish spinster in\"A Rose for the men she almost married, the glamor- Emily.\" Squatting dimly in the midst of ous life she could have had-but, and TVTV is currently working on a script Long Island's gold coast, a falling-down here she is touchingly uncertain, for the which is a historical treatment of the first frame house behind tattered privet hedges needs of her mother. A grotesque figure of seventy years of television, from 1930- and a briar patch of unpruned trees and bathos, she becomes, under the filmmak- 2000. It will be in the form of a serial that bushes, Grey Gardens (as the Beales call ers' scrutiny, a creature of pathos. A shot will dose each week's original drama-for- their hermitage) is a genuine haunted of her in the ocean, swimming with a per- television (Barbara Schultz's KCET new house of the kind that would intimidate fectly schooled crawl stroke, suggests in series called, Visions). It is an ambitious even the most intrepid Halloweeners. But one beautiful, quiet sequence that not all of project which will test the ability of inde- inside, the ghosts are very much alive: two the promise of her background and youth pendent artists to introduce a fictional shut-in survivors who live on their past has vanished. format outside the major television institu- dreams, on their contemptuous fear of the tions. TVTV will be using low-cost color outside world, on their comfort in incredi- Shot over a period of several months video for dramatized material that will be ble squalor, and, most of ail, on each and edited in free-flowing scenes to con- shot on location with actors who will have other's nerves. vey the time-suspended, nearly stagnant to work improvisationally with the video whirlpool of life inside the haunted house, equipment and team. Harold Ramis (the A deeply weathered semi-invalid in her GREY GARDENS raises in high relief the usu- Second City troupe and The National Lam- late seventies who goes about dressed in al, vexing questions of cinema verite: how poon Show) will be directing. little but a beach towel, Mrs. Beale has, much are the filmmakers manipulating, more or less gleefully, distilled her life to exploiting their subjects? and how much \"Nobody has done a serious examina- three obsessions: memories of her un- are the subjects manipulating, exploiting tion of television as an industry,\" Sham- realized career as a concert singer, the them? In the end, it resolves these ques- berg says. \"In fact, nobody has ever done a whereabouts of her dozen or so cats, and study of the electronics industry as an en- the shortcomings of her daughter. In one tions in one shattering moment. Sudden- tertainment vehicle. We are attempting to ly, Edie advances toward the camera focus on television as a business: how it began and how programming today is a by-product of the business mentality. We will also deal with the evolution of pro- gramming styles. Television's focus has always been on distribution first and pro- gramming second. The moment that people start dealing with television imag- ery in a creative way, outside of the struc- tures of the networks, it will be the birth of a new aesthetic. The technology is there and developing. What is needed is careful re-evaluation of its use and its effect. This will be the future of television and it will be very exciting.\" ·~:; GREY GARDENS: Mother Edith and daughter Edie.

INDE- PEND- ENTS or from Scottish Academic Press Ltd., 25 leigh Dickinson University Press, Ruther- Perth Street, Edinburgh EH3 SOW, Scot- STRUCfURAL INCURSION II: land); Working Papers in Cultural Studies ford, N .J.) THE LITERATURE (Barthes, Eco, Adorno as contributors), from Screen magazine, or from the Centre Jump Cut magazine (P.O . Box 865, Ber- by Amos Vogel for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Uni- versity of Birmingham, P.O . Box 363, Bir- keley, Cal. 94720). Iconoclastic, important In my first column on cine-struc- mingham, B15 2IT, England; and Meyer turalism, I had drawn attention to the Schapiro' s magisterial Words and Pictures new magazine; cine-structuralism-cum- steady encroachment of this new (Mouton, The Hague)-available from methodology upon earlier types of film Wittenborn Art Books, 1018 Madison Marxism . analysis, indicating that while one could Avenue, New York. decide, after study, to embrace, reject, or Koch , Christian . Semiotics and Cin ema remain indifferent to this new one, one No bibliography of structuralism would could no longerdaim to be \" serious\" about be complete without reference to that just (Mouton) . Ready in 1976. cinema yet ignorant of it. An introductory mentioned Dutch publishing house bibliography follows . A word of warning: Mouton, whose unique, astonishing Metz, Christian. Film Language (Oxford the cine-structuralist vocabulary tends to catalog is available from P .O. Box 1132, lYe dense, alien, at times irritatingly 5 Herderstraat, The Hague, Netherlands. University Press, New York) . Basic, \" sem- obscure. Dictionaries, however, are near- Their American distributor is Humanities by (not always helpful); and the better Press, 171 First Avenue, Atlantic High- inal.\" examples of this new methodology (com- lands, N.J. 07716. bined with careful reading) may bring un- Metz , Christian . Language and Cinema expected, different rewards than previous CINE-STRUCTURALISM: sociological, psychological, impressionist, A First Bibliography (Mouton) . His newest; significantl y dif- historical, auteurist, literary, or adjectival approaches. Later columns will discuss the Afterimage #5 : \" Aesthetics , Ideology, ferent from Film Language. \"ideology\" of the movement and its rela- Cinema,\" Noel Burch, ed. (Afterimage tion to independent cinema and the \"for- Publishing, 12-13 Little Newport Street, Mitry , Jean . Esth etique et psychologie du mal\" avant-garde. In the meantime, litera- London WC2H 7]], England) . ture (\" the word\") paradoxically remains a Art Forum magazine (667 Madison cinema, Volume I: Les Structures (Editions precondition for the analysis of a visual art. Avenue, New York , NY 10021) Cine- structuralist analyses, under Annette Universitaires, 115 rue de Cherche-Midi, Some knowledge of structuralist litera- Michelson's editorship. ture itself is advisable. Extensive bibliog- Bettetini, Gianfranco . Th e Language and Paris 6, France) . In French . raphies are readily available, and at least Technique of the Film . (Mouton) . some acquaintance with Levi-Strauss, Burch , Noel. Th eory of Film Practice Monogram magazine , #2: es sa y on Piaget, Chomsky, Barthes, Jakobsen, and (Praeger Publishers, New York) Essential. Lacan will be helpful, as are anthologies Cahiers du Cinema (9, passage de la Boule- Cin etique and French cine-structuralists such as DeGeorge, The Structuralists From Blanche, 75012, Paris, France) . This impor- Marx to Levi-Strauss (Doubleday-Anchor, tant magazine has turned from auteurism (available from Screen). New York); Douglas, Rules and Meanings toward Marxist-oriented cine- (Penguin); Lane, Introduction to Struc- structuralism . In French. Nowell-Smith , Geoffrey . Vi sconti turalism (Basic Books, New York); and Cinetique (2 rue Theophraste Renandot, Macksey, The Structuralist Controversy Paris 15, France) . Most radical French (Doubleday, Garden City, N .Y.) Cine- Oohn Hopkins Press, Baltimore). A basic Marxist-cine-structuralist publication. text is de Saussure's Course in General Lin- Eco, Humberto , \" Articulations of the structuralism applied. guistics (McGraw-Hill, New York); a Cinematic Code,\" (Cinemantics magazine popularized introduction to structuralism #1, January 1970, London, England). Screel1 magazine (c/o SEFT, 63 Old Comp- is Gardner, The Quest for Mil1d (Vintage Eco, Humberto . \"Toward a Semiotic In- Books, New York); a stunning contribution quiry into the Television Message, \" in ton Street, London W1V 5 PN, England) . is Foucault's The Order of Things (Vintage Working Papers il1 Cultural Studies #3 (see Books, New York) . Equally original (per- above). Most important source for cine-struc- verse) are the works of those neighboring John Hanhardt and Charles H. Harpole. giants Ervin Goffman, Ray Birdwhistell, \" Linguistics, Structuralism, and Semiol- turalism in English; original contributions, Jurgen Reusch. ogy\" (FILM COMMENT, Vol. 9, No.3, May- June 1973) indispensable translations. Also helpful, for film people, will be 20th Film Quarterly magazine (University of Century Studies (#3: Structuralism, #7/8: California Press, Berkeley, Cal. 94720). Sitney, P. Adams . \"Structural Film\", re- Russian Formalism), available from Screen Some of the most interesting examples or magazine, London (see below for address) critiques of cine-structuralism in English. vised in Film Culture Reader (Praeger, New Gianetti, Louis D. Godard and Others . (Fair- York) . Sitney, P. Adams . Visionanj Film (Oxford University Press, New York). Studies il1 the Anthropology of Visual Com- munications (SAVICOM, 1703 New Hamp- shire Avenue NW, Washington , DC 20009) . Semiotics, communication theory , visual anthropology. Essential. Wheeler, Dennis, ed. Form and Structure in Recent Film (Talon-books , 1911 Acadia Road, Vancouver 8, British Columbia, Canada) . Michelson, Frampton, Brak- hage, etc. Wollen, Peter. Signs and Meanil1 g in th e Cin ema (Indiana University Press , Bloomington, Indiana). Wollen, Peter, ed. Sociology and Semiology; Working Papers on the Cinema (British Film Institute, 81 Dean Street, London, Eng- land) . . Worth , Sol and Adair, John . Through Navajo Eyes (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana). YOUl1g Mr. Lincoln (by theCahiers du Cinema editors) . English translation: Screen, Au- tumn 1972. Seminal example of cine- structuralism applied to specific film . Perseverance, an open mind , and black coffee will help with the above enterprise. The results will range from challenging to persuasive to brilliant to inchoate. t};, FILM COMMENT 39

JOBNPOBD I J Unlike hi s TV films, John Ford's war the interested attention of so vast an audi- one's life. What is life, or love, or death documentaries are more than curious ence. compared to it? footnotes to his career. They explore alter- nate sty les of cinema, examine various To this aim , THE BA TTLE OF MIDWAY is di- War at the Battle of Midway took place dialectical relationships with the audience, rectly manipulative: it seeks a deeper level over a three-hundred-mile battle area. It and anticipate many of the \" modernist\" of consciousness through a fuller exploita- would be impossible to report such an tec hniqu es o f Godard , Rossellini , and tion of multi-media art. To be sure, Ford event in cinema, if by \" report\" we mean a Straub. Since Ford's stance here is didactic, did not abandon staginess altogether, but record not simply of events but rather of he is able to exploit visual a nd aural ele- he would never stand so far back from his deeds and thoughts and emotions. War is ments in more disjunctive ways than in his material after THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY as he an experience, but also it is an attitude: story film s. His montage style is genera lly did before it. This is the deepening of feel- whoever is involved in war, or thinks linear a nd simple, desig ned both to de- ing, provoked by exposure to the War, deeply about it, is changed in his thought. scribe what Dziga Vertov called \"frag- which James Agee referred to . It is the clif- ments of actua lity\" and, from the accumu- ference, perhaps, between a man who Ford was on Midway Island during the lation of fragments, to evoke actua lity. films his ideas and one who films his ex- battle. As Frank S . Nugent later wrote: perience. Ford's vision expanded, to \"Ford shot it himself, standing on an ex- But Ford did not cliscard Hollywood's darken considerably but also to cliscover a posed water tower and, according to on- notion of the reality of the cinema tic image; greater beauty in a LIBERTY VALANCE cactus lookers, yelling at the attacking Zeroes to nor is th e term \"Brechtia n\" an y more rose than was seen in STAGECOACH. swing left or right-and cursing them out applicable to Ford's documentaries than it when they clisobeyed directions . The film is to the cinema's modernists. Film remains With THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY Ford found jumps in one spot: the moment a fragmen- film; it cannot cancel out the distance be- a style of his own, a language of im- tation bomb exploded close by and drove twee n scree n and a udience. Unlike th e measurabl y greater potential. And if, its steel splinters into his arm. He kept on modernists , however, Ford is less in - thematically, the family was still the core of shooting.\" terested in mixing cillbna- verite techniques Ford's society, it had been replaced by a far with those of the classical cinema than he is larger unity as the focal point of his vision. It was no coincidence that Ford was in mining th e tension between actuality Duty, formerly ordained upon the indi- there himself with his Eyema 16mm cam- a nd fabrication . Curiously, it is at those vidual, had become a collective responsi- era. He had asked to go to Midway, to points when the tension is tautest that both bility. photograph the battle . The thought is cine ma tic an d actual reality are most po- rather staggering, particularly if one re- tently throw n at us. • gards Ford as a great poetic chronicler of American history. For this was the greatest THE BATILE OF MIDWAY (1942) marks the Whatever else war might be, Ford tells naval battle of history, the turning point of occasion when Ford came of age as artist us, it is an ultimate sort of experience of and as man. In retrospect, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY (1941) can be seen as the bud- burst of this maturity, the result of a long course of educa tion in film and of stylistic experimentation in the Twe nties and Thir- ties. But Ford's postwar career is a process of deepening within a style that owes more to THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY than to HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY. The films of 1939-41 (STAGE- COACH,YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, THE GRAPES OF WRATH, THE LO NG VOYAGE HOME, TOBACCO ROAD, HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY) constitute a remark- able achievement; yet they look like films made from an ambition to win recognition, stature, awards . They are relatively stagy. For the most part, they are studio assign- ments, made from scripts Ford was forced to follow closely. And they seem designed to appeal to the \"sophisticated\" tastes of New York theater aucliences. But THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY was a film vir- tually lacking any formal precedent, one for which Ford had to invent something \"new.\" And it was for Ford an occasion when critical reaction mattered little, an occasion aimed at a broad auclience, an oc- casion when the reaction of the masses to this deeply personal essay OL1 \"war, and peace, and all-of-us\" mattered terribly. Rarely is an artist given so vast a subject to address, and rarely do his thoughts receive 40 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

The War Documentaries by Tag Gallagher THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY: SEQUENCE BREAKDOWN The film 's two battle seq uences are not long, but for me real time slows, and each TIMING DIVISIONS MUSICI(SOUND) shot see ms to last an eternity. There are no dead bodies, and no blood; no more than 0:30 TITLES My Country, 'Tis of Thee Sophocles does Ford need to resort to such devices. Here, as in battle scenes in all his 4:56 I. EXPOSmON Anchors Aweigh; Yankee Doodle other fil ms, h e relies upon an intense, 1:00 1) Midway Island Marine Hymn often surrea l, \"impressionism.\" THE BAT- 0:22 2) The Marines (Bird sounds); Bird motif TLE OF MIDWAY is a film which demands 0:35 3) The Birds Red River Valley; (Bombs) deep concentration and total involvement 0:35 4) Sunset before Battle to yie ld its riches. It is not a movi e for a 2:22 5) The Air Force Columbia, Gem of the Ocean; s maIl screen, or for soft speakers. Th e 0:50 a) Council Off We Go music and battle sounds sta nd in relation to the pictures somewhat as a rich musical 0:40 b) Crew & Flash Home Homey folk tune accompaniment stands to a voca l line; the 0:52 c) B-29s Take Off (Engine sounds) two are equally important and reciprocally 5:35 II. THE BATTLE (Gunfire, Plane drones, Bombs) supportive. 3:35 1) U.S. Defense Star Spangled Banner If a formal precedent for THE BATTLE OF 1:25 a) Japanese attack, bomb (Battle sounds) 0:35 b) Flag raising (Battle sounds) MIDWAY be sought, it can be found in the 1:35 c) Japanese planes shot down battle compositions so popular in 2:00 2) U.S. Counter-Offensive nine teenth-century music. Only Beeth- oven's T11 e BattIeofVittorio (Wellington's Vic- 4:50 III. AFTERMATH Anchors Aweigh tory) is widely known toda y, but there 1:00 Marine Hymn played slowly were very man y such pieces, often for 0:35 1) Fliers Return Anchors Aweigh piano solo, and their tri-part structure 0:20 2) Birds Still Free Anchors Aweigh; (presentation, battle, aftermath , each of 0:55 3) Search for Survivors fairly equal length) is the same as that of 4) Survivors Return; Onward Christian Soldiers Ford's film. 2:00 My Country, 'Tis of Thee Hospital Destroyed This is the operatic Ford, an aspect of his 0:50 5) Funeral on Land; on style occurring a t the high points of most of his films. One notes it particularly in earlier 16:51 Sea; Recapitulation pictures like THE BLACK WATCH (1929), the first episode of THE WORLD MOVES ON CODA Off We Go; Anchors Aweigh; (1934), and MARY OF SCOTLAND (1936); and Marine Hymn; Over There in man y of the later films, especiaIly WAGONMASTER, THE SUN SHINES BRIGHT, thegreatestwareverfought,a nd-isittoo Ford is filming philosophy along with MOGAMBO. much to say? -the moment when the experience. One thinks constantly of what THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY is a symphony in its succession of tones of light, of tones of United States became a global power. it is to kill, to be killed, to be in deadly peril, emotion, of tones of movement. The score, by Alfred Newman, must surel y owe The most significant fact of THEBAITLE OF to be a mecha nic fueling dea th. Is it much to Ford's intervention: it is so inex- tricably woven together with the images MIDWAY is that it is authentic, and Ford at heroism? How scared are the men? Ford's involved at a given moment, the cutting, the words spoken by the narrators that it every moment wishes to remind us of this . sentimentality should not be misinter- constitutes a proof of cinematic author- ship. The film goes as far as possible toward preted: it is a sign of his breadth, not of his The film went on to win an Academy being an exception to Godard's dictum of simpleness. These are our people, our Award. But it is difficult to say whether it had the influence upon postwar cinema the similarity of documentary and fictional friends, or they could be. The voices of the that, in hindsight, one can see it anticipat- cinema. There is all the difference in the narrators throw us into the terrifyingly ing. Clearl y, it has some of the \"Brechtianism\" of Rossellini, the world between the historical films of Ros- mundane reality of it, of war unthinkable . documentary technique of Godar~i, the formal emotionality of Antonioni. These sellini (or of Ford) and this actuality; and all They speak directly to us- \"Yo u!\" Like it elements had already been hinted at in Ford's two earlier war documentaries, SEX the difference in the world, too, between or not, we are forced to respond. HYGIENE and DECEMBER 7TH; but Ford never exploited them so singularly as filming the actuality of 42nd Street and There is a dialectic to this film that is others did in later years. filming the actuality of the Battle of Mid- posed to us constantly, one that turns itself Ford was never to make a film more cinematically perfect than THE BATTLE OF way. into an argument for the justness of this MIDWAY. The concision of its seventeen minutes is astonishing; it never once de- The twin facts of its historic importance war by one who hates war with profound mands a concession in amplitude. and of the ultimate nature of war draw us feeling . Yet Ford argues not so much with more deeply into its documentary than logic as with sentiment. There are streams would otherwise be possible. There is a . ..of~otions that run the gamut of nearly unique sort of \"reality\" here, and a doser-f\"_' evgy emotion. The succession of emo- proximity to life than exists in Ford's fiction tional forms-from peace to war to vic- films . The confrontation is starker, more tory, from heroism to fear to courage, from vivid, more de~ply encountered. And individuality to paranoia to community, more personal, SInce Ford was there. It IS from innocence to sin to redemption, from even a sort of autobiography, for war is an dawn to night to dawn-constitutes a re- extension of one's cognition-down to- flective philosophy written into cinema ward hell, up toward heaven, and broadly and, as such, untranslatable into words. a~ross ~ horizon that is no longer two- The film's title symbolizes a struggle of dimenSIOnal. conscience. FILM COMMENT 41

THE BATTLE O F M IDWAY Left: Dad, back home, o il s a loco motive (1 :5:b). Center: Mother knits (1 :5 :b); on the w all : \"Servin g Our Country. Right : The exhil aration of battle (11 :2), as a soldier reacts to the gunning down of a Japanese pl ane. PHOTOS : TAG GALLAG HER TITLES screen . The a bruptness of the cut is e f- the night Flying Fortresses have landed at The title appea rs over the Navy shield; a fecte d by the cut being made on the first Mid way.\" After several shots on th e so und of the male chorus which enters at airs trip of B-29s and a few airm en a nd subtitle reads \"Photographed by the U.S. this p oint with the words, \"First to fight for birds, Irving Pichel's voice says, \"A n his- Navy in Techni color fro m a 16mm origi - ri g ht a nd free d o m . .. \"; and by th e ir toric council of wa r is held,\" and we see na!' '' ph ala nx fo rm atio n a nd th eir marching two shots of a group of officers sta nding feet. Thi s abruptness produces an effect talking on the field . The music changes to There follows a written introd uction, in w hich is operatic: the future heroes pre- \" Off We G o.\" capital letters, the boldface portions sent themselves. This is a necessary device I:5:b CREW AND FLASH HOME in an Epic. We know, however, that some printed in red: of them will in fact die in the next few From a frontal shot of a B-29, the camera \"THI S IS THE ACTU AL PHOTO- minutes. cuts back to a long shot of the airstrip: a 1:3 THE BIRDS lieutena nt a mbles toward the plane, Jane G RAPHIC REPORT OF THE BATILE OF Darwell 's voice cuts in: \"That fellow's wa lk MIDWAY. A close shot of th e U.S. fl ag fro m.. the looks familiar. My neighbor's sow used to preceding sequence is dissolved into a blue amble along just like that. \" The birds are \" IN NUM BER OF S URFACE AN D sky with ma ny birds; their voices enter ab- prese nt in nearly all the shots. The ca mera, AIRCR AFT DESTRO YED IT IS TH E ruptl y after th e ca d e ntia l ch o rd o f th e under a wing of a B-29, pa ns right about GREATEST NAVAL VICTORY OF THE \" Marine Hymn .\" After a cut, the camera 120 degrees to the nose of the plane. WORLD TO DATE. pans dow n to the horizon and the land, to six shots of one, two, three birds wobbling Oa ne Darwell :) \"Say, is that one of them \"THE FO LLOWI NG AUTHE NTIC humorously on the ground . \"These are the Flying Fortresses?\" SCE N ES WERE MADE BY U.S. NAVY nati ves of Midway,\" says Crisp. \"Tojo has PHOTOG RAPHERS.\" sworn to liberate them .\" The superimpo- (Henry Fonda: ) \"Yes, ma'a m . It sure is'\" siti on of th e U.S. flag over the birds in the Some me n load a tank into the pla ne's Note the key words: report, actual, au- sky suggests that they are American birds, belly w hile on its wing another is feeding it th e nti c. free as the sky. gasoline. The lieutenant comes under the wing a nd crouches dow n to discuss things There follows a map ofth e Pacific, situa t- 1:4 SUNSET BEFORE BATTLE with his crew and the gro und officer. ing Mid way Island mid way. The ca m era p a ns up aga in fro m th e (Da rwe ll :) \" Wh y, it' s th a t yo un g li e ute na nt! H e's from m y h o m e tow n , I. EXPOSITION: 1) MIDWAY ISLAND horizon . \"The birds see m nervous,\" notes Springfield , Ohio. He's not gonna fl y tha t Crisp . \"The re's something in the ai r .. .\" grea t big bomber?!\" \"A Navy pa trol plane. Ro utine patro!. The shot of the birds and sky dissolves into (Fonda :) \" Yes, ma'a m! That' s his job! O nl y be hin d ever y cl o ud m ay be a n one of a sailor upon a boa t, the sea a nd vast H e's th e skipper! \" ene my.\" The voice is that of Donald Crisp sky bathed in a rudd y sunset. \" So mething The voices of Darwell and Fonda playa (o th e rwise unid e ntifie d , li ke th e o th er behind that sunset. \" One sailor sits play- ro le so mew h a t different fro m th ose of three narrators) over sh ots of a plane ing \" Red Ri ve r Va lley\" on a n accordia n Crisp a nd Piche!. The latter are informed a mong the clouds and glimpses of Midway (dubbed by Dan Borzage); others lounge commentators w hile the former see m to Island below. In closer shots of the is- aro und. The se ntinels, their guns slung on spea k fro m the audience, and to the film . la nd we see Navy ships anchore d near the their shoulders, twice gaze out toward the Of course it is not entirely improbable that dock. \"Midway Island ,\" says Crisp crisp- setting sun w here som e muffled ex plo- a contemporary vie wer of the film should ly. \"Not much land , right enough. But it' s sions are heard . The music jux taposes it- recognize someone in it, but Ford clearly o ur o utp os t. Yo ur fro nt yard .\" Cri sp self tellingly aga ins t the suppressed un- wishes that we be conscious of the film 's serves as principal narrator, seconded at easiness. The sequence concludes with a actuality, that we engage in a dialectic with times by Irvi ng Piche!. shot of the setting sun, its red flames burst- it, and that we admit these soldiers as rep- in g o ut thro ugh th e cl o ud s in a d es ig n resentati ves of our friends and neighbors. We see the plane la nded in the water, suggesting the Japanese battle fla g. Birds (A dditionally, the voices of Darwell and then at a dock. Wheels are brought d ow n, a nd me n bo th a nti cipa te th e co min g Fonda were surely rea dil y identifiable as attac hed under the wa ter, a nd the sailo rs me nace. those of th e m other a nd so n fr o m THE start to haul it out. GR AP ES OF WRATH, w h ereas Crisp's voice 1:5 THE AIR FORCE: a) COUNCIL ca rried unquestionable pa tria rchal author- The seq uence is introductory; the blue The s unset fades out a nd , be fore the ity. ) sky, the bright Technicolor, and the li vely But Darwell 's role is still more complex: music (\"A nch o rs Aweig h \") indu ct o ne fade in to a shot of the sea a nd island from a she ques tions the film and it replies to her. into the life of the film . patrol plan e, strain s of \" Columbia the Whe n she says, next, \" Will 's Dad is an en- Gem of the Ocea n\" and Crisp's voice en- gi neer. Thirty-eight years on the old Iron- 1:2 THE MARINES ter. \" Excitement this mornin g. The da w n to n Rail road,\" th e film obedi entl y dis- Dissolve into a leftward pa n of a Ma rine pa trol has sighted a n ene my fl eet. During color guard, th e U.S. flag toward the ca m- era. Accompa nied by the \"Ma rine Hymn\" (in strum entally), they march briskl y past, the ca mera fra me coming to center on th e fl ag. Th e sea is behind the m. The film cuts a bruptl y into a s till sho t of a column o f ma rching Marines, in khaki, fo ur abreas t, fo rmin g a di ago nal ph ala nx across th e 42 SEPTEM BER-OCTO BER 1975

Left and center; The pilots return, like conquering heroes (III : 1); at center, the pilot responds to the questio n, \" How many more today, skipper? Right; \" The bird s still free,\" liberated by the N avy (111 :2). solves with her, and with ho mey music, to w hich make an incre dible din, esp eciall y Pich el's voice says, \"Yes, this really hap- Dad oiling a locomoti ve and then turnin g, the explosions. ) pe ned .\" 311 The w hite s ky with shrapnel in a closer shot, to look into the ca mera. b ursting. \" ... bo mbs bursting in air . . .\" Darwell , h owever, is not so much narrat- 21 A man wi th field glasses looks up fro m 321 A fiery cloud of smoke, \" ... gave . . .\" ing the film as she is talking privately to a fox h o le. 3/Th e sk y aga in . 4/A n Anti- 33/A sh ot of the fl ag, the fra me fill ed wi th someon e else wa tching the film (Fonda?); Aircraft gun-barrel p oints up, firin g fro m a bl ac k s m oke, \" . . .p roof th ro u g h th e at least, this is the effect. fox h ole. 51Shra pnel explodes in the sky as nig ht ... \" 341 A lo ng s hot, tilted slightl y o n e Jap a n ese pl a n e fli es thro u g h it. up, of the sunlit fl ag, its p ole; the blue sky Sh e continues: \"And his mother. Huh, 6/Again, the gun-barrel firing. 7lAgain, the fillin g the uppe r left diago nal, the black well, s he's just like the rest of us mothers in plane fl yi ng th ro ugh the shra pnel. 81Two s m oke churnin g th ro u g h th e ri g ht Springfield, or any other American tow n.\" boyish soldiers operating the AA gun in diago n a l. A few bi rd s fl y thro u g h th e the foxh ole. s moke. \" . .. that our flag was still . .. \" 351A Mother sits knitting. To one side: a vase quick sh ot of a plane fl yi ng th ro ugh fiery of red fl owers; on the wall: a sign wi th a 91Two USMC planes take off from the s moke. \" .. .there'\" star and the words \"Serving Our Coun- island airstrip . The camera p ans right wi th try.\" The film cuts into a close sh ot of her; them . On the soundtrack two or three un- 361 The beach a nd a n a brupt EXPLO- she speaks but no sound comes through . identifiable male voices cry out, \" There go SIO N (End of music) . 371 Clouds of fi ery Then we see sister Pa tricia, a red ribbon in the Marines!\" 101 The ca mera pa ns right s moke . 38/Black smoke. 39/A billowing fire her hair, talking o n the telephone: \"And wi th more USMC planes. ll/Again, wi th and black s moke. 401The two boys in the his sister Patricia! Eh! S he's about as pretty several more . fo xhole, shooting. 41/The sky filled with as they come!\" s hra pn el. Th e dr on e o f a pl a n e (as 121 Again , th e man with field glasses th ro u g h o ut , but lo ud e r h e r e) . 42/Th e \"I'll say so!\" quips Fonda. looking up . 131Planes fl yi ng directl y over- g un -barrel firing. (The pla ne drone con - The \" fla sh-home\" dissolves back to the head . 14/The two boys in the foxh ole, from tinues. ) 43/The d ro ning pla ne in the air is co nfere nce under the B-29 wing. \" Well! above. 15/Their AA gun firing. 161Fro m a hit a nd ex pl o d es . 44/A jee p ca ree n s JuniorTimm y!\" gasp s Da rwell . hut wh ere Ford is filmin g: a pla n e fli es th ro ugh the fiery d ebris. 45/(possibly not a along the beach , s uddenl y there is an im- cut) A tremendous EXPLOSION on the 1:5:c B-295 TAKE OFF m e n se EXPLOSIO N . The film slips its gro und rocks the film. The ca mera jerks The film cuts abruptly into th e h arsh sprockets in the ca mera, then rights itself, aro und , to the left, and then pans to the w hil e th e cam era sh akes. 171 In a lo ng- right to a Medic attending a man . 46/T he sounds of airplane motors. A B-29 taxies focal-l e n gth le ns and p erha p s in slow- air with a pla ne fl yi ng . The ca mera pa ns d ia gon all y toward th e ca me ra, panning motion: debris fl oa ts thro ugh the air. 181A aro und the ba se; we h ear a bo mb falling left. Then, cut diago nall y away from the pl a n e swoop s ove rh ea d in cl ose -up . and then its EXPLOSION. The film jumps ca mera, again panning left. A simila r sh ot 19/The foxh ole gun-barrel firin g. 20/Th e its sprocke ts and w hen it steadies itself the rep ea ts the second. A ground officer di- sea with the sky full of shrapnel. 211The ca mera is looking out from the hut towa rd rects th e planes in a cl ose s h ot. \" G ood two boys. 221 Their gun again . 231Planes the base. 471Agai n, from the hut. luck'\" calls Darwell . \"G od bless yo u, son! \" above; a nother huge EXPLOSION loosens (Again Fo rd wishes to engage us: if we do the film and rocks the ca mera; we see the 48/The base, with a huge black cloud of not s upport Darwell 's sentim ent, we mu st explosion on the beach , a nd its s moke. 241 s moke, pa n up along it. One bird is fl yi ng nonetheless relate to its ramifications. ) A sh ot overlooking the base, fires, and the th ro u gh it. (During thi s sh o t begins the beach . 251 A similar sh ot. 261 The isla nd distinct drone of a plane w hich will con- Eight consecutive pan s foll ow of a B-29 ground: fire and w reckage. 271The hang- tinue to occupy the soundtrack thro ugh (not necessarily the same one) taxiing into ar, burning, pan right into the smoke. 281A Sh ot 55.) 49/A long sh ot of the hanga r. A take-off. The ton e is that of mech anica l plane above: EXPLOSIO N, aga in loosen- billowing clo ud of fire pours out of it, and strength being thrust forth. The sequence ing the film; looking out from the hut, de- ou t of the fire p ours the huge cloud of black d o es n o t clim ax in th ese ei g ht s h ots, bris falling. (Instrumental strains of \"The smoke. SOIA closer sh ot of the fire clo ud . though each pan gets us farth er down the Sta r Spangled Banner\" begin just after the 511The two boys in the foxh ole firing their airstrip . (Such repetition occurs frequently ex pl os io n.) AA gun . 521The air filled wi th shra pnel. A in Ford's docume ntaries. ) me tallic CLAN K is h ea rd . Th e came ra 29/Men runn in g ra pidl y thro u gh th e rocks. The cla nk stops the d ro ning sound : The constant presen ce of the birds in- fiery de bris on the ground . 301A fl ag detail n ow th e plan e is h eard to co u gh a few creases their association with America: like is attaching the U.s . flag, w hile others race tim es a nd then sta rts falling earth wa rd. the airmen, they amble and they fl y. by seeking shelter. Behind them a Marine This sound continues in an ever-rising with field glasses kneels on one knee look- II: THE BATTLE ing up at th e sky. The ch oir enters with the crescendo for almost fifteen seco nds. 531 1) THE U.S. DEFENSE words, \"And the rockets red glare ... \" The During the crescendo of the falling pla ne, fl ag. is raised , slowly, the ca mera panning the camera looks over a burning installa- (The shots are numbered and preceded up In steady steps: a lengthy shot amid by a slash.) l /A sh ot of the sky and fi ve rapidly cut ones. As the fla g is raised Irving Ja panese planes . Donald Crisp shouts, in a hurr y, \"Sudd e nl y, fr o m be hind th e clouds: The Ja ps Attack!\" (The action is ac- co mpani ed in th e film by battl e no ises FILM COMMEN T 43

.. tion , s moke rising from it, then pans forth between the air and the carriers. the island) . Just after the crash, strains of slowly leftward. (A lengthly shot.) 54JThe Planes swirl dizzil y above while, below, \"Anchors Aweigh\" come onto the sound- two boys-the crescendo nearly deafen- sailors are hurriedly loading and firing AA track . The picture dissolves to a shot evi- ing. 55/A shot looking up to the sky from guns and cannon. (Ford returns re- dently looking out of a long narrow open- over a ridge of sandbags in a foxhole: the peatedly to these men feeling death.) At ning in Ford's hut (about the dimensions plane careens diagonally across the sky, its one moment, from a doorway, we see two of a CinemaScope frame). The shot says, \"I crescendo increasing. It hits earth , rocking cruisers thundering in the distance; at was there. I am safe.\" the camera. The camera jerks around a bit another moment, again from a doorway, a and then: 56/cuts to a plane wing. Fire gun fires outside on the deck, flaring the This shot dissolves quickly into a shot of burns in the circular Japanese e mblem. film red. eight or nine U.S . planes in the air, and The sound of this fire. then to the next section of the film. The film is constantly reflective, of men 11:2 U.S. COUNTER-OFFENSIVE and their might, of mechanical discipline at III. AFfERMATH: In terms of the film, the raising of the flag the critical moment, of the job of war and 1) THE FLIERS RETURN of the impersonal enemy whose face re- inspires courage, and the downing after- mains unseen. In the air, bombs burst This sequence consists of twelve shots ward of two planes signals the turn in the around a plane flying into the sun. The on board a carrier. Pilots remove their battle, which now switches to the sea. lens is gauzed with flares of white light. flight helmets and look joyously at the From the air we see some carriers, then Off camera the plane is hit: we hear it fall- camera; like heroes they climb up out of three U.S. planes in the air. Far below ing as the ca mera jerks quickly down to the their planes and then descend to the them , planes take off from the carriers. At ship's bridge, jerking right and left and ground while the camera arcs up toward sea level, one plane swoops in from the sea right agai n over the faces of the officers and them. \"Anchors Aweigh\" accompanies and flies low past the carrier. It is the sig- men. We catch only brief glances of their and the voice of Irving Pichel introduces nal. \"Then , suddenly-The Trap is expressions, butitis not difficult to read in- the sequence: \"Men and women of Sprung!\" says Crisp. The camera shows a tense excitement and happiness beyond America, here come your neighbors' sons, carrier deck filled with planes , and pans intoxication . They know they have won. home from the day's work. You ought to right with several of them taking off. meet them . There's Jimmy Thatch. Seven It signals the end of the battle. \"The in- meatballs on his plane.\" The fliers smile in (Donald Crisp:) \"Navy planes roar from vasions forces were hit, and hit, and hit careless triumph. Henry Fonda's voice the decks of our carriers. Army bombers, again,\" says Crisp over a few last shots of asks one of them, \"How many more today, Marines, thunder destruction over a firing guns and then a rapid camera pan skipper?\" and the pilot holds up four fin- three-hundred-mile battle area.\" The into an immense crashing explosion ion gers. shots that follow rapidly switch back and ., S\\IX .WAR DOaJMENTARIES the moral justification for American par- ticipation in World War II, established the ~ didactic base upon which Ford's Korea and Vietnam documentaries rest. ~ !S2C~.1 The original version of DECEMBER 7TH (at _~.c..:o.lI;w.. _ the National Archives in Washington) is about ninety minutes long; somebody John Ford made seven war documen- evil-looking pharmacist gives a boy a bot- (who?) objected to its length, or its content, taries (not including TORPEDO SQUADRON, tle); that insanity can result if the disease is or both, and the film was released in a an eight-minute, 8mm film about a fatal at- not checked (a raving maniac struggles twenty-minute version that won an Oscar. tack on a PT-boat crew, given to the dead wildly as he is strapped to his bed and Ford says that Gregg Toland, who was men's parents; and some other films on given a sedative injection). then a Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, which information is lacking). One of and who photographed the film, was also them, THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY, ought Two tendencies are evident in SEX in charge of its direction; and that \"I helped surely to be counted among Ford's five or HYGIENE which will reoccur in Ford's other along.\" six best films . The others are worth com- documentaries: the enclosure of the menting on here, at least in brief. documentary material within a narrative or Whatever that means, DECEMBER 7TH theatrical frame (the story of Pete, a wan- has the look and tone of a Ford film, and SEX HYGIENE (1941) is less a documentary dering GI); and the device of repetition (as the techniques (especially of repetition) than an education film. Darryl F. Zanuck the audience of soldiers watches the end of identifiable in his other documentaries. A proposed the project to Ford, and then the film-within-the-film, we see a series of funeral sequence is notably Fordian. It produced the film for the U.s . Army. The fourteen closeups of different men in the takes place on the shore, amid white sand minute film teaches, among other things, theater). and flags (terribly beautiful photography). that venereal disease harms not only A tenor sings \"My Country, 'Tis of Thee.\" \"you\" but the war effort; that the disease DECEMBER 7th (1943), although released An elderly officer and his wife stand in at- can spread through innocent contact (in a after THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY, was made be- tendance, she struck with such fragile sor- poolroom, Pete, an infected man, lays fore it: Ford's Navy photographic unit ar- row that, were it not actual, one would down his cigarette and another man picks rived in Hawaii about a week after the suspect Ford had posed her in his patented it up); that proper treatment is needed (an Pearl Harbor attack. The film, which gives way. The sequence concludes with a track- ing shot looking up at palm trees. WE SAIL AT MIDNIGHT (1943) was origi- nally twenty minutes long, with a narra- tion written by Clifford Odets, and music by Richard Addinsell. But the only print I have been able to locate (at the National Archives) consists of about eight minutes of fragments; it is badly over-exposed and missing its soundtrack. Peter Bogdanovich describes it as being about \" the hazards of getting merchant ships through combat 44 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1975

But that phrase, \" home from the day's right, back up to the bird on the dune. The out. Crisp's narra tion continues unbroken work,\" is disturbing . The film says that pan ha s described an odd triangle and the during this: \" . . .a nd then crashed into the fighting a war is a job, but killing and win- bird struts forward a few steps: a scene of sea ... eight days ... nine days ... ten days ning a victory is not so intoxicating to half-humorous incongruity. Another sol- with out food o r wa ter. \" watch for us as for those who live through dier stands with a propeller blade as the the decision and practice of it. The faces of camera pan s up to th e horizo n and the Perhaps it did not hap pe n intentionally, the fliers alienate us while attracting us. black smoke still there. but cer tai nl y it was inte nti o n a ll y em - Ford is fascinated with these faces. Indeed pl oyed: in between th e wo rd s \" eigh t they are heroes; but there are so me deeds 111:3 SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS days . .. nine days\" and, again, between which are difficult to comprehend, even if \"The Ba ttle of Midway is over,\" says \" nine days ... ten days\" a red flare fla shes we do them ourselves. the film red as this exposure-shocked sur- Crisp as the scene dissolves to a plane in vivor is helped o ut of the rescue plane; the III:2 THE BIRDS STILL FREE the air and then to a shot of the sea below. effect most effectively communicates the \"Our front yard is safe. But a big job is still pain of endurance. in close-up th e sur- A close-up of a pilot dissolves to the to be done. Da y after day our patrol planes vivor puffs a cigarette. \"His first cigarette,\" ruined, smoldering hangar and \" Anchors sea rch for survivors.\" (We see a pilot flying says Irving Piche!. \"Boy! that first drag sure Aweigh\" concludes on a dissonant in his plane.) \" Every tiny coral reef.\" (Shot tastes good!\" quips Fonda. seventh. \"Back at Midway,\" says Crisp from the sky of a coral reef.) \"Every distant with a chuckle, \"Tojo swore he would lib- mile of sea .\" (A lovely shimmering shot of Other survivors arrive: the camera pans erate the natives.\" the deep blue sea from the air, then a shot closely a moustached man as he pa sses be- of a plane in the water, a ship nearing it.) twee n two medics, it frames another smil- \"They seem just as free as they ever \"Search for men who fought to the la st ing and smoking. It looks at another who were!\" quips Henry Fonda over a couple round of ammunition and flew to the last turns and looks happily at the camera. shots of birds pruning themselves in front drop of gas and then crashed into the \" Eleve n days,\" says Irving Piche!. \"Well of destroyed buildings. With strains of the sea ...\" done, Matthew Keene.\" The effect is \"Marine Hymn\" the camera pans down mythic and, as with his words the melody from a black soldier to the debris of a III:4 THE SURVIVORS RETURN of \"Onward, Christian Soldiers\" begins on Japanese plane. Then, with a combination As Crisp speaks these words, accom- the soundtrack, the cutting and panning of the \"Marine Hymn\" and the bird tune, take on a lofty, jubilant rhythm. The jubi- the camera pans laterally left from a bird panied by strains of \"Anchors Aweigh,\" lant naming continues: \"Logan Ramsey,\" standing upon a dune to a soldier and the scene dissolves to a plane being hauled says Pichel with stern admiration. some debris. It pans straight down toward in at Midway. Two men crawl into the the degree and then diagonally up to the hatch. After a cut a rescued pilot is helped A yo ung soldier is borne out upon a zones.\" There is nothing in the fragmented tellingly beautiful shot of the film, we see taries of World War II and Korea . The most footage that suggests Ford's presence. glaring omission in VIETNAM! VIETNAM! is (through the eyes of Walker and Kim's sis- any acknowledgment of the horror THIS IS KOREA! (1951) is a fifty-minute ter Choi) a religious shrine, with a monk, wrought by the United States or by film produced by the Navy and Republic bowl and long pipe in hand, posed in Saigon. Pictures (it's in Trucolor), and distributed gorgeous dress in the foreground . theatrically to encourage support for the In the second half of the film , subtitled American presence in Korea. Among the VIETNAM! VIETNAM! , a fifty-eight- \"The Debate,\" Ford acknowledges the narrators is John Ireland. Ford is credited minute film for the U .S . Information existence of dissension in a sequence of as supervisor. He was in Korea for the Agency, was shot in late 1968, but editing some forty cameo comments; but none of shooting; and in editing, structure, and was not completed until June 1971. Ford, the remarks, either pro or con, offers a co- narration, his hand is quite evident. who is listed as Executive Producer, was gent defen se or rebuttal of U.S. policy. not present during the shooting (though VIPs speak for the government; pimpl y The print I saw is missing its last twenty he did go to Saigon). Sherman Beck is cred- yo uths shout \"Hell no, we won't go!\" It is minutes . But based on the available evi- ited with the direction. But Ford sub- left for the film to reiterate that the struggle dence, THIS IS KOREA! looks to be an impor- sequently supervised the editing of Beck's is for freedom. In this respect, VIETNAM! tant chronicle, and Ford's second-best footage and rewrote Beck's scenario. The VIETNAM! is s imilar to Ford 's other documentary. The repetitions here show narration (read by Charlton Heston) bears documentaries, in which a policy of war, small idiosyncracies as well as national sufficient similarity to that of other Ford however lamentable, is justified through similarities (a Korean village chief; a group documentaries to suggest that Ford had a emotional evocation. of villagers; village children). A Color hand in writing it. Guard celebrates the awarding of decora- Ultimately, VIETNAM! VIETMAN! can be tions with the \" Marine Hymn,\" but not so VIETNAM! VIETNAM! is both longer and operatically as elsewhere in Ford's films . more expensive ($252,751) than most other considered a Ford film only with some Shots of guns, hills, and muddy roads USIA films . It was originally conceived as a qualifications. Although Ford had previ- predominate, and the general tone is one defense of American policy in Vietnam; ously made films from footage shot en- of weary perseverance. We are very far but by 1970 this policy had changed con- tirely by others, the aesthetic of filmmak- from the heightened celebration of Mid- siderably, and neither the film nor its ing expressed through Beck's zoom lenses, way. Good-vs .-Evil view of the war was timely. rack focusing, and light textures is quite In fact, the film had become an embar- distant from Ford's own. More critically, KOREA-BATTLEGROUND FOR LIBERTY rassment; it was released reluctantly, rarely 'the film as a whole is less concise, less (1959) was one of a series of Department of screened, and quickly withdrawn from cir- complex, and less personal than almost Defense orientation films made for Ameri- culation. any other Ford film . can troops being sent overseas, and the The film assesses the war as the invasion It is fitting, and rather wonderful, that only one Ford appears to have been in- of the South by the North. The South the last film of a man to whom the parade volved with. It is forty minutes long, and fights \" to be left alone\"; the North for was the great symbol of subsistence was shot in and around Seoul in the fall of monolithic Communism. And although should end, too, with a parade into a 1958. Basically an introduction to Korean the horror of war (ghastly ?hots of night speckled with smoldering fire. But culture draped in a loose narrative, the film napalmed babies) is the predominant vis- the parade of history was going on its way centers on Sgt. Cliff Walker and his grow- ual theme of the film's first half, Ford's faith without John Ford-and, like THE LAST ing friendship with the family of a Korean in the righteousness of American aims and HURRAH'S Frank Skeffington, he was no Army jeep driver named Kim. In the single arms has not altered since his documen- longer terribly interested. FILM COMMENT 45

stretcher. The ca mera pa ns ..,vith him , cuts respond with images before it is able to do take n o n board o ne of th e boa ts. Th e to a still of a nother ma n, cuts back to the so, through Crisp, wi th words. words\" Auth or of liberty\" occur directly pan , cuts aga in to a still of ano th er and ove r a coffin . agai n back to the pan: the hymn swells. No doubt Ford believed that the U.S . \" Frank Sessler,\" says Piche!. \"That's thir- was in the right, but to seek reassurance for The final shot is the sa me as the first: the teen for Frank!\" quips Fonda. the righteousness of war he has recourse PT boa ts moving in a slightly diago nal line also to faith and to patriotism. The use of toward the camera (mounted upon the Two men are helped into an ambula nce; \"Onward, Christian Soldiers\" is a grasping lead boat). Even the waves rise and fall they sit happily smokin g in the back of its for justification, and indica tes a sensitivi ty wi th the h ymn . The camera pans slowly cab w hil e w hite Navy blankets are put to w hich war is antithetical. But, beyond left . It moves away from the boats a nd then aro un d th e m . With th e camera looki ng this, the hymn is also a prayer. It says: \"Be up wa rd to center a cl o ud composed of into the cab, the a mbulance pulls away and Christian .\" It is a hope. And Darwell's plea three bill owy sectio ns joined toge th er. off to the left, its door still ha ngi ng ope n. is part of this dialectic. It occurs in the first \" Freedom's holy light,\" si ngs the ch oir. (Note that there are two shots here. In the place because th ese ex p os ure -sh ocked The pan continues, dow nward to the left, first the two men are framed sitting at the heroes are standing aro und bare-chested w here the camera discovers Midway Is- near end of the back of the cab, but before on the airstrip smoki ng cigarettes. But we land. \" Protect ... \" sings the choir. the a mbula nce moves off they have moved think of them, too, as we thought of the re- farther back into th e ca b. In order for th e turning fli ers: that they ha ve co me back As the panora ma continues toward the cut between the two shots to be smooth it from killing. We need to be reminded left, it dissolves into a nother pan, movi ng was necessary tha t the camera be pointed again that these soldiers are \" ours,\" not o n the island toward the right follOwing into the cab at the beginning of the second some fictitious others. three planes an d corning to center on the shot. In this way the two me n occupy the III:5 THE FUNERAL. soldier with field glasses kneeling o n one sa me area of the frame in both shots.) knee whom we saw ea rlier in the film as During the final few seconds of the la st the flag was raised. It is in fact a shot taken Just before the a mbulance pulls away, seque nce, a tollin g bell joins the sound- at about that same time, for the huge black wi th \" Onward , Christian Soldiers\" begin- cloud of smoke rises on the right and the ning a ca non, Jane Darwell 's voice enters track and continues as the red cross dis- birds fly left through the air. Both the birds and the soldier seem oblivious to the dea th Funeral at sea (111 :5). solves to the next scene. The camera shoots holoca ust around them. This shot recapitu- behind some silhouetted beams that par- lates four themes: watchfulness (the ma n pleading: \"Get those boys to the hospital! tiall y mask the sh o t. A pri es t, gro uped with the field glasses). freedom (the birds), Please do! Quickly. Get them to clean cots with some soldiers, is putting on his danger (the smoke), and strength (the a nd cool sh ee ts. Get them doctors and surplice. (Irving Piche!:) \"The next m orn- planes). \"G uid e Thy might,\" sings the medicine and nurses' soft hands. Get them ing, divine services we re h eld besid e a choir. to the hospital! Hurry. Please.\" As she is bomb crater that had once been a chapel.\" speaking (\"clea n cots\"), the choir enters, The film cuts to a sce ne over the base, si n gin g: \" Onward, Christian Soldiers , The choir begins \" My Country, 'Tis of the three planes on the horizon, the clear marching as to wa r! With the cross of Jesus Thee\" as the camera cuts into an un- sky overhung with billowing black smoke. marching on before!\" masked sce ne of the service held in the \"Great God our King!\" d eep hu ed light o f la te a fternoon . \"A t At the sa me moment the film cuts from eve ntide,\" says Pichel, \" we buried our The final long shot is alm ost identical to the departing ambulance into a long pan heroic dead. The las t sa lute from their the amazing o ne we saw earlier of the fla g over a destroyed building. The pa n con- comrades, from their officers. \" The men a nd its pole, th e strongly etched colors tinues during the remainder of Darwell's stand in an L-shaped line, the flag on the standing out in front of the black smoke. plea. Then, as the choir sings the word left, the fl ag-draped coffins in the center. A But this time the camera angle is not tilted \"war,\" the film cuts into a pan moving in a PT Boat waits a t the dock nex t to the ser- upward . It is the difference between cour- different direction and the voice of Donald vice. The camera pa ns 180 degrees from age and faith , between hope and security; Crisp enters as soon as Darwell finishes: the saluting crew to the formation on the it is a moment similar to Griffith's allegory \" There was a hospital. Clean, orderl y, a sh ore. at the end of his ABRAH AM LINCOLN, when hundred beds; and on its roof the red cross victory and courage merge into a single plainly marked: the symbol of mercy the The eve ning light is caught with solemn quality within the human fragility of their enemy was bound to respect.\" The pan beauty. Toward the end of the first verse of pervasion . The choir concludes: \"A men. \" e nds upon the red cross and stares dow n the h ymn , Ford cuts to several close shots CODA at it: all this time we have been pa nning of officers: his camera is tilted up toward over the roof of the destroyed hospital . faces covered by the shadow of dusk and The coda (at the request of FD.R.) con- This is the second instance of the film 's re- history. In betwee n, the scene shifts to sists of three signs. The first is introduced plying to Jane Darwell; the effect this time ground-level shots of the line of men and with a drum tattoo and reads: \"4 Jap car- has a certain poignancy, for the film tries to the line of coffins. \" Captain Simar of the riers sunk\" in red letters against a white Navy,\" entones Donald Crisp. \" Colonel background . \" Off We Go\" comes on the Shannon.\" Irving Pichel na mes the third so undtrack a nd a bl ack -s leeve d h a nd officer, \" Major Roosevelt,\" w ho holds his makes a wide red swish across the sign salute looking into the sun as the picture with a paint brush. dissolves to a line of PT boa ts at sea. The second sig n is introduced with The choir sings the second verse: \"Our another drum tattoo and read s: \" 28 Jap fathers come to thee,lAuthor of liberty/fo battleships, cruisers, destroyers sunk or Thee we sin g. /Lo n g ma y our land be destroyed .\" \"Anchors Aweigh\" comes on bright/With freed om's hol y light!/Protect and the arm swishes a big black \"X\" over and g uide Thy migh t,iGrea t God our the sign, this time with black paint. Kin g !\" The third sign comes right on with the The line of PT boa ts churns through a \"Marine Hymn\" and reads: \"300 Jap air- craft destroyed.\" A bar of drum tattoo and sea deeply blue save for the flashing w hite the theme changes to a triumphal \"Over tops of the waves they stir up. The sky too There.\" The hand, this time more slowly, is a deep blue with one or two large puffs of white clouds. Hence the reds of the flags paints a large red 'V\" on the boats a nd the coffins gleam with Si.vWe. a.t..;r-,~-.'is terrible, but the victory was deci- particular brilliance both in this initial long shot and in the three camera positions 46 SEPTEMBER -OCTOBER 1975

The WORRlnli [LASS IiOESto HOLLYWOOD THE WAITRESS AS GODDESS by Tom Reck Waitresses, truck drivers, linemen, dock SUNDAY MORNING, A KIND OF LOVI NG, Zanuck, Ford , Fonda) , despite their liberal workers, down-and-out soldiers of for- ROOM AT THE TOP, A TASTE OF HO NEY, THE tendencies, are not of the working class tune, two-bit chiselers, petty entertainers, LEATHER BOYS, and THIS SPORTING LIFE lack themselves. This would not necessaril y go salesmen, \"hostesses,\" farm laborers, and the innocence and honesty of the Ameri- against them since neither, for example, is the wives, husbands, and families of the can Working-Class film. Jack Warner, whose studio made more above-these were the populace of a re- than its share of the Working -Class Films . markable but forgotten group of films, In a way, the American Working-Class But in the dedication to make a Work of Art which lived briefly but abundantly in the or a Significant Proletarian Statement, in- Forties and then died an unnoticed death, films were a fusion between the Thirties nocence was lost. Ann Sheridan starring in but which in retrospect seem to be a very gangster film and the traditional woman's JUKE GIRL , or Michael Curtiz directin g special contribution to the American picture. From the gangster film they took MILDRED PIERCE , is more successful be- cinema. their interest in crime, their masochism cause the work is less pretentious-more over being victimized by the Establish- like real work. Self-conSCiously proletarian They were the sons and daughters of the ment, and their occasional bruta lity. From efforts like THE GRAPES OF WRATH were Depression, the fantasy of the American the woman's picture came the elements of made for bleeding-heart liberals, the politi- working class-not an exotic Arabian fan- soap opera, the predilection for emotional cal left, intellectuals, and the artesia, and tasy, or a swashbuckling one, but one that, complications, and catastrophes of sexual, therefore were called upon to touch the in Hollywood, almost passed for realism. economic, and psychological content. conscience of the liberal-minded , not the The external trappings were real enough: These elements contributed an aspect of ego/id of the working classes . all-night cafes, roadside gas stations, tawdriness which is very special to the taverns, tenements, streets, store fronts, genre. The \"truth\" of the Working-Class Film is carnivals, second-hand automobiles, pris- not in its attention to the external details of ons. From these real-life settings, how- What killed the Working-Class Film was how the working classe s lived in the Thir- ever, they moved away to dream wishes likel y American affluence, which extin- ties and Forties, but in its ability to strike a for money, power, and fame-or even for guished the types that peopled them and chord in the innermost psyche of these adultery, violence, and murder, since in liked them; and also TV, which took over Americans. It did not matter whether or the working class milieu these could inad- the fulfillment of the drea m-wish of the not, in reality, truck drivers were some- vertently become ideals also. lower socio-economic class, reducing that times tempted by hard, fast, and beautiful wish to low domestic comedy and redun- boss's wives; it only mattered that when This duality of realism and fantasy gave dant variety acts . the truck driver was George Raft, and the these films their special quality, for they boss's wife was Ida Lupino, it would hap- have in them the mystique of the Ameri- The Working-Class Film was a well- pen . There is probably very little factual can working class of the Thirties and For- inhabited subgenre. Some prominent \" truth\" to the implication that if you bake ties. They speak to us with more truth than examples are described on the following enough good pies, you will make yourself the self-consciously proletarian novels of two pages, but the list could go on and on. a lot of money; but there is much \"truth\" to John Steinbeck or Nelson Algren. It's not FALLEN ANGEL (1945) allows Linda Darnell the reality that millions of a certain kind of that they tell it like the working class some moments as a waitress who will be American thrilled to have Joan Crawford thought and acted in the Depression and murdered. In HE RAN ALL THE WAY (1951) a do so. And if she did, they somehow did War years, but that they tell it like the lower class family is kept hostage by a crim- not need to. working classes believed or hoped they inal their promiscuous daughter (Shelley thought or acted. Winters) has picked up and brought Also very special is the unrelenting at- home. Others are not pure members of the mosphere these films maintain. It is a con- They can be compared with that area of genre, but show elements: HIGH SIERRA sistent sordidness, and is achieved by an country music which documents a life of (1941), DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), RAW unwillingness to sugarcoat motivation, poverty, adultery, drunkenness, suffering, DEAL (1948), CASS TIMBERLANE (1947), A characterization, or outcome. The tawdri- and survival-except that the expertise of LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949), and THE FILE ness becomes romanticized, and stylized, the Hollywood camera removed some of ON THELMA JORDAN (1950). and we get to the Freudian heart of why country music's earthiness and corniness, certain types fall into habits of self- and so the film equivalent lacks the sanc- Not to be strictly included among the destruction, into ruts of joylessness, futile tion of the ethnic purists. Yet if the form is Working-Class Films are those which patterns of silly behavior, ritualistic and more sophisticated, the content is largely soft-cushioned and thereby subverted the masochistic suffering, and self-indulgent the same. mystique; which let the characters be good violence. folk happening to have bad luck at the For the most part these films lacked the moment. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN There could be success after the suffer- skilled craftsmanship of their British coun- (1944), for example-with its hard- ing and striving in the Working-Class terparts, the \"Kitchen Sink\" films of the working housewife, drunken husband, Film, but when there was, it was as in THE early Sixties; but, to their credit, they also floozy aunt, and desperate children-had POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE: a turn- omitted strained purpose and point of the proper paraphernalia, but the point of about into something terrible. The wish view. The British films were made for intel- view was all wrong, and it shows al- coming true is the fulfillment of a prophetic lectuals who were either slumming, together too much affection for its charac- pattern of disaster and tragedy. In the romanticizing, or politicking, whereas the ters. Working-Class Film it is the almost-tragic American films were made for the very flaw of poverty, or the birthmark of being people who populated them. Despite their And not to take issue with it as a great \"low-class,\" which works itself through proficiency as films, movies like LOOK BACK film, but only to question its authenticity as and out, and turns the dream into night- IN ANGER, THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG embodiment of the working-class mys- mare. DISTANCE RUNNER, SATURDAY NIGHT AND tique, we might again cite THE GRAPES OF WRATH. The minds behind it (Steinbeck, FILM COMMENT 47

KING ' S ROW (1942) . The first half was about other CITY FOR CONQUEST (1940) was one of those what- THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940). Truck drivers George things, but the second half is pure Working-Class Film. will-they-become stori es. james Cagney, Ann Sheri- Raft and Humphrey Bogart prefer the satisfaction of in- Ronald Reagan , a young blade from the wrong side of dan , Arthur Kenned y, and Elia Kazan (pre-directing dependent operation to security with the combine. the tracks, tries to rai se himself by paying court to the days) grow up together on the same block on the Lower Picking up hitchhikers like Ann Sheridan and losing daughter of a prominent doctor. He loses not onl y the Ea st Side. Cagney nearl y becomes the world 's light- arms in truck wrecks are almost everyday occurrences. girl, but the lower half of hi s body after a railroad acci- weight bo xing champion , but isn' t quite dishonest There is an earthy romance between Raft and Sheridan, dent. Ann Sheridan , a plain but hardworking girl who enough . Ann aims forfame as a club dancer, but is done who becomes a waitress in one of those marvelously has kept house for her father and brothers for years, in by a Valentino-ish partner (played by a very campy authentic diners that Howard Johnson helped to kill, marries him anyway. Together (and within their own Anthony Quinn) . Kazan becomes a good-for-nothing and a cozy domestic thing between Bogart and his peer group) they will build an honest, if modest, life. hooligan, while Kenned y is a starry-eyed song writer cotton-printed wife. Both romances are interrupted by who finall y makes it big. Poverty is a prerequisite of Ida Lupino, who tries to tempt Raft into murdering her fame, and the Lower East Side is a metaphor, the micro- hu sband-a wealthy truckman pla yed by Alan Hale. cosm where the American Dream can be acted out in Later she goes insane, and Raft marries the waitress in grand style. true knight-gets-princess tradition . JUKE GIRL (1942). Ann Sheridan is a singer at a juke NORA PRENTISS(1947) lets a respectable doctor build THE HARD WAY (1942) was for wives whose husbands joint in Florida , where migrant worker Ronald Reagan a compulsion for a rather trashy nightclub entertainer. slept in their underwear. What you could do about it hangsout in search of joy to balance thenada of picking And although the story is told from his point of view in was what Ida Lupino did : you could leave town with fruit for low wages. The juke joint is everything one self-pitying confessional , it is the lower-class femme two mediocre hoofers (Dennis Morgan and jack Car- could want-a prototype for thousands across the con- fatale , who simultaneously brags and warns about her son), taking along your virginal and talented sister. As tinent in the Forties. But best of all is the tomato fight immorality and who is played lovingly by Ann Sheri- an entrepreneur, then , you could know some success, between the pickers and the packers . And finally, to dan, who holds your interest. bright lights, and expensive clothing, but you'd have to drive home the idea of martyred migrancy, Ronnie is pay for it with a couple of suicides and other disasters. framed for a murder he did not commit. Punishment in the Working-Class Film is frequently courted , and the \" I'm-no-good-and-I-deserve-all-this\" complex works as a very special and romanticized no- tion . FLAMINGO ROAD (1948). A carnival dancer (Joan THE DAMNED DON 'TCRY (1949). joan Crawford leaves ROAD HOUSE (1948) has some marvelous bits be- Crawford) is arrested as a vagrant in a s m~U Southern her laborer husband and abject poverty in Texas when tween Ida Lupino as a Down-and-out singer and Celeste town. Her existential independence In resisting whlte- her child is killed. She works at a cigar counter, at a Holm as a bar maid in a sleazy highway saloon; and a suited Sydney Greenstreet causes her to lose her job as dress shop, and then asa kept woman . She tries to build good scene in which Cornel Wilde tries to teach Ida the a waitress and take one as a \"Hostess\" (1940 for ProSti- something worthy, but with this sordid and desperate working class archetypal art form of bowll ng. tute) . She rises to marriage with a young lawyer (David past as a base, there can only come murder. Brian), but . ..the past always catches up. (It' s part PUri- tan and part Greek tragedy.) When Sydney attempts to ruin David 's budding career, Joan IS driven to murder him.