tial media buyers on hold , but MTV says it will cross that threshold momen- tarily. But while there's little regard for re- search in the record biz, part of MTV's allure for the record companies has been that it is cheaper to cu t a promo than tour a group. MTV converts, however, are prone to give testimonial s, not sales fig- ures: The 1982 Grammy Award winner for Best New Act, Men At Work, couldn't get air play until MTV played them ... People walk into record stores in virgin territory where a band has never ap- peared or been on the radio , and buy the record; sometimes they don' t even know the name of the band. \"The group was on the beach and the si nger was wearing... » LA-based Oingo Boingo played the South to sell-out crowds- the only exposure they had was MTY. Ever since the FCC limited stations to 50,000 watts, MTV has become something this country never had , na- tional radio. That's why it makes sound marketing sense for record companies to spend anywhere from $6,000 to $150,000 to make MTV videos, with an average now around $30,000. Rock ' n roll stars are nothing if not smart marketers. And lately, contractual agreements signed with record com- panies contain MTV clauses. One group looking for a record contract, Saga, pro- duced a video that was cablecast on MTV; tout de suite, the group was signed by Epic records. Many artists seek to wield artistic control over their video en- deavors. \" If it's not too outrageous, we let them do it,\" explains Michael Kraukau , vice president of artist devel- opment at A&M. \"After all, it's a new hybrid art form merging visuals and mu- .» SIC. The venture is not yet profitable. MTV's parent company, Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Co. (WASEC, pronounced WaaSic), reported losses of $46.6 million in 1982. MTV'sown losses have been estimated from $ 10 to $15 million for 1982, with 1982 start-up costs about $20 million. Though industry ru- mor is that American Express wants out of WASEC, Warner Communications believes the precocious rwo-year-old off- spring can perform. Stockholders do not necessarily profit from suffering in the same manner as artists. Before MTV becomes a commercial success it needs commercials. Adver- tisements on MTV cost $1,000 per 30- second spot, $3,000 during a concert broadcast. MTV sales literature states 49
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that the audie nce it delive rs to adve r- tisers is \"E lusive . .. MTV attracts young upscale males and fema les.\" Along with its elusive audie nce, how- eve r, MTV is selling a program ming e nviro nment th at frequen tly contain s sex-and-d ru gs -a nd-rock -' n' -ro ll- an d- viole nce- which is part of its allure in attractin g its aud ience, bu t part of the p roblem in attracting mai nstrea m adve r- tise rs like Procte r & Ga mble . So me more up-to-date adverti se rs are comfort- able wi th the MTV fo rmat, and exploit its possibilities. Atari , a Warne r unit, lau nched a custom-made com me rcial for its Centi pede game on MTY. Instead of a happy fam iIy playing a video ga me , the spot involves the viewer in the game itself via a fa ntasy settin g. While waiting fo r ad revenue, MT V last month in itiated a mo nthly charge to cable operators. New ope rators will be charged te n to 15 cents a month pe r subscri ber to carry the service. T he con- cern re mains, among MTV fa ns and WASEC, that syste ms will op t to d rop the se rvice rath er th an pay the fee . MT V is the ultim ate test of the concept of narrowcasting; analysts fi gure that if MTV doesn' t work, nothing will , and America's Moviest V eo Catalog cable narrowcas ting will remain re le- Just Got Movier. gated to movie and sports channels. Srand new 1983 edition! Not that MTV is head ing out to C BS • 1000's & 1000's of titles on VHS, BETA, VideoDisc-Nobody has more! Cable wasteland . It isn' t that artsy. Ear- • Order with confidence from one of America's largest, most lier this year, MTV's chief architect Ro- dependable home video services_ be rt Pi ttm an received the corporate nod It's bursting at the seams with pure video entertainment. From early silent films to the latest releases ... the classics (and not-so- of approval whe n he was elevated to claSSics) ... concerts . . . cartoons ... famous tv shows ... foreign films ... sports ... hard-to-find titles ... the list goes on and on. WASEC's chief ope rating offi cer. Be fore You'll also find complete listings for video games, accessories, blank tapes and more! Imagine-154 pages jam-packed with a complete mov ing to cable , the 29-year-old w hiz description of every title, trivia, delightful photos and illustrations ... and access to the entire exciting kid had been a rad io programme r re- world of home video. So stop searching. And start finding. Order yours today! now ne d fo r turni ng los in g statio ns (Enjoy Adult Video? Enclose an additional arou nd . $2 for our huge Adult Video Catalog!) T he n the re is some thing about imi ta- tion being the since rest fo rm of fl attery, particul arly whe n it is necessary to spe nd money to do it. O n June 4, cable pioneer Ted T urn er launched a rock video pro- gram. The video cl ips will run on T urne r Superstation WTBS fro m midnight to 6 A.l\\ 1. F riday and Saturday nights. T urne r, however, abhors the viole nce even in conventional network program- ming and is limiting the pool of accepta- D Enclosed is $5 (cash, check or money order) . Send me your new Video Catalog , plus periodic ble tapes. Videos conta in ing sex and updates of new releases and sale Items. viole nce will be edite d or rejecte d . Which may make it more comme rcially D Enclosed is $2 additional. Please include your Adult Video Catalog . I am over 18 years old. palatable, but fa r less like ly to pump 6736 Castor Ave. • Phila ., PA 19149 adre naline in the wee hours. MTV will 215-722-8298 re main the franchise fo r now- or llntil Name _____________________________________________________ someone gets the bright idea to start a Address _____________________________________________ cab le chann e l th at re fl ects tas tes in rhyth m ' n blues, cou ntry, pop, d isco, City _________________________________ State _ _ Zip ________ and the rest of th e colors in the rock rainbow. - MA R Y BILLARD Phone __________________________ IFe I © 1983 Movies Unlimited, Inc. 51
Thu Chopper stars in O'Bannon's Blue Tlninder. screenwriter? Long pause. Then one six- Eszterhas was brought in to work on it. teen-year-old says, \" Pinback! I mean, Dan O'Bannon Interviewed O'Banyon!\" Weeks to do one more draft and recon- by Marc Mancini Dan O'Bannon is neither the charac- nect some now-loose ends. Finally, they Westwood, California. A long line has ter he played in Dark Star nor a tropical formed for a \"sneak\" preview of Blue tree. Once a young, pale male who de- hired Dean Reisner to make a few minor Thunder. There are collegiate couples. voured all things speculative, he has There are paramilitary types. Above all, been associated in one way or another changes for reasons that are still myste- there are the young, pale males. with many of the most provocative works of science fiction and horror over rious. What you see on the screen, I Young, pale males prefer computers the last decade. He is the co-writer of to surfboards, Star Trek conventions to Alien, Blue Thunder, Heavy Metal , and would guess , is 85 percent from Dan and football games, Ms. PacMan to Bo De- Dark Star. He also contributed to Star rek. Their communication network Wars and an early attempt at Dune. He is myself. about new sci-fi films-even one as slated to write and direc\"t a new 3-D marginally futuristic as Blue Thunder-is Heavy Metal. Though he is the first to pay homage stunningly efficient. Their loyalty to the genre has made cult triumphs out of Blue Thunder co-author Don Jakoby, to his co-writers and preferred directors, certain clinkers. With their delight in who avers that \" neither Don nor I have arcane knowledge, they would make ever been up in a helicopter,\" and who O'Bannon 's style stands out. An ideal scholars, if only they could bring a says that their research consisted of a sense of proportion to their fancies . 30-minute chat with some executives of O'Bannon story plays mischievously They are , in other words, a publicist's Hughes Aircraft, describes the movie's dream. gestation: \"First, there was our idea of a with audience expectations. His thrillers crazy who possesses something techno- Ask these pavement-camping zealots logically dangerous. The police helicop- revere cause and effect, though their to name their favorite novelists and they ter came next. We then wrote this script respond at micro-chip speed: Bradbury, on spec. We made a deal with the pro- logic has often been subverted in the Heinlein, Clarke, Le Guin. Spielberg is ducer, Gordon Carroll, and reworked the invariable choice as favorite director. three or four new drafts with him . Sev- final screen versions. His writing is often They also know why tribbles are trou- eral studios expressed interest-espe- ble, why there are monsters in the Id, cially Paramount-but it was eventually cynical, always irreverent, rooting itself and who said \"Klaatu Barado Nikto.\" picked up by Rastar and Columbia. Joe But who is their favorite science-fiction deeply in personal anxieties and the par- anoia of the times. Now, with the success of Blue Thun- der, Dan O'Bannon feels even freer than usual to talk about his relationship to speculative cinema. -M.M. • For every screenwriter who succeeds, hundredsfail. Why have you done so well? I've done well only by the standard that I'm a rarity among screenwriters: I actually make a good living writing for the screen. By my self-imposed stan- dards, however, I've had only very mod- est success. Except for Dark Star, all my 52
scripts have been changed. I have a rep- L.A. from his chopper, he would see To speed up the middle of the picture utation as a visceral, action writer when arcane patterns . He eventually saw L.A. and because John Badham had so much I'm most proud of the psychological un- as the mythological serpent that he must fun directing that scene that they derpinnings in my stories, man y of destroy. couldn't use it. which have fallen away by the time the stories reach the theater. I'm pleased Since he is the LAP D's best pilot, The same sort ofplot-gutting happened when I watch Blue Thunder with an audi- they ignore the warnings and leave an on Alien , didn't it? ence and share their excitement and ultimate weapon in the hands of an ulti- pleasure, but what they see is quite dis- mate madman. He proceeds to devas- Yes. To me , it was important to ex- tant from my original vision. To answer tate L.A., turning it into a Beirut-like plain why the creature preyed on the your question, however, there have nightmare. It was felt , however, that crew. It wasn't eating them. Not at all. It been several elements that have led to someone more heroic was needed at the required sex hosts for its two-phase re- my scripts being bought: excellent writ- film's center. Obviously, I don ' t entirely productive cycle. In a key sce ne toward ing partners, like Ron Shusett and Don agree. The film could have been an im- the film's end, Ripley [Sigourney Jakoby; luck; good storytelling skills; portant character study, like Taxi Driver, Weaver) finds her captain all spun into a being well-versed in one or two genres; as well as a futuristic thriller. cocoon, half-dissolved , turning into the total tenacity; and rage. pods we saw at the film 's beginning. He We did , however, in the final version begs her to kill him, and she does. In- Why rage? of the script, leave traces of his madness stead , the producers [Walter Hill and Instead of going out and murdering in. Otherwise, we would have a heroic David GilerJ took out that scene and put people, instead of suppressing anger, I in a dumb robot. Another change that write screenplays. The angrier I am, the \\ bothered me was that the crew members better I write. Take Alien. I was mad went off, alone, to find the cat. Never that Dune had collapsed, I was living on Dan O'Bannon . did they do such a stupid thing in the Ron Shusett's couch, I didn' t have two original script. One good thing came of dimes to rub together, I had serious character doing inconsistently unheroic that, howeve r: \" Here, kitty, kitty ... \" stomach problems. So I embodied all things. I'm therefore very bothered that this phys ical and mental pain in the some of these character development As a screenwriter, however, you must Alien monster. scenes were edited out. For example, anticipate changes. Same kind of motivations with Blue there was what Don and I considered to Thunder? be an important interchange between But presumabl y those changes will be No. I've run on anger for a long time , Murphy and his analyst. We wanted the improvements. I sometimes feel that but I've finally realized that such motiva- audience to know that Murphy was very I've carefully designed a house that tions may be good for your craft but bad unstable. That would have justified someone has bought and rearranged for your health. some of his subsequent behavior. with a chain saw. The process is seldom How detailed were the Blue Thunder subtle or gratifying. scripts ? Like using innocent civilians as decoys? Very. All the action footage was de- Exactly. Also, I'm not exactly Joseph What do you think of actors changing scribed in great detail. Since I knew Wambaugh. Put advanced technology in your lines? they weren't going to let me direct Blue the hands of any governmental system , Thunder, I wrote effects and stunts that or any member of that system, and yo u So far, I've never minded that. First would be almost impossible to film. Let have the threat of mayhem at least as of all, I think that all the films made somebody else worry about it. Ironically, great as that from criminals or terrorists. from my scripts have been extremely it was probably this challenging nature The director [John Badham) went to well-cast. Second, good actors can often ofthe script that sold it. And they solved great lengths to show people escaping alter their dialogue in a way very appro- most of the \"impossibilities\" in true unharmed from various explosions and priate to their interpretation. There Hollywood fashion: they spent more crashes. I find that unconvincing. were many ad-libs in Blue Thunder, and money. So why do you think that the therapy most of them worked. And Warren Were there any action sequences that scene was edited out? Oates's performance, though somewhat didn't make it to the screen? different from what Don and I had imag- Some. For example, we had the Hol- ined for the character, was wonderful. lywood Freeway cave in. That and a few other apocalyptical moments were Don't you agree that casting several dropped early. With a redefinition of the women crew members in Alien was an central character, however, such improvement over your original all-male changes were necessary. You see , the crew? original Blue Thunder concept was much different. Frank Murphy [played in the Interesting that you ask. We never film by Roy Scheider) was a schizo- had an all-male crew. That was one of phrenic. He was on the verge of a ner- those stories spread while we battled the vous breakdown but managed to hide studio over the Alien credits. They his madness from the police depart- wanted to give principal credit to those ment. He even thought he was a reincar- who had done the re-write. Look at this. nation ofThor, god of thunder and light- [0' Bannon pulls out the original, typed ning. When he would look down on version of Alien. Clearly indicated: \"The crew is unisex and all parts are inter- changeable for men or women.\"] Now we've put one more bit of misinforma- tion to rest. You've said that a widely reported story regarding Alien's profits is also untrue. The L.A. Times decided in 1980 to 53
From 0'Bannon's first venture into space, Dark Star. expose reputed profit-skimming in Hol- editors, free-lance assistant cameramen, though, and has sold well as a video lywood. They focused on Alien as an writers who have yet to have a script cassette, even though the first cassettes example. The basic idea was that Alien optioned? What about the promising have been duped off a bad 16mm print. had pulled in $100 million in rentals and ones who just disappeared? And then, of VCI has recently taken the trouble to yet Fox was claiming that it had not yet course, there are those who you thought make a new, color corrected tape ofDark turned a profit. This story became the were real losers. Now, you walk into a Star. Both John Carpenter and I helped prototype example of creative book- studio for a story meeting. And who's them by providing a more tightly edited keeping in the industry. the story editor? It's one of those guys 35mm print from which they could you didn't take seriously. So you imme- record. Yet I did get checks all along. Since I diately think back, \"Was I nice to him?\" only had a percentage of the gross Why 'is it that you and Carpenter have profits, I'd assumed that I couldn' t ex- Your first film , Dark Star, began as a not worked again? pect Alien to finance my life. But it did. studentfilm project. Is it true that you stole It was like manna from heaven. The Shortly after Dark Star, John decided four others and I who were profit partici- itfrom V.s. c. ? that we no longer worked well together, pants, however, decided to clear all this so we had a parting of the ways. Since up by sponsoring an audit. A few irregu- Let's say that John Carpenter and I then, we've hardly communicated, larities were found , but absolutely noth- walked off with about 30 minutes' worth partly because we have few mutual in- ing major. There have been gross exam- of negative which served as a center- terests, partly because he has become ples of creative bookkeeping in piece for the feature. rather inaccessible to most everyone. I Hollywood, but I don't feel Alien was do have fond memories of working with one of them. That's still theft. him in college, however, and suspect he When you're hungry and you see an does too: in The Fog he named a very • apple on an untended cart, you grab it. sympathetic character O'Bannon. At the time, the question of morality It's a long way from V.S.C.film school seemed far less important than survival. Dune is finally being made as afeature to Alien and Blue Thunder. How do you Furthermore, I have serious doubts by David Lynch, of Eraserhead and The feel about your experiences back then ? about the morality of the school owning Elephant Man fame. But most peopLe a student's creative efforts. Of course, don ' t know that there was an aborted at- With mixed emotions. The success the university has its side: it's their tempt to film the same property in 1975, that I have now started there , and so I equipment that was used, 'they paid for and that you were the director of special owe them a great deal. I'm an active the stock and processing. effects. member of their alumni organization Despite Dark Star's low budget and stu- and I go back to speak whenever I'm dent origins, several now well-known art- And that the notorious Alexandro Jo- invited . Yet, the other day I was strolling ists participated. dorowsky was its director. In his EI Topo, around the campus on a quiet, typically . Right. Some of them were profes- Jodorowsky played a raving lunatic, and sunny afternoon. My thoughts were far sionals who wanted to try something I expected him to be at least a little from sunny. I remembered the loneli- new, like cartoonist Ron Cobb, who cre- weird. That's why my first meeting with ness, the hassles, the poverty of my stu- ated the models and some of the design. him was a shock: he was clean-shaven, dent life. Since then he has done Alien and Conan. dressed in a business suit, every hair on Jim Danforth, one of the most brilliant his head in place, every action gracious I can look back now from a position of stop-motion animators around , did the and continental. But deep down , Jo- comfort, so it all seems remote. But matte paintings. John Wash did many of dorowsky is a genuine mystic, mesmer- what of the ones that didn't make it big? Dark Star's effects. He has since made izing in a nearly supernatural way. After Everyone knows about George Lucas, major contributions to Blaae Runner and a couple of days, he called me and said, Randal Kleiser, and John Milius, who Brainstorm . One other thing you should \"I want you to direct the special effects vaulted from a successful student film remember. Dark Star was initially a box- on Dune . Sell everything you own, come directly to the big time. But what about office flop. It has built a cult following, to Paris. I come into your life like a all those U.S.C. grads who are part-time 54
hurricane. \" Though director Ridley Scott is a bril- not to drift. I avoid subplots. The com- Somehow , you don'T seem like one who liant visualist, he graciously encouraged ment I most commonly hear is, \"Yo ur my input on the film 's look. That's script is too on-the-nose.\" Well, that's responds well TO messianic exhortations. where H .G. Geiger came in . I told Rid- the way it should be. No, but for this guy I was ready to do ley, \"When you see this man's work, it'll be so disturbing that you'll know that it • anything. Anyway, I was so poor I didn't -and he-is what you want.\" I was have anything to sell. worried that I had ruined the impact. Are any of the fears exploited in your Just the opposite. He told me that Gei- screenplays your own personal fears? And was iT like a hurricane? ger's work was more marvelous than he If constructive hurricanes exist. Actu- had imagined. All of them. I believe, as Hitchcock ally, it was the most positive experience did , that being frightened by things of my life. I had thirty people working That whole workaday, shaggy look to makes you capable of creating frighte'n- for me, includingJean Giraud, known as Alien's environment was also something ing things. I've always been very im- Moebius, the foremost comic book artist dear to me. Carpenter and I had used it pressionable . I have a good memory for in France. His storyboards were as- on Dark Star around the same time that those little things that scared me , tounding. There were thousands of his Douglas Trumball had trjed it in Silent thrilled me, frustrated me, and I can drawings, four months' work. Jo- Running. easily reconjure them in a new form. dorowsky tentatively lined up a remark- Like most people, I'm a bit uncomforta- able, strange cast: David Carradine as Roy Scheider. ble with dark places and closed spaces, Kynes , Orson Welles as the Baron , How about Blue Thunder? and I definitely don' t like slimy things. Charlotte Rampling as Jessica , and Sal- No. My only participation beyond the Alien exploits all of these fears. vador Dali as the Emperor. Dali even scripting was to watch the stunts being wanted to design his own sets. Then filmed in downtown L.A. I did write I also think that I portray a much more there was Pink Floyd to do the score. John Badham some very detailed sug- general dread in my scripts: that reality So whaT happened? gestions. I felt an obligation to do that. is disintegrating, that all the forces of the So the producers went broke after He carried out very few of them. universe have turned against you. It's having spent about $2 million. And I I must say that all those suspenseful, much like the feeling you can get when went home and vented my frustration thrilling chases that Don and I wrote you fall asleep, everything gets weird, by writing Alien . were visualized in an impressive fash- you go full blown into the bizarreness of You also worked on Star Wars? ion. In any suspense film or thriller, the the dream and suddenly wake up, safe Yes. George Lucas had seen and en- energetic or fearful moments have to and free. joyed Dark Star. He therefore had his happen only occasionally. They must be producer, Gary Kurtz, call and offer a separated by quiet stretches, though at That clearly was your approach in middle-level special effects position. It any second the audience knows that Alien, but how about Blue Thunder? was the summer of '75, and Jodorowsky something startling can happen, some had just offered the Dune job, so I had to twist, some astonishing but logical There, too, reality gives way, though say no. A year later, they called again. It course of action different from the one not as dramatically as it did in Alien. As seemed that they had tried to have gen- expected. children growing up, most of us felt safe: uine computer animation for screens in I also always try to keep to the point, our parents would protect us , cops were the various spaceships, but the technol- our friends, we were largely oblivious to ogy was at the time too awkward. Any- world unrest. Both because we are now way, Lucas had been impressed with our adults and because the world has Dark Star readouts and wanted the changed, that comforting obliviousness same. So t\\vo very talented animators, is gone. Somebody gets shot down the John Wash and Jay Teitzell, joined me street. Banks cut off your money be- and we faked the computer displays. I cause of some twisted clerical error. also came up with the idea of putting a Noises get on your nerves, like that of mirror beneath Luke's landcruiser to helicopters. Privacy is gone. Blue Thun- cover the wheels, reflect the sand, and der, therefore, is a film of urban phobias. make it look from a distance like the vehicle was floating. So my input on Star Afew days ago, you mentioned that you Wars had nothing to do with scripts and were going to build a bulletproof house. mostly to do with visuals. Were you kidding? You were given an extra creditfor visual design on Alien. Isn't it unusual for a I was serious, though I know it sounds writer to have a visual input on afilm ? strange. But think about it: California Other than on the real basics, yes. law requires you to build earthquake- Some writers, like Larry Kasdan and proof, fire-resistant homes. In an envi- Don Jakoby, write incredible, image- ronment of violence, in a country where laden prose. I don't, since I figure that firearms are legal, in a city where some subsequent artists will reinterpret even guy was killed last week by a bullet fired the most colorful verbal images that I in a holdup a half-mile away, what do could write. For example, the Alien you think is more likely these days, be- script had few visual directions. But in ing hurt by your house falling down on my mind were some of the images, or at you or a piece of artillery coming least where they could be found. through your wall? That's what I mean by modern urban anxieties. Considering what event Blue Thun- der may be used for, are you going to remain in L.A. during the Olympics? Are you kidding? ~ 55
by John Motavalli doubtedly considered it too close to the The Shah's attitude towards Iranian uncomfortable reality of the bloody con- film was somewhat ambiguous. Al- The triumph of the Iranian revolution flict, in which hundreds of thousands of though the regime was much happier in 1979, which promised a new era of Iranians have died. Another post-revolu- with the frivolous subjects dealt with in political and cultural freedom to a long- tion film by Naderi, concerning torture the so-called Fardin films (starring a suffering people, has been an unmiti- techniques of the late Shah's secret po- popular actor named Fardin, and aping gated disaster-not least for the coun- lice, SAVAK, was also banned, perhaps the comedy-musicals churned out by try's _emerging film industry. Under the because the new government has em- the Indian film industry), it realized that harsh rule of Ayatollah Khomeini's rigid braced many of these techniques itself. the cinema of the serious directors won theocracy, an independent and once- prizes at the international film festivals, flourishing industry that in one year, Ironically, Naderi had suffered from drawing the kind of prestige abroad that 1972, produced as many as 91 feature censorship before, when the Shah still the Shah could not buy with his oil films, has been reduced to a cowed, sub- sat on the Peacock Throne. Naderi's wealth. servient shadow of its former self. Most 1974 film Marsiyeh (Elegy) was banned of the country's talented directors, pro- in Iran until it won the special jury prize One of the most influential of the ducers, actors, and film technicians are at the San Remo film festival in 1978. New Wave of Iranian directors, Darius in exile, and those remaining in the Naderi specializes in what one critic has Mehrjui, saw his trend-setting 1969 film country are either quiet or are function- called \"bitter realism ,\" and his famous Gav (The Cow) banned for more than a ing under enormous constraints. In the 1975 film Tangsir, depicting a peasant's year, though the film was financed in four years since the revolution, only 40 desperate struggle to regain his land and part by funds from the National Radio films have been made, and 23 of these possessions from the hands of a grasping and Television Service. When the film, have been banned. town official, escaped censorship only about the travails of a poor peasant and because it was a period piece. Appar- based on a short story by the influential Before a film can be made in the so- ently giving up the fight against the cen- leftist writer Gholam-Hossein Saedi, called Islamic Republic, the story or sors, Islamic or monarchist, Naderi has was finally released, the government screenplay must be submitted to the stopped making films and is now con- forced Mehrjui to attach a prologue as- \"Ministry of Guidance,\" which submits centrating on photography. serting that the film was depicting his- each film to a medieval Islamic Code. torical events with no connection to the No on-screen kissing is permitted unless Director Bahram Beyzai's historical present day. Despite official disap- the couple is married, and women must epic Tara, completed shortly after the proval, Gav won the best actor prize at be wearing the all-encompassing chador revolution, was immediately banned by the 1971 Chicago International Film (leaving only the face and hands ex- Khomeini's censors, who apparently ob- Festival, as well as the 1971 Interna- posed) at all times. A representative of jected to the presence of unveiled tional Film Critics prize at the Venice the Islamic government must be present women in the film. Beyzai, likened to Film Festival. during filming, and the completed film Kurosawa by one Iranian critic, is still in must be submitted to yet another set of Iran but is no longer making films. An- Mehrjui's equally important 1974 official censors. This kind of strict regi- other young Iranian filmmaker, Ghasem film, Dayerh-e-Mina (The Cycle), one of men ensures that all released films fall Ebrahamian, now living in New York, the very few Iranian movies to be dis- within a very narrow \"Islamic\" purview. was arrested and detained briefly by tributed in the U.S. (in 1979 by Icarus/ SAVAK while shooting scenes in 1978 Dispodex International), was banned in When Amir Naderi, one of the few for his documentary, Iran: Scene ofRevo- Iran for more than two years because the top directors still remaining in Iran, lution. Yet after the revolution, during a SAVAK censors detected its connection made a documentary about the Iran-Iraq screening of his film at Teheran Univer- between the corruption depicted in the war last year, the film was immediately sity, squads of officially sanctioned hez- film's story about a chaotic hospital and banned because the authorities un- bollahi (Islamic thugs) attacked the au- the popular image of the Shah's regime. dience with clubs and knives. Unable to function in Iran under Islamic 56
guidelines, Mehrjui moved to Paris. He notes that the success of Abi and Rabi Teheran, during which he interviewed has not yet made another film . presaged decades of derivative cinema many of the directors who would come in Iran. Indeed , Abdul-Hossein Se- to Iran for the annual Teheran Interna- Although the Iranian cinema pro- panta, the creator of the first Farsi-lan- tional Film Festival, begun in 1972 un- duced over 1100 movies between 1931 guage sound films (made in Bombay), der the auspices of the Shah. Many films and 1979, it was only in the Sixties and failed to find any production money otherwise banned in Iran were screened Seventies that a group of young direc- when he moved from India to Iran. His to the elite audiences at the festival. tors, most of them educated in France, films dealt with realistic themes and The Shah could thus foster the image to began to produce what has been termed were often based on popular Iranian sto- the international press of a pluralistic the \"New Wave\" of Iranian films. ries , but he could not get backing either society while still keeping \"dangerous\" These directors, including Mehrjui, Na- from the government or from the few films away from the masses. In a reac- deri , Parviz Kimiavi, Sohrab Shahid Sa- sources of private capital available in the tion to the years of censorship, such less, Masud Kimia'i, Parviz Sayyad, and Iran of the Thirties. films as Z, Potemkin, and The Battle of Bahman Farmanara, were strongly influ- Algiers played to standing-room-only enced by Godard, Truffaut, Bresson , Not until the early Sixties, when crowds immediately following the revo- and the Italian neo-realism of Rossellini three seminal films were made in Iran- lution , before the draconian censorship and De Sica. By portraying the harsh Fereydoun Rahnama's Siavash-e-Takhte took hold. realities of the everyday life of the aver- lamshid (Siavash of Persepolis) , Ibrahim age Iranian peasant or factory worker, Golestan's Khesht va Aayeneh (The Mir- Although Maghsoudlou is strongly the New Wave directors were exploding ror and the Brake) , and Farrokh Ghaf- critical of some aspects of the Shah's many of the myths carefully constructed fari's Shabe-e-Koozh Posht (Night of the regime, he sees the repression of artistic by the Shah's regime-myths that im- Hunchback)-did serious filmmaking works under the monarch as mild com- plied the birth of a great society that really take hold in Iran . \"These films pared to the present situation. \"Under would soon outstrip the industrial socie- were unique because their seriousness the Shah,\" he says, \"at least a film could ties of the West. influenced the younger generation of be made. It might be held up for five Iranian filmmakers ,\" notes Maghsoud- years , but then it could be released. Un- As much as these directors were in- lou . \"With the establishment of various der Khomeini, films can't even be made spired by European and American film festivals in Iran beginning in the unless they get government approval movies, they were also reacting against early Sixties, the support given by the first.\" (Now, Maghsoudlou presents an the great bulk of Iranian entertainment Ministry of Art and Culture, and the Iranian film series at the Bombay Cin- films. Irani film critic and scholar beginning of Iranian TV also in the Six- ema, on Fifty-Seventh Street in Man- Bahman Maghsoudlou sees the New ties , Iranian independent filmmaking hattan, every Thursday evening.) Wave directors as having bucked a trend started to take off. \" that had started at the very beginning of For those directors experimenting Iranian cinema. The first Iranian feature Maghsoudlou's own story gives an in- with avant-garde techniques in the late film , Abi and Rabi, made in 1931 by dication of the numerous contradictions Sixties and Seventies, enormous obsta- Avaness Ohanion, was a copy of a popu- facing film culture under the Shah. A cles existed, even beyond the constantly lar series of Danish silent comedies. In writer and editor of more than a half- threatened censorship. Although Tehe- his forthcoming book on the Iranian dozen cinema books and magazines in ran itself was a carefully planned oasis of screen (to be published in September by Farsi (some of which were banned at modernity, especially in its swank north- the Center for Near Eastern Studies at various times by SAVAK), Maghsoudlou ern section, much of the rest of the New York University), Maghsoudlou also had his own television program in country remained in conditions little Daruish Khan. Saless's Still Life. 57
changed since the turn of the century. Parviz Sayyad. of a country bumpkin baffled by the Of the 500 or so movie theaters in the Mary Apick. ways of the big city (a common theme of country before the revolution, most Iranian folk tales). Although he was pri- showed Indian and American adventure marily known for his popular work, Say- films, or the domestic dreck of the Far- yad founded (in 1974) the New Film din variety. Group, a loose confederation of New Wave directors, and used the money Directors were under enormous pres- from his commercial projects to help fi- sure to make popular films, as Sohrab nance the works of Kimia'i, Ibrahim Go- Shahid Saless explained in 1977: \"If I lestan, Saless, and Mehrjui. His own want to make a film for an Iranian pro- 1976 Bonbast (Dead End) has a double ducer, then he demands endless conces- distinction: it was banned by the Shah's sions-a belly dance, for example-or regime, and its star, Mary Apick, re- assurance that the characters will be ceived the Best Actress award at the happy and get married and so on.\" Al- 1977 Moscow Film Festival. The latter though he made two acclaimed features action undoubtedly influenced the for- in Iran, 1973's Yek Ettefaq-e-Sadeh (A mer. Simple Event) and Tabi' at-e-Bijan (Still Life) in 1974 after completing studies in Avoiding political ideology of any Vienna and at the Paris Conservatoire kind, Sayyad focuses on the lives of indi- Independant du Cinema, Saless, whose vidual people caught up in political or specialty is what critic Ronald Holloway social events beyond their control. In has termed \"the isolation of the individ- Bonbast, Mary Apick plays a lovesick ual in pessimistic, tragic terms,\" found young girl wooed by an eligible young the contradictions of Iranian cinema far man, only to find that her suiter is a too confining. Since 1975, he has been SAVAK agent whose mission is to arrest living and working in West Germany. her brother. In Saless's celebrated In Der Fremde (Far From Home), made in Ger- Directors like Parviz Kimiavi, per- many in 1975, Sayyad plays the part of a haps the boldest stylistically of the New lonely Turkish immigrant laborer in Wave directors, had a hard time attract- West 'Berlin who largely meets with in- ing an audience because of the lack of difference in his sad attempts to make sophistication of the bulk of Iranian contact with his German neighbors. Say- moviegoers. Specializing in semi-docu- yad's performance (and Saless's direc- mentaries that combined stark realism tion) are that of men who know what it is with flights of Felliniesque fantasy, Ki- to be alienated and alone. miavi won a Silver Bear at the 1976 Ber- lin Film Festival for his brilliant Bagh-e- Sayyad, who was in Germany during Sanghi (Stone Garden), a fascinating the revolution, decided not to go back glimpse into the sad life of a religiously after mobs ransacked his theater in Te- crazed old man who constructs a garden heran. (Movie theaters and dramatic of heaped stones as his offering to God stages were frequently the target of ar- (based on an actual incident). His most son during the revolution.) Since set- famous film, Moghulha (The Mongols), a tling in the U.S., Sayyad directed and semi-surreal, almost Bunuelian venture co-produced Ferestadeh (The Mission), into the manner in which Iran's history the first Farsi-language film produced in and traditions kept creeping into the this country; he calls it his \"stateless\" Westernized society the Shah was trying film. Shown at the New DirectorslNew to construct, was sponsored by the state Films series in New York earlier this television service, opened in a major Te- year, The Mission won kudos from The heran movie house with much advertis- New York Times's Vincent Canby, who ing, and still manged to do only about called it \"appealing, technically accom- $40,000 worth of business in Iran. Ki- plished,\" and \"clear-eyed.\" Shot en- miavi now lives in France. tirely around the New York area, The Mission concerns the political awaken- • ing of a young assassin (Houshang Touzie) sent by the Khomeini regime to While Kimiavi's films puzzled a large eliminate a former government official. pan of the Iranian film audience, actor- When he gets to New York, he finds that director Parviz Sayyad's movies were his target has been changed and, in packing them in at theaters across the questioning his new assignment, he country. Through his ubiquitous ap- slowly discovers the true nature of the pearances on Iranian TV, as well as the Islamic regime. Informed by a sharp thirteen films he directed and the sense of irony, The Mission reflects the twenty-two films he participated in as disillusionment and pessimism exiles actor, producer, or writer, Sayyad was like Sayyad feel about the direction of one of the leading figures in the popular cinema, specializing in playing the role 58
events in their native land. the Shah, because you had portrayed hard for Behruz Vos uqi , the most fa- Sayyad, now working in Los Angeles characters who drank wine and taught mous Iranian actor, now living in Los bad things to people. I was in shock for a Angeles. Vosuqi made more than 100 directing a Farsi-language stage play for while.\" Apick is beginning to recon- film s in Iran, including memorable ap- the large Iranian exile community there , struct her career in the U.S., appearing pearances in Naderi 's Tangsir, and says that all his movies-with the excep- in Sayyad's current play, entitled Khar Kimia' i's DashAkol and Qeysar (The Kai- tion of one that depicts the lives of an old (Donkey) , and has a small role as a re- ser). A superstar in Iran and neighboring couple (the woman wears a chador porter in Philip Kaufman's new movie Asian countries , Vosuqi , like Sayyad, throughout)-are banned in the Islamic The Right Stuff. combined commercial projects with Republic. \"Under the Khomeini re- those of more artistic merit. In Tangsir, Known primarily in Iran as a stage he so successfully embodied the role of gime,\" he declares, \"it seems that any actor, Houshang Touzie worked with an embattled and heroic peasant that it independent productions are immedi- Teheran's Drama Workshop and ap- was hard to imagine that he was a very ately banned, except for propaganda peared in Arbi Ovanesian's 1971 film wealthy man with close ties to the Shah. films. They have a Ministry of Art and Cheshmeh (The Spring) , also earning Vosuqi was in the U.S. during the revo- Culture that does produce films, but good notices during an appearance in lution, working on a made-for-cable film these hardly ever get shown. At least The Tibetan Book ofthe Dead at Manhat- called Cat in the Cage, still unreleased. during the Shah's period, a film like The Cycle , which was a great movie , could be Behruz Vosuqi . In view of his identification with the made. [Sayyad was co-producer of the tan's Cafe La Mama last year. A veteran Shah, Vosuqi decided that going back movie.] We've forgotten about that pe- of more than fifty plays in Iran, he has to Iran would be suicidal. \"Some time riod, but when we compare it to the found work a lot harder to get in the U. S. after the revolution, some representa- present regime , it was like living in para- but is determined to make it in New tives of the new regime came to me and dise.\" York. Like the character he portrays in asked me to come back to make a film The Mission , Touzie has come to under- on the life of Khosrow Golesorkhi [a Apparently resigned to the prospect stand the tragedy that has enveloped famous poet executed by the Shah's re- of a long exile, Sayyad hopes that the Iran. \"We were all victims of that re- gime in 1974]. I didn't believe them ,\" success of The Mission will help establish gime, \" he says of the Pahlavi reign, Vossuqi said of the Khomeini envoys. \"I Farsi films on the subtitle circuit, and he \"and we're all victims of the present didn't know what they really wanted to hopes one day to make an epic on the ·regime.\" Those friends of his still in do to me. There are no guarantees.\" Iranian revolution. Working under cur- Iran, he said, have \"become religious, Most of his money is still in Iran, and he rent conditions in Iran would be impos- and started talking like mullahs. They hopes to get it out so he can produce and sible, he says: \"They've accused many wouldn't dare make a film. \" direct films in the U.S. He acknowl- actors and actresses of being connected edges that he has lost a lot as a result of to the old regime. They had to swear • the revolution. \"I miss Iran,\" Vosuqi that they would never act in, produce, or says, \"but what can you do?\" direct any film that was against Islamic Life as an exile must be particularly laws. I have a lot of friends who were Most of the exiles know they can't active during the Shah's regime as ac- return in the near future , and are starting tors, directors, and so on, and they're not to integrate themselves into their host doing anything now.\" cultures. Saless's 1976 Coming of Age, his 1979 The Long Vacation of Lotte H. The two leading actors in The Mis- Eisner, and his controversial, three-hour sion, Touzie and Apick, were making 1982 film Utopia (a look at the sordid names for themselves in Iranian films world of a German pimp) all deal with and on the stage before the revolution specifically German subjects. Ghasem changed their plans. Both had taken Ebrahamian now makes a living produc- time off from their careers to study their ing news features for Italian TV, and also craft in the U. S. at the time of the revo- won the 1981 Student Academy Award lution, and both were soon convinced of for his three-hour, 16mm feature Willie, the futility of returning. about the struggles of a young black child in the Bronx. Mary Apick, whose mother was a well-known stage and television actress, • appeared in seven feature films in Iran (including Masud Kimia'i's famous 1971 E brahamian speaks for the majority of DashAkol, when she was only 14). \"Peo- the exiled Iranian film community when ple told me to go back after the revolu- tion and make movies wearing the cha- he describes the failure of the revolution dor, but I can't do that, \" she says. Just to fulfill its promise. \"We all felt that we after the revolution, unaware of what were going to have a democratic society, was happening in Iran, she had told her where freedom of expression and of the mother during a phone call that she press were the goals. Everybodywanted planned to return. \"My mother told me it to succeed. All of a sudden we realized strongly not to do that,\" Apick recalls. that it wasn't going the way we thought \"She said there was no real stage or cin- it was going to go. We thought Khomeini ema in Iran anymore, and that you had would be like Gandhi, but he turned to sign a document admitting your 'sins' into something much worse. It's a for working in the film industry under tragedy. \"~::' 59
e tn by Bill Krohn tures of a Jesuit education. Rendered arrest for murder.\" homeless by the First World War, he was Ulmer was frequently loaned to other It's 1945. A down-on-his-Iuck piano taken in by the family of an old school- player quits his job at the \"Break 0' mate, Joseph Schildkraut, through studios during his stint at Universal; this Dawn Club\" in New York and heads for whom he became acquainted with the permitted him to collaborate again with Los Angeles to see his girl , using his theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt. Murnau on all his American films, and thumb for transportation. Somewhere also to return-occasionally to Germany to en route he gets into the wrong car. By Though he wanted to be an actor or a work at UFA. During one of these trips the end of the film he's an outcast, musician, Ulmer started off under he made the pseudo-documentary Peo- wanted by the police for a bizarre double Reinhardt designing and building sets, ple on Sunday (1929) with Robert Siod- murder, cut offfrom the woman he loves mak co-directing, Billy Wilder scripting, and condemned to wander like the Fly- Edgar Ulmer. and an uncredited Fred Zinnemann ing Dutchman along the back roads of then did production design on films at pushing the camera in a baby carriage. America, where every juke-box in every UFA, where he worked with Fritz Lang hash-house is playing \"their song.\" and became one ofF. W. Mumau's closet In an interview with Peter Bogdano- collaborators. In the Twenties he emi- vich in 1967 and a work biography he That's the plot of Detour, which some grated to America and went to work for dictated from memory in 1971, Ulmer people consider the best B-movie of all Carl Laemmle at Universal, building recalled working in one capacity or an- time. It was made in six days for a little sets and models and assisting William other on films by Mumau, Lang, Lu- company called PRC (Producers' Re- Wyler on a number of silent two-reel bitsch, Stiller, Pabst, Leni, Wegener, leasing Corporation) just before the end westerns. Wyler tells an anecdote in Curtiz, Griffith, Vidor, von Stroheim, of the war, and it is the testament of an Axel Madsen's biography that is as star- Walsh , de Mille, Mamoulian, Maurice emigre director named Edgar G . Ulmer, tlingly apropos , for the man who would Tourneur, Clarence Brown, Chaplin, one of the legends of film history. someday make Detour, as the one about Borzage , and Eisenstein (on Que Viva Hitchcock and the village constable. Mexico). Even allowing for faulty recol- Historians have traditionally seen Ul- Apparently Ulmer was the victim of a lection, it is a remarkable list. mer as a man who took the wrong·turn , elaborate on-set prank: An argument Reinhardt, Murnau, and Lang alone are and Ulmer, who identified closely with was staged, the lights went out, a gun more influences than most young film- the hero of Detour, would probably was fired. \"When the lights came on makers could comfortably digest, and it agree with them. The metaphor seems again,\" Wyler recalled, \"one of the fel- is no wonder that Ulmer's first solo ef- sadly appropriate to a career that began lows was lying in his blood and Edgar fort, an all-star musical called Mr. Broad- with Murnau and Reinhardt and ended stood over him, dumfounded, with a way (1933) produced by a New York film -almost-with The Doris Day Show, gun in his hand. As he stood there lab, came out in his own words \"a night- after passing through a series of films watching his 'victim' in horror, a studio mare, a mixture of all kinds of styles.\" with Golden Turkey titles like Girls in sheriff, who was in on it, put a hand on Chains and The Manfrom Planet X, and his shoulder, telling him he was under With his first two features, made in- films with stranger titles still, like Moon dependently and far from Hollywood, Over Harlem, Amerikaner Schadchen and Ulmer had found his genres, melodrama Zaporozhets zu Dunayem. and the musical, spiced by a penchant for eccentric projects. His next was Da- Yet there is an element of myopia in maged Lives (1933), a limpid melodrama this view. His critics have largely fo- about syphillis produced by Harry cused on the films he made in Holly- Cohn's luckless brother Nat and filmed wood, often in idiotic genres, and ex- in eight days at Hollywood General Stu- cluded his European work and dios, in which a young, upperclass cou- particularly the films of his \"ethnic pe- ple afflicted by a pre-marital lapse on the riod\" in the Thirties, when Ulmer was husband's part are treated by the head of working like an independent filmmaker a sinister clinic to an illustrated lecture on the European model. frankly reminiscent of the \"Hotel des Folies Dramatiques\" sequence in Blood Ulmer was born in Ulmitz, Czecho- of a Poet: Behind a series of numbered slovakia, sometime around the turn of doors are displayed crippled, innocent the century, to Sigfried Ulmer, a Jewish victims of the disease, frozen into gro- wine merchant active in socialist poli- tesque postures or locked into infernal tics, and a headstrong, passionate Vien- patterns of mechanical repetition. As in nese coquette named Henrietta Edels. Cocteau, or a bad documentary, these Shortly afterward the family moved to shots are sutured in with no attempt at Vienna, where Ulmer suffered the tor- spatial credibility, so that it is impossible 60
to tell which of them, if any, is staged is not a travesty of its source. Ulmer was ment when his career as far as Holly- and which, if any, is real. faithful to the letter of Poe, to his sym- wood was concerned came to an end, bols, which he manipulates with such and the legend began. Shirley had been The same format-Anglo-Saxons sensitivity that Marie Bonaparte's anal- briefly married to Laemmle's nephew honeymooning in the Cabinet of Doctor ysis of the Tales could serve as a com- Max Alexander, and Ulmer's good for- Caligari-is used in The Black Cat mentary on the film as well: Lugosi's cat tune in winning her away so outraged (1934). Made at Universal underthe be- phobia, the subterranean crypt, the up- \" Uncle Carl\" that he forgot his soft spot nign sponsorship of Carl \"Junior\" right posture of the embalmed women , for Germans: Ulmer is one of the rare Laemmle, this Lugosi-Karloff horror even the uncanny whiteness of the cas- examples in Hollywood history of some- classic was Ulmer's first-and last-pic- one who was blackballed not for politics, ture for a major studio, but far from be- tle walls a la Roderick Usher's painting but for love. The newlyweds made one ing a youthful work, it is a grand sum- more picture before leaving Hollywood, ming up of the decade of cinema that of a vault the walls of which emit \"an a western titled Thunder Over Texas preceded it. Ulmer got the idea for The inappropriate and ghastly splendor,\" (1934) produced, oddly enough, by Max Black Cat from a grisly anecdote told to and the especially morbid connotations Alexander, directed by Ulmer under the him by Gustav Meyrinck, the author of of which are unravelled at the end of pseudonym Joen Warner, and starring the novel on which Paul Wegener's The Bonarparte's reading of The Narrative of Guinn \"Big Boy\" Williams , the amiable Golem was based, and the warlock and A. Gordon Pym. behemoth who played the villainous master builder played by Karloff is Mac in Murnau's City Girl. named after Hans Polzeig, the great While making The Black Cat Ulmer German architect who designed the rev- met his wife-to-be apprenticing on the Few filmmakers have had less to work olutionary sets for The Golem, the first picture as a script supervisor, there to with than \"Joen Warner\" on the B-west- picture Ulmer worked on, as a \"silhou- preserve spatial and temporal continuity ern beat, but the mood of the picture is ette cutter.\" Even in the brief prologue, during shooting. Ironically, Shirley Ul- light. Shirley drew heavily on Little Miss memories of a certain tradition come mer (whose new book, The roLe of the Marker for the scenes between Williams thick and fast: the short-lived character Script Supervisor, will be lavishly illus- and the little girl he adopts, which are of the cab driver (an emaciated double of trated with stills from Ulmer's films) was infused with an odd sexuality. A trio of Emil Jannings in The Last Laugh) drives to perfect her craft under the tutelage of Yiddish comedians implausibly cast as Lugosi and his young English friends to a director with a passion for heterogene- Big Boy's sidekicks do imaginary radio their unexpected rendezvous at Pol- ity, who would frequently change the broadcasts featuring their impressions of zeig's castle in a cab with side-flaps in- lighting or the background of a shot over stars of the periods; and stray expres- stead of doors, recalling the phantom her protests and in flagrant violation of sionist conceits dart out like moonbeams coach in Nosferatu. all the laws of screen continuity on the from sequences of incredible platitude pretext that it was \"right for the feeling\" and technical impoverishment: a dia- At the same time the myths of Ex- or that \"no one notices these things any- logue scene displaced onto shadows on a pressionism are made new by being way.\" It was a collaboration that lasted wall, a fistfight intercut with vertiginous married to the private mythology of Poe, 40 years, during which Shirley worked shots of trees aLa Sundays and CybeLe, a with Karloff playing the doomed artist on many scripts, although she received cascade of faceless riding shots that figure-a fusion of American and Euro- writing credit only on films made be- builds rhythmically until the horses pean strains of Romantic extremism that tween 1934 and 1940. seem to be plunging straight down the produced the only cinematic treatment side of a cliff. of Poe before Fellini's Toby Dammit that • The marriage occurred during a semi- nal period for Ulmer, almost at the mo- Hollywood days: The Black Cat. Lugosi and Kar/off. 61
With the studios closed to them, the in Exile, 1938). shots of galloping horsemen straight out Ulmers moved to New York during the Even more important, Avramenko of Thunder Over Texas, which are re- Depression. Shirley modelled hats, and placed in the second act by boats silhou- Ulmer sporadically worked as a camera- had shown Ulmer, who was an inventive etted against glittering expanses of wa- man for Pathe Newsreel. In 1936 pro- businessman, the way to a new career. ter (reminiscent of the funeral sequence ducer William Steiner hired them to Using Avramenko's pre-sale technique, in Potemkin), symbolizing the melan- make a thriller under Canada's \"quota he produced four films in the next three choly sweetness of the Zaporogian Cos- quicky\" system, starring Ruth Roland, years for the booming Yiddish-language sack's exile \"over the Danube\" in the Queen of the Serials (which was re- market, all of which have now been re- Turkey. cently restored by D. john Turner of stored by the American jewish Histori- Canada's National Film, TV and Sound cal Society, and one all-Black feature, In his ethnic films, Ulmer put his art Archives from a negative on deposit with Moon Over Harlem (1939). He also made at the service of oppressed minorities, so the AFI). Like Thunder Over Texas, the a series of short fiction films for the Na- that each film is first of all a collective title Ulmer gave the film, From Nine to tional Tuberculosis Association (now the statement, and a highly political one. Nine, is a joke about his high-culture American Lung Association), including Moon Over Harlem, unlike most Black B roots. A psychological thriller for which three miniature versions of Damaged films, includes Whites in its world-view: he had done some preliminary model Lives with cast of Blacks, Mexicans, and White gangsters (seen in Langian back- work, it would have been Murnau's last Navajo Indians. Ulmer told of-the-head shots) telephone orders to German film if William Fox had not Bogdanovich that during this period that their lackeys in Harlem, who are always called him to America prematurely to documentarian Pere Lorentz dubbed discovered sitting fecklessly around the start work on Sunrise. him \"the director of the minorities\"; an same table in the local saloon. The film ad in one of the trades simply read: \"Ed- ends with the hero proclaiming that Ulmer had a free hand to experiment gar G. Ulmer, Director: 723 Seventh \"Harlem is a great town, but it needs a with the sets on From Nine to Nine, Avenue.\" leader.\" At the end of Blacksmith, when which were built with ceilings for the the wayward hero has been saved by the sake of realism, and he was able to use Ulmer's From Nine to Nine. love of a good woman, he remarks im- the conventions of the fake-English de- probably that \"Workers create the tective story to paint a subtly corrosive Natalka Poltavka, the film that started wealth of the world.\" (This habit of portrait of Canadian society. But the it all, is lost, but Cossacks in Exile, re- shoehorning a Marxist moral into the last main interest of the film is historical. For cently rediscovered by the tireless D. shot continued as late as Ruthless [1948], the first time Ulmer adapted the formal john Turner, is an interesting experi- with its famous last line: \"He wasn't a principles of The Black Cat to the draco- ment. Although it was made in the mid- man, he was a way of life.\") nian conditions under which he would dle of Ulmer's Yiddish cycle, it is very be working for the next few years: long different from Yankel dem Schmidt (The More subtly, the first of the Yiddish takes played mostly in long-shot and in- Singing Blacksmith), which was shot dur- films, Griene Felder (Green Fields, tercut with carefully lit close-ups, pans ing the same summer of 1938 and on the 1937), which was co-billed during its substituting for the sinuous camera same jersey locations. Whereas Black- New York release with a documentary movements he always favored, and a smith is like a low-budget Hollywood called China Strikes Back, adds to Peretz musical structure based on repetition musical, Cossacks, which is based on a Hershbein's charming playa discussion and variation which wrests stylistic ad- Mozart operetta from the turn of the of \"the union of Labor and Torah,\" vantages from a restricted number of century, was an opportunity for Ulmer which was not lost on the reviewer for set-ups. From Nine to Nine was shot in the frustrated musician to do filmed op- the World-Telegram, who observed that eight days during a terrible Montreal era in natural settings. When the hero the marriage of the scholar Levi-Iyzchok winter, and the Ulmers were paid so sings an aria in the middle of an open and the peasant girl Tzineh is \"symbolic little that an attack of appendicitis which field, reverse shots of earth and sky and of the new jew that is being born amid felled Shirley on the eighth day wiped trees form a visual accompaniment. The the stern realities of Europe.\" out their earnings, sending them back to first act, climaxing in the burning of a New York as poor as when they left it. Cossack village by the soldiers of But in Green Fields the filmmaker has Catherine the Great, is punctuated with also portrayed his own relation to the • collectivity in the character of the un- worldly scholar who is adopted by an Salvation came in the form of a \"crazy uncultured community of rural jews and Ukrainian\" Ulmer met while shooting a becomes [he prize fought over by two newsreel at Coney Island. Vasile Avra- peasant families competing for the menko, whose ballet troupe and danc- honor of housing and feeding him. (Ul- ing schools had popularized Ukrainian mer told Bogdanovich that while he was folk-dancing in the U.S. and Canada, making Green Fields a fight broke out now wanted to make the first Ukrainian among New York's three Yiddish-lan- musical film, and Ulmer, for a fifty dollar guage newspapers over which paper was advance, was hire to direct. Financed by going to sponsor him.) The utopian a crude early form of pre-sales, Natalka dream of Green Fields is finally an ex- Poltavka (1937), shot for $18,000 in a pression of Ulmer's own feelings of lib- Ukrainian village constructed overnight eration: far from the haunted sound- in the backwoods of New jersey, was a stages of Bavaria and Hollywood, he created a lyrical fusion of landscape and huge success, making possible a more theatrical artifice where the long takes ambitious Ulmer-Avramenko collabora- necessitated by an $8,000 budget evoke tion, Zaporozhets zu Dunayem (Cossacks 62
an invisible presence brooding over the Three hoofers il1 the Yiddish musical. The Singing Blacksmith. natural world. nature and the revolutionary hopes it ment by the Tuskegee Institute Choir, If Green Fields is Ulmer's song of in- nocence, then Fishke der Krumer (The had nurtured gave way to studies of the and Cloud in the Sky (1939), made in San Light Ahead, 1938) is his song of experi- ence, and the village of Glubsk is the ills of modern urban life in 1939's Moon Antonio with a cast of Mexican-Ameri- dark side of the happy peasant commu- nity in the earlier film. Beset by perpet- Over Harlem and Amerikaner Schadchen cans, portray religion and science, the ual night, pieced together out of sparse, sharp-angled Expressionist sets, Glubsk (American Matchmaker), which antici- old and the new, as allies. While charac- is a sinkhole of superstition, cruelty, and poor sanitation. The evening idyll pate the films Ulmer would make in the ters are tempted to rely on folk medi- around the dinner table from Green Fields is repeated, but this time the cam- Forties when an accountant named cines or the consolations of prayer, it is era lingers ominously on the collective pot of slimy noodles into which every- Leon Fromkess invited him back to always a priest or minister who recom- one is indiscriminately dipping his spoon. When a group of young girls in Hollywood to produce and direct for mends that they have a skin-test. But white shifts go for a swim in the river, we PRC. Another to Conquer (1940), the last of the know that the water is full of vermin, and even before the inevitable outbreak The growing tragic element in Ul- series, filmed with non-professionals on of cholera, their innocent act is reproved as a sacrilege by the wife of the shamus mer's vision is also visible in the little a Navajo reservation in Arizona, is a trag- whose black-garbed figure looming up in the landscape behind them is like a films he did for the NTA despite the edy like The Light Ahead, in which Slow harbinger of the plague. In fact, religion is in league with the plague: Reb Men- rationalistic premise of the series, which Talker, the revered grandfather who dele, the humane bookseller who advo- cates cleaning up the river and building was to educate ethnics, working people, tells everyone to avoid the white man's a hospital, is upbraided for opposing the will of God, and the corrupt city fathers and children about the causes and cures medicine and stick to the old warrior use religion as a club to enforce the backward, grim, unsanitary status quo. of tuberculosis. Both Let My People Live ways, learns that he is the carrier of the This systematic inversion of motifs (1938), a lovely all-Black film shot in \"invisible worm\" that has decimated his from the earlier film in part reflects Ul- mer's growing involvement with New Alabama, with a musical accompani- family. York's Jewish community, which was torn by class conflicts and dissension A rural idyll in Green Fields. over the deepening crisis in America and Europe. But Glubsk (\"Foolstown\") also represents a spiritual condition, a partic- ular state of the human imagination. In Green Fields the union of Tzineh and Levi-Iyzchok symbolized the marriage of the imagination and the forms of na- ture; here the imagination, too closely tied to nature, has lost all capacity for vision and sunk to the level of animal existence, engendering the mechanical round of work and ritual that is the hori- zon of life in any traditional culture. On the allegorical level, the lame Fishke (David Opatoshu) represents that crip- pled imagination. His marriage-per- formed in a graveyard as a Saturnalian rite to ward off the plague-is a parody of the marriage at the end of Green Fields, and his bride Hodele-Nature -is literally bereft of vision, although Reb Mendele holds out the promise that her blindness can be cured by the simple act of leaving Glubsk. • After The Light Ahead, the religion of 63
Goodbye, Mr. Germ (1939) supplies a bed-a prospect that understandably similated women, and on his , an erup- sardonic coda with a germ named Tee horrified Slow Talker. When Ulmer's tion of old vaudevillians wearing beards Bee bragging to the camera about travel- imagination later espoused the codes of and derby hats, seemingly triggered by a ing in a spoon of oatmeal that Aunt the B-movie in Club Havana (1945) and pre-Woody Allen nightmare of himself Mathilda thoughtlessly fed to \"little Ed- Detour (1946), the approach was the as a bearded, impotent matchmaker in gar\" after tasting it herself. That unfor- same, and the results were just as sub- the Old Country. Only by exorcising tunate child is not the only Ulmer hero verslve. these grotesque images can these two in this complex little film: the cartoon eminently eligible people form a cou- sequences inside the human body, de- • ple. signed by Ulmer and animated by H.L. Roberts, J r., strikingly anticipate the In American Matchmaker, Ulmer said ButMatchmaker is also a very personal weird organic forms that imprison the good-bye to his ethnic period. It was the work, made around the time the director characters in The Cavern. Tee Bee and most mysterious of his Yiddish films, a turned 40. Why should Nat Silver, self- his \"tribe,\" as they are called, are really comedy in which we see what became of made man, man of the world, and re- the most ancient \"traditional culture\" Fishke ·and Hodele's descendants in the spected member of New York's Jewish that Ulmer filmed during his ethnic pe- city. Nat Silver, a wealthy and cultivated elite, be unable to marry? The trouble riod, and not the only one threatened New York bachelor, after failing eight really starts when Nat, dreaming of his with extinction at the hands of science times to get married , grows resigned to impending marriage to Number Eight, and reason. his condition and sets himself up as a is rousted out of bed by an angry young man with a gun who reveals that only his Two points are suggested in summing Shirley Ulmer. own poverty prevents the young woman up the achievement of that remarkable super schadchen, or marriage broker, the -whose name happens to be Shirley- period: perhaps the most beautiful mo- trade pursued in the Old World by his from marrying him instead. Recognizing ment in any of Ulmer's ethnic films is uncle and which Nat proposes to update his own unhappy youth, Nat renounces the funeral sequence in Moon Over using the methods of modern business the chance for a new life not only be- Harlem, for which Ulmer seems to have embodied in the \"Schadchen Trust.\" cause he is afraid of what he might be- filmed an actual wake. Singing and occa- Even when he meets a young woman come-everything he once hated-but sionally pausing to converse in low who is perfect for him Nat rigidly insists also because, like Octave in The Rules of tones, the mourners sit in a semi-circle, on finding her a younger, more suitable the Game, he feels that he is already too with some chairs left vacant to permit mate and pays for the wedding out of his old for anything new. individuals to circulate and quietly talk own pocket,but she takes the initiative with their neighbors, before rejoining at the last moment and obliges Nat to His marriage to a woman who repre- the collective dirge-all filmed in a rag- lead her to the altar himself. sents· everything new, after the comic ged, slow back-and-forth pan that coun- . Cinematically, Matchmaker is disap- detour of the Schadchen Trust, signals terpoints the Brownian movement of pointingly simple, but the script, the Ulmer's acceptance of his own new the bodies in the circle with its own only Ulmer original in the Yiddish cycle, identity: During and after the war years, searching gaze. This very modern se- is rich in comic stock-types treated as he became a working Hollywood direc- quence re-creates in an urban setting the archetypes and used to explore the Jew- tor, an ardent patriot, and supporter of rhythms of the dinner scene in Green ish-American psyche on the eve of the the free enterprise system-going so far Fields, where Ulmer stationed the cam- War. Despite their glamorous appear- as to make musical shorts for the armed era in the hearth, with the women mov- ances, Natand the heroine are inhabited forces and filmed commercials for Coca ing back and forth between it and the by cartoon identities which spawn a Cola. That acceptance could only have table where the men are seated in the multitude of secondary characters: on come about through the singular detour background of the shot. Ulmer's ethnic her side, a series of childish, overly as- ofthe ethnic films , which permitted him films are full of ceremonies, often en- to explore his own condition of exile and acted by believers, but what shapes his mixed feelings about being the in- these \"ethnographic\" sequences is the heritor of an alien tradition-\"the exec- arbitrary positioning and movement of utor of the Murnau estate,\" as Andrew the camera, which adds its own scansion Sarris called him-confronted with a to the text of the ritual. younger world already staked out by pio- neers named Griffith, Vidor and Walsh, For these films are not the work of an to whom the ethnic films in their glo- ethnographer. When Ulmer filmed a rious primitivism pay open homage. culture he appropriated its mythologies Since any director is a matchmaker of and turned them to his own purposes, sorts (and all these films , whether comic just as he appropriated the symbolic uni- or tragic, end in marriages), Amerikaner verse of Poe in The Black Cat. In Another Schadchen also signifies Ulmer's readi- to Conquer, for example, the white doc- ness to become finally what he had set tor explains that he can tell if a lung is out to be seven years earlier: an Ameri- sick by listening to it, and his young can filmmaker, one who had found his Indian patient observes that \"Warriors own version of the American Sublime, put their ear to the ground to hear the but only after an exuberant and often footsteps of their enemy\". The warrior downright wacky pilgrimage through all code is systematically used to enlist the the cultures and conditions which had tribe in a war with an enemy who can somehow gotten left out of the Ameri- only be conquered by taking to one's can Dream. ® 64
Diane Kurys on the set oj Diablo menthe. by Dan Yakir CocktaiL MoLotov during May 1968, Coup a store is deja vu , but in the Fifties it was de Joudre mostly in 1952-and it is In 1977, with her directorial debut, through these crucial dates in her life nothing less than revolutionary. and the life ofothers that the 34-year-old \"For these two women, the choice of DiaboLo menthe (Peppermint Soda), filmmaker tries to come to terms with Diane Kurys introduced her brand of the notions of the couple, the family, friendship over their families was highly personal filmmaking, which consisted of camaraderie, and love. individualistic. They suffocated within the fusion between her real and reel their respective nests, as happens very lives. But the term \"autobiographical • often when you're in your 30s: you wake filmmaking\" hardly does justice to the up and ask yourself if this is all your life rigor she has manifested since then-in The inspiration for Coup de Joudre is about. I wanted to show that it's possi- the 1981 Cocktail MoLotov and her new (which means \"bolt of lightning\" and ble to change. In a dramatic period like film, Coup deJoudre, which will open in usually refers to love at first sight) came the war, where people go through tragic the U.S. this fall. Simply and intelli- from a series of interviews that the film- moments, there's also happiness , while gently, gently yet not passively, she has maker conducted with her mother. \"I peace and prosperity sometimes bring created a trilogy as compelling for what it wanted to make a film about my child- about a malaise. I wanted to show that says about childhood, adolescence and hood,\" says Kurys, \"and I asked her to the war united people, who, without the maturity as it is for its incessant shifting tell me about my early years. But as she danger and the need to survive, started from stylization to naturalism. kept talking I understood that the real drifting apart. Then problems of self-ex- subject of the film was herself. In 1952 pression gained priority. Whether Kurys focuses her lens on a she was exactly my own age now, which crucial year in the life of the 14-year-old made it all the more relevant to me. So I \"Madeleine stands for culture, taste, heroine of DiaboLo menthe (Eleonore told her story, that of a Russian Jew who art. She's a bit of a bohemian, a fascinat- Klarwein) or a decade of experiences suffers through the war, gets married ing character who has dreams but lacks shared by Lena (Isabelle Huppert) and and has children, until she meets Made- the strength to pursue them. She never Madeleine (Miou Miou), the protago- leine and their friendship changes her really recovers from the death of her nists ofCoupdeJoudre , Kurys juxtaposes life. It's a true story, although it's not first, idealized figure of a husband dur- life's essentials-identity, freedom, totally autobiographical. It's an Eighties ing the war, and gets out of her marriage self-expression-with the social and po- story about the breakdown of the family, to the infantile, narcissistic Costa [Jean- litical textures of the time. For Kurys, Of the couple, but it's also universal: the Pierre Bacri] when she meets Lena. In the past is no foreign country; it is a well basic feelings-desire, jealousy, posses- Lena, she finds the strength she needs of inspiration that nourishes the present. siveness, the craving for freedom- to leave her family. And Lena is the DiaboLo menthe takes place in 1963, haven't changed. Today, the story of a opposite-she has the force, but not the woman who liberates herself and opens talent. She has a voracious appetite for life. They nourish-you could say they 65
vampirize-each other, but it's a posi- Miou Miou and Isabelle Huppert in Coup de foudre . tive relationship because it enables them to go ahead and do what they early. I needed my independence.\" the only candidates. \" Isabelle has a want, even at the expense of others.\" Slavic side, with bright eyes, that look a While her first and third efforts were bit Jewish, which corresponded to my The others are the men, but unlike image of the character. Miou has a dark Agnes Varda in One Sings, the Other box-office hits in France, Cocktail Molo- side to her, the Josepha rather than the Doesn't, which dealt with similar subject Going Places side, which fascinated me. matter, Kurys refuses to annihilate her tov failed. \" It wasn't all that good,\" she But while Isabelle is an intellectual ac- male characters, including Michel, tress, Miou is a 'popular' one. They Lena's husband (Guy Marchand). \"Mi- admits today. \"It had some good mo- couldn't have switched roles, but they chel is weak and pathetic in that he share a certain sweetness and they cer- doesn' t understand his wife's needs ,\" ments, but the extra touch wasn't there. tainly have chemistry together. explains the director, \" but if he were unpleasant, yo u would have ended up I should have used three voice-overs for \"I was bothered by the weak, closed, detesting the two women. I wasn't inter- suffering Isabelle of The Lacemaker,\" ested in culprits and victims-they all the characters and have the words con- continues Kurys. \"It was time for her to are, in different ways. The point of view change and she was conscious of that is that of the women, but we feel sorry tradict what was happening. People and happy to accept the role . Isabelle is for the me n. In the end, when Michel a mimetic actress, and she imitated me a arrives at the beach to see Lena and the didn't notice that these three weren't lot, since she was playing my mother two kids , we want to be in the place of and imagined that I must resemble her. the children and say, 'It was all a bad just goofing off, but rather living some- It was good for the film. It was a work of dream. Now everything will be fine .' observation rather than analysis. I'm not But no . The family does not triumph. thing important. I thought people would even sure she was doing it consciously. Who, after all, has seen a really happy And I didn't intervene-it's her kitchen famil y?\" get it, but it wasn't too clear. An interior and she may do what she wants to get the right result. With Miou Miou, it was Kurys sees he r own childhood as \" un- monologue would have helped.\" different: she had more to invent and happy enough to want to make films, construct. She had to understand sculp- and happy enough to retain my bal- What Cocktail Molotov lacked also ture and she started smoking and dress- ance,\" but she acknowledges that \"the ing differently, for the part. She unhappiness came from the separation was an expression of the attraction the searched more for Madeleine. Each ar- of my parents. I grew up without a fa- rived at the part in her proper method . I the r. As I show in Diabolo menthe, there characters felt for each other. It was an don' t get involved in the how. I give were no men in my world, at home or at them what I can and leave the rest a school. It was an exclusively feminine inevitable triangle, but the moments of mystery. milie u. I lived with my mother and older sister and I not only idealized my absent intimacy between the two men were flat \"It was totally different working with father but I fe lt I must have resembled children on Diabolo: you instruct them him and therefore, at times, I felt I was -surprisingly, because Kurys mani- about everything and they repeat. I'd rejected the way he was. It was a diffi- like to do it with adults too, but they cult time for me-today children have fested her craft at conveying precisely don't let you. When you write a script, more of a dialogue with adults-but I you have a certain music in your head didn' t want to sentimentalize. It was en- such instants in Diabolo menthe, where tirely autobiographical. And I must ad- mit that by making the film at the L ycee the heorine's sister shares a silent mo- Jules Ferry, where I had suffered for six years , I did take my reve nge. I must ment of wonder with a girl friend, which have done the same with my sister through her portrayal in the picture; but culminates in a kiss (only to be betrayed when one entrusts an adolescent with authority, one is bound to abuse it. She by her later on, because of different po- did. litical orientations), and in Coup de fou- \"In Diabolo menthe, I tried to show how we were raised and educated, dre , where the friendship of the two which explains why we exploded in May '68. After the gentleness and pain of women has a sensual but not quite sex- childhood, I wanted to depict an 18- year-old girl, the same Anne, experienc- ual quality to it. She would like to make ing rebellion and in Cocktail Molotov , Anne [Elise Caron] goes on a journey a film about a man \"when I know with two boys-it's a story of love and adventure, but they actually miss the enough,\" she offers. \"Maybe about two revolution. I was actually in Paris when it all happened , but I did leave home men. \" • In Coup de foudre, she benefitted from the extraordinary presence of the two actresses. Although she didn' t write the parts specifically for them, among the four top stars in France of that age group, Huppert and Miou Miou were 66
Miou Miou in Going Places The title of Georges Lautner's new forming troupe that included Romain Frank, etc) I consider as family. I remain loyal to them. As an actress, I see myself comedy, One Woman May Conceal An- Bouteille, the late Patrick Dewaere (a as an extremely precise instrument in service of the director's wishes. Being an other, refers to the various ways the her- lover who co-starred in four of her 27 actress helps me maintain my equilib- rium, since I can legally fulfill all my oine is perceived by the men who love films) and Coluche, who insisted that dreams-kill, die ... I could never be satisfied with a 'normal' life, but at the her, but it is equally appropriate for the she was silent as a kitten and forced same time I'm pretty sane. Still, I tend to become my characters; it's not a fac- actress who plays her, Miou Miou. Nee upon her a nickname that became her tory job that you can switch off after hours. I think it's great for a man to see a Sylvette Herry 33 years ago, Miou Miou professional trademark. Daughter of a woman who changes all the time. When I played a whore in La derobade it became a boxoffice attraction in France fruit and vegetable vendor, Miou Miou seemed to have gone very well in this respect. .. following the success of Going Places in spent nights helping her mother at the \"My choice of roles has changed a 1973. The commercial and critical hits, markets of Les Hailes. Her streetsmarts bit,\" she continued. \"I no longer wish to play young girls. When I played a 20- Memoirs of a French Whore (La Dero- -so much more appealing because un- year-old a couple of years ago in La gueule du loup, I felt I wasn't with it. It bade) and La femme jlic in 1979, cata- polished-charmed Coluche, who in- flopped. In Josepha and Coup de foudre, I play women my age and I like it. I still pulted her to the top. More recently, corporated her into his cafe-theatre in do comedies, but ones that make you laugh and cry at the same time. I prefer a Christopher Frank's Josepha and Diane 1968. On stage, in a largely improvisa- comedy of situations to verbal wit. A woman can't just be burlesque, because Kurys' Coup de foudre placed her along- tional show, her ripostes proved hilar- people won't accept her if she's physi- cally ridiculous. I can't do what Pierre side Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppert ious and provoked offers. Richard or Louis de Funes do, and I don't like it anyway. I prefer to portray and Nathalie Baye as the creme de la But the long blond hair, the innocent the desperate search Josepha carried on to find happiness. I don't really distin- creme of her metier. yet brazen sexuality, and the sizzling hu- guish between friendship and love, which is also why I think I got along best Americans may take a little longer to mor that had marked her early roles (and with Patrick (Dewaere). He was a fragile man who considered his work as primor- know her, but to the French the working won her comparisons with Bardot) gave dial. He was a true artist.\" class comedienne who was so decidedly way in recent pictures to dark short hair, -DANYAKIR forthright in Bertrand Blier's film and a maturing sensuality, and depth. Irrev- the sophisticated bohemian who is both erence has been replaced by a savoir grim and humorous in Coup defoudre is faire that proved no less appealing to the epitome of the new French woman. French moviegoers and directors as var- \"They identify with me very closely,\" ied as Marco Bellocchio (Victory March), the actress said. \"I'm not beautiful, and Alain Tanner (Jonas), and Claude Miller therefore am not on a more distant pla- (Diles-lui que je l' aime). teau, and I have a daily-life side to me; \"I have the impression I don't prepare people know I have the same problems for a role,\" she muses, \"although I'm they do-raising children and so on. sure I do. I think about the role, and it I've been associated with fighting for comes to me, slowly, until the accumu- women's rights, for the right to abortion lated energy is expressed by work. I pay ... I'm not new. I'm like all the others. attention to material things , small de- When women imitate my hairdo, it's be- tails that help me grasp the part, and cause it's practical.\" then it's the other actors who give you Indeed, the French remained faithful things. Making a film is an act of love, to her ever since she became known as a and there's a group of directors (Laut- member of the Cafe de la Gare, a per- ner, Daniel Duval, Maurice Dugowson, 67
Miou Miou and Huppert in a scene from Coup de foudre. -Miou Miou in Josepha. ELeonore KLarwein in Peppermint Soda . and from the first note you know if it's right or not-and you want to correct ELise Caron , Francois Cluzel, and PhiLippe Lebas in Cocktail Molotov. right away. But you shouldn't. You have 68 to let the actors express their own music, which may even be better than yours. Isabelle accepted my instructions some- times, when I'd stop her in the middle. But Miou and Guy Marchand never did. While Kurys' approach reflects the natural tensions between director and actor, it also echoes her own experience as a performer. She worked eight years as an actress , mostly on the stage (she was a member of Jean-Louis Barrault's theater group) and television. Her film appearances were few, but included Fe- derico Fellini's Casanova and Maurice Dugowson's F comme Fairbanks, co- starring Miou Miou. \"I hated the frustra- tion of being an actress,\" she recalls, \"the feeling of having no control over things. 1 needed to do something other than just waiting for the phone to ring. So in 19761 wrote DiaboLo menthe, but in fact 1 started writing down observations a few years earlier. 1 wrote the story of Madeleine as a 50-page novella and I used it for the script. \" I worked a lot, but 1 wasn't a docile actress. 1was angry with directors for not directing me well or simply not directing at all. 1 realized then that my vocation was different, but 1 couldn't just stop. 1 had to make a film or write a book to be able to say 'I'm no longer an actress.' In the beginning, I thought I'd make films to show my talent as an actress, but now 1 don't have the slightest desire to act. To be an actress you have to believe . I lost the faith.\" Kurys decided to become an actress when she was twelve, a buffoon of a child with a penchant for showing off. \"I'm not sure ifI wanted to act or simply be successful and famous,\" she smiles. \"I wanted the recognition of others. My family never stopped me, but they must have had fears. They respected my wish. 1 still have good memories from
my acting days, but no role I'd save. I away from a confrontation or a climax, spent the years from 20 to 27 in a milieu I she avoids indulging in a moment, no adored, and I learned all I know about matter how precious. the medium. When I made Diabolo Kurys maintains that such stylistic menthe, I knew nothing about the cam- rigor was \"unwilled. It just came outthat era and the technique of filmmaking. I way. What I did try to achieve was to surrounded myself with people who did make scenes end differently than the and proceeded with all the energy and way they start: I like it to start happily enthusiasm I could muster. and end up sadly, for instance. I enjoy \"I still don't have principles of work. I such twists.\" Perhaps the rigorous edit- adapt myself and learn from experience. ing of Diabolo menthe marked the cau- I always have an idea as to how to do it, tious hand of a novice filmmaker. In because I wrote the script. Roman Po- Coup defoudre, one notices the breadth \"A f.asCina!?, lanski said something funny in response of stroke, the ease with which it all to the question 'Where do you put the flows . \"I take it as a compliment,\" mOViJllrecor camera?' He said, 'I watch where the Kurys states. \"I prefer people to enter crew goes and I follow.' It's true. The the story, not to watch out for technique. ofone man's set designer and cinematographer al- I'd like to have a simple, efficient style pursuit of ways choose a privileged spot. They're -it should just exist rather than call excellence in usually right.\" attention to itself. That's the kind of For Coup de foudre, she researched film I like to watch. asm,Ie art!' 0 the Fifties, mainly by reading magazine \"Coup defoudre is my most important -N.Y. Times Book Review articles and trying to reproduce the film, for me, because it made me feel colors and lighting of the time on film. \"I that I finally mastered my art. It was my VINTAGE BOOKS wanted it to be like Technicolor, but biggest, most ambitious and expensive A division of better, with hard images and sharply film, with big stars. Diabolo menthe was Random House contrasting colors,\" she observes. \"Not made unconsciously, almost. The fluid things and filtered colors d second was done on the success of the Illustrated with photos. $6.95 paperback I'Anglaise. For example, the trees are first and had the certainty that I was right at bookstores ' black rather than green. We had them and that nobody could teach me any- painted. And I liked shooting in 'Scope. thing. It failed. And now I have the It was more difficult in terms of the mise feeling that I know something. Diabolo en scene, but what a difference! You can menthe, like Cocktail Molotov, was writ- create a larger, more complex image-a ten in two months-but I took a year The extraordinary creator of spectacle. Now I think that the 1:66 and a half to write Coup de foudre. The Star Wars ... Raiders rati? is too tight. I wouldn't want to use it process of reflection and maturation of the Lost Ark... and Revenge of the Jedi... again. made me ready for it. I wasn't afraid. I \"In the beginning of Coup de foudre, was aware that it had to be successful; I the natural decor-the mountains couldn't afford another failure. I knew I through which the refugees pass-en- had to make a film d' auteur that would hanced my awareness of the image. I'm also be commercial-not to lose my au- SKYWAlKING not indifferent to it, but I give priority to thenticity while making something that the words and the music. They guide us will speak to people and make them go and I use them a lot.\" see it. It isn't easy.\" THE LIFE AND FILMS OF To have a measure of control over her • Kurys is too modest. A glance at her work, Kurys shares ownership with di- work gives immediate proof that what's rector Alexandre Arcady of a company DEORDE LUCAS most impressive about her films is her named Alexandre Film. The two met at style. For example, Diabolo menthe is 15, active members of a militant Zionist- Here is the first and only inside story of the quiet genius who's revolution- full of short, elliptic scenes that suggest Jewish movement. At 17, they left it and izing the American film industry. Illustrated with 30 photos. rather than insist. Kurys never outplays a lived in a kibbutz, before starting their $14.95, now at your bookstore, or use cou- scene. In depicting the surprise birthday respective careers. In 1975, Arcady di- pon to order. party celebration given by the two girls rected her in the TV film Hotel Balti- for their mother (Anouk Ferjac), we see more (based on Lanford Wilson's play H-A-R-M-O-N-Y S-O-O-K-S her entering the apartment, notice the The Hot I Baltimore), and their relation- IrC-R-OW-N-P-UB-LI-SH-ER-S-, IN-C-., -De-pt-. 9-63---~ lighted candles and the cake, hear ship since has been, in Arcady's words, I 34 Engelhard Ave., Avenel, N.J. 07001 Sophie Tucker's A Yiddishe Mama on the \"personal and professional.\" \"We work I Please send me SKYWALKING: THE LIFE AND I FILMS OF GEORGE LUCAS by Dale Pollock. En- turntable and get a glimpse at the closely,\" says Kurys, \"and influence I closed is my check or money order for $14 .95 , plus mother's moist eyes. The filmmaker each other by the mere fact that we I $1 .40 postage and handling charge. If I wish , I may I return the book postpaid within lOnays for full refund. then cuts away. There are very few know each other so well. We evolved I Name'_____________________ close-ups in the film: Kurys scrutinizes together and we must resemble each I Address_______________________ her protagonists with eyes both critical other by the way we work. His debut, I City State_____Zip _____ and affectionate and never forgets to Coup de sirocco, is very much like Diab- -------------------~ILN.V. and N.J. residents, add sales tax.I maintain a certain distance. By cutting 010 menthe . We have a lot in common. '~~ 69
Irene, and the Critic by David Thomson A Private View, by I rene Mayer Selznick, Knopf, New York, 1983, $16.95. The best reason for reviewing this from pictures. Her aloofness is envious through hard work, fortitude , and meri- book here is that it is so little obsessed with movies. Despjte her lineage- of stardom. Despite every tough claim torious energy, instead of chance, cun- daughter to one mogul, wife to another -Irene Mayer Selznick lived as best for independence, she is a hopeless Hol- ning, and the frivolity of all his factory she could in the light of family and friends . The keynote to her book is her lywood groupie. Irene Mayer was so produced . own slowly won sense of the value of decent ordinariness. And so it was that much subtler and more reluctant a dis- Louis B. Mayer was of that generation an innately obedient, devoted, and timid woman emerged from two huge senter. Not a ghost, never resigned, she that straddles the benighted poverty of shadows, and then looked back on the men who had cast them with fondness tried hard for yea rs to hide herself in oppressed Europe and the unlimited and compassion. A Private View is a movie memoir written by a concerned approved lines of thought and behavior. glamour in running the picture business. visitor, a tourist from a richer land , a human being in Hollywood . It was as if she could not disturb the He had moved from the harshness of Something in movies makes a merci- destiny in being daughter to a Russian earth, labor, product, and pain to a life of less god out of energy and enthusiasm. This drive wills itself into a frenzy of emigre who had made his way from legitimized fantasy. Poor in the first , he commitment, as if somewhere in the panting zealot there lurked a dread sus- scrap iron to evanescent celluloid, be- grew rich in the second. So perhaps it picion that all this sound and fury was wrapped around nothing or nonse nse. coming fabulously rich and powerful, tore Mayer quietly in half, made him How terrible it would be, after yea rs and millions of works, and in the presence of notoriously obeyed and feared. different men at home and at work, se- that huge, transported audience, if mo- tion pictures were discovere d to be His daughter had no apparent sense vere but reckless, hating the public he dross, or slight, just the bright dry slick of snails. So banish that thought with of that. Even now , she does not stoop to wooed and the stars he enshrined in our work, heroic strenuousness, and the passion of task. Which makes it hard for address the reputation her father had as culture, trying to insist to himself that he movie-families, but harder for her, if they contain the conscientious serious- a hypocrite, a monster, a manipulator of was a family man , burying the conflict in ness and reserve of Irene Mayer Selznick. talent. She does not deny those things. work and ruthlessness. Without having a trace of her smart- But over the yea rs she seems to have His two daughters , Edie and Irene, kid cynicism, still Mrs. Selznick begs comparison with Cecilia Brad y in F. realized what a hard time she had grow- were expected to look like girls good Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon: the daughter of a boss (often taken for Louis ing up in a household as strict as Mayer's enough for movies, but too fine and too B. Mayer), who \"accepted Hollywood with the resignation of a ghost assigned line of business was fan·tastical. \"There privileged to go near the real dirt of the to a haunted house. I knew what yo u were supposed to think about it but I are inconsistencies I cannot fathom,\" business. There are pictures of them in was obstinately unhorrified. \" Cecilia talks like someone who learned thinking she writes. \" How could a man of my A Private View, princesses of the salon father's innate conservatism have cho- and the open-air swimming pool , big- sen show business?\" At home, she heard limbed and sharp-featured, taken as a , Mayer stress the need for wholesome pair no matter that Edie has a dreamy and respectable pictures. She did all she smile while Irene stays grimly suspicious could to submit to rigid principles of of the camera. They were not as alike as behavior: protection from young men, the poses tried to say. Edie is the one from the studio life, from too much edu- member of her family for whom Irene cation or independence. Her father feels a lasting perplexity or distaste. Her made a fortune and yet she had to worry own love for David Selznick, and their over her allowance; his turmoil became marriage had to wait until Edie, the her anxiety. The famil y was run on un- elder, could go suitably first in the mar- questioned homilies , laws to persuade a riage market. poor Russian that he had succeeded Nothing in the book is as painful as 70
the mome nt in 1930 whe n Ire ne told he r fuller pe rson from th e clenched Irene. rf~1 RTS father that she and David wa nted to As a producer, he was a lone r; he was marry. She was sure he und e rstood in adve nturou s, reckless, and mo re fully Film Music Is advance. But he rea red up in hos tili ty, e ngaged in and in love wi th the details of Our Forte reb uke, and the need to red uce he r. picture-making. Far from hand some, he \"Whv had I dece ived him ? I sa id I neve r was very appea lin g. Ire ne Selznick is a Exclusive Soundtrack Selections had , 'a nd I had neve r li ed to him . H e discreet write r, but we feel how far And Umited Editions! sa id , 'Yo u've been thinking this. ' 'Yes.' David brought he r to life with conve rsa- 'W hy have yO Unot told me?' I sa id , 'Yo u tion, trips, collaboration, and love. In a Over 1,000,000 LP'S available: n ev~ r gav~ me an oppo rtunity. You book that neve r gives too much away, In-Print and Out-of-Print, an array of never as ked me what I thought abo ut th e portrait ofSelznick is th e riches t, still imports, highly-desired reissues, and myse lf o r my life . I thought I was doing moved by hi s com pany and hi s quick, original casts (on and off Broadway). exactly what yo u wanted. I thought I sha ll ow ge niu s. The y divorced , o f could please yo u both. I have tri ed very co urse; the produce r married an actress, We offer the finest service hard. \", Je nnife r Jones, who is trea ted witho ut available - monthly auctions by mail reproac h or de tail he re. It was not that, (rare, unique titles), the only monthly Ire ne deferred in so many things. She or any othe r affa ir, th at broke up the Fdmusic Newsletter \"Music Gazette\" did not chall e nge he r father, le t alone marri age . The problems we re mu ch the film s made at MGM or all the oth e r deeper; and surely they have to do with For YO(JR copy of our extensive studi os. She co uld not ove rcome the re- two very successful people who we re not catalog, a sample of \"Music Gazette\" gime of the Mayer house hold , or its re- in possess ion of their se lves. ($2 value), and monthly auction, le ntless ope nness: \"My fam ily gave me Please Remit $1.00 TODAY TO: everything except pri vacy and a se nse of In the Thirties, they we re exactly my ow n worth .\" She did as she was told; what each other needed. S he helped RTS, Dept. 20D she strove to li ve up to othe rs' expecta- him make hi s films-more, I think , tions; and she voluntee red he rse lf as a th an s he cl a im s- a nd he brought P.O. Box 1829 make r of mi stakes : \" I devised a very wa rmth , irony, and idealism to he r life. Novato, California 94948 pri va te sys tem whe reby I wou ld always \" His id eas were high-minded but not be in the wrong, oth e rw ise I might get highfalutin ',\" she writes. \" H e was the n, 415/883/2179, Tues 12-4 pm mad too. It was eas ie r to blame mvse lf; and for many years th e reafte r, filled wi th to find yo urse lf at fault is a sp le ndid th e aspiration of which heroes are made. JRe JUm Jlnal9sis 8.eries techniqu e for co ntrollin g ange r. If I felt I th ought that man was marve lous. I still rage, I didn' t know it, it just got swa l- do.\" presents a series of guides for lowed. When I fin all y learned ange r, it screen writing study. was too damned late for it to co me out in What we nt wrong? Selznick was fran- tempe r. \" And so she stamme red to the tic; he ,vas terrifi ed of stopping; he lived Each book analyzes a film in point whe re she could not speak in more in two states, deep sleep and hectic ac- detail, including the sequence than private ci rcumstances. tion. The stamm e rer was marri ed to the structure, the plots and subplots, dictato r of the wo rld 's most profuse act climaxes, scene structure, Yet it's vital to see her as of he r family, me mos. H e co uld not sleep for working; and the elements of theme, not as a rebe l or an angry victim . She and then he could not wa ke up from characterization , and . . . . .~ loved he r pare nts as much as David tiredn ess. So he took Be nzedrin e, as if motivation. Selznick needed to redeem hi s father. the re was no othe r way of li ving but to Perhaps she was too loya l and too di- fill every hour. (\"If you wa nt some thing -~ vid ed to notice all the rivalry betwee n done, ask a busy man\" - so happy a he r fathe r and her hu sband , but she is a motto, and so se lf-d es tru c ti ve.) H e Guides are available valu able correcti ve in exp laining the ir made Gone With the Wind, and he se t up for the following movies, as well mutual respect. Moreover, she he lps us Intermezzo and Rebecca while the big as others: see how alike they were in the ir enthusi- one was still going on. It was like a time asm for positi vism and profits. Neve r of wa r, and Se lznick won. The chal- • E. T- The Extra-Terrestrial forget that Gone With the Wind is a tribute lenge of pictures bypassed reflection or to hum an ac hi eve me nt , of land and criticism: it concentrated on e ne rgy. \"To • Gandhi property, de te rmination and dedica ti on. David , work was only rea l work if it was The film re fl ects the manic-depressive done at ungodl y hours or under intense · Tootsie sp irit of its make r, not the conventional, press ure. Whereas to me , it was not a flim sy breeze of romance. Its true pas- question of when or how long yo u work, • Raiders of the Lost Ark sion is kept for th e very conservati ve, but, is it any good?\" pionee ring process th at builds and holds • Chariots of Fire out against disaste r and opposition. Ty- Was Gone With the Wind any good ? It coons, too, were authors, and they or- won Oscars, it made mon ey, it is a mon- • Star Wars r---------, dained the subj ects of American pic- um e nt of Hollywood prowess; so the ture s, material as s tron g as th at of question seems redund ant. But Ire ne • Chinatown $11 .95 each Dreise r or Balzac. Mayer Se lznick would go on, at last, to make he r ow n ca ree r as the Broadway • Citizen Kane (shipping • produce r of plays, A Streetcar Named D e- sire among othe rs. That is not si mply • Casablanca included) But Selznick was more th an Mayer. be tter than GW7W; the re is no competi- H e made better films, and he drew a Send check to: The Film Analysis Series 5515 Jackson Drive, Suite 246 La Mesa, CA 92041 For catalog, send $1.00 ,which will be refunded on first purchase . 71
tion. It was hard work, to be sure , maybe Scarlett O'Hara was a gambler. Yet he is Penelope Gilliatt, while Chapter Two, with days as demented as those of not the only mogul , then or now, to be \"The Europeans,\" treats five subjects, Selznick. But Irene stayed just a few afflicted. And the chase after deals and among them C.A. Lejeune and Penel- yea rs in theater, less addicted to \"work\" paper money at the tables is one sign of ope Houston. Are McCreadie's classifi- than desirous of some professional ful- how far Holl ywood functions like a cations by way of venue? Place of origin? fillment to go with the children, her board game, not a reality. Critical methodology? Hard to tell, as marri age, and her family. subsequent chapters separate \"Femi- • nists\" from \"Theorists\" and \"Re- This book has the same careful bal- viewers\" from \"Culture Critics\"-qual- ance. It is no diary of days at the studio. A Private View is intelligent, lucid , itative fun ,ctions which are not No matter how closely she was ca ught and compassionate. It never throws off exclusive. Given her extensive scholar- up in Selznick films, .she does not com- the reserve that m ade Irene Mayer's ship, McCreadie-had she written her pete with the memos. She is much more yo ung face as fearful as it was beautiful ; I treatise chronologically-might have interested in the inevitable crack-up of think the book is still a little muffled by provided an original social history of her husband , and she gives the best ac- helpless wealth and advantage. But the women who, in taking film seriously, count we will ever have of how exhaus- older woman has found pleasures too encouraged the culture to do likewise. tion, paranoia, and indecision overtook great to talk about. If she mentions Only one chapter, on Museum of Mod- Selznick in th~ Forties, so that he be- friends-like George Cukor, Cary ern Art film department founder Iris came a maker of deals and packages Grant, Howard Hughes, William Paley Barry, is valuable since it assesses an rather than films. When the picture -we know she is not boasting. She is under-appreciated career and reveals business becomes a complete obsession brilliant on her mother's decline into McCreadie's enthusiasm and critical there is no time for films , only for plans melancholy, and on the torture that skills. Her other research adds up to and bets. Louis B. Mayer felt because of it. She thirty-one opinionated profiles and makes Myron Selznick convincing as a never successfully answers the implicit And David Selznick gambled. This is mi sdirected , self-loathing talent. She question: do women critics approach not quite a revelation , but in its detailed knows failures of dramatic taste in film in a different manner than men? description it is the most significant new Laurence Olivier and the rascal of in- material here for Hollywood historians. trigue in Elia Kazan. The case McCreadie makes for a fem- His wife, who was tortured by the inine aesthetic is to assert that in 1941 chronic losses far more than by any other In the end, this is a book about being C.A. Lejeune argued for a criticism ac- promiscuity, cannot explain it. But if it a woman in this century, and of how one knowledging the director's signature on seems incongruous for a conservative to woman surpassed her family's plans for film-a precocious auteur theory. This, run show business , then surely it is as her: \"My parents had never stopped McCreadie suggests, is natural to great a paradox that the man behind warning me against strangers; against women's readiness to \"confer the title or people trying to gain my affection. Peo- denomination 'master' to male crea- •••••••••••••••• ORIGINAL MOVIE POSTERS •••••••••••••••• ple would use me. It's true , I' ve been tors.\" (1) In her weak summation used a lot. And we ll-very well.\" When McCreadie further implies that women CINEMA CITY is a complete service for will American pictures be capable of are drawn to film because it's a passive cinema collectors . dealing with original showing us a woman like this, so attuned activity mirroring women's role in the movie posters. photos and related collect· to experience, so unimpressed by waste- culture. (11) Finally she concludes that abies. Original motion picture graphics are ful intensity ? the triumph ofwomen critics, their keen sought by collectors throughout the world. awareness of detail and richness of de- Original film posters are a unique remem- by Carrie Rickey scription, derives from women's eager brance of a memorable film . and because receptivity to the moods of others. (Ill) of their limited number, may become fine Women on Film: The Critical Eye , by Such conclusions are not drawn from the investment pieces. Many Items . With the ir Marsha McCreadie, Praeger. $21. 95. data presented, but from some 1960's distinctive artwork. make attractive wall pop-psych studies in sexual differentia- deco rations that are sure to be the topic of Meta-criticism is not in Marsha tion. Generously speaking, d iSCUSSion among movie lovers. McCreadie's bailiwick. Her Women on McCreadie's \"theory\" is vulgar psychol- Film aims to chronicle, analyze, and ogy which fails to transcend hysteria- All matenal is original - we deal With no evaluate the work of women who have types of male logic versus female intui- caples. reprints. or anything of a bogus made. substantial contributions to film nature. Our latest catalogue lists thousands reviewing and criticism, ' but it only- tion. of Items that include posters . photos (over barely-achieves the first of these three That failure is particularly demeaning 30 .000 in stock) . lobby cards. pressbooks. ambitions. McCreadie's disquisition and other authentic film memorabilia. If reads like an inquisition: she's more in- since the careers McCreadie treats-Su- you 're looking tor a particular item that is terested in tallying the balance sheet on san Sontag, Nora Sayre, and Annette not in our catalogue. we will try to locate It individuals than summarizing their col- Michelson, for three-are rare for their for you. To receive our latest calalogue. lective achievement. aesthetic, social-critical, and polemical send $1 .00 (rerundable with first order) to· rigor. McCreadie's bland attempt at the- Considering the work of some thirty- ory, moreover, neither assesses the cul- 'CII~ I[~\\A\\ 'Cl lr \", two European and American writers on tural significance of these subjects nor film-from Renata Adler to Virginia adequately takes into account the man- P.O.Box 1012. Dept . FC Woolf-McCreadie organizes her book nerist criticism of such personalities as Muskegon . Michigan 49441 into eight scattershot chapters which Pauline Kael and Renata Adler, the for- defy logical argument, theoretical prop- mer having waged unilateral war against osition, and common sense. Chapter official art and, not withstanding the ca- One, \"New Yorker Niceties,\" investi- gates the careers of Pauline Kael and 72 .
sualties, having effected a transva- when philosophical popularization has self-criticism: \"One becomes reduced, luation of so-called popular and high long been Sontag's critical m.o.? What along with the author, to the pinpointing culture. are the assumptions of Michelson's ideas? of certain 'accepted' notions: here's a Let's get down to McCreadie's brassy Sontag's? Such is the proper inquiry of female image with the right approach, tacks. Though a failure at proposing an meta-criticism. there's one without.\" In reneging on her original theoretical or meta-critical con- McCreadie is not an inquirer but an promise of identifying a feminine aes- struct, she is, sadly, successful-and her Inquisitor. And her sins of omission are thetic, McCreadie invents what Cynthia prose is purplest-when she belches her grievous as those of commission. The Ozick might term The Ovarian Theory opinion of a critic's tics. I say \"sadly\" absence of B. Ruby Rich and Julia Le- of Film Criticism, observing a passivity, because it has the effect of Rona Barrett sage among the feminist theorists is glar- subordination, and powerlessness of proclamations phrased in academese. ing. And what of Kathleen Carroll, cer- women writing about film while it is For instance, McCreadie dismisses the tainly one of the most reasoned, instead their active theories of aes- recent work of Kael with \"We no longer readable daily reviewers in America? thetics, social criticism, and observa- need anyone to cavil against films with Arlene Croce? Veronica Geng? tions on high-versus-mass culture that ridiculously highbrow hopes, for there Dismissing Marjorie Rosen, have enabled such women to dominate simply aren't that many.\" Who's to po- McCreadie could be offering her own the field.~ lice pretension here? While McCreadie rails against Kael's anti-pretentiousness, she's smitten by Eisner's art historical erudition, even though it may be factu- ally incorrect. Rhapsodizing about FILMMAKERS Eisner's recognition that \"Sets used in Paul Leni's Waxworks (1924) seem to WE WANT anticipate ... Antonio Gaudi,\" YOUR EROTIC McCreadie doesn't realize Eisner may SHORT FILMS have put cart before horse: Gaudi died in 1926 and it's more likely that his work & VIDEOS! influenced Leni's. McCreadie condescends to Marjorie Rosen and Molly Haskell in assigning \"a patina of feminism\" and \"aura of intel- lect\" to their work, as though they're misogynists in feminist clothing. With- out arguing her case, McCreadie patly decides Haskell's \"pseudo-psychoana- lytic bent\" is a cover for \"personal arch- HOLLYWOOD conservatism.\" (?) More declarations: \"Oudith) Crist seems to uncannily re- flect middlebrow taste.\" Or, \"One of the best things about Oanet) Maslin's EROTIC FILM and VIDEO prose is that she is an easy read, while still maintaining a high level ofliteracy.\" FESTIVAL - NOVEMBER 9 -12, 1983 (??) What is the connection between a pseudo-psychoanalytic bent and conser- CASH PRIZES AND DISTRIBUTION DEALS vatism? Doesn't McCreadie understand WILL BE AWARDED TO WINNING ENTRIES! that media mediates, that Crist doesn't reflect middlebrow taste, she's its ora- ENTRY DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 9,1983 cle? Are readability and literacy such odd bedfellows that they're remarkable? Categories Include: A most appalling insinuendo, typical NARRATIVE, ANIMATION, DOCUMENTARY, of McCreadie's hit-and-run declara- and EXPERIMENTAL. tions, reveals itself when she gossips Length: Between 30 Seconds and 25 Minutes about the intellectual schism between Susan Sontag and Annette Michelson: \"It is now hinted in film circles that CALL or WRITE FOR OFFICIAL ENTRY BLANK Michelson is miffed at Sontag's popular- ity, which may have been based on her successful popularizations of Mi- EXPANDED ENTERTAINMENT chelson's ideas.\" Sontag is well-known as a popularizer of difficult aesthetic the- 11514 Ventura Boulevard - Suite A ory, viz. On Photography's readings of Kracauer, Benjamin, and Adorno; why Studio City, California 91604 (213) 506-0607 darkly allude to intellectual plagiarism 73
JACOBSON (continued from page 11) that one of these days pretty soon you're ing, whirring WOPR and get on the phone to Honeywell and sing \"Gimme a Or: going to buy and put in your home. It WOPR witn everything to go, and hurry. \" \"Skeptics worry that mistakes made might be named Apple, or Kermit, or Whatever Badham's or Dan here [at the NORAD facility at Iron Howdy, but its cousin is WOPR. O'Bannon's intent (see O'Bannon inter- view, page 52) in Blue Thunder, the re- Mountain, Colo.] by man or machine They're building them into your sult is not so much the denunciation of evil technology as its celebration. The could make a false alarm look like an Chevy or Cressida so that it can bid you helicopter, named Blue Thunder, is in actuality a flying computer that does all attack. That might lead ... to a Presi- good morning in a humanoid voice, tell the things Supennan is supposed to be able to do: read the labels of the quarry's dential decision to fire United States you to buckle up, and then mix fuel underpants through steel and concrete, sense the heat of someone in hiding, missiles in retaliation , thus possibly dryer than last night's martini. A conser- tape his heat image and sounds, and churn him into hamburger with a ma- starting a nuclear war by accident.\" vative Congressman from Georgia has chine gun blast of 4,000 rounds directed by the pilot's eyes. While WarGames cooks along with proposed passage of tax credits for those Blue Thunder's credit roll tries to the threat that this pisher, Mathew Bro- who buy home computers-not simply heighten reality by informing that the chopper actually exists and will be used derick, has inadvertently tapped into to take over the function of incinerating to police the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The picture probably wasn't the NORAD computer (which the 15- the chicken, but to quote HR 6397, in- conceived as a piece of hometown boost- erism, though it may well have occurred year old son of a Yale professor appar- troduced May 18, 1982: \"to increase in- to someone in Columbia's Coast offices that it might score a few points with the ently did accomplish) and triggered an dividual economic opportunity ... Mayor. The credit roll might even take the edge off the idiot storyline and the unstoppable U.S. retaliation to a phan- expand the potential to own their own winceable characterizations by Roy Scheider and Daniel Stern, who've both tom Soviet launch , the film works won- business, restore the family setting ... been better elsewhere, but it is also less a point of information perhaps than an derfully. It works just on the level of learn and earn together ... develop op- admission by Badham of \"to hell with the story, look at this thing.\" travelogue, growing a bit absurd when portunities for the handicapped ... It can, after all, be used against any- the general (Barry Corbin) asks, \"Hello, provide a growing pool of one. To wit: Cleveland, are you still there?\" computer-literate young people ... (to) They finally caught up with Gordon W. Kahl in Walnut Ridge, in the north- man the sophisticated military of tomor- eastern foothills of Arkansas, where state routes 67 and 25 meet just a little row, and to decrease home-to-office south of Pochahontas. For nearly four months, they'd hunted this North Da- commuting and national dependence on kota farmer, whose membership in the Posse Comitatus (Power of the County) imported oil.\" -a grassroots, quasi-Klan-like group--- qualified him as something more than a All this, according to environmental \"tax renegade,\" as the evening news had described. The World War II gun- psychologist Jamie Horwitz, who spoke ner was killed in a shootout with federal agents, and subsequently denied a mili- at the Barnard Feminist and Scholar tary burial. Conference last April, spells out the pro- What snagged my attention in the family Right's view of the computer as front-page New York Times story by Houston bureau reporter Wayne King \"a good organizing tool on which to han- was that the search included use of \"an infrared [thermo-sensor] airborne spot- dle their entire political agenda.\" ter that scanned the abandoned farm- houses in the fogbound Dakota country- Beyond the tax deduction's aid to side.\" Well, that was Blue Thunder, all right, stalking a son of the far-Right. middle class families , the consequences The irony, of course, is that it missed; they found Kahl the old-fashioned way.~ of computer proliferation might very well result, according to Horwitz, in de- creased union strength and work rela- tionships, and increased surveillance of the work force, which would also have to juggle home responsibilities and absorb the overhead costs that management Blue Thunder on the loose. once did. Moreover, instead of hourly or salary wage scales, computer work is The seed for WarGames is, of course, paid as piece work, which save for the Dr. Strangelove , which also expressed upper income strata that is geared to deep suspicions about our technological participate in home computer work, is posture toward nuclear war. It's pretty not unlike the way the garment industry clear that WarGames shares those suspi- farmed out shmata patterns to immi- cions and rides the same vector from the grants 80 years ago. Left. The film's best joke is also the one It's that techno-terror undergirding that most nearly encapsulates the film's WarGames that differentiates it from al- techno-wariness: Says one computer most the entire spate of pro-military freak, who is fairly nonnal, to another, films, including, ironically enough, John who is clearly sub-normal, \"Remember Badham's other summer release, Blue how you wanted me to tell you when Thunder. The only wild card in War- you're acting anti-social? Well now is it.\" Games deck is the same one that existed If the Left is worried about com- in Lucas' hand when he dealt the Star puters, the Right has appropriated them Wars Three. Domestic viewers may im- as hardware that is more than simply mediately perceive from which side of efficient, but also useful in the home the political spectrum WarGames was and friendly. The monster in War- delivered, but there are always those Games, named WOPR for War Opera- tin-pot bozos across the oceans who will tion Planned Response, has a relative see the Situation Room and the bleep- 74
Was our first FILM COMMENT Quiz Quiz Number 2 an article and the number (so, not The (May-June) tough? Too tough? Give- Two of Us). The entry with the most you-the-shakes-it's-so-tough tough? child who can count on his fingers (and film titles wins a year of FILM COM- Then salute Henry and Nancy Mattoon has an encyclopedic knowledge of MENT. Entries must be addreessed to of Madison, Wis., who scored an im- movie titles) can do well. All you have FILM COMMENT Quiz Number 2, 140 pressive 86 out of 100 points and won a to do is to send us a list of as many West Sixty-fifth Street, New York, N. Y. free year of FILM COMMENT. (Answers movies as you can think of with num- 10023, and received by August 12, to Quiz No.1 are below.) bers in the title. Handicaps: only one 1983. Answers and winners will appear film per number is allowed, and the next issue. Good luck to all! -R.C. Now try Quiz No.2, so easy that any film title may not begin with the num- ber (so, not One Hour With You) or with QUIZ NO.1 ANSWERS as the actresses who played their mann's episode of the film Love (1979). 1. Roles proposed but never realized for mothers: Thomas Mitchell and Beulah (Also: Lee Grant. ) 17.People to whom Greta Garbo. (Also: George Sand.) 2. Bondi in Make Way for Tomorrow, Cary films have been dedicated: Jack Tyree Films written or co-written by Nobel Grant and Jessie Royce Landis in North for The Sword and the Sorcerer, Domi- Prize winners Ernest Hemingway's The by Northwest, Laurence Olivier and nique Dunne for Baby, It's You , Gene Spanish Earth, William Faulkner's Air Eileen Herlie in Hamlet . (Also: Michael Moskowitz for Mrinal Sen's The Case Is Force (uncredited), Samuel Beckett's Ames and Gene Tierney in Heaven Can Closed. (Also: Sharon Tate.) IS.Direc- Film. (Also: Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Wait.) tors of 3-D movies. (Also: Andre de Erendira.) 3. Acronymic titles: II. Burt Reynolds movies. (Also: Toth.) 19. First three movies shown at H .O.T.S. , Z, \"F.1.S.T.\" (Also: Mobile Smokey and the Bandit.) 12. Films re- Radio City Movie Hall. (Fourth: Sign of Army Surgical Hospital: M*A*S*H.). leased two or more years after comple- the Cross.) 20. Actors born in St. Peters- 4. Films with two directors. (Also: tion. (Also: Love and Money.) 13 . Per- burg, Russia. (Also: Tom Conway.) Singin' in the Rain.) 5. Actors with per- formers in the original Broadway pro- 21. Actors with famous siblings. (Also: manent tattoos. (Also: Tony Danza.) 6. duction of PalJoey. (Also: June Havoc.) Joan Fontaine.) 22. Actors who played Non-musicals that won Oscars for Best 14. Films on Elliott Stein's list of Best characters based on Raymond Chan- Song. (Also: An Officer and a Gentle- of the Seventies. (Also: Days of dler's Philip Marlowe: George Sanders man.) 7. Real names of movie directors Heaven.) 15. Occupations once held by in The Falcon Takes Over, from Fare- Dziga Vertov, Nicholas Ray, Werner Pauline Kael. (Also: cook.) 16. Ac- well, My Lovely; Lloyd Nolan in Time to tresses who directed a movie: Lillian Kill, from The Brasher Doubloon; Ro- Herzog. (Also: Allen Konigsberg = Gish's Remodeling Her Husband, Mabel bert Montgomery in The Lady in the Normand 's Mabel at the Wheel , Liv UII- Lake. (Also: Humphrey Bogart.) 21. Woody Allen.) S. Pseudonyms for FILM Actors who committed suicide. (Also: COMMENTwriters. (Also: George Kap- Walter Slezak.) 24 . Unrealized Howard lan.) 9. Movies whose titles were Hawks projects. (Also: The Maltese Fal- changes after release: from The Clans- con.) 25. Movie titles containing tele- man to The Birth of a Nation, from The phone numbers: Dial M (6)for Murder, Chink and the Child to Broken Blossoms, Butterfield (28)-S, and Calling Northside from Citizens Band to Handle With Care . (Also, from The Ace to The Great San- (66) 777. (Also: 7877 = Surftide 77.) tini.) 10. Actors who were at least as old CONTRIBUTORS COMMENT Mancini: p. 53, 54. MGM/UA: p. 9, p. David Ehrenstein is working on a bi- 26. Museum of Modern Art/Film Stills ography of R. W. Fassbinder. Enrique PHOTO CREDITS: Archive: p. 41, 61 (1). Photo by Linda Fernandez is film editor of The Village Mary Apick: p. 58 (3). Anthology Film Moser: p. 78. John Motavalli: p. 57 (1, Voice. Richard Gehr is an officer and a Archives: p. 41 (1, 2). Columbia 2),58 (1,2,3),59 (1). MTV: p. 35, 36 journalist. J. Hobennan is co-author, Pictures: p. 11 (1), 24, 52 (1), 55, 74. (1, 2), 38 (1), 40, 43 (1), 49 (2). New with Jonathan Rosenbaum, of Midnight Thomas Dolby: p 34 (3). Bob Giraldi: York Film Festival: p. 22 (2, 3). New Movies. Bill Krohn, the Los Angeles p. 48. Peter Hujar: p. 21 (1). Harlan Yorker Films: p. 23 (1, 2), 65, 68 (2). correspondent for Cahiers du cinema, is Jacobson: p. 38 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Janus Paramount: p. 11 (2). Photo by.An- an associate editor of Boxoffice. Marc Films: p. 14-15 (1). Jacques-Henri Lar- thony Payne: p. 33. 20th Century-Fox: Mancini teaches film at the University tique: p. 23 (5). Knopf: p. 70. Bill p. 10, 11. John Sanborn: p. 47 (1). Par- of Southern California and at West Los Krohn: p. 62, 63 (1, 2). Bahman viz Sayyad: p. 58 (1, 2). Kary Scheydt: Angeles College. John Motavalli is a Maghsoudlou: p. 57 (1,2), p. 59. Marc p. 23 (4). Shirley Ulmer: p. 64. Univer- freelance writer living in Connecticut. sal: p. 61 (2). Cecilia Veltriano: p. 60. Carrie Rickey has written for The Vil- Ken Walz: p. 43 (2). Graeme Whiffler: lage Voice and American Film. Arlene p. 43 (3). Dan Yakir: p. 16, 19,66,67, Zeichner is a video consultant. 68 (1, 3, 4). 75
Works ofDespair. by Amos Vogel Pier Paolo Pasolini's La Rabbia (An- Philippe Garret's L'enfant secret. ger) is a case of despair, though it traffics more in tears than in despair, and follows Entirely composed in staccato, ma- are those of a master filmmaker, non- a heartbreaking montage of reality-foot- chine gun-style montages of newsreel conformist, modernist, mordant. The age with a (falsely) upbeat ending. With and documentary footage , re-edited into material is presented as a fifty-minute every passing day, the brilliant luminos- a chronological-ideological pattern, this harangue (the narration, of course, by ity of this anguished, conflicted genius compilation of horrors, banalities, injus- Pasolini) in the best tradition of modern comes into sharper focus. Poet, film- tices, and tortures- \"history,\" in short rebel culture. It is rare indeed to come maker, political polemicist, unorthodox -explodes in our faces . We watch un- across such a consistently, explicitly se- Marxist, anti-formalist formalist, and an- bearable scenes of the Hungarian revolt ditious work in modern cinema , fired by archist, this Renaissance man displayed against Stalin, the Korean War, Lu- so brilliant a flame of moral indignation a staggering complexity of thought and mumba's murder, Arabs and Jews at and furious hate. creation in all media. Consider his icono- Suez, Castro's revolution. Simultane- clastic range in cinema alone: religious ously, we are confronted with Sophia \"Here,\" says Pasolini, \"is a film about populism (The Gospel According to St . Loren, Eisenhower, the coronation ofan ordinary times. Man falls asleep in his Matthew), philosophical allegory (The uncertain British queen, and, in ordinariness, forgets to think. This is Hawk and The Sparrows), ribaldry (The explicitly anti-clerical sequences, the why the poets, in their artificial ways, Decameron), surrealism-cum-expres- death of a Pope and the coming of an- must once again create extraordinary sionism (Pigsty), ambiguous mysticism other. The film builds to a shattering times.. .. What makes the poets dissat- (Teorema) , sophisticated blasphemy (La montage of death dreams'-a collage of isfied? Colonialism, hunger, racism, Ricotta), ice-cold eroticism (Salo), not to thirty atomic explosions-followed by conformism, the cult of institutions, the speak of his voluminous cultural and po- (despite earlier criticism of the USSR) a hate against what is different and there- litical essays and polemics-famous in disingenuously pro-Soviet ending by a fore disturbing to bourgeois order, the Europe, unfortunately not translated Pasolini in 1963 not yet transformed by triumph of the Digest, the Illustrated into English. later events. This conclusion remains Magazine, and, above all, television. rhetorical (and flawed); only the evils are The world, distorted by these means of Is it possible that there still exist films evident. communication, culture, and propa- by this genius unknown to us? It is, and ganda, turns ever more unreal, becomes Rabbia is an example, made in 1963. The editing, visual style, and content a world that kills. . . . Do you see the se- One can only incredulously ask where this seminal work has been all these MOVIE STAR NEWS AUTHORS WANTED BY years. Why was it never shown here? Is it NEW YORK PUBLISHER not the function of festivals to show COME IN PERSON· MON-FRI11-5 SAT 12-5 (Mail Order) \"films maudit,\" particularly master- Pin· Ups • Portraits • Posters • Physique Poses • Leading subsidy book publisher seeks manuscripts pieces? Pressbooks • Western • Horror • Science Fiction • of all types : fiction. non-fiction. poetry. scholarly Musicals • Color Photos • 80 Years of Scenes From and juvenile works, etc. New authors welcomed. Originally the first of a two-part docu- Motion Pictures Send for free. illustrated 40-page brochure H- 83 mentary-one segment by a left wing Vantage Press. 516 W. 34 St.• New York. N.Y.I000l director, the other by a right-on the Rush $1 .00 FOR OUR ILLUSTRATED BROCHURE history of the previous decade, the result was a financial fiasco . Only Pasolini's 134 West 18th Street, NYC, New York 10011 film survives. It is a cry of anguish, a scream of rage. The profound moral fer- vor of this lonely genius burns through every frame of this subversive master- pIece. LOWBROW CINEMA THE UNDERBELLY OF FILM HISTORY Spring Issue: The Best of 3-D; Vic Morrow : Requiem for a Heavy; Uncut GODZILLA; SPACE FIRE BIRD ; ana special feature- \"Keeping Up with the Joans.\" Single copy : $2 .50 Subscription : $7.00 (4 issues ) LOWBROW CINEMA P. O. Box 310. New York . NY 10473 7fJ
vere me n with double chins, elegantly e re nces) projec ts a cul-d e -sac, with A FILM BY RICK SCHMIDT attired , e nte r and alight from ai rplanes, glimme rs of a poss ible alte rn ati ve ob- EMERALD CITIES sit at des ks as if on thrones, me n with sc ure ly hinted at by th e filmm ake r. • Rick Schmidt 's film styl e is blending the faces of dogs or sa ints, of hyenas or ea- mad·cap humor of the Marx Brothers, a heady version of American surrealism , and gles, they are th e maste rs. And do yo u Pe rhaps the most despe rate film I' ve iconoclast ic inspiration , perhaps, of Jean· Luc Godard. see the othe rs? Modes t peopl e, dressed see n recentl y is Philippe Ga rrel's The - Vic Skolnick in rags or chea p clothes, who wa lk along Secret Child (L' enfant secret, 1983), win- New Community Cinema overcrowded , ugly stree ts, spe nd hours ne r of the Prix Jea n Vigo, a harrowing, EMERALD CITIES is an exhilarating pop cultural explosion. on e nd in work witho ut hope , whose difficult tale of unre lieved sadn ess. T hi s - Michael Silverblatt faces resemble the dead , without distin- is Garrel 's fourtee nth film . It is one of L.A. Weekly gui shin g marks, lightless; these are th e the not-so-secret scandals of film history EMERALD CITIES also attacks , in its way , contemporary life ... by satirizing obvious slaves. From thi s separati on comes trag- that Ga rre l's oe uvre (particularly Le Re- murksprings of the American Way . edy and dea th . As long as man exploits Levateur, Le lit de La vierge, Concentra- - Calvin Ahlgren S.F. Chronical man, as long as humani ty is divid ed into tion, La cicatrice interieure) is not know n FILM FESTIVALS 1983 maste rs and slaves, the re can be no nor- in Ame rica. The Secret ChiLd is q uite dif- ROTTERDAM SYDNEY mali ty, no peace. This is the source of all fe re nt from these ea rlie r works, whi ch FLORENCE evil in our time.\" (Vie N uove, No. 38, featured images of powe rful de pth and The film juxtaposes the Santa Claus myth , nuclear war, punk rock, hypnotic self· 1962. ) plastici ty, mined fro m and hurled at th e analysis, psychedelic drugs . and video • subco nscious, of a haunting surreal-ex- manipulation - you know , all that stuff we Eve n more unexpected a film is Ga- press ioni st te nsion and grandiosity se l- usually think about. Featuring FLIPPER and THE MUTANTS, this is one of the best in· bor B6dy's The Dog's Nightsong (Kutya dom matched . dependent films we 've seen all year - it puts SMITHEREENS to shame. Eji DaLa , 1983), poss ibly the most ico no- In The Secret Child Ga rrel le ft (as he - Bruce D. Rhodewalt, clastic film to co me out of Hungary since puts it) his \"aesthe ticism and puritan- Marci Marks, Craig Lee the Communi sts took over. This is a ism\" be hind and oste nsibly creates hi s L.A. DEE DA profoundl y ava nt-ga rd e wo rk , li g ht- mos t accessible work : mome nts in th e As with Schmidt's earlier 1988·THE REMAKE, EMERALD CITIES displays yea rs re moved from Socialist Reali sm, life of a young coupl e, com ing togethe r, editorial wizardry which mixes moods and media in a dizzying pace which at first may in fact, re li gious in the se nse that it dea ls growin g apart , te nsions, depress ions, seem haphazard , but which at a second glance takes on an order which its material with the loss of fa ith and the need for drugs, shock th e rapy, the poss ibili ty of a would seem incapable of producing . new myths to take the place of outwo rn new beginning. T he two live as in a - Jon Jost ideologies. Told in a discontinuous, di s- vacuum. We are in Pari s, but we never Fo r bookings and information please te le ph o n e : so nant sty le, unpredictable as to narra- see it, onl y the m, in huge, claustropho- (201) 891·8240 tive or implications, thi s is a melange of bic co mpos itions. Th e style is e lliptical, Or w ri te : fiction and docume ntation, 3Smm , Su- non-lin ea r, too cryptic. Long takes, with pe r 8mm , and video. The re are fake little move me nt, predominate, and one priests, ancient CP functionaries, unor- is re minded of Warhol or as pects of ea rly thodox physicists, offi ce rs obsessed by Godard : exte nded sil ences may be the explosives, outrageous punk groups (in most decisive part of the action. The pe rform ance , the nearest the film comes sluggishnes of th e narrati ve is deliber- to ideo logy), ailing wo me n who commit ate as each mome nt is see n in full and suicide with hat pins earlie r used for becomes privil eged . Inabili ty to com- mas turbation , and such dial ogue as: municate dominates, and one feels the \"Why do dogs bray at the moon?\" \" Pe r- couple's overreaching desperation and haps they are trying to break through impote nce re lieved only by bri ef mo- their dog-ness. \" That view of th e state me nts of te mporary ease. of life is sufficie ntly important to G abor One scene can stand for many: the B6dy to give the work its title. yo ung woman holding close he r child This is a film of anguished disillusion- fro m anothe r rel ationship , in a close-up ment, but without illusions or ideals to las ting seve ral minutes, sile nce co m- begin with. Its unspoke n premise is des- plete, th e man on th e othe r bed , the pair and alienation, and the wisdom that mothe r and child in sile nt union. \" It comes from them. \"U nfulfilled e mo- must be poss ibl e to make te nder, soft tion s can lead to arson ,\" says B6dy. \" In a film s,\" says G arrel , \"for outside rs, as world created for con-me n, it is inevita- Godard did .\" He constantly pays hom- ble that a pse udo-pri est will ass ume th e age to th e maste rpiece of his gene ration: roles discredited by politics, art , science, Jea n E ustac he's The Mother and the family . . . a comprehe nsive picture of Whore, but refu ses, despite his somber present-day Hungary's micro-climate is pess imi sm , to co nsid e r taking E us- thereby created .\" It is, in fact, only the tac he's way out (s uicide). Th e Secret fake priest who offers the possibili ty of Child is largely auto biographical, includ- love. Yet, at the e nd , chased by police, in g th e brea kd ow n . Th e path ology, he is seen on the cross. Refu sing to as- howeve r, is not pe rsonal but soc ial. sume the role of the sav ior, he shyly La rge stateme nts are being made in the descends from it. The film (difficult to gui se of private or eve n obscure narra- comprehend because of specialized ref- tives, and we mu st pay heed. 77
Li by David Thomson The Grey Fox is surely the first movie As BiLL Miner in The Grey Fox. in which a man holds up trains in order to bear witness to politeness. Bill Miner, stream. He is a bird, as adroit, fastidious , the new day. He is photographed, but the real bandit of the first years of pic- and dreamlike as a heron in a Japanese he feels engraved. Even the movie is tures, must have been a touch or two print. Outlaws, no doubt, were as brutal drawn to admit the beauty of the man. rougher than the angelic Richard as their times, but Richard Farnsworth The feminist he loves and who has come Farnsworth. I heard somewhere that the -born to play this part-is as much a to photograph the Northwest tells him part was originally offered to Harry very perfect, gentle knight Chaucer his face has fascinating planes. Her Dean Stanton: how inevitable it is that words stir sleeping thought. The vet- that suspicious but ambitious face ever described. eran begins to regard his own future, the should turn down the gorgeous lead in a Farnsworth is a 63-year old horseman, very privilege that once seemed beyond film so unerringly pitched at charm that the reach or deserving of an old man and it seems bound to win audiences. But born not on the range but in Los a thief. At last, his courtliness redeems Stanton would have made a different Angeles. As he grew too tall to be a him: he has managed in his self-effacing outlaw: broken of honesty and kind- jockey, he took up stunt riding for way to clear a space in the new century ness , and probably closer to the actual Westerns. He reckons to have ridden for for manners allowed to grow old with soiled desperation of a man who spent famous stars in 300 pictur~s, but it was grace. his life in jailor on the run . Which means only in The Cowboys (1972) that he that The Grey Fox we have is as fanciful spoke for the first time. He has since It's hard to judge how much the film and abstract as it is exquisite and gentle- played in The Dutchess and the Dirtwater owes to Borsos. There is so much to take manly, and that it is held in place by the Fox, Tom Horn, Resurrection, and An- in in Farnsworth, and in the heartfelt spiritual courtesy of Farnsworth. other Man , Another Chance. But itwas in formalism of the cold landscapes shot by Comes A Horseman (1978) that he 'Frank Tidy, who photographed that He is a gunman, of course. There is a earned an Oscar nomination and showed other mysterious film about etiquette, fine scene early on when he goes to a us an actor whose dignity was as breath- The DueLLists. Still, there is one se- gunsmith's premises-all brown, white, taking as the landscape. quence, apparently marginal, that lets and pewter, like a Vermeer breakfast- us feel the personality of the director. and gently insists on the \"heft\" of a His Bill Miner is not real, only natu- On Christmas morning, Miner and his black Colt. The gunsmith seems to ralistic. He is an icon and an example, lady are aroused by the constable to pho- think it is too heavy a thing for this old furnished with late 19th-century etched tograph the slaughter of his family by a man. But then he sees Farnsworth's detail: the crested honor of his salt mus- deranged man. The man has fled, leav- gnarled walnut hands waltz through the tache, the crow's feet in his smile, and ing apple-red bloodstains on the radiant chambers and the hammer. Even a gun the facets of pain in his face, so gaunt can comform to the spiritual discipline of and yet so faithful and alert to life and balance and behavior. These are sublime hands , steadily no- ticed by the calm of Phillip Borsos' film. They pick up an egg, an orange, a golf ball, even a bottle of kidney pills, as well as weaponry, and there is a tell-tale tat- too, a bluebird , in the angle of Miner's thumb and forefinger (where a Colt rests), which he can cause to fly. It is this giveaway by which the Pinkertons know him-a Miner bird that the man never thinks to scrape away or hide. Some- thing in politeness makes itself available to be captured. The Grey Fox needs the eventual ap- prehension of its hero so that he can soar freer still, into legend and the blue- white light above a windless sedge 78
wall s of his te nt. T he scene is not central ANOTHER BROOKS GRAD WHO MADE IT TO THE TOP. to the story, but its unstressed confl ict with the \" meaning\" of C hristmas is es- As Director of Photography for M.A.S.H., one of history's most highly-regarded sential to the gravity of the movie . TV shows, Dominick Palmer has paved the way for a new generation of creative T he horror is restrained . We feel it most in the tears that do not q uite escape cinematographers. Where did Dominick learn his craft? Brooks Institute in Santa fro m M ine r's tactful eyes. By joining the constable in the sad du ty of pursuit- Barbara. California. more mourning than reve nge-he af- At Brooks, we provide the type of comprehensive education that's designed to firm s the ir bond and the constable's cor- rectn ess in loo kin g away fro m the bring the best out of our students. You 'll learn all aspects of film making, including: like lihood that an outlaw is living in his town of Kamloops. They are crossi ng a o Stage & location lighting 0 Directing 0 Stage & blond prai rie, and they find the knife . The n Mine r looks up and away, like a o Film & video camera technique 0 Editing location sound pointe r, to a piteous sight: th e man spreadeagled on strand s of wire fe ncing. o Screenwriting 0 Production techniques He had cut his throat and the n run till hi s strength and guilt were gone . In which If you're considering a career in film making , first consider how important your case, his last act of re morse and manne rs was in judgi ng hi s own life exactly to the education can be to your career. That's why Dominick Palmer chose Brooks. point of the wire. O r did the wire spring up , whe re he fe ll , imagine d by divine And maybe that's why he's where he is today. fo rgive ness? G race unde r pressure, so hackneyed a strategy in adventure film s, BROOKS INSTITUTE comes alive agai n. T he narrative excur- sion is not supe rfluous. It refe rs us back For information, write to Brooks Institute, 2190 Alston Road , Dept. FC1 -0783, to M in e r's gen tle manl iness, and dis- Santa Barbara, CA 93108 Attn : Director of Admissions covers it in a wretched , ruined outcast. ORIGINAL AMERICAN & EUROPEAN / Just occas ionally, Farn swo rth gives The Grey Fox a hint of a Robe rt Bresson MOVIE POSTERS I film in all its charm . T he spirit is being addressed amid the nostalgia and the LOBBY CARDS AND PRESSBOOKSLI1 rathe r cosy view of history. When the old man sees E dwin S. Porte r's The Great r' -- Train Robbery it is like a pil grim of many years meeting his special miracle at last. i.~ fll,.. ~()II2/()I£I\\I~()AI1 -- Such outrages are part of the orde r of th ings; they are recognized and de- ht' £()I2\"'A~/()()[)AI2[)/ lA~(J -- picted. He is stirred by the confi rma- -- tion. Planning mayhe m, he glows with If; -- mn oce nce. f 1111£11£()£I\\/fASSUI~[)112 -- Evil has been transcended. H is lady wonde rs about the knife scar on his ,~ fUllll2/ffil2[)/ II2UffAUI r--- chest, and he te lls he r th e man who did it didn ' t need a reason. M ine r is as ~ ... MAN~ MORE r--- drawn to stealing as a bird is wise to ride au· • >. the wind . But if it must be done, th en le t .. I- e--- it be done with gentle propri ety. H e is ashamed of his one messy job. He wants I--f- protocol to be observed . Be hind a hand- ke rchief mask he says, \"1 apologize fo r I- f- the di sturbance, gentleme n.\" H e calls people \"sir\" without irony or calcula- f-- c- tion. And he breeds a matching digni ty in the world around him . When the gang - c- is captured , th e mountie hears the ir modest denials and says, \"Neverthe- - c- less, I must take you for the train rob- be rs.\" It was to expected , says Mine r's I face. The gentle manliness in Richard F arnsworth's noble eyes- about to take L- HEAVILY ILLUSTRATED CATALOG FILLED WITH INFO r-- c- a horse or eat a tomato- is that of a y 1/ y r,yFor the Advanced Collector & Novice. $5. Walter Reuben/Box bared , virtuous spirit. ·~l~ / 26 6 , [Dert. A sti 7187~8 I I [ [ I I I I I r-- c- / j[I II 79
Margareta Akermark, 1913-1983 On a recent Friday in June, the friends and colleagues of Margareta Akermark assembled at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where she had worked for nearly 40 years , to remember her. That she amassed the Museum's first of thousands of film classics, that she started the circulating film program and the \"Films at Noon\" series so that cinema could not only be preserved but seen and felt, and that she urged univer- sities to respect the art form of the times does not tell the whole story. In 1978, Margareta, who was born in Sweden, received the Mayor's Award of Honor for achievement in arts and cul- ture in New York. The best award may be the testament of her friends that day in June, of which we offer one: I first met Margareta in 1950-she Margareta Akermark in her office. was the Circulation Director of the Film Library here at the Museum and she fortable eating alone in a good restau- Gepted and, after climbing the eleven gave me my first real job-as her assist- rant. She was at home with all kinds of dark flights to her apartment I was met ant. She soon became my idol, my men- people-with those she referred to as by a marvellous vision. tor and, over the next thirty-three years, the \"muckey mucks\" on the Board of my good and dear friend. Trustees, with the young filmmakers There was Margareta, in a long white who came to her for help and advice, dressing gown, her hair flowing, holding There were many other young men and with the carpenters and the engi- a candle in one hand and a pitcher of and women who worked for Margareta neers on the Museum staff. I remember Martinis in the other. If Ingmar during the nearly forty years she was being very jealous because Margareta Bergman had been there, Liv Ullmann here-a numberofthem are here today. was the only member of the Film Li- would never have stood a chance! I know that all of them grew to admire brary staff invited to the annual and respect her, and many to love her as Christmas party in the Museum's engine I learned so much from this remark- room. able woman, but perhaps the most im- I do. portant thing she taught me was the Over the past few weeks I have Her personal life is to be admired and most difficult. Don't ever confuse love envied . She was deeply in love with with pity. Don't ever think that having thought a great deal about what made Randall Heymanson, as was he with her, people feel sorry for you will make you her so special and why she had such a and although they never married, they more lovable. No matter how over- tremendous influence on me and on so had a near-perfect relationship which worked or harassed you may feel, or many others. lasted more than forty years-longer how miserable, or even how sick-wash than the marriages of most of her your hair, put on your lipstick, and get I am sure that she would cringe if she on with it. heard herself referred to as a feminist, friends. but I believe that Margareta, some thirty One of my favorite memories of This was Margareta's lifestyle. years ago had achieved for herself most She had elegance, she had dignity of the goals that women are striving for Margareta was on the night of the first and she was the classiest lady I have ever New York blackout, in 1965. She had known or can ever hope to know. She today. not come in to the office that day-I was was witty, she was compassionate, and She was a professional, with a deep working at the Museum and lived in she was always fun to be with. New Jersey. When the lights went out I am so very glad to have been her sense of commitment to her work. She she called to see if! would like to spend managed to transmit this commitment the night at her place. I gratefully ac- friend. to everyone who worked with her, thus -JOANNE KOCH setting some very high standards for her co-workers. She was an independent person, to- tally at ease with herself. Margareta is the only woman I know who was com- 80
NEW RELEASES FROM NEW YORKER FILMS \" ABSOLUTELY MAGICAL'.' -Judith Crist . •~ 'i·( \\ i A New YOfter Films Release Plus: Ousmane Sembene's Mandabi, Alain Tanner's Light Years Away, Ababacur Samb's Jom, Judy Irving, Chris Beaver and Ruth Landy's Dark Circle. *The Atomic Cafe is available for non-theatrical rental only. CALL FOR WRITE FOR OUR 1983 SPECIAL ATTRACTIONS CATALOGUE. e~!t~~a 16 West 61st Street, New York, NY 10023 (212) 247-6110
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