VOLUME 18 - NUMBER 03 MAY-JUNE 1982

I -m ~ ~.,-o .: 8:30 _.--------- C I II I Yolilllovehow itloads up front and howlittle it sets you bacl{. Thanks to Toshiba, you For easier operation 1/5 normal speed. Or even one no longer have to be loaded to mechanically pre-set tuning frame at a time. afford a VCR. In fact. for a reason- has been dropped and re- And auto-rewind has been able amount of money, you placed with a more advanced added to cue whatever you've can even get one that's loaded electronic tuner. recorded back to start as soon as with features. Which means the the tape is finished. The new V-9200 with V9200 can be programmed to So you see,Toshiba remote contro1. record a ball game on one has taken the VCR , What Toshiba's done is channel while you watch a a giant step for- ..from the top down. _I!!!!!!-!!!!!!!!!!I_ rethink the VCR REWIREVIEW PLAY FF/CUE movie on another. ward. Yet still We searched managed to Literally. for ways to put the price Conven- improve picture in reverse. tional top-loading 8 _- PICTURE SEARCH - (3 search.The result? A federal court has has been replaced The V-9200 not ruled that recording copyrighted material with a system that lets you slip only makes quick visual off the air without consent isin vio· cassettes in the front. So you searches at 8 times normal lation of existing copyright laws. can slip the machine itself into picture speed, TO S H I BA tight spaces without leaving but also very Again,the first. any room overhead for loading. slow ones at lbshlba America. tnc.81 lbtowa Road.Wayne. N 1.07470

•SI•SSUe pu monthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Volume 18, Number 3 May-June 1982 Midsection: The Video Revolution . 33 Gay Films, Straight Movies ...... 15 Video is exploding everywhere: on There's been a lot of talk re- the burgeoning cable channels, in art cently about \"gay movies\" : galleries, even in the conservative Making Love, Personal Best, stronghold of Hollywood. J. Hober- Partners . Are they good movies? man offers an informed overview of Are they truly gay? Mary Ri- the subject, from Ernie Kovacs to chards has some thoughts on Jean-Luc Godard, on page 34. Ri- the subject (pages 15). And chard Zacks spots big companies Carlos Clarens offers a new and big bucks in narrowcasting (page look at Victor/Victoria (p. 18). 36). Arlene Zeichner checks out rock music on TV and in the clubs (page 39). Amy Taubin profiles some important video artists (page 42). Andy Klein stays up late to catch the L.A. cable freex (page 44). And Brooks Riley previews a thrilling fu- ture in Francis Coppola's experi- ments with film and video (page 45). Milius the Barbarian .... They hook you; they hold you; they tell you what you're about to see. They are movie titles-and sometimes they do At least, that's the popular no- their job so well that you leave the theater humming the tion of this writer-director (Dirty credits. Title art is an exact and exacting craft, brought to maturity by the four men whose work Dean Billanti pro- Harry, The Wind and the Lion, files on pages 62-65: Saul Bass , Maurice Binder, Wayne Apocalypse Now). Truth is, he's Fitzgerald, Dan Perri. Fitzgerald, who has designed hun- a poetical soul, as his Guilty dreds of movie titles, tells Mitch Tuchman all about how Pleasures should prove (page it's done on page 66. Filmographies are on pages 70. 24). His new movie is the Arnold Schwarzenegger pec- tacular, Conan; Carlos Clarens reviews it on page 26. Also in this issue: Bracketting Wilder ...........29 Independents ...............73 Billy Wilder, the subject of this year's Amos Vogel sounds the clarion call: Journals ................... 2 Film Society of Lincoln Center trib- Let's save sex from the pornographers! In Utah, Austin Lamont finds good ute, had a productive screenwriting Some film artists are doing just that. films and an independent spirit. apprenticeship with Charles Brackett. Tom Allen reappraises it. Books .....................76 Acting English . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 7 Now there's a cacophony of books From Cary Grant to Larry Olivier, Hollywood Lays an Egg ...... .49 on the Hollywood musical. Our Law- from The Invisible Man to Brideshead Things look bad for the industry, but rence O'Toole has found the best one. Revisited, English actors have lent look closer: A new multimedia cartel is movies their special elegance and flair. forming. By Harlan Jacobson. Industry ...................78 An appreciation by David Thomson. Would you slice the top and bottom off Steven Spielberg Interview.....53 a Picasso? Then why watch films in the Assignment: Berlin...........20 The Wonder Boy ofJaws and Close En- wrong ratio? By Dan Yakir. ... where Harlan Kennedy found lots counters has turned producer-auteur to like. But the best was in Munich: with E .T. and Poltergeist. He tells Bulletin Board ..............80 Werner Herzog's new Fitzcarraldo. Todd McCarthy about his new roles. Cover photo: E.T., by Universal. E?itor: Richard Corliss. Senior Editor: Brooks Riley. West Coast Editor: Anne. Thompson. Business Manager: Sayre Maxfield. Advertising and CIrculation Mana&er: Tony Impavldo. Art director: Elliot Schulman. Cover deSign : Michael Uns. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Executive Director, .Fllm Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch . Second class postage \"aid at New York and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 1982 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All nghts reserved. The opinions expressed In FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center pohcy. ThiS pubhcatlon IS fully protected by domestic and international copynght. The publication of FILM COMMENT (lSSN001S-120X) is made possible!n part by support from the New York State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Art. Subscription rates in the United States: $12 for.slx numbers $22 fortwelve numbers. Els~where : $18 for SIX numbers , $34 for t\\ve!ve numbers, payable in U.S. funds only. New subscribers should Include their occupations and ZiP codes. Edltonal, subscnptlon , and back-Issue correspondence: FILM COMMENT, 140 West Sixty-fifth Street, New York, N.Y. 10023 U.S.A.

oumals Everything's Up-ta-Date in Park City Austin Lamont deeply-moving portrait of a young black that the U. S. -eq uipped Salvadorian from Park City, Utah father desperately .attempting to earn Army had killed twenty civilians in San \"Utah? Ugh!\" sophisticated East- erners will complain. \"There's nothing enough money to bring his family up Salvador. there.\" Nothing but the warmest, most ambitious, best-attended festival of in- decently. Shot four years ago in black- Jim Brown's The Weavers' Reunion dependent American film and video in the U.S. It's the U.S. Film and Video and-white, under the most adverse fi- (subsequently released as Wasn't That a Festival, Park City, Utah. Don'tconfuse it with the U.S.A , Festival in Dallas, nancial and creative conditions, Killer of Time!) shared honorable mention for a thousand miles to the southeast. Don't confuse it with Cannes , New Sheep is a low-budget miracle that glows film documentary. A loving portrait of York, or Los Angeles-those exposi- tions are all huge , multinational, and with honesty and humanity. Jenny Bo- the quartet which first popularized folk relatively impersonal. If an American in- dependent film is shown there, it tends wen's Street Music is a bright and perky music in this country, the film refuses to to get lost in the crowd. The U.S. Film and Video Festival is devoted exclu- San Francisco comedy with plenty of wallow in nostalgia. It reverberates with sive ly to independent work . music, a large cast, and devious plot the . respect the four mem- Park City is a former mining town turned into a year-round resort. It is in .-------------------------~--------~ the mountains, an hour by car from the Salt Lake City airport. The town's small Larry Breeding and Elizabeth Daily in St reet Music . size, the festival's efficient and friendly staff, and the numerous planned and twists. This story of two young people bers continued to feel for each other- unplanned opportunities for visito rs to who protest the planned demolition of and to communicate to their audiences get together make this a bijou among the old hotel they live in has aptly been -for 30 years. A darker side of festivals. Park City is now in its fourth described as \"Frank Cap ra with color.\" Americana is revealed in Errol Morris's year as a showcase for film, and in its first 1978 feature Gates of Heaven, which year for video. Film programmer Lory Nicholas Broomfield and Joan Chur- won a special awa rd. This austere docu- Smith and video programmer June Fenn chill's Soldier Girls won first prize for mentary, about the people who operate have put together a festival Easterners documentary. A company of female and use pet cemeteri es, is not just hilari- should be jealous of. Army recruits are led through basic train- ously funny, not just pathetically se- ing by Sgt. Abing-one of the toughest rious. It is instead \"a slice of American The festival has two formats for show.- drill sergeants in this woman's Army. life crumb ling around the edges.\" ing films. The competitive categories- Some scenes are funny, some are horri- judged by critics, curators, and film and fying. Most amazing are the sincere feel- • video- artists-are feature-length dra- ings of Sgt. Abing in a final sequence matic films, documentary films, video that reveals the ultimate irony of war. First prize in video art went to Dan art, and video documentary. The invita- Another documentary with political un- Reeves' Smothering Dreams, a disturb- tional categories included those for new dertones, El Salvador: Another Vietnam, ing look at Vietnam at war seen through Hollywood films, documentaries, older won honorable mention. Filmmakers the eyes of a boy who plays with guns. A works of video, and regional short films. Glenn Silber and Tete Vasconcellos lu- superbly-edited assemblage of official, cidly demonstrate the U.S. Govern- unofficial, and acted footage of Viet- • ment's arrogance, stup idit y, and nam, Smothering Dreams takes us di- insensitivity in supporting the regime rectly into the unrelenting horrors of And now. .. the winners! In feature- rather than the peasant guerri llas. On combat. In a happier trip to the Far East, length dramatic films, there was a three- the day the festival ended, President video art ist Bill Viola spent seven way tie. Randall Conrad and Christine Reagan announced additional military months at Sony Corporation's research Dall's The Dozens carefully explores the funding for the regime, amid reports labs in Atsugi, Japan. One of the results life of a newly-released prisoner trying of his sojourn, Chott-EIDjerid, took hon- not to break her parole. The film , full of quiet and beautiful moments, is told with economy but not sparseness. Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep is a 2

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orable mention. This video landscape union. Eric Lewis, Don Gordon, and -the salmon we \"farm \" on \"ranches,\" shows the shimmering fields of winter in Tami Gold have created a tape that acts whose way we impede with dams, Canada and the searing heats of the Sa- both as an expose of poor working condi- whose habitat we destroy. hara desert. Almost .nterly in compo- tions and as an effective organizing tool. • There were other memorable films and tapes at the festival. Dreamland, a film drama by Oz Scott and Nancy Baker, is about a gospel singer, Joanne Crayton, trying to build a show business career; Henry Butler, an exceptional pi- anist, accompanies her in some se- quences. Mark Reichert's Union City (1980), a thriller set in a nair apartment house, finds its psycho core through cin- ematographer Ed Lachman's murky color scheme and the eerie perform- ances of Deborah Harry and Dennis Lipscomb. In film documentary, Ken Fink's Be- tween Rock and a Hard Place is a warm portrait of three miners; Martha Sandlin's A Lady Named Baybie is out- standing, as are Nacy Schreiber's Pos- sum Living and Close Harmony by Nigel Noble. In video, Wendy Clarke's Love Tapes and Shirley Clarke's Savage/Love Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch Show. -a brilliant mixture of video, drama, and music-were among the standouts. sltlon, Viola's images sometimes spar- Another social documentary won an More than 100 films and tapes were kle, sometimes slowly melt into new honorable mention . Michael Marton's I shown at the U.S. Film and Video Festi- images. They challenge not only the Don' t Matter, I Don't Care tells of teen- val. In addition, there were some forty medium 's technical capacities but also agers unable to break out of a cycle of seminars of various sizes, with indepen- the viewer's powers of perception. trouble , truancy, and inertia. The tape dent filmmakers , or experts from the Also a video art honorable mention forcefull y suggests that none of our so- industry, speaking on topics ranging was Amarillo New Tapes , a collaboration cial programs are working for these kids , from financing to creativity. of Doug Hall, Chip Lord , and Jody and well-financed new ones are needed. But Park City is more than a series of Proctor. Hilariously funn y, it is also an Second honorable mention in video films and tapes (however impressive) indictment of the game-show hijinks documentary went to Skip Blumberg'S and panels (however impassioned). It that pass for local TV news programs. Pick Up Your Feet: The Double Dutch affords the chance to talk informally The tape is another in The Ant Farm's Show, an infectiously energetic report on with just about any of the artists and series of bizarre looks at the medium of New York City's annual jump-rope com- critics there. The work is seen; the word television , and that medium's relation- petition. The last honorable mention in is spread. Now just wait till next year. ship to art, truth , and life. video documentary was awarded to Distribution information on all films or In vi deo documentary, first prize Salmon on the Run, by Jim Mayer and tapes mentioned here, as well as details on went to Signed, Sealed and Delivered, Steve Christiansen. This beautifully- next year's festival, may be obtained by the story of a postal employee's struggle shot tape is a clearly-reasoned argument writing the U.S. Film and Video Festival, to organize his fellow workers into a to let salmon remain as wild as possible 1177 East 2100 South, Salt Lake City, ------------.....,~-----------...., Utah, 84106. ,~!,~ .....Ift_.~~ FREE Catalog PARADISE GARDEN (SCRIPT) AUTHORS WANTED BY NEW YORK PUBLISHER Illustrated. 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BOWKER FEATURE FILMS ON BOOKS FOR 8mm, 16mm, AND VIDEOTAPE THE FILM A Directory of Feature Films Available for Rental, Sale, and Lease in the LIBRARY United States and Canada; 7th Edition Prices are applicable in the U.S. and Canada ; 10% higher in Edited by James L. Limbacher. As the es- other Western Hemisphere countries. All invoices are payable in tablished and authoritative source of feature U.S. dollars . Applicable sales tax must be in c luded . Shipping and films , this book is indispensable for a com- handling will be added . prehensive list of feature films that can be rented , sold , or leased . It also contains infor- R.R. Bowker Company mation on documentaries, educational fea- tures , animated and experimental films, and Order Dept. , P.O . Box 1807 , Ann Arbor, MI 48106 has been expanded to include approximate- ly 23 ,000 films . A new and significant feature of this 7th Edition is the Index of Foreign Language Films. ISBN 0-8352-1486-9 . April 1982 . 512 pp . $65 .00 AUDIOVISUAL MARKET PLACE 1982 A Multimedia Guide. With Names & Numbers This is the most comprehensive and authori- tative directory to the AV industry, listing , in one convenient volume, contact information and activities of more than 16,000 firms and individuals active in 25 AV areas. It provides information on AV software producers and distributors, hardware producers and dis- tributors , AV services and suppliers , refer- ence sources, funding sources, and a calen- dar of events. The \"yellow pages\" section presents an alphabetical listing of the more than 16,000 individuals and firms listed in the text. ISBN 0-8352-1361-7 . April 1982 . 480 pp . $39.95 / paper EDUCATIONAL FILM LOCATOR Of the Consortium of University Film Centers and R.R. Bowker; 2nd Edition The 1st edition of this reference won the Silver Reel Award upon its initial publication in 1978. This 2nd edition catalogs some 40 ,000 films available for sale or rental from the 50-member Consortium of University Film Centers (CUFC) . It includes 4 ,300 films not listed in the first edition and information on video availability. Film titles are listed alphabetically and are fully annotated based on reviews by CUFC librarians. Bibliographic data such as title , running time , format , subject , audience level , color or black and white is included . \"Access to this most cur- rent sourcebook is a must for anyone who recognizes the educational value of film and / or anyone who has interest in using films and video .\" -from a review of the 2nd Edition in the International Journal of In- structional Media . ISBN 0-8352-1295-5 . 1980 2,611 pp . $50 .00

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Peter O'Toole with Carolyn Seymour in The Ruling Class. by David Thomson England is a large, gracious, unheated condition of The Gentleman under so- house, afflicted now by death duties and cialism, one still longs to be one. That is a vanity as grisly as Malvolio's self-expo- rambling loss of faith. It is less a true sure and it is the unending pain of ab- surdist comedy in which the middle Sir Ralph has often been at his best interior than a hollow stage where it is class ridicules its wish to be better. It is also the promise of poetry, a looming when playing men in whose lives , the everyday test of a gentleman that he that can float the eye and voice of John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson , or Anthony gamely though they keep up appear- act English. It is like Edward VIII going Andrews (in Brideshead Revisited) from hope to desolation on one throwaway ance, there is a spiritual emptiness, a into exile and realizing that he has only remark. certain terror of the void. the deadpan charade of gentlemanliness The great house stands for the past, for prosperity and privilege wise enough -Kenneth T ynan , Show People to disguise his solitude-a duke of self- to choose taste, orashamed enough of its advantage. It comes in the styles of This is the saddest story I have ever deception. The play's the thing in which Adam, Grinling Gibbons, Capability heard ... My wife and I knew Captain we'll catch up with the king; acting is Brown, or Vanbrugh (In the case of Bri- and Mrs. Ashburnham as well as it was the commoner's chance of passing for nobility. Mrs. Simpson, that climbing possible to know anybody, and yet, in American, thought she would wake up another sense, we knew nothing at all royal. But in England, love rs wake up about them. This is, I believe, a state of unaltered and separate. things only possible with English people. When has it been enough in England -Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier to be a man? Despite the threadbare 7

deshead's Castle Howard setting)-the live upstairs in a small flat-he's a direc- glishness becomes a Crusade they take architect-dramatist whose combination tor of defaulting companies now, a Basil to the desert. A sinister grace attends of interests demonstrates the affinity be- Fawlty with too many problems-and them, as stealthy as depression; it is tween English theater and a stately he creeps OLlt of a side door, too proud their guilt, and it lines their handsome home. Thus the English box stage was and too shy to disturb the crowd attend- faces like mascara tears. the hallowed room that we could all be- ing to the play of his demise. hold and dream of entering. The cham- • bers and courtyards of Shakespeare's • plays are the dream-spaces of a Tudor The scene is Cairo; the time is mid- artist, as definite and spiritual as Ver- A little gloomy history is required to afternoon, 1915 or 1916, too early for meer interiors. Shakespeare was preoc- embellish the special plight of the Eng- tea. Lieutenant Lawrence is spooking a cupied with nobility. Is it a divine right, lish actor who went into pictures, and chipper N.C.O. by putting his hand to a a caprice that goes with the crown, or never came back. He had been trained naked flame. In David Lean's Lawrence what a striving moral sensibility may in nobility. Aiming at Shakespeare of Arabia, this is an underlined clue earn? above all, he had acquired the manners about self-destructiveness, permitting ofa courtier; he must make conversation Lawrence to pronounce his lying motto The Tudor had found the crown un- like blank verse, wear fine costume on being hurt but not minding. It also der a bush on Bosworth Field; and, without sheepishness, fence, dance, begins to account for Peter O'Toole hav- whatever Bette Davis or Glenda Jackson and bow. It is therefore quite logical that ing the waxy glow of a candle. (Later, may have us think, they were worried the English recognize greatness in actors much later, in the film, all the lights go about not being good enough. \"Uneasy with knighthoods-so long as the actors out, and yet no one thinks to put a match lies the head that wears the crown,\" for to O'Toole and carry on regardless.) it may not deserve its precious house. For eminent actors of Lear is cast out on the heath, and Pro- But Lawrence gets a call to see the spero lives on a desert island-an isola- the English stage, General, a barrel in a uniform about to tion that has fostered his magic, just as extinguish Egypt with a fart. Constipa- the heath's madness is what redeems some films are allowed, tion prevails in Donald Wolfit's perform- Lear as the master of property. ance. He has not had a motion, or a like holidays. Lord motion picture, in a year, and yet Wolfit The house remains as a religious sym- was a Great Actor with reason to be scan- bol: it is Heartbreak House; it is that Olivier can appear in dalized by neglect. He was a sacred frame for French windows in all those monster of the English stage, a bottled- tennis-playing romances; it is the bed- clinkers so that his beer Orson Welles who had his own sit, clotted with discontent, in Look Back company and did thunderous, cut-price in Anger; it is that bereft refugee of a little ones may be provincial tours of the classics that room in The Caretaker, and the modest charged, head-down, through the nar- middleclass stronghold ravaged by providedfor. row gap between the sublime and · the simultaneity in Alan Ayckbourn's Nor- grotesque. He had a Lear that could man Conquests. \"Off-stage\" exists in the have done their duty in the English the- ~cour your bowels. But whenever he modern theater: the one and only room ater, stayed home .and tried to defend is threatened by an infinite surrounding the house against its dilapidation. made a movie he looked like a smoked dark, a stomach that might swallow the ham: too angry to be eaten, too salty to clean, well-lighted place. The set has Some films are allowed, like holidays, decay. On the screen he was always full- become neurotic and bare-what Tom and they might as well be ridiculous. blast and embarrassing. I daresay he Stoppard calls \"a place without any visi- Everyone understands Lord Olivier's knew this, and was the more scornful of ble character\" for his off-stage, on-stage need to appear in clinkers so that his the medium because of the way it let Elsinore in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern little ones may be provided for. (It is like him down. I doubt if he ever made Are Dead. going to India to keep a family solvent, a much money; his regime was right- touch of old imperialism.) But Olivier eously opposed to relaxation. Yet cool That is the heath creeping into the has always come home. For his own lizards of the culture lounge like Olivier house, like Turner's mist or like Gren- films he chose Shakespeare, and a de- and Harold Pinter-twin champions of del. It brings travesty and a final loss of but, Henry V, as patriotic as rationing, hide-and-sleek and of screwing feelings owners such as has overtaken the coun- but so much more flamboyant. Thereaf- back inside the human shell-will say try house in this century. The Brides- ter, he made a gray concrete home for that Wolfit, on his stormy night, was the heads are no longer family homes where the National Theatre. This was never most commanding stage actor they had the communual silence could touch the opportunism, seeking title, but sincere ever seen. painted ceilings. Such houses are the- aggrandizement, the vigor that makes a aters of the past for tourists, with rooms captain of industry feel he is useful. Oli- Anyway, Cairo, GHQ, that country roped off as proscenia and ladies from vier is the Rex Mottram of actors. house abroad, with an overhead fan and the village hired as guides who recite the potted palms. Across the table from family history like Brechtian narrators. There are others who went into Wolfit's bombast, all in gray, sits Claude The Chapels are examined for minor, movies, because of the mOlley, the ce- Rains playing a fellow called Dryden. uncleaned Rubenses. The religion that lebrity, the ease ofCalifornia, or because He cannot do much but listen, mutter, some said lived there was always a of the lethal attraction in the waste of flinch, or close his eagle eyes in awe of MacGuffin, a pretext for delicate but films. They are the Sebastian Flytes the precise force of Wolfit's wind on the deadly moral discrimination. A God for who fall through the web of duty, flying Beaufort Scale. \"Dryden,\" they said in snobs. Sometimes the last duke does but always downward, toward booze, casting. \"I think the name says it all ... shady company, and the fevered sun. career trimmer, diplomat, master ma- For them, there is no going home. En- nipulator ... very clever, very sly, 8

running-the-whole-show sort of thing nity cuckolded in The Passionate was doomed early-a thought that ... Claude Rains?\" When you're making Friends; heartrendingly patient in Mr. an epic, you round up the usual charac- Skeffington . Ladies and gentlemen . .. makes us realize the uncanny lasting ter actors and give them the expected for special achievement ... the Academy names. ... Claude Rains. All stand, silent. Too force of deferential genius in Richardson late. He died in 1967; married six times; Only David Lean's superficial politics acted in thirty or so dreadful pictures. and Gielgud. • would dismiss Dryden's intelligence as sly. But who's complaining when we can And there in Cairo, Rains is quietly In England, the question facing a watch Rains representing our weary schooling this strange new boy, amusement at Wolfit's ham and O'Toole. From Connemara, Leeds, the young actor-whether to be Wolfit, O'Toole's sauce? Wolfit is a Colonel Navy, and the Royal Academy of Dra- Blimp without Roger Livesey's Quixotic matic Art, Peter O'Toole got his break in Rains, or O'Toole-is still real. Who hoarseness, while Rains is an adroit Lawrence ofArabia; indeed, he plays the sharpness who hesitates nicely before entire film like a broken man. His blue would not rather watch Rains in any- bursting na·ive stupidity's balloon. Rains eyes-paint dabs on top of the celluloid is so immaculate a movie actor because -stare into the empty places where thing than the other two in something? he plays nearly every scene sitting com- some Englishmen dream of wearing fortably, reluctant to move but too dis- sheets and pretending to be gay. Law- Yet Rains is the least remembered or cerning to go unmoved. He is a rence never goes all the way-what did honored in England-because he went to America and had a king's clutch of wives, but more damningly because he chose the cinema. Wolfit was knighted in 1957, for services to the theater in the unfashionable parts of Britain, for the troops, and throughout the Empire. He is now revered, in a spirit of chuckling Donald Wolfzt, Claude Rains and O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. flattering extension of the audience, happen at Derra?-but that is because forgiveness where awfulness becomes a sedentary but attractive. Lean always made gaze-averted studies fount of good stories; indeed, he is the of excessive emotion. Still, the casting behind-the-scrim subject of Ronald Rains once was English. He became a lures him out of his depth. O'Toole has a Harwood's elegy play, The Dresser. naturalized American when he was 49, shivery lust for self-abuse and making a Moreover, Wolfit lacked the imagina- in 1938, the year of his Prince John in spectacle of himself, the decent lack of tion to sell out, or to make any attempt at The Adventures of Robin Hood. What is which in Trevor Howard kept the En- being handsome and agreeable. He most distinctive about his time in Eng- counter brief and regretful. never wavered in the certainty that pic- lish theater is that he was never simply tures were squalid nonsense. He was a an actor. He kept order first: he was a Lawrence cheeks the General more man of the theater, which allowed him call-boy, a prompter, and a stage man- than the idiot can grasp, there being to skip the stage of gentleman on his way ager for Harley Granville-Barker. Then such a gulf between Wolfit's Victorian to knighthood. for four years, in the early Twenties, he sturdiness and O'Toole's intimations of taught at the Royal Academy of Dra- Pythonesque debunking. He's all limp O'Toole would giggle if he felt the matic Art (RADA), where Gielgud was salutes and wilting height in a uniform as sword coming down, wondering if a one of his students. How apt that his loose as shantung. Wolfit's Sam Browne short-sighted Queen might lop off an movie debut was as The Invisible Man; belt squeaks with the effort of holding in ear; he craves wounds. Recently, he put and how true to his creative reticence, his indignation, and Claude Rains wags on a London Macbeth so wild and intem- for he was a Caesar who preferred incog- a finger of silent admonition as if to tell perate that it was a sold-out sensation. nito. He had tidied up after big egos, the lyrical O'Toole: \"A little less.\" Os- (The theater can be daft, too, especially and absorbed their tirades. Every stage tensibly, the strategy of the Middle East when a film star moves in . ) But he manager suspects he might be a great, war is at issue: bloody artillery and going would need a decade of such disasters, overlooked actor, and it made Rains an by the book against Lawrence's languid in Wolverhampton and Lesotho, to get off-hand master of the screen, a face guerrillas who will take Aqaba from the the accolade. One has to doubt his stam- forever shifting from a smile to a frown rear. But in truth we are witnessing a ina. Only 49, he is as hysterically un- without apparent alteration. It was all little lesson in acting English. The three sound as Camille's . last c0ugh-the pain, but the tone could be ironic or generations of English actors are three voice laid open to the quick but inso- stoic. He is the most natural inhabitant characters from the national imagina- lently fastidious, with a mask of a face of unstable Casablanca ; a column of ci- tion: coarse power, deferential clever- that one might wear for Halloween. No, gar ash waiting to fall in Notorious; dig- ness, self-destructive genius. O'Toole O'Toole is likely to veer between the 9

segmented slog of Masada and the raff- extremist, and as dependent on a retrieve the Arab who fell off his camel ish cult of The Stunt Man, a fabrication shocked establishment, as Jimmy Por- in the night. While the exhausted Law- that would vanish without the bogus ex- ter's self-pitying, come-hither grievance rence sleeps, the Arabs burn his uni- istential swagger that gives up the Ghost in Look Back in Anger. form. Awake and reborn as a desert man, as if sending it out for fresh ice. Or, ifhis he puts on white robes. Then he wan- constitution is really only notional, he Genius lets us know its secret depths ders off to be alone, like Christ in the should retire into interviews: he has a by unexpected responses. It may slip a Garden or Edward VIII at Fort Belve- groan of abandon into smooth verse so dere. In the great hot vacancy of the magnificent routine as the flagrant, elo- that the listener is not quite sure what he wide screen he dances with his released quent wreck, brave and witty in his di- show-off self and its intimations of femi- saster, kept alive by listeners. heard. Olivier is the master of this ploy; ninity. It is one of the least restrained he presents it as a glimpse into his soul things Lean has ever done, and I doubt FILM COMMENT ran an O'Toole in- for only the very quick or knowing. It if any other English actor could have terview in March-April 1981. It was gen- binds us to him: noblemen want alle- been as innocent or musical with it. But erous of Joseph McBride to swallow the giance as much as stars need fans. For the dance is bitten off. The dark intru- Oscar Jaffe courage of a fragile actor (in a him it is a perverse flash-rapid and sion of Anthony Quinn comes into view, purple robe) sacrificing himself to the illuminating, a sexual flashing of in- and the Lois Fuller of the desert re- tape recorder at the Beverly Wilshire. nards, and the spasm of release as a ges- tracts. His face flushes with the wretch- Still, he did catch the baroque, dried-out ture of artful self-denial. It is Maxim de edness of being seen. Quinn's aghastness of the actor-swoons and im- Winter (a big cold gun) in Rebecca mar- hawk-nosed A-rab has a crushing gotcha personations, startling memory and ar- rying again for no other reason than to (as if this were only the Road to Aqaba), chaic speech. It's enough to make you show the new wife how unknowable he \"What are you doing ... Englishman?\" sigh, \"If only he hadn't .... \" But is. In so many of his performances, Oli- O'Toole refused to notice that warning vier has a cry, a sound, or a gesture that • sign from Claude Rains: his eyes never seems to be the stamp of shuttered stoop to the visible. (In Lawrence, as he power. It is in watching him closely One can hear O'Toole's drawl, regain- becomes irradiated by his own divinity, enough to catch it that we learn how ing superiority, \"Actually, my dear, I'm he sees a twister and calls it a pillar of implacably withheld his power must Irish. \" That ruinous fallacy of Celtic ad- fire.) He takes it as a sign of genius to stay. vantage or excuse has waylaid several transmute plain facts. He is author of actors. It is one more way of not being himself, or, in Lawrentian pidgin, \"For In Lawrence of Arabia there is just from the effete, stuffy club of Bri- some men nothing is written; unless such a glimpse, but it is as reckless and deshead and received English; and a they write it.\" (White sheet speak with voluptuous as O'Toole himself. Law- sign of shrugged-off stiff upper lip so frosted tongue.) He has dissolved the rence has led his men across the Nefud that leading men did not have to sound boundaries offailure and insanity. Ardor Desert, a miracle in the eyes of that like Noel Coward and John Gielgud, the has so eclipsed judgment that you can- one-no-trump-OPEC Arab, Omar Sha- cocktail lounge and ecclesiastical intona- not tell a disgraced gent (Lord Jim) from rif. He has even gone back, alone, to a demented His Grace (The Ruling Class) or a Guccione emperor (Caligula). Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in Rebecca. Alcohol has eroded his body, but he was always anxious to be a fallen angel. In a Monty Python remake of Vertigo, O'Toole would hunt up and down San Francisco for women and towers to fall from. The death in O'Toole's eyes found Mecca in the desert; Lawrence has guided him as fatally as James Dean did Nicholas Ray. T.E. Lawrence is a beguiling mirage for the English actor. His legend has been sustained not by lasting Arab affec- tion or The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but by commentary and dramatization. La- wrence was in love with masquerade and aliases. He was also the bastard son of an aristocrat, someone who fled the house for a burnished, clean wilderness. That allows the actor to feel nobility in the heat without being trapped in its pomp or unearned privilege. It permits a more mystical greatness than that of the class system and rain-soaked estates. And Lawrence was an outsider who needed the outraged eye-popping of au- thority. His military thinking and his sexual preference were as romantically 10

tions of Oxford English-both fake. rare screen glories. The remark was as play may be too long for his reserves, but Richard Burton mined the Celtic tra- piteous and prophetic as his role in that Burton now seems indistinguishable film-an expert in old civilizations adrift from old James Tyrone in Long Day's dition, even if it was the pout of incipi- in modern life. Burton has become a Journey into Night-whereas O'Toole ent poetry that saved him from being a ghost of an actor; his ache for dignity has could probably tackle Mary Tyrone, and coal-hewer. He was the last of the war- turned as dry and choking as starch in stretch as far as genteel junkie and era heart-throbs (like Stewart Granger that famous voice. It is a degeneration menopausal jitters in the same perform- and James Mason) in costume pictures. that he would understand best, to go ance. It was a long time before we saw Burton from Shakespeare's kings to a showbiz in modern dress, and by then there was Arthur. Yet on screen he did seem to • the first cramp of disappointment in his learn the need to be himself always; face. Once, his eyes had been as deep perhaps Elizabeth Taylor taught him A serious career in pictures is a contra- and soulful as the radio narrative in Un- that as she led him through a series of diction for many English actors. It en- der Milk Wood; and he was a stage actor failed, boozed preachers, healers, and tails fatuous, disproportionate income; a with the smoldering, bruised gypsy teachers. But the self was sunken and dead audience; worthless material; a soft Prince Charming of Olivier's Heathcliff. dull, instead of relaxed. (A similar nega- life; and being away from England, get- But whereas that inner bale was a device tive energy seems to obscure Albert Fin- ting out of the house. All manner of of Olivier's, it was an uncontrollable ney.) Burton was a matinee idol once; he prejudices, myths, and fears lurk in morbidity in Burton. Show me sadness, was beautiful in The Robe and Alexander those attitudes. The British curse their he seems to say; justify my eyes. the Great. He might have been an inter- own high taxes and damp weather, but national sexpot, but in marrying the real they resent those who seek warmth and Has he ever offered or raised a laugh? beast he became only a stricken roue. relief. Hardship is an ordinary obliga- His depressive grandeur was always des- tion, so much more national than desert tined for unspeakable movies, marriages By now, mortification holds him to- sun or diamonds as big as Liz's violet like accidents, and tabloid humiliation. gether, just as amazement is the glue for eyes. It takes the brisk charm of Noel The eyes narrowed. The face became O'Toole's sundered features. They have Coward (and his diligent feeding of fixed in torment. An air of tiredness both recognized the absurdity of their home fires) to live abroad and still earn overcame him; he needed rescuing. careers, but O'Toole has found much the Queen's reward. There is a small Radical but vague illness set in. He can- more humor a'nd inspiration in the army of English actors who can never not be born again, but that may not save waste. His Eli Cross in The Stunt Man is renew membership. him from having to marry Elizabeth exultant. On a talk show, he might whip Taylor once more or sing \"Camelot\" up a riot of indiscretion, but Burton It includes the best actor the movies again with the dreadful, clipped gratifi- would settle into the solemn pit of recit- had: Cary Grant. Archie Leach cut his cation of a man reading his own obituary. ing poetry for Merv Griffin. (\"Richard throat, of course, and though he joked ... Richard. I got goose bumps.\") The about it later, he recognized how tho- \"I kill the living and I save the dead\" roughly England can kill some ambi- mused Burton in Bitter Victory, one of his tions and how surely the quitter murders himself in going to America. But a mu- Burton in Alexander the Great. Archie Leach in Notorious. sic-hall player, closer in his roots to Cha- plin than to Olivier or Claude Rains, would manage to establish a new charac- ter in drama: the American gentleman. Grant has never sounded American, and never looked English. It means too little to call him mid-Atlantic-unless one pictures a Cunard conman shifting accent, suits, and style with every de- gree of longitude. His example helps us see that for the American actor there is peril in seeming refined. And Grant has sipped at sexual ambiguity without ever getting drunk. He is as smart, quick, and cool as such expressly American in- stitutions as Cole Porter, shortstop, and air conditioning. But he has never strayed from one English ideal of gentle- manliness: that manners and manner are the stuff of morality. Grant's movie work has been dedicated to honesty, order, and gentleness. He is so American that he has never quite grown up, but no one has more fully lived up to the English hope that bearing is character. He is ev- erything that Olivier wanted to be-a deft, effacing perfect knight whose ca- sualness makes us want to share his no- bility. 11

Charles Laughton in Sign of the Cross. have to be sorted through to separate the few cold nuts of evil (The Paradine Case) What he managed (with that cher- ties: Bligh, Barrett, Ruggles , and Quasi- and unattractive nobility (This Land is modo in America; Rembrandt, Mine). That he was more intelligent and ished English lack of effort) beckoned Claudius, and Jamaica Inn in Britain. less sentimental than much of his acting Moreover, the aborted Claudius had as is evident from Night of the Hunter and many others. Rains is a match for Grant one of its hindrances Laughton'S teddy- his casting of the next best actor the bear attachment to Edward VIII's abdi- movies have had, Robert Mitchum. in Notorious, but still a loser who must cation speech. I am supposed to deal with Olivier, go back to Nazi comeuppance in the We know how far Laughton's per- Richardson, and Gielgud yet, so how sonal anguish provoked his overbearing can I say enough about James Mason? house; Herbert Marshall, always putting performances. He was as ashamed of his Except that he is stronger and more var- oddity and ugliness and he was fasci- ied than Rains, and a resourceful pro- his best foot forward , declining to admit nated by it; he went in terror of being d ucer as well as an unfailing actor. identified as a homosexual. He had a Mason has ten years in English films, the loss of a leg, but standing up straight talent for inopportune decisiveness- including the delicious period sultriness becoming an American citizen in 1940, of The Man in Grey and the extraordi- for Lubitsch kiss-and-tell and acquiring just as Niven and Olivier were hurrying nary Odd Man Out, in which he is an home to get in uniform. He lumbered exquisite, highlighted victim who never the slow stroll that could walk The Ra- through entertaining trash as an exotic disrupts the solidly mannered work of monster: The Island of Lost Souls, The his Irish supporting cast. zor's Edge and observe the wounds of Big Clock, Salome . He could ape the Southern Senator as easily as Olivier He went (or came: the choice is a others; Basil Rathbone, who acceded to could become a Nazi dentist or a bari- Mobius strip for this writer) to America tone Moor. This was, and is, imperson- to play Rupert of Hentzau and Flaubert the American worry that elocution and ation smothering lonely self, a skill and -the Rathbone tradition. But he drew taste for mimicry that are as common in closer to Grant's dark grace than anyone. courtesy were the attributes of cads, un- England as they are suspect in America. Grant surely is aware of that all through When Brando attempted it in the late North by Northwest, which is a British til he fell in with Sherlock Holmes; Rex Fifties an'd Sixties it seemed only to be- comedy of crazy danger and sexual prop- wilder and becalm him. erty that treats America as a far-fetched Harrison, Sydney Greenstreet, Clive board game. Mason has never been Laughton was a Lon Chaney who sel- American, but in Bigger Than Life Brook, Ronald Colman, David Niven, dom worked in horror. He pretended to (which he produced) he was a credible arouse fear and loathing as a way of reas- Eisenhower-age Everyman. Rather Ray Milland, Boris Karloff, Robert suring his own fears. But he made a than brave cruel seas, dam busters, and masterpiece about dread and vulnerabil- beer ice cold in Alexandria (as did Jack Newton, Robert Donat, Peter Finch, ity, The Night of the Hunter, which for- Hawkins, Richard Todd , and John gives but exposes the bloated villainy Mills), Mason has the wit to playa Ger- George Sanders. They could be one of (Bligh) and the bogus bonhomie (Wit- man general, Rommel, thereby enjoy- nessfor the Prosecution). Those excesses ing a fine, curt, and painful war; winning Sir C. Aubrey Smith's Beverly Hills never sat well with the British. He is very touching in Caught and The Reck- cricket teams. • less Moment, and he clearly loved and understood Max Ophuls (the only direc- There are two cases I would like to tor to make Peter Ustinov human). Ma- son delighted in the sophistication of look at in more detail: Charles Laughton Five Fingers; he is fearsome in Lord Jim and The Pumpkin Eater; his Brutus was and James Mason. As it happens , they decent and just enough in awe of John Gielgud to explain the man's suscepti- were both Yorkshiremen; but Laughton bility to Cassius; he is lovelier and more haunted than Judy Garland in A Star is went to RADA and Mason to Cam- Born; and he is the only actor to play Nabokov who has read and felt that au- bridge, where there was proof enough thor's pedantic devil. Ladies and gentle- men ... Lord Mason of H uddersfield? that only stand-up comics kept local ac- • cents. They both did a few years on the \"We were fortunate in one respect: a English stage. Then in 1931 Laughton very grievous hazard in the filming of a Shakespeare play is the cinematic treat- took a play to Broadway and fell into a ment of monologues; in Julius Caesar . .. one is Cassius' thoughts as he watches Hollywood career, aided initially by his Brutus' retreating figure after the forum scene ... Since this occurs at the begin- friendship with Irving Thalberg. But his Henry VIII was English (and the mak- ing of the Hungarian Kordas), and he went back and forth through the Thir- 12

ning of the great storm that precedes the Ides of March, wind machines and swirl- ing dust made it impossible to record without interference. It was one of the few speeches that needed to be re- corded. Gielgud was so appalled and terrified by our 'looping' mechanism that we soon gave up in despair and even considered the possibility of trying to find someone to imitate his voice. John then suggested that if we would play the whole speech back to him once or twice without the image, he would attempt the almost impossible feat of reproduc- ing it with absolute accuracy. He made two tracks-each so flawless that our editor was able to match it to the original film, frame by frame, without having to move one single sprocket.\" -John Houseman, Front and Center, 1979 You could argue that that was Gielgud's most English moment on Ju- lius Caesar. It is a virtuoso demonstra- tion that defies technology and says, James Mason was the Odd Man Out. John Gielgud in Providence. well, yes , after all, pictures are a lark and they do not take the same pleasure in phant Man, and in possession of an Oscar the Americans do take them very seri- selfhood. Shyness is so much more a for Arthur, where he is very generous to, ously. Gielgud had not made a film in virtue in England, and few excesses are and quite unalarmed by, the haphazard over a decade, and no doubt he was as hideous there as personal vanity. Dudley Moore, currently the English ac- mystified at having to \"loop\" a solilo- Gielgud is very proud of his technique, tor in Hollywood-a benign status that quy. Especially if he could show there would only convince an Albert Finney or was no need for it. The English actor, and a great believer in the basis it gives a Paul Scofield not to take the movies you see, is brought up to speak blank an actor; he is a little like a singer, and as too seriously. verse reliably; it is something like the indifferent to glamor. But he is a con- Light Brigade's discipline, which fessed cry-baby. On The Dick Cavett But GieJgud has his masterpiece: Gielgud knows from Charge of. On Cae- Show, a year ago, he read some poetry Providence, one more instance of the sar, Gielgud was apparently an inspiring and , as he predicted, raised himself to mysterious passion between an English- but modest coach to actors less familiar tears. Not reduced, for despite the man and his house. There is something with verse. He was particularly fond of warning there was no staleness. He had of Evelyn Waugh in that character, a Brando and invited the young American helped substantiate the armor ofan actor man who might have dropped away like to join him in a classical season at the by showing how readily his own heart a despairing stone had he not been a Lyric, Hammersmith (a suburban the- bleeds. writer. Gielgud's novelist has terrible ater). But Brando had a prior engage- In the same interview, he admitted visceral pains, the strength of which is ment: scuba diving in the Caribbean. that it was only lately that he had begun never hidden in his performance. But he Kindly disbelief without one eyebrow to get the hang of films. In and out of is Prospero, too-a master of the revels arching has always been in Gielgud's movies, he was always a visitor- of his own family, another blithe be- repertoire. In Hollywood, he must have whether in Hitchcock's Secret Agent or liever in the dream that if one can read kept a very straight face. Looping and as Barrett to Jennifer Jones' Elizabeth everything in terms of style the pain will scuba are not taught at RADA, but they (so much more hidden than Laughton, recede, at least one step. Providence is as decorate the English perception of a and far too secret for Jones). I cannot good as a film can be, and it owes some misguided frivolousness in the film busi- even recall what he looks like as Clar- of its resonance to its discovery of an ness. Gielgud has regularly directed on ence in Richard 1II: his face was blurred actor, not too old at 73 to be awakened . stage, but you can see him wincing at by malmsy, so emphatic was Olivier's If Gielgud seems too airy to be photo- the thought of being in charge of so Mr. Punch head. But something stirred graphed, Ralph Richardson could be re- much machinery for a film. him in Chimes at Midnight. Henry IV moved from the world itself. On stage , Although, in the Thirties and Forties, was the original usurper, the first uneasy on screen, in life, and wherever else he Gielgud was esteemed for the physical head, and there for the first time was the goes, he is absolutely unpredictable. beauty of his Richard II and Hamlet, he bald, vulnerable dome of Gielgud above Thus he could make The 300 Spartans never photographed well. It was as if his the parched face of an old man. He and Long Day's Journey into Night in the looks were too spiritual, too little aware seemed to be working on a very cold same year, and even in the latter go of that carnal moment when the camera soundstage. within minutes from convincing you he takes you. I don't think it is irrelevant Today, he is in demand: naked in a hadn't understood one speech to stun- that many English actors dislike being Polish film (\"Who would have thought ning you with the next (something Ka- photographed. They are not good at it; it?\"), severe but charitable in The Ele- tharine Hepburn doesn't approach). 13

ducer, an autocrat, and an inspiration, defiance, that change registers most dra- he's like David Selznick in his indefati- matically. gability. It may be very significant that I have had to omit many actors I like; he fell short of Garbo's romantic needs and all the actresses. Roger Livesey, on Queen Christina and decided, damn Eric Portman, David Farrar-all associ- it, not to be a star. He is a planner and an ated with Michael Powell, the director achiever, and his acting is only marred most subversive of English propriety, by that sense of getting what he wants. though never free from it. Dirk Boc He's so spot-on, so detailed, it's claustro- garde, who emerged from years of de- phobic. mure ingenues, as the thief of the house The last ten years have seen him and its feeble master's soul in The Ser- ready for any supporting movie role, al- vant. Cyril Cusack, Wilfrid Lawson, and legedly to avoid poverty, but surely John Cleese, all of whom have done there is gratification too in being able to nothing less than grapple with madness. be so condescending and in wearing so Robert Shaw, ~he most frightening of many disguises? Given a part, Olivier's Englishmen. And Alec Guinness- first resort is to take cover. What is he sometimes so broad, so placid-also a really like? We think we know the an- devotee of make-up, but in Kind Hearts swer with Gielgud and Richardson, and Coronets the trigger for Goons, Pe- however remote they may be, but with ter Sellers, and Monty Python. Olivier we are in the maze of his variety. In Brideshead Revisited, Gielgud and Perhaps Garbo detected his reluctance Olivier are installed at the head of the Ralph Richardson in The Fallen Idol. to be himself. And in Rebecca-as a table, like the best cruet. But in every Apart from the O'Neill film, his ad- man who cannot give up the house- episode one can see the ordinary excel- mirers cite only two outstanding pic- tures: The Heiress and The Fallen Idol. It that is where Hitchcock traps him. So lence of English actors and the lasting seems to me that the first is deteriorating steadily, while the second is growing in handsome but so repressed. It is his best appeal of acting English as a subject. power. film, and no small confession from the The series has been as popular in Britain That is still not persuasive reason for my putting Richardson above any other English director who, for the first time, as Edward and Mrs. Simpson. Backing actor in this essay. His screen achieve- ment is nowhere near Grant's, but Ri- was away from home, and embarking on nervously into its future, the nation chardson far from retiring has become more urgent with old age. He is still a recreation of English anxiety as intense looks back on old glory and the moment ready for surprise and strangeness to overtake him. He has always thought of as Joyce's description of a day in Dublin of its loss: to learn a lesson or to make himself as a stage actor, getting money for motor-bikes and fireworks in pic- undertaken out of sight of the city. pain a part of nostalgia? They are both tures. Like those two hobbies, he deals • stories about giving up the house-for in momentary danger, so that you have So many fine houses, all empty or love and out of irrational, inarticulate to be there. I share Kenneth Tynan's feeling (from Show People) that Richard- sold. So many great actors, and so few dismay. In both Edward Fox and An- son was never more himself than on an English TV talk show where he would English movies. However much it has thony Andrews there has been the awful not play by the rules. Show People re- counts that occasion better than I can, hurt, any Englishman can be glad to realization that nobility is not quite and it illustrates my feeling that with Richardson we are always meeting anew have lived this century. It is in radical enough, but that it is better than what a very dangerous and beautiful animal- a savage, who speaks like a cello with , uprooting, in gomg away or in noble comes next. consumption and has the presence of a ghost. His Baines in The Fallen Idol is Back in the castle: Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons of Brideshead Revisited. not quite master of the house; he's only as authoritative as a butler. He is the house, its spaces, its secrets, and its fab- nco The hardest ofall to discuss is the best known, Olivier. It may be that if fame was always what he wanted, then it an- swers every question. He is so much more handsome and worldly than Gielgud or Richardson; a director, a pro- 14

The subject is homosexuality. The films are very .straight. Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin in Making Love. by Mary Richards sybil). Martians and madmen got more relatively small numbers, with skewed sympathy in the movies. demographics-and the audience for They have been the screen's invisible WASP weepies like Making Love and Per- men-except when they come scream- So when a quintet of upscale Holly- sonal Best is even smaller; you could fit ing out of closets to attack some win- wood films approaches the subject, eye- most of them in a John Anderson rally, some child, or trip over their feather brows are raised, heads scratched, and the others would have been too boas on the way to bit-player status in a typewriters pummeled in quest of the young or apathetic to vote. Forget farce. The screen has not provided a Why? and Why now? We are presented Reaganomics; hold the Zeitgeist. Wait congenial home for homosexuals. with five different kinds offilms-Mak- for a month or two to see whether these Though they represent maybe a tenth of ing Love is a social drama, Personal Best a moviegoers will like the pictures enough the adult American population, and a sports movie, Deathtrap a comedy who- to see them again, to recommend them much higher proportion of film's artists dunit, Victor/Victoria a period farce, to others, to convince moviemakers that and performers, they are still portrayed Partners a police thriller-that show dif- as sex objects-objects of fear, raucous ferent and, generally, sympathetic views they have a new trend. humor, liberal pity and piety. At a time of the gay life. To the extent that these The trend hasn't happened yet. Five when blacks, Jews, Hispanics, and other films can be sifted for political meaning, despised minorities were being granted they are spiritual offspring of the Carter movies out of a hundred-plus released a measure of official, arm's-length re- Years, when the films were conceived, by the major studios each year doesn't spect, gays remained a ghetto class and when a certain born-again decency constitute much more than a coinci- whose \"otherness\" was used to make an coincided with the laissezjaire belief dence. And even if these films are box- audience laugh, or make them scared. that everyone has his reasons. What sur- office successes, it won't mean that More often than not, the homosexual prises is that the two films to have been popular perception of gays has changed male was ~ither a man twisted out of released, Making Love and Personal -just that Hollywood is voracious in its shape (into the seducer of schoolboys) or Best, have piqued the interest of Reagan search for subject matter. \"Gay\" films else not man enough (the purring bitch- America: they are modest hits. will then join the list of previous movie cycles: movies about natural disasters, Not a lot can be made of this. The demonic possession, bike gangs, old movie audience is a ghetto of its own- movie stars, werewolves. In the late Six- 15

Patrice Donnelly and Mariel Hemingway in Personal Best. something unique, preferable, untouch- able, even threatening about the differ- ties, there was even a group of films shirts, and sensitive glances from a well- ence. So, the argument goes, a film like about tortured gays: Reflections in a tailored stranger across a crowded room. Making Love must be as terse and taste- Golden Eye, The Sergeant, The Killing of If any assignations were made in this ful as a commuting executive's three- Sister George , The Boys in the Band, and, place, it would be to catch the late show piece suit. The first step is to show gays stretching the homosexual impulse to of On Golden Pond and then maybe talk who are okay-because they're straight. include the homoerotic, Midnight Cow- a little investment banking over Coin- boy. If there's a change, it's that the bad treau and Vivaldi. TV was doing this a decade ago. In gays have become the good gays. 1972, That Certain Summer drew a And so the stereotype of the squeaky- rounded picture of a divorced man (Hal • clean homosexual is established-right Holbrook) attempting to explain his ho- along with a case history out of Rose mosexuality to his 13-year-old son. If the That change may seem significant Franzblau. Ontkean's father, we learn, movie never troubled to suggest a sexual enough-what beleaguered group was a jock tyrant, forever pushing the basis for the man's attraction to another wouldn't settle for favorable propaganda kid into the competitive machismo of mar.-if they seemed just good friends after decades of defamation? No wonder Little League; and the night his father -it at least pointed to one aspect of a some gay activists are jettisoning their died, Ontkean went to his first gay bar! life truly lived, which Making Love does critical standards to tout Making Love-a Guilt, resentment, revenge-these are not. In 1978, A Question ofLove focused solemnly silly film whose one genuine reasons to \"turn gay.\" Would it have on a lesbian (Jane Alexander) who, with breakthrough is in allowing Kate Jack- been too alienatingly radical for the film- her lover (Gena Rowlands), fights for son to make fun of Charlie's Angels. makers to suggest that Ontkean might custody of her child. Again the sex, if (Playing a network executive, she simply have wanted to speak to his own there was any, took place during the mocks a proposed series called Calla- pleasure center-that he might enjoy commercials, but the argument for com- han's Dolls.) Yes, Michael Ontkean and being gay? passion was a strong one for network Harry Hamlin play role models-or at television. The message was that all of least male models-not figures of fear. The activist argument for Making us-gay or straight-are more than the Yes, they Kiss On The Mouth. Yes, Love goes like this: The movie isn't sum of our glandular imperatives, that Ontkean, a doctor, ends up pretty happy much, but it's a start, and it's all we've sex isn't the only, maybe not even the with his male lover, a lawyer (who's got got. Why shouldn't gays have their soap- \"a case\"). But the exchange of erotic opera fantasies? And why shouldn't primary, reason people stay together and signals, the electric slap of thigh on straights have a view of \"ordinary\" ho- fight for what they think should be thigh , the embracing of inversion is ac- mosexuals-surely the majority-to theirs. Television, of course, bows to complished with so little angst or oomph complement and counteract the image timid standards of candor. Movies are that there's no drama. Ontkean and of leather-and-lash sadists that so many not so fettered-which makes the com- Hamlin make for lovely placards but other movies have exploited? Like the promise ofMaking Love that much more lousy characters. liberal films of the Fifties, in which Ne- objectionable. groes were shown to be plaster saints, Making Love is supposed to be about Making Love offers a trio of exemplary • sexual possessiveness; instead it's a lec- human beings, but with Ontkean in the ture-demonstration of material posses- Sidney Poitier role. To liberalize (if not , Personal Best, at least, isn't afraid to sions. Everybody's apartment looks liberate) conservative America, you be horny. In this story of love and com- unlived-in, as neat as if the photogra- must first convince it that blacks/Jews/ petition between two female pentath- pher from New York magazine were just gays are the same as everybody else; letes, there are only a couple of minutes about to arrive, as artfully arranged as an they just happen to be black/Jewish/gay. of sexual contact-you could go out for entree at La Cote Basque. The gay,bar After acceptance can come the assertion popcorn and miss it-but there are two Ontkean visits could be a Princeton eat- of individuality, as it did with blacks in holirs of bodies. Indeed, the human ing club from an alumnus' stately reverie the Sixties; then you can say there's body is the movie's subject: how it -a world of $60 haircuts, Valentino works, how we can make it work, how we strive to control it and express our- selves through it. The bodies here are female; the big love scene is between women; and all this is incidental to the politicizing of alternate sex. Personal Best is both the most sensual of the new \"gay\" films and the least gay. Like the steam room where the athletes repair to unwind and giggle and gossip, the movie is all humidity and no heat. Writer-director Robert Towne's tri- umph is that he has skinned the aura of perversion from polymorphous perver- sity. One of the women (played by Pa- trice Donnelly, a ravishing-looking woman whose face exudes emotion and passion) is, we may believe, lesbian; the other (Mariel Hemingway) is still young, still exploring options, passing 16

through same-sex infatuation as Charles women In shorts attempted the high politics; it is also aesthetics. And in the Ryder does in Brideshead Revisited. It jump, and sat in appreciative silence. rosy or pink glow of nostalgia, we can see doesn't really matter; it's just another But when Kenny Moore, playing the that the decade when Hollywood went terrific way to use their bodies. Though man Mariel Hemingway \"grows up\" to decisively,aesthetically gay was the Thir- Towne's style is studiously amateur fall in love with, rose naked from bed, ties. When the movies learned to talk , it (\"Would you mumble that line a little there were apprehensive titters. The was in the mellifluous , musical (read: more, Mariel, I could almost understand feeling seemed to be: That's wrong- faggy) cadences and accent that Broad- you that time\") and overfond of thrill-of- men aren' t supposed to be nude in pub- way had earlier appropriated from the victory cliches, the movie has a good lic. Can you hear cultural politics talking London stage. There are aspects of ef- feeling to it. Its hothouse affection for here? It is the man's right not only to feminacy to be found in virtually every the characters and their world is infec- look, but also not to be seen. Thirties actor-in Astaire's gangly diffi- tious. Audiences like Personal Best. dence, in Fredric March's fluty genteel- This isjustone reason you're unlikely ism , in Cagne y's eyeliner a nd Put it another way: 'audiences aren't to see, in the near future, a Personal Best Cupid's-bow mouth , in Lee Tracy's threatened by it. Softcore lesbianism has about male track stars. Male homosexu- saucy patter, in Robert Taylor's prim long been a motif in heterosexual ex- ality is a threat to the male heterosexual courtliness, in Gable's sucked-in dim- ploitation films. It offers twice as much audience in a way female homosexuality ples, in Tyrone Power's gorgeousness, fun, and no threat, to the heterosexual can never be. In lesbian sex, it is in Cooper's nonchalant narcissism , most male viewer-voyeur. As David Thom- thought, women do to women pretty especially in Cary Grant's hand-on-hip son has often noted in these pages, the much what men would like to do to stance and wonderfully daft whinny movies are a medium not just for vo- women; gay male sex is a scatological (Bringing Up Baby: \"I'm so gay!\")--in yeurs-offering the pleasure of vicar- parody of man-woman sex. Lesbian sex just about every actor but those antipo- ious satisfaction without the risk of seems an act of gentle passion, gay-male dal figures of the Plains states, Henry commitment-but for male voyeurs. sex an act of implied rape. And so, to Fonda and Spencer Tracy. These two Directors and cinematographers are al- document their fears, the movies-the spoke orphan prose; all the others were most always male; you could even say medium of the straight male voyeur- Percy Dovetonsils. that the camera is \"male\" and the image turn gay males bitter or bully or bland . \"female.\" Men, in control since the be- Or uses it as a devious deviant plot twist Masculine women complemented ginning of time, are the ones who have (as in Deathtrap), or as the McGuffin in a the feminine men. With a poise bred in traditionally decided where to look and farrago of mistaken sexual identities (as the knowledge of their own genetic su- in Victor/Victoria). The female imper- periority, these actresses (you know who what to look at; they are the watchers, sonator in Victor/Victoria is a straight they are) drove Dusenberg tractors over and women the watched-the objects. women; the heavyweight henchman is their swains. No wonder their ghosts gay. And the movie itself is about as populate every drag show from Mont- The result: female nudity on screen \"gay\" as Some Like It Hot. martre to Montreal-they were the seems natural-and not just to men. A ballsiest folk around. The decade's di- recent audience at Personal Best took in • the love scenes, the slow-motion mus- culature, the dozen crotch shots as Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve in Deathtrap. Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby. 17

rectors, art directors, and ca me rame n Masculine/Feminine, knew this; th at's why they prope lled the Great L adi es th ro ugh all those stories of F eminine/Masculine triumph and traged y, all those cl ean , cream y pe nthouse sets (sca led fo r a gi- by Carlos Clarens ti o ns th at is Victor/Victoria . antess), all that soft-foc us halo lig ht. We I\\lu c h to hi s c re dit , E d wa rd s has speak he re of fl ash , caustic wit, the up- Part hack, part arti st, and all aute ur, e nding of sexual roles, the me lodrama of Blake E d wa rds has direc ted so me of th e neve r hes itated to distribute brickbats deco r and deco rum. L aw re nce O 'Toole mos t eas il y recogni za bl e co medi es in a nd bo uqu e ts among hi s c harac te rs, might have bee n definin g the Thirti es th e las t two decades or so; most of the m straight o r gay. S till , the re \\\\'as a lesso n to whe n, in hi s review las t iss ue of Bri- he also produced and w rote. E ven if the be lea rn ed from th e fact that, w hile Bin g deshead, he ca talogued th e gay aes- Pink Palllher pictures stu ck to a strict C rosby (in High Time) and Dick S hawn th e ti c: \"Excess o f s pirits; th e to rmula, the\\\" still see m pe rso nal and (in What Did You Do in the War, DaddyO atte nuation of yo uth and bea uty ; the de- quirky beyond the ca ll of slapstick. And could be funn y in drag, alth ough hardly sire for des ire; the adoratio n of detail. \" w he neve r E d wa rd s managed to brea k as funn v as E dward s obvio usly tho ught away from his hi ghl Y p rofitabl e assoc ia- they we re, th e cas tin g of an actress ([\\ Ia- Yeste rd ay's rea li sm always looks in tio n with the late Pe te r Se ll e rs, he wo uld rio n Marshall ) in the rol e of a male trans- re trospect like ro mance. A half-ce ntu ry a tte mpt suc h un stabl e compo und s of vestite who also happens to be a killer from now , we may find a gay aesthe tic hig h, low, and mu sica l co mcd y as Dar- plunged Gunn 's routine de tective story nibbling through the fl oo rboa rd s of the ling Lili . Th e Tamarind Seed. \" 10.\" Ei ghti es' space o peras a nd Saturday S .O B .. and now Victor/Victoria-all of in to an almos t tangible un eas iness. A Night co me di es and ea rnes t famil y th e m marked by th e mi stimed intru sio n ma n in skirts is funn\\' o nl y as lo ng as he dramas. Drag quee ns of 2032 may be of ru stics and ro mantics in to each oth e r's re tain s an inco ng ruo us virility; if the im- doing Sa lly F ie ld (\" Kveye tch kveyetch wo rld , almos t as if E dward s didn ' t quite pe rsonation succee ds and th e illu sion is k veyetch! \"). But for now we mu st look tru st h is ow n tas te, good or bad . Thi s ac hie ved , we' re on a totall y diffe re nt away from H oll ywood to find a gay aes- shatte ring of moods, whe the r rom antic dramatic pl ane, that of th e tra vesti-the thetic. It's not hard to find . British rVlan- o r comic or both , is alrea dy prese nt in world of Julian E ltinge , Babe tte, Holly nerism has fl o urished for close to two ea rl y film s like Breakfast at Tiffany's Woodl aw n , and , ves, Di vin e (w ho 's decades in the wo rks of Ke n Russell and (196 1) w he re [\\ Iic key Roo nev's beas tl y, funn v in the manne r of a skillful charac- Joseph L osey-fl aming and simme rin g, bu c k-too th e d Ja panese ph otograph e r te r actress). But a woman in male attire respectively. The Rocky Horror (Picture) see m ed to have wa nd e red fro m th e isn' t funn \\' pe r se- S hakes pea re , 1\\10- Show bridges the transa tlantic styles of wo rld of Abbott and Coste llo in to th e za n , and Richard Strau ss at leas t didn' t punk and camp ; the cop ro phago us com- fa int lave nd e r co ntex t of H oll v G o- think so, and granted Rosa lind , C he rLI- edies of John Wate rs b ring it all back li ghtl Y'S U ppe r Eas t Sid e . bin o, and O ctavian the be nefit of g race h o me-to Baltim o re. R osa vo n and wi sdom , not to me nti on so me grea t Praunhe im offe rs screamin g manifestos The re is also, in E d ward s' body of wo rd s and mu sic. No r is it inco ngru ous on G e rman T V; Frank Ripploh breaks wo rk , a rec urre nce of homosex ual and any more; it hasn't been since that spe- o ut of that ghe tto with charm and de fi- tra nsves tite c harac te rs th a t, in re tro- ance in Tax i zum Klo. T hese film s take spect, amo unts to a nea r-obsess ion-o r cial dav in Morocco whe n [\\·Iarle ne Die- the ir c ue not just fro m the need fo r o ut- at leas t a majo r subtext. In mo re rece nt trich donned top hat, white ti e, and tails raged ex press ive ness but fro m o ld pi c tures, th e ir prese nce is alm os t as to stroll in so le ntl y among he r ca pti ye movies, from D av id H ockney's fl at, lus- muc h of a trade mark as th e H e nrv [\\ Ia n- c li e nte le and sing abo ut th e follv of love, cious land scapes, from moods and feel- c ini sco re , but eve n in ea rli e r comedies any kind of love . ings read be tween th e lin es of ea rl y like High Tim es and Wh at Did You Do in Williams and Albee, in Pinte r pauses the War, Daddy!, a nd ea rli e r thrille rs like • and Joe Orton drollery, and now strut- Experiment ill Terror and GlIIlII . fe male ting stage-ce nte r in th e work of C harl es impe rso nati o n was utili ze d fo r be ll y [\\ Iarl e ne he rse lf pres id es ove r Victor/ Ludlam and H arvey F ie rste in . laughs and shock e ffects, res pecti ve lY. Victoria from a very ea rl y sho t in which L ate r o n, E d ward s wo uld pl ayfull y con- th e ca me ra pan s ove r he r fram ed po rtrait The re are two, three, many gay sensi- tri ve to ge t ln spec tor C lousea u in drag or on Robe rt Preston 's wall. Appropri ate ly, bilities; the re are tho usand s of gay sto- into an occas ional gay bar, all in th e VictorlVictoria was inspired by a 1933 ries. A livin g film industry could explo re course of d uty. In time, a ca meo like th at G e rm an mu sica l comed v, re made by th e them all. The new \"gay\" film s do n' t of a sw ishy ~a ite r in Th e Party wo uld I3riti sh as First a Girl in 1935 with the explore any, because H ollywood is still expand into such solid supportin g roles lo ng-l egge d J ess ie [\\I a tth ews who leery of po rtraying gay men and ,vome n as Da n O ' H e rlih y's homosex ual diplo- lookcd de li ghtful in pa nts, and late r by as worthy of anything mo re than th e mat in The Tamarind Seed and Robert the G e rmans th e mse lves, about a fe- condescension known as U nderstand- We bbe r's sympathe tic surfe r-kee pe r in male impe rso nator (s traig ht) who in- ing . Vito Russo e nds his instructi ve hi s- \"10,\" before e scalatin g into the yarious duces an un e mploved actress (s traight) to ry The Celluloid Closet with th ese Holl ywood dev iants of S.OB. and fi- to imperso nate him , w he re upon her lines: \"There have neve r bee n lesbians nall y' reac hin g the e labora tc interpl ay of convincing re prese ntati on of a \\\\'o man o r gay me n in Hollywood film s. Only gay and straight attac hm e nts and dece p- makes he r an inte rnatio nal star. At its Homosex uals.\" H e m ea ns th at gays mos t tvpi cal , Viktor IIlld Viktoria was aren' t people in mov ies, th ey' re plot de- lig hth ea rted (whic h does not mea n gay); vices. And so the proble m re main s the at its most da rin g, it was mildl y equi vo- same: that H oll ywood co ntinues to see cal , the he ro in e re vea lin g he r ge nde r at homosexuali ty as a Probl e m . th e e nd to both the a udie nce and th e 18

man she loves. This kind of confection rines do a burlesque number in which off as a man, even when the script labors depends almost exclusively on the abil- they bend over and spread their cheeks hard to explain why she hasn ' t yet made ity to tap dance on eggshells. with a vulgarity that's just a bit too calcu- it in show business at her time of life? lated. (Warren overdoes the old Jean To drag in homosexuality-or homo- Hagen dizzy-dame role from Singin , in • sec-suality, as Julie Andrews enuniciates the Rain: she soon wears out her wel- it-is like letting a bull dyke loose in a come, but not before she purrs gro- Happily, Edwards has lost none of his Deco china shop, an image that Victor/ tesquely, \"I'm horny,\" to James Garner, old visual flash-and-flair, which harks Victoria conjures up more than once thus speeding him along to the less ob- back to the old studio system of overpro- with its willful destruction of exquisite vious sexuality of VictorNietoria. ) duction-sometimes to the point of settings. Edwards must have considered wastefulness. There are some large- an updating necessary, and rightly so, Never a very strong sexual presence, canvas shots that only an old Hollywood yet it's disappointing how little humor Julie Andrews has several production pro like Edwards could think of, or pull he draws from it. The original Viktor und numbers in and out of male drag. One off. A French bistro explodes in a panic Viktoria seemed more risque for its time hardly notices the difference. With her at the sight of a very personable cock- simply because it allowed the straight- short haircut and her well-tailored eve- roach and Edwards cuts to a muted long- male romantic lead a few moments of ning clothes, she sometimes looks as ca- shot of frenz y as seen through the front self-doubt as he pondered his attraction daverous and sinister as Joel Grey in for a young man (who is revealed to be a Cabaret. But any viewer this side of window from the street. Garner and An- woman, but only after reels of badi- deafness will have a tough time accept- drews go dancing at the one club that nage). Those who.saw the German ver- ing her as a man. Yet, like Peter Pan, we would allow men to dance with each sion recently, when operetta critic want to believe, and in her best routine, other, and the camera slowly pulls back until the screen is filled with gay couples James Garner and Alex Karras in VictorNictoria. in tuxedos, a roomful of penguins danc- ing cheek-to-cheek. Richard Traubner ran it at Manhattan's a derivative Mancini-Leslie Bricusse Goethe House, were surprised by the number called \"LeJazz Hot,\" Andrews is And he has brought into his rarefied tone of certain scenes that in their way Thirties Paris a number of characters seemed to predate the \"if you like it, almost as good as she gets. (My all-time from his Pink Panther days who may be don't question it, go for it\" attitude of favorite Andrews number is \"Whistling irrelevant to the story but who keep his our hip Sixties. in the Dark\" from Darling Lili, which beloved running gags on the run. As a Edwards almost reprises here , even to waiter, Graham Stark is a stud y in exis- Edwards gives the impersonation the 360-degree camera pan: but this tential resignation; he can take a pratfall away too soon, losing the sexual tension time the music isn ' t really there.) with the best of them. An equilibrist, and throwing in a few gay jokes as com- played by Perry Davey, balances him- pensation. In the end, straights and gays The major hurdle in VictorlVictoria self on the head of an unwilling secretary have remained in their respective lies in the casting of performers who are (Matyelock Gibbs) before achieving the camps: there have been no conversions. well past the age of the characters they impossible feat, then-wouldn 't you The musical numbers in VictorlVictoria, play. Charming as they may be-and know it?-he comes crashing down at however, have hinted all along at some- Robert Preston's wise and witty homo- the sound of Andrews' high C. There is thing much more ambitious and disqui- sexual may be the first joyful and posi- also a Fr::nch detective , played by the eting. Onstage, sexuality is travestied tive depiction of gay middle age in an improbably named Sherloque Tanney when it's not diffused. Theater is a privi- American film-we can't reall y lose any as a glorious fumbler in the old Inspector leged terrain where gender can be safely sleep about their romantic entangle- Clouseau tradition. dropped. A chorus line presents alter- ments, in and out of the closet, when nate male and female faces to the audi- they're so clearly approaching meno- You won't find Edwards in the recent ence; can-can dancers shriek and do pause. Who can accept Andrews as a two-volume A Critical Encyclopaedia of splits; Lesley Ann Warren and her cho- starving waif forced to resort to such a the Cinema, to which some of the best desperate deception as passing herself critical minds on both sides of the Atlan- tic contributed entries-as if American film comedy had died with Preston Sturges and revived with Woody Allen. Between those illustrious reigns , how- ever, there was the age of Frank Tashlin, Jerry Lewis-and Blake Edwards. The omission of their names cannot be justi- fied; yet in Edwards' case, it would be the Pink Panther comedies, and the lesser offbeat comedies like The Party, that would guarantee his inclusion ; not Darling Lili or VictorlVictoria, which are not only overstuffed but comically unfo- cused. (However I must admit that this last picture whets my appetite to reap- praise The Wild Rovers and The Great Race. especially from a sexual view- point, in the light of the new evidence.) In the meantime, send in the c1owns- or call for Benny Hill. ~ 19

reared up to be noticed. R.W.F. must Veronika Voss striding the debris in have eaten toasted cheese after a late- Rainer Werner's own dr6le de melo- night TV screening of The Snake Pit to drame . have gestated this weirdo tale of a faded The best modern make-over of film movie diva who is struggling with the noir and heyday Hollywoodism was Brit- • twin horrors of drug addiction and dwin- ain's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. \\\".,r.' /} dling celebrity. Rosel Zech plays Director and ex-film critic Chris Petit by Harlan Kennedy Veronika, whose story is based on that of has dunked a P.O. James murder novel Dateline: Berlin. Evening, no gloves, the town is Arctic, stores are closed, my a real-life Ufa star. Peter Martesheimer in sumptuous, prickly gloom. It's like a hands are ice. I take this personally. Es- pying a street vendor on the Kurfursten- and Pea Frohlich, Maria Braun's co- Penseroso English flip-side to Lawrence damm, his tray chock-full of home-made hand puppets, I begin bar- ·oters, wrote the screenplay. And Kasdan's Body Heat. Throttled emo- gaining hard, haggling even, until ulti- mately Deutschmarks pass hands and I F\"_Jbinder shoots it all in high-explosive tions. Taut tense dabs at transvestism walk away wearing a \"Snowy-Bear\" puppet on each hand. Festival attire monochrome like one of those Holly- and role-swapping: the murder victim is complete, I soon discover it's possible to wood films blanc set in mental asylums, the \"gay\" son of a rich property devel- meet some quite startling Berliners while wearing puppets for gloves. where the walls are all in a holocaust oper; the private eye is a lady in a man's None more startling, though , than white that makes you reach for you sun- job. Thrilling camerawork by Martin Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who this year sported chrome-link chains across glasses. Schafer (ex-lens-wielder for Wim Wen- an ever-increasing circumference. The Teuton wunderkind-well, at 35, not There may be an allegory in Veronika ders) gives exteriors the hothouse flush quite a kind but still a wunder-c1ump- clumped into his press conference, char- Voss-a dying Germany doting on her of studio sets and interiors the eerie ge- ismatic and bellicose. His film Die Sehnsucht Der Veronika Voss had just un- former glories? Guilt and sickness ometry of a Feininger painting. reeled to noisy boos and claps and was to • go on to win the Berlin Golden Bear. guised by the mask of glamour? Then Herr F. was vigorously giving question- ing newshounds the impersonation they again, there may not. But though the Film noir nightmare and Berlin, of wanted: an enfant terrible at bay. thesis is opaque and the performances course, are natural bedfellows. Schisms Veronika Voss is not, heaven knows, Fassbinder's best. But in a merciless oddly dour for a Fassbinder movie (es- past and present spook the city, ghosts of Berlin competition this year, which chomped away at the audience's for- pecially Hilmar Thate as the holy-fool political horrors rattle their chains, and bearance with mediocrity, it at least sports journalist turned investigator with the old German kinship with Art ofCru- his Parsifal-like \"Ich weiss nicht\"s), it's e1ty-the hellish side of the visionary still fun to sit tight and snap out a chame- skills of Werner Herzog, Hans-jUrgen leon tongue whenever the chewy bits Syberberg, et al.-pops up from any come along. A stunning rain-slashed for- trapdoor left unbolted. est at night lending expressionist As if to underline the point, one of the weltschmerz to raincoated Veronika's mightiest spectacles at Berlin was a new own tears; some juicily exotic chiaro- staging of Lulu at the Opera. And Gotz scuro; and odd moments when white- Friedrich's production is the kind of to- faced Austrian star Rosel Zech, looking tal theater that shades into total cinema. like Delphine Seyrig after a vampire at- Berg's dodecatonic menagerie of human tack, looks set to be a hypnotic Fassbin- cries and lusts and greeds is not so much der follow-up to Hanna Schygulla. noir as pitch-black, slashed by lightning With a Curtis Bernhardt retrospective and howls of thunder. It's the full cry of in full swing at the Astor-reports ran German schadenfreude, from whose that Fassbinder solicited it as the condi- fount Teutonic helmers sip their more tion for fest-premiering his own film- measured poetic angsts. and with noir-ish bows to vintage Friedrich staged it all as a human zoo Hollywood in movies like Christ Petit's in motion. The cast is sardine-packed in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman and Amos a cage for the Prologue; American so- Poe's Subway Riders, 1982 in Berlin was prano Karan Armstrong uncoils from a the year of melodrama redivivus. snake-skin as Lulu; a dinosaur skeleton Bernhardt's work began with flair in towers over the whole production. And Germany, then fell away in Hollywood. you come away wondering what growl- But if there's not much Sirk-scavation of ing, primal carnivore will next jump out style for cine-archaeologist s in films like at you from the German jungle of ata- Million Dollar Baby, Sirocco, or A Stolen vism? Try these fine monsters! Life, Bernhardt was undoubtedly a great Fucking City. All right, so the lot of us Pygmalion to his female stars. Davis, turned up wrapped in raincoats and car- Stanwyck, Crawford-marmoreal god- rying newspapers for this film about four desses all-stalk with tremendous Berliners-two guys, two girls-and power through silly plots, much like the fun they have making home porno 20 /

Festival Report and Berlin Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. Werner Schroeter's Liebeskonzil. movies. But if we came to drool we 'risks' herself in encounters with some- cut her wnsts belonged to U lrike stayed to applaud. There are no hard- thing outside society's norm.\" Meinhof.\" core gymnastics in Lothar Lambert's film; and if there were you couldn't see There is a harrowing scene of bloody Other new German films , steeped in them too well through the smear and and prolonged lovemaking between reeky exotica, were a cassoulet of good sizzle of black-and-white 16mm. Just a Rita G., not yet recovered from an abor- and bad. Ulrike Ottinger's Freak Or- raunchy-spoken comedy full of bull's- tion, and a black gastarbeiter she picks lando pushes Virginia Woolf's sex-swap- eye truths about the power of lust and up and brings to a hotel room. \"I knew ping hero(ine) none-too-willingly the collisions it causes between dream that this scene, in normal film terms, through a fantas yland of German his- and reality, supply and demand , sense goes on 'too long,' \" says Sanders- tory. Wacky Barnum-and-Bailey images; and sensuality. In sex you can't make an Brahms. \"But I did it deliberately. I steadfast elusiveness of purpose. In Un- omelette without breaking egos, and wanted the audiences to become caught sere Leichen Leben Noch-five Berlin Fucking City says it in twelve tones of up in the spiral of suffering, that Rita G. women in search of Life, or Death , or bitter-funny comedy. It's likeLulu under is in. In real life, that lovemaking actu- something in bet wee n-Rosa Von laughing gas. ally lasted three hours . In my film, it's Praunheim (Herr) takes another swal- just three minutes. But the shock va lue, low-dip into lunatic-fringe Bohemian- Die Beruhrte (No Mercy No Future). the relentlessness make it seem more .\" ism. He picks up a fi shy morsel or two Christ-like progress through the stations and creates some splashy concatenations of sacrificial sex by a schizophrenic girl. Bolder than the film 's individual of Rousseau primitivism and slinky Set in Berlin and based on the real-life scenes or details is the way Sanders- travestie. diaries of \"Rita G.,\" who co-wrote the Brahms has defined a whole society-its screenplay, Die Beruhrte is the tale of a bigotries, its neuroses , its authorita- Best of all was Werner Schroeter's \"divided\" woman in a divided city. Rita rianism , its passion for superficial pro- Liebeskonzil which , though ball-and- G. gives herself to a series of men- priety-in the story of one tragic chained to proscenium formalism in its society's castaways, the old, the de- casualty. That there is a potent political filming of a banned play by Oscar formed , all belie vi ng the y are subtext in the film, Sanders-Brahms Panizza (the Bavarian Rabelais?), has incarnations of Christ-in a grisly leaves us no doubt. \"The nightgown Schroeter's deadpan extravagance and round-the-clock martyrdom that's like Rita G. wears and the knife she uses to chalky, outre makeup out of the Chez Christianity seen through the wrong end Lazarus drag club. (or maybe the right end) of a procto- scope. Fierce, searing, visionary: the • test of an \"eternal\" creed on a particular need and emotional anguish. So there were films dancing about and keeping their feet warm in Berlin , Director Helma Sanders-Brahms though most of these-and all the five spoke briefl y about her film : \"I wanted films above-were out of competition. Rita G.'s story to parallel the process of The main competition iced the eyeballs filmmaking. She offers herself and her with its yearly imitation of a polar zone love to a series of different men. And in where few but the brave or insane dare the same way the filmmaker with each venture-and even those not without film gives herself up to something new , several layers of fur, snow-shoes , and a bottle of St. Bernard brand y. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Veronika \\'Ioss. How else could the ill-accoutred sur- vive such as Sweden's The Frank Murder, in which Gucci-clad angels help a village idiot to fight the local landowner; A Ger- man Revolution, wherein director Helmut Herbst tries, and gaspingly 21

Edgardo Cozarinsky's La Guerre d' un seul homme. fails, to give Georg Buchner the kiss of zarinsky's film also bows to Germany's Just before a lunchbreak half a century biopic life ; and Zoltan Fabri's catatonic past, though a more inglorious and or so ago, Murnau, she tells us, gave her Requiem , to which the only proper re- bleeding chunk of it. Pasting-and-pat- his only direction: \"Be Gretchen, day sponse would be the Hungarian for terning together archive footage and and night, be Gretchen\"-then he \"Zzzz . .. \" ? newsreels from the Nazi occupation of locked her in a cage. \"But EmiIJannings Paris, the film has the purr-purr rat-a-tat secretly brought me some grapes,\" she What is it that sits like an incubus on of a perfectly tooled machine. whispers. the Berlin competition year after year, draining its soul and hindering respira- On the screen: parading Paris manne- On screen she continues wat.:hing tion? Is it truly the retro-extended quins, French soldiers trooping off to Gretchen, now fighting her way through shadow of Cannes, clawing like a movie- Germany's Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler a blizzard . \"The sound-stage was white fest Mafia for early option on all the top paying a call. On the soundtrack: with a fake snow ... they started the films? In the mid-Seventies and after, a speeches, jolly newsreel commentary wind machines and little sticky pieces of dull Berlin competition was at least off- and the overvoiced diaries of Ernst snow blew into my eyes, my nose, my set by the latest from the New German Junger, a senior German officer whose mouth . .. but with Murnau you couldn't Cinema: Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, pensees purl out with a degage precision stop ... and it was cold to show my Alexander Kluge , and Syberberg kept peculiarly at one remove from the grisli- breath.\" Reels continue to unspool, the billowing forth genie-like at the rub of a ness of the times. \"A last haircut, a fare- screen is lit showing Gretchen being car- projector-lamp. But their reinforce- well look at Sacre Coeur\" are his adieu to ried to a stake, then tied, and Camilla ments today are weak and slow-footed. Paris when the Nazis are booted out. Horn says, \"And now it will be fin- And elsewhere he samples executions ished .\" I hope it won' t. Cinemas all over Nonetheless, Germany has too strong with the same fastidious connoisseur- the world , book it now as a supporting a cinematic heirloom not to warrant a program. You have nothing to lose but yearly film festival. And that Berlin itself ship as \"lunch with Arletty\" or cocktails your Trout Fishing in Quebec. has the flair for the big-event screening with Cocteau. was shown by this year's unfurling of And the feature film from Poland, Walter Ruttmann's 1927 silent classic Cozarinsky's film , shown out of com- Woiciech Marczewski 's Dreszcze Berlin: Symphony of a City, with live ac- (Shivers). This bildungsroman of a boy's companiment by two pianos and as- petition, delineates not so much the ba- brainwashing days in a Fifties Stalinist sorted percussion. nality of evil as the what-the-hell- training school is like Angi Vera with the life-goes-on accommodations people shower cap off. Prickly, tingling, relent- Not quite your Napoleon perhaps, make to it. Look happy or look down a less, direct, it shows us an orphaned with Carmine Coppola, color tints, and rifle barrel. Lulu-the survivor, the tou- mind being seductively bombarded orchestral tuxedos stretching beyond jours gai-would have recognized the with new dogmas. Its characters are the earth's curvature. But it was another smiling jungle , the entente of life-or- thumbnail-sketched with pinpoint pre- chance for silent cinema to show that it death hypocrisy. cision; the satire is fresh , never facile . could still crow fortissimo , and for Rutt- And thirty years after the time of the mann's day-in-the-life-of-a-city to Lastly, a brace of films-one short, film's story, Eastern Europe still needs one long. Hans Sachs and Hedda Rinne- the message . Yesterday Stalin , today prove itself a marvelous whirl of movie berg's Camilla Horn Watching H erself Brezhnev. The circle continues. invention. The humming flux of hu- Play Gretchen in Murnau's Silent Movie manity, the wax and wane of a working Faust! Magic. Fraulein Horn , aged 75 • day, the Leger-like beau ty and bustle of and looking not a day over glamorous 60, factory machinery, the street-life asides played Gretchen in Faust back in 1926. No sooner had the festi val closed its as witty as Chaplin. In thi s fifteen-minute film , Age and gates and festivalgoers vamoosed than Youth gaze eyeball to eyeball. We watch news whispered through the jungle of If Ruttmann's nonfiction classic was her watching her own cygnet-song as an the German night that Werner Herzog's the best revival at Berlin, the best new Ufa ingenue talking to and through a Fitzcarraldo was to get a quiet and tiny documentary was La Guerre d' un seul screening of Murnau 's silent master- screening at a preview theater. homme by Argentinian-born , Paris- piece: recalling, explaining, reminiscing based Edgardo Co z arin s k y. Co- with memory-minted vocal footnotes. It was. I went. Herzog's Amazonian 22

epic, which has had the gestation period Kinski's fingers. Then they glide and elements-earth, air, fire , water-and and labor pains of two elephants and was swathed in myth long before anyone had skitter around him , touching him , ex- melds them in ever startling combina- seen it, tumbled forth from the projector beam and hit the light of a Berlin screen. ploring him. They finger his blond hair, tions. In one sce ne a long shot shows red First impressions herewith. The print peer up agog at hi s blue eyes. Kinski , all tongues of flame licking the steame r at was ungraded and some postsynching was shaky. But Cannes Film Festival the while, magisterially, preposterously night. Conflagration? Indian sabotage? audiences are in for a celestial treat when Herzog's opus opens there in May. aloof, pupils glaring. But as the camera moves closer, the \"Klaus Kinski Rules\" must be Fitzcarraldo is a movie abo ut commu- flames are seen to be watch fires sur- scrawled on countless jungle trees down South America way; for ex-Aguirre nion between worlds, the transportabil- reall y scattered on the wooden deck Klaus is at it again, this time trading Spanish armor for the tropic-stained ity of rapture. There are no hindrances among the sleeping Indians. white suit of the title's opera-crazy Ger- man-Irish rubber baron and ice-maker. too Herculean if the will is there. One of Water is the primal element and the His golden hair is all akimbo like war- the film's most spectacular showpieces magical thread of Fitzcarraldo; the liq- ring wheatfields, his mouth is gashed in an imperious sneer, as he paddles and -its central metaphor-is the scene of . uid highway which connects worlds and steams up the Amazon bringing Verdi and Bellini to the wilderness. He plays the boat being hauled over a mountain. cultures. It glints and snakes between Caruso on wind-up 78's and makes con- tact with the Indians more profound This folie de grandeur is conceived by green spurs of jungle, it rolls like molten than language can. His transport is joy, his destination is communion. Fitzcarraldo as the only way he can get silver at twilight, it floats in pockets of Kinski-Fitzcarraldo buys, repairs, and his floating opera-house to his own mists; it's changed into ice by Kinski and hauls up river-and over mountain-a steamer, the Molly Aida, which becomes stretch of water, and it's like a DeMille given as a cool, solid block to the In- his very own floating La Scala: with or- chestra and singers and a production of I let 's- build-the-pyramid-right-here dian s; it catches the demountained Puritani played to the river and the pass- ingjungle. scene given a crazy centrifugal poetry. steamer in a wild and welcoming Herzog's genius lies as ever in using Straining ropes, screaming winches, whirlpool. wild incongruity as a way into Panthe- ism . Extreme opposites are yoked and pole-axed pines, crushed Indians. But Fitzcarraldo is a film which takes as its the shock of the surreal startles you into a Paradise of possibility. far from being an expense of in a waste protagonist the greatest hybrid form in Caruso and Sarah Bernhardt together of sales, it pull s the movie's plural all art-opera-and spreads the message at the mid-jungle Manaos opera-house? Herzog provides them in his opening threads and themes together in one su- of its celestial incongruity through all the scenes; with the Divine Sarah wildly and wordlessly emoting while the King preme imagistic conjuction. Music and fibers and fabric of its story. Caruso sings of the High C's holds high the suicide dagger at the climax of Ernani. (To pile mathematics unite, expressions of each in the deepest Amazon. White men and on colliding anomalies, Sarah in the film is played by a man , and the ultra-styl- other. Meaning is born from surreal adja- Indians commune, with touch and trust. ized staging is by Werner Schroeter, Herzog's compatriot.) cency (of boat and mountain). The will to co nnect moves mountains Everywhere in the film irreconcil- Herzog builds hi s film from the raw and makes miracles. ® abies are reconciled. There's a stunning scene later in the movie in which the Rosa von Praunheim's Unsere Leichen Leben Noch. Molly Aida, purling Caruso across the ether, is overtaken by a gliding swarm of native canoes backed by a crescendo of toppling tree. The Indians pull along- side and gently, tickle the side of the boat with their fingers before quietly scrambling up, drawn to the white man in the white suit on the white boat. Kinski holds out a nervously firm hand to shake. The silent Indian s answer it with their own greeting: a delicate scrab- bling of fingertips on the inside of 23

Marlon Brando in The Wild One. by John Milius one thing in common which has made Dean -Fifties-in trove rted -trou bled- them appealing , fascinating, and youth crap. Forget Streetcar Named De- Let us first examine this idea of Guilty Pleasures. When I was young, dreaded. They are free. Next time you sire, On the Wateifront. We're dealing the world was so new with promise that it was impossible to find that feeling of drive up to a couple of bikers cruising with guys that rode into town like Ta- self-conscious embarrassment in secrecy that could bring guilt to any pleasure. It slowly on their hogs, take a good look. merlane-no ambitions, no apologies, is only in early adulthood that we come to measure our passions and, in time, They don' t live like you. They are outside and little restraint. Where else can you forget them. So it was always in the first light that I was influenced by the movies 1#,.: find such a pure sense of anarchy? Who I liked, as if seeing an ocean for the first time, or being taken to an airport to i\\.t else in modern culture really lived like watch the planes land. There is no judg- ment good or bad, just noise and move- Vikings? And what for? \"What are you ment, intensity and rhythm. This is not to say that I have no guilt. But life hands rebelling against, Johnny?\" occasioned out few enough pleasures. the best line in the movie: \"Whaddya • got?\" That's it, pure and simple. It's Biker movies. This whole genre has been overlooked probably for good rea- never been said better in any movie. son. One thing that can be said about all of these films, from The Wild One to The This is social irresponsibility. Losers, is that they have a rich tradition of social irresponsibility. I mean, these As biker movies progressed, the life films should make you feel guilty. Of course, they have little to do with real style itself changed and became more bikers. Real bikers are like real Mongols -nomadic, simple hunters whose only menacing. We soon learned that bikers crime is that they are the descendants of Genghis Khan. But the bikers in the were much worse than the mobile white movies and the ones on the road share trash we suspected. They were indeed packs of mutant, ursine predators, spawned by some hideous breach of so- cial ecology, and they soon joined the ranks of irredeemable screen socio- William Smith. paths, the way Indians used to be por- trayed and Nazis still are. Soon, the plots your life, your law. They don't share simply had to show a horde of swastika- your morality, ethics, your humanity, or festooned, hairy, drug-crazed, sub-Ne- your conscience. They are free of all that anderthals (led by William Smith) shit. descending upon some worthwhile tar- . Let's talk about the movie that started get area that gave ample opportunity for it all , The Wild One. (1953, directed by rape and pillage. The rest of the story Lazlo Benedek). This has to be one of usually had some reference to commu- the most important Marlon Brando nity guilt, parents who didn't under- movies ever made. Forget your James stand their daughters, etc., and a strong 24

loner-hero, sometimes a biker himself The Texas Chain Saw Massacre agile as a sports car as she darts in and out (who could also be played by William (1974, Tobe Hooper). Yeah, I know it of the trees in headlong terror. He fol- Smith). The loners who stopped the has a cult following. But I really like thi s lows, but like a truck out of control, barbarian hordes were, curiously, often movie. It's really good. Best of breed in spinning out on the corners, shatte ring Green Berets directly home from disillu- my estimation. Made for nothing, ex- branches, kicking up dust, always trying sioning experiences in Southeast Asia. traordinarily inven tive, it just reeks of to keep the saw pointed in the right style and other things. It has horror with direction. These men could only be pushed so the best of them. Nicely achieved in far. (This stereotype also helped build that nothing in the film is supernatural. Also, the great ending shot where the public myth that there were twenty- Every object is common; lots of the film Leatherface holds his chainsaw up to the five divisions of loner-killer Green Be- takes place in broad daylight. rising sun in some ritu al dance to the rets , and no cooks or clerk-typists.) The harvest god. I could go on and on, but loner prevails; a lot of virginity and pri- Things happen you just don't expect, see it for yourself. It deserves its rep. vate property are lost. And the Horde like the girl with the sexy backless hal- retreats back into the dark recesses of ter-top being hung up on a meat hook. • man's pagan past, waiting. Great visual You just don't expect that. The guy in stuff. Low-slung choppers gleaming in the wheelchair being chainsawed and Return to Paradise (1953, Mark early sunlight massing together grace- the great scene in the barbecue store Robson). After my other two guilty plea- fully as they come around that bend in also take you by surprise. It's not that the sures I feel I should swing the pendulum the road. Fiends with their hair blowing scenes are unexpected, it's just that they the other way. This is undoubtedly one back, wrapped in armor-like chains, be- go so far. But what I like best is the of my favorite movies. It is faithfully ing held by brazen felines who know no irresistible visual humor, so sick yo u adapted from a James Michener story of limits to promiscuous carnality. There don't belie~e it's reall y happening. the same title and shot entirely on loca- simply are no other movies quite like Leatherface-gigantic, masked, tion in Fiji or Tonga or somewhere using these. They have titles like Chrome and aproned-wielding the great sputtering non-actors for most of the cast-giving it Hot Leather, AngeLs from HeLL , Born snarling title weapon, is chasing the one a rudimentary authenticity that is to me Losers, etc. surviving girl. She is nubile, buxom , and thoroughly enchanting. A superb piece from the end of the I don't know when I first saw this film , genre's halcyon days was simply and ap- but it was probably at a particularly ide- propriately called The Losers (1970) Directed by Jack Starrett (vastly under- Top left: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre's Leatherface . Top right: One of The rated), this has the final twist on all biker Losers clears a Vietnamese hut . Above: More of the Angels from Hell. movie plots: The bikers themselves are sent to Vietnam. That's right. Bearded, leathern, latter-day Mongols astride gleaming hogs equipped with rockets and automatic weapons take on a rival club: the Viet Congo They lose. Superb action, interesting political insight. Another oddity is , of course, Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper). In this, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper aren't bikers at all, just ordinary citizens who close out their retail narcotics business in order to take a peaceful vacation ride across country. Their mistake is that they look like bikers to the prudish land apes that have seen the rest of these movies and are mistaken as the advance scouts of the Golden Horde. The com- munity rights are upheld and they pay for the sins of William Smith. Nobody makes these movies any- more. They've gone the way of Italian muscle pictures and blaxploitation movies. They will leave no mark even in the annals of trivia collectors. No French critics will ever enshine them in Cahiers du Cinema. But next time you see that bro and his old lady heading off with the wind in their hair, the light dazzling from the lacquer and polished chrome, and the big V-Twin like a quickened heartbeat and thunder, give them a thumbs-up for poor Dennis Hopper. 25

alistic and emotional stretch of adoles- Gary Cooper, no way. You're dealing cence, during which I was a fanatical with Yankee independence, the reason surfer. Being a surfer in those days was America was founded and settled. Be- like belonging to a hallowed brother- sides, he has a shotgun. His hut is even- hood-a noble tribe of timeless drifters tually torn down and he asks the and beach bums that shared a solemn community, \"Who will help put it back adventurism and a longing for primitive up?\" In a scene that's etched in my tropical places that lay in the path of the memory forever, a simple dark-eyed girl great swells. These places often had steps forward where all the others cower. by Carlos Clarens rich-sounding names, and were sparsely This is romance. This is love. Nothing The date is March 12, the place the Rivoli Theater on Broadway, where a populated by strong simple men and else will really do. Where are these preview of Conan the Barbarian is about to take place. Both twin houses are lithe, brown-skinned women. White women, these men? How many of you packed: not many critics are in atten- dance this evening, and in comparison men there were regarded as higher be- have wives, husbands, or lovers who will with the usual company-papered sneak preview audience, this one is a mob, ings and often went bad with the weight step forward when the odds are thrown ruly and washed perhaps, but nonethe- less a restless, loud, volatile compound of that responsibility. All of this was ma- down, when the community, the police, of young adults, mostly male, neither blue- nor white- collar but T-shirted and jestically set forth in the works of Fortune, and God are on the other side? conspicuously muscular. But then, Uni- versal hasn't been exactly sneaky about Melville, Conrad, Stevenson, and With nothing in it, who will stand by this particular showing. The city papers had advertised it, and the faithful from Gauguin. I would sit in the winter class- your side? all five boroughs and several suburbs have gathered by the hundreds, forcing room, spin the globe, and read the With the aid ofthe shotgun, Mr. Mor- the police to intervene and keep late- comers from crashing the already sold- names of the islands: Atuona, Raro- gan becomes the unwitting instrument out houses. The hubbub subsides somewhat as the lights dim and the cur- tonga, Manihiki, even Guadalcanal. of revolt. The people are freed, the war- tains part. The Universal logo is ap- plauded; then, from a dark screen, ' a Rich stuff, and it was all still there, all of dens banished, and even the old mis- voice is heard-later to be identified as belonging to the Wizard of the Mounds it possible. sionary left in peace with his church -intoning a preface: because he was only misguided. An ide- \"Know, 0 prince, that between the , alized society, no government, lots of years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryes, there food, sex, surf, and the intoxicating was an age undreamed of. .. \" sound of the drums and the dances. Of The audience now chants along with the narrator, from memory, having be- course, it is here that Conrad always come celebrants on a scale undreamt of by the campy midnight cultists of The warns us that white men go bad-at the Rocky Horror Show. As Conan the Bar- barian progresses, they seem to antici- point of moral choice. They either lose pate every situation, relish every exploit, echo the hero's exclamation of control like Mr. Kurtz, or drift on because \"Krom!\" The critics are by now es- tranged from the ritual. Have all these they have no anchor and can't really be, people read the screenplay beforehand? Have they all been rehearsed and cued just left alone. Mr. Morgan is the latter. by Universal? He never marries the girl. She dies bear- Chances are that if you're American, or French, and in a certain age group, ing him a daughter; he realizes he's lost let's say between 12 and 35, you will have recognized the oracular opening of the only thing he ever had, and leaves, The Nemedian Chronicles. as set down by a Texas-born pulp writer named Robert embittered. E. Howard who created the Conan char- It's here that the story seems to take acter for Weird Tales in 1934, and who on an added dimension. Cooper wan- committed suicide (at 30) only two years later, having already gained the respect ders the winds, becoming a hardened, friendless man. World War II starts and something brings him back. He returns Gary Cooper in Return to Paradise. to the island to find himself a legend of the past, a part of their history and folk- When I saw Gary Cooper wading lore. He also finds his daughter and, ashore through the waves in the first eventually, himself. minutes of Return to Paradise, he be- In this final sentimental confronta- came an immediate role model. He is tion, he discovers what all adventurers put ashore, to be exact, for reasons we're and drifters really seek, that which most never told, except that he has an intense people had all along-a home. It's a dislike for authority. On the beach he is simple powerful emotion, one that the met by a crowd of exotic, innocent is- cynicism in all of us constantly tries to landers, who are being ruthlessly sup- reject. But it gnaws at the back of my pressed under the regime of a misguided heart and has colored all of my work. Christian missionary and his gang of I've written parts and shades of this story truncheon-wielding wardens. All man- into everything I've ever really cared ner of oppression is levied on these chil- about, from Jeremiah Johnson to Conan. dren: They have to wear clothes, work I guess I do it unconsciously. Maybe it's steady hours, not breed freely, and at- just because I, too, really want to be like tend church daily and sing hymns. Mr. Gary Cooper at the end of the movie: Morgan (Cooper) only wants to be left standing on the dock, listening to the alone, but he is a glaring example of music with my arm around my daughter, individual will to the others, and must and letting the boat sail away without be made to bow and kiss the ring. Not me. ti;. 26

of a few peers and the recognition of a well served by Conan the Barbarian and with a subject Milius seldom brings up few hundred readers of pulp magazines. by its director, John Milius. You would in interviews, namely that a time must think that if Conan had not already ex- come to put childish things away and The readership of the Conan stories isted in print and drawing, Milius ~ould accept the diminished freedom of adult- has increased by the thousands since, have invented him. From Siegfried and hood. Not to mention that there is more most significantly after they were re-ed- his magic sword Balmunga (so dear to gratuitous violence, and of an unpleas- ited in the mid-Sixties as paperbacks Wagner) to the Uber-l11ensch there is but am misogynous type as well, in Burt enhanced· by Frank Frazetta's cover art- one quick goose-step, if the Right spirit Reynolds ' Sharky 's Machine-which work, and subsequently adapted into is willing, and sure enough Milius bor- goes to prove that in films, at least, it's comic-strip form. (Everv ne,v instal- rows his epigraph from Nietzche to the ' the good ole boys who get away with ment of Conan's adventur~s is rigorously effect that what doesn ' t kill you will murder. prefaced by The Nemedian Chronicles .) make you stronger. (l may not quote Almost single-handedly, Conan was in- accurately, and I'm not sure Milius does Of course there is a paean to steel, the strumental in establishing the very either.) \\Vhat attracts 1\\ filius to Nietzche Cimmerian equivalent of Dirty HarrY's successful fantasy subgenre of Sword tribute to his trusty .44 magnum, the in this case ~ eems less the eternal return most powerful hand weapon of its day. and SorcerY, or S & S as it's usuallv of myth than an attempt to confer a cul- referred to. \\Vhether paperback, comic'- tural bon ton where none was warranted. strip, or calendar, S & S usually features an inordinate amount of S & 1\\f-not to With his Nietzche quote, l\\filius is mention Brawn and Blood, Breasts and also paying dues to the image he has Buttocks-which in time has also infil- fashioned for himself in the media-the trated Science Fiction. gung-ho macho surfer hawk-and which his films consistently fail to bear Excalibur and Dragons/ayer are other, out. The Wind and the Lion (1975) was and much milder, entries in the sub- imbued with boyish hero-worship for a genre. The Conan stories and strips are civilized barbarian; but one would look so ripe with evisceration as to send in vain for the nasty insights into either Bruno Bettelheim into despair: they are , childhood or barbarism that a somewhat however, rendered in the comic strips similar film , Alexander fackendrick's with relative taste, the art-work often High Wind in Jamaica, so effortlessly pro- deriving its inspiration, but never ac- vided . The failed Big Wednesday, awk- knowledging it either, from Harold Fos- ward as it was, dealt rather sensiti\\'elv ter's Prince Valiant, probably the one liberal heroic comic-strip of Thirties. There is no grail in the Conan stories, nor is there anv chilvalrv. Conan lives bv the sword in a 'chaotic a~cient world cre'- ated by Howard out of Edgar Rice Bur- roughs' Pellucidar stories of the Twenties and best described as a Middle Earth irrigated by the blood of Picts, Mongols, Nomads, and other assorted races. Conan himself is a Cimmerian: Howard invented manv such ancient pre-Aryan peoples, such as the Hvbo- reans, as well as places bearing na'mes like Vanaheim or Aquilonia, like so many California suburbs. Although su- perficially devoid of any redeeming cul- tural or ethical value, the Howard stories (now continued by L. Sprague de Camp and others, but alwavs faithful to the original concept) drew' their force from a common fund of inspiration which would include icelandic sagas, the less inspirational passages of the Old Testa- ment and the Gilgamesh epic. • The Conan constituency has been

Schwarzenegger and Sandahl Bergman. although not really a match for a trained dancer like Sandahl Bergman , who plays Of course there is an effete priest whom most part, Conan restores violence to its his Valkyrie girl-friend and who per- Conan clobbers after leading him on. former Hollvvvood appellation of action; forms with great kinetic grace in the And Milius baits the dormant liberal in it's escapism in se rial form but not so fight scenes. (She also has a good speak- every critic by reserving his and Conan's old-fashioned that it will exclude sex, as ing voice, which in a film like Conan, supreme detestation , not for Thulsa was the case with Raiders ofthe Lost Ark. where the dialogue runs to grunts and Doom-the evil wizard who slays (The sexual interludes, bv the way, are balloons, could be considered an ex- Conan's parents, exterminates his tribe, to be found in the Conan ~omic b~oks.) pendable blessing but shouldn't.) In re- and has him, still a child, chained to a The most fantastic moment in the pose, and when Conan is required to millstone (so that, in time and sustained screenplay (written by Milius and Oliver sulk through the second half of the story, by a desire for revenge , he achieves the Stone) brings Conan to the hut and rug after the heroine's death , SchwarLeneg- superhuman strength of slave heroes of a voluptuous witch with the unkempt ger is more effective and his best mo- like Samson and Ben Hur: forced labor glamour of Al Capp's Moonbeam ment as a dramatic actor has him flexing as bod ybuilding)-but for Thulsa McSwine and who literally catches fire his arm muscles by the seaside, in Mi- Doom 's followers, whom filius por- when made love to. lius's replay of a similar scene in Marlon trays as the flower children and l\\/loonies Brando's One-Eyed Jacks . of Conan's day, brainwashed sheep to • the slaughter who are destined to pro- The remainder of the cast must estab- vide gourmet nourishment for Thulsa's The casting of the title role must have lish whatever character it can in the short inner-circle reve ls. There is so much cal- discouraged film producers until the ar- time allotted between stunts. The most culation in Milius' effrontery that the rival of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the professional actor in Conan the Barbarian picture's emotional tone finally strikes entertainment scene. With an acting is paradoxically (but not really) the most one as remarkably innocent of contem- range noticeably wider than Lou Fer- difficult to take. As Thulsa Doom , porary social or personal significance. rigno's and a playful disposition , Sch- James Earl Jones proves that, on the warzenegger proved he could be funny screen at least , he's better heard than In fact, Milius's film has some trouble and spirited on film, even in an unwor- seen. Camp is a four-letter word indeed , living up to the average fan's expecta- thy comedy like The Villain. He still can- yet anything would be preferable to tions of bloodletting on a heroic scale. At not quite negotiate Conan's \"gigantic Jones' brand of pompous seriousness. 129 minutes , Conan has been tidied up melancholies\" -his eyes aren't quite as The matter is aggravated by the cos- in the editing, perhaps in the mythic sullen as Howard described them and as tume designer's perverse resolve to quest for a PG rating, and contrary to the various illustrators have emblemati- dress Doom in a long gray wig and flow- advance reports (in the fabulous Cine- cally depicted-but the physique is ing robes that suggest less an archvillian fantastique , among other publications), role-perfect, even if here it's more re- than a gospel singer about to belt out a there is very little graphic maiming in it, fined and less flaunted than before. call to repent. nor is nudity brazenly displayed. For the In move ment , Schwarzenegger is sur- Shot in Spanish locations and studios, prisingly agile for a man of his bulk, Conan manages to look skimpy and wasteful by turns. Ron Cobb's imagina- tive sets don't always show up in the prevailing murk provided by cinematog- rapher Duke Callaghan. Luckily, Callan moves often and well, and l\\liIius has selected his sources of inspiration with great care. These would include not only a classic like Sergei Eisenstein's Al- exander Nevsky (almost obviously in some predatory-looking helmets), but also well-loved near-classics like The Thief of Bagdad (the almost continuous musical score by Basil Polidouros tends to Rozsa when not to Orff) and the odd fantasy film like Kobayashi's Kwaidan (Conan's nearly dead body is saved from the spirits of the dead by being painted like a Japanese scroll). In his two climac- tic set pieces-an orgy violently dis- rupted by Conan and his cohorts, and an outdoor battle against superiqr odds- Milius borrows respectively from Fritz Lang's Kriemhild's Revenge and Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. That ulti- mately nothing in his film reverberates with Lang and Kurosawa's important meaning is at this point more a matter of aspiration than of limitations. ~ 28

• within the system. • Wilder was never a true iconoclast. He was the loyal establishment from the beginning and he loved it. The first year was shaky. It included Bluebeard, an un- fortunate swan song for Lubitsch 's Para- mount career. Among Lubitsch 's the American screenplay without ever seamless flow of charming, Middle-Eu- having once ascribed a solo writing by Tom Allen credit to Mmself. ropean-flavored boudoir comedies, it is ENGLISH SPOKE N The Wilder-Brackett chemistry thus the most abrasive and unsatisfactory ro- remains something of a mystery to this SI PARLA ITALIANO day, but a transparent one. Consensus mance, and it has a gimcrack plot. Gary has accepted their names at face value. MAN SPRICHT DE UTSCH Billy was the wild , creative one; Charles Cooper was disastrously miscast as a was the constrainer and polisher, the AMERICAN UNDERSTOOD bracketter. Like a truly \"happy couple,\" pushy American tycoon who shops for even after the 1950 divorce , neither ever In the opening shots of Ernst Lu- felt compelled to jealously ascribe sole wives of the moment and has fixed his inspiration for portions of dialogue or bitsch's Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938) , plot to himself. previous seven marriages with one-mil- the very first words of a Billy Wilder- Charles Brackett screenplay are A Wilder-Brackett clash in creativity lion-franc divorce warranties. His blunt mounted as a service sign in the window would have been redundant anyway. of a Riviera haberdashery. That ten- Billy Wilder contained within his own assessment that \"Love-making is the word, wry deprecation is, in effect, a personality enough contradictions for self-advertisement for a brash, 31-year- any one filmmaker, and his career rolled red tape of marriage\" was the kind of old expatriate rising from the crammed on with the seventeen films to follow , compound of the Paramount Pictures up to last year's Buddy Buddy (a apt title anti-romantic gambit that must have ap- screenwriters bullpen. Wilder, Viennese for the uniquely Wilder concept of reporter, wunderkind Berlin screen- screenplay collaboration). The Wilder- pealed to Wilder as he reunited with writer, and short-time resident of Paris Brackett era is still a most relevant body and Hollywood , had the good fortune on of film because it mirror-images all of Cooper in Love in the Afternoon 19 years his first Paramount assignment to be Wilder's post-Fifties films in the only teamed with Brackett, Harvard Law active example today of the new Holly- later and put the formula in a more suit- School graduate, Algonquin crony, wood coming full cycle with the old . banking executive, and New Yorker ably acerbic, realistic context. Mean- drama critic. Good fortune because the Billy Wilder: romantic and cynic, chemistry of opposites worked. lover of Old World farce conventions while,Claude Colbert was left and practicioner of New World verismo, Wilder and Brackett went on to write innovator of themes while studiously ten other screenplays for Paramount- adapting other writers' works in four out from Midnight in 1939 to Sunset Boule- of every five films, prolific reader never vard in 1950, as well as the successful tempted to do either genre or presti- comedies Ninotchka for MGM and Ball gious literary adaptations, risk-taker an of Fire for Goldwyn. Ironically, at the also filmmaker of safe properties, midpoint of their partnership, Lincoln vola tile director who kept within Barnett dubbed them \"The Happiest Couple in Hollywood\" in a ten-page Life budgets. In perspective, the so- article. The Life story appeared in 1944, the year of their greatest strain: Brackett called contradictions in Wilder had strayed to produce The Uninvited, slough off not into any one of while Wilder collaborated with Ray- the dozens of portraits of his mond Chandler on the screenplay of contemporaries who fell off Double Indemnity. Chandler was another to the wayside, but into a high literary profile of almost indeci- prescription for a long- pherable worth in his infrequent career lived, supremely as screenwriter. It has been Wilder's lot equipped infighter for almost a half century to be one of the most single, prominent influences on

hanging as the eighth wife who holds out ability to inhabit the skins of disparate lard Mitchell's cynical black-market for a two-million-franc guarantee. No personalities. panderer and military wet nurse to visit- Lubitsch heroine has ever less convinc- ing congressional dignitaries in A For- ingly stated, \"I loved you from the mo- The clunk, or rather, the lunk in Mid- eign Affair. Wilder's ability to wear the ment I saw you. \" night, like Bluebeard, is the miscasted many masques of this planet's worldly hero of Don Ameche, with his common- overlords has been his most pungent Wilder and Brackett quickly re- place earthiness as the fake prince to contribution to nudging Hollywood deemed themselves in the Colbert fold wisk away the fake Cinderella. He is not away from the dreaming meek. with Midnight. Her Eve Peabody is a only a paradigm of the man on the wed- non-Lubitschian, Bronx-born golddig- Wilder and Brackett's What a Life, ger who arrives in Paris on a wet night, ding cake; he is a fleshy, graceless, hu- starring Jackie Cooper as Henry Aldrich displaying her assets in a gold-lame morless man in a tux who crashes in the in Paramount's answer to the Andy gown. She's off with the slangy wise- cake and ruins the party for everyone cracks from the start-\"From here, it else. Ameche is primarily offset by John Hardy series, comes between Bluebeard looks a lot like a rainy night in Kokomo , Barrymore's fairy godfather, whose deft and Midnight . This lugubrious program- Indiana\"-and she's swept up ingenu- performance as the pragmatic husband mer-with Henry as an abject, non- ously into a Cinderella role as a fake lure willing to pay to win back his wife's slangy liar and cheat, a numbskull who to attract the lover of a rich man's wife. affections has contributed much to the can't get through the first scene of Ham- mystique of Midnight as an enduring let, and a slow take on the charms of Claudette Colbert and Don Ameche in Claudette Colbert and Ray Milland in Arise, My Love. ~. Midnight. Thirties screwball comedy. Barrymore, Betty Field's co-ed in a plucked-eye- Her incredulous waking, between the playing not one of the screen's most ad- brow version of a New Jersey high silk sheets of a plush hotel suite, is a mirable characters, wins our respect ut- school-is alien in every way to a scene to be savored even more than that terly, primarily through the convincing Wilder-Brackett imprint. One presumes of Jean Arthur's working girl in a pent- kind of set speeches that Wilder will put they signed their name on the script and house suite in the Preston Sturges-au- in the mouths of many other hard-boiled hurried off to work on Ninotchka, a thored Easy Living (also directed by realists throughout his career. prime step fOf\\vard in Wilder's Holly- Mitchell Leisen). Sturges was then the wood education. prime, on-the-spot standard bearer at As an apologist for the way of the Paramount for the right of a talented world, Barrymore will be succeeded in Ninotchka would be the first truly bal- screenwriter to direct his own work, and the Forties by such characters of divided anced, three-act script bearing the in such nose-to-nose parallels like this , respect as Erich von Stroheim's de- Wilder name in America, and it would one feels that Sturges has the decided fender of the German Superman in Five be the first featuring a major star tran- edge in comic repartee and confronta- Graves to Cairo, Edward G. Robinson's scending typography through a unique tional dialogue. The Eve Peabody computerized prosecutor of insurance gift of an inside-outside perspective on awakening, however, is more felt , expe- swindlers in Double Indemnity, Frank Hollywood iconography. Alongside rienced, and relished, and herein enters Faylen's tough, wise, alcoholic-ward playful vant-to-be-alone quips, there is Wilder's edge in his more co nvincing guardian in The Lost Weekend, and Mil- room within Garbo's commissar for a 30

curt, grim id eo logue as well as an effu- titl es th e m se lves, diffe rin g fro m in vo lve d na turali za ti on process . T he sive, swoo ning rom antic without doing Wilde r's late r ca ree r, co nfirm th e su- headline co nte nt was minor he re, on th e harm to the myste ry of he r almos t ce les- pre macy of the und e rl ying script; each ord e r of social proble ms th at today's TV ti al narcissism . G arbo's N inotc hka is a titl e of th e three Le ise n-directed film s is movies solve three times a seek. T he case of reco nstructing ty pe he roica lly- lifted fro m a key passage . Colbe rt rue- film was c ru cial to Wilde r, neve rthe less, a lesson Wild e r ca n' t be c redited for full y states at midpoint, \"Every C ind e r- in the way th at hi s e ffort to align the since Garbo initi ated the proj ect, but e lla has he r midni ght.\" M ill and uses Ke tti F rings story with hi s ow n expe ri- from which he learned dee pl y. \"A ri se my love\" to e nco urage hi s fi ghte r e nces we re subsequ e ntly alte red to fit planes, co urt Co lbe rt, and fin all y rouse p ro tests from th e M exica n gove rnm e nt, One ca n deduce from Wild e r's direc- America to a nti- Fasc ist milita ncy. torial ca ree r that here was th e best un- C ha rles Boye r uses \" H old bac k th e from Boyer, and from L e isen. In the publi shed c ritic a nd obse rver of the daw n\" in co nversati on as a me taphor for sc reen in Ame rica, who saw pote nti ali- the imposs ibili ty of his love for Oli via de film , L e isen playa Paramount director ties in pe rformances missed by every- H av illand and in action as a praye r that on scree n who saves the Boye r c harac- body e lse. H e wo uld stre tch G in ge r she will survive the ni ght on a hospital te r's honor and soul-ironically, for he Rogers in he r three-gene rational role in bed until he arrives at he r side. was rea lly the bete-noire medioc rity who The Major and the Minor and Ray M il- is re me mbe red for driving Sturges afte r land as th e wino-write r in The Lost Week- Arise My Love, afte r a few misste ps two films and Wild e r afte r three to th e Olivia deHa villand and Charles Boyer Gary Coop er and Claudette Colbert on the set of Blue bea rd 's Eighth Wife. in H old Back the D aw n. between Milland's aviator saved at the torial control. end. He would play Fred MacMurray las t second from a Franco firin g squad brilli antly again st ty pe in Double Indem- and Colbe rt's wave ring ca reer re porte r, Some of th e despair of the original nity. And he would tap mythic resonance is a daring affirmati on of rom antic love in Wilde r-Bracke tt sc ript co mes across in in von Stroheim , j\\/[ariene Dietric h, and the teeth of threate ning war headlines. such stark sce nes as an exile's suicid e by Gloria Swaso n only intuited by the most Milland and Co lbe rt's toss ing of cocktail hanging, but the main lesson learned perceptive cinema buffs. glasses on the S.S. Ath e nia into the about suga ring cy nicism with se ntime nt wake of U-boa t torpedoes, and their was in th e fashioning of a dange rou s, • second pledge aga in st the Nazis in the opportunistic rogue in Boyer's Geo rges forest of Compi egne armistice, suggest Iscovescu, who redeems himself in the The last two years of the Wilder- informed me lodrama of the gutsies t, final minutes of H ollywoodi an clinch. Bracke tt appre nticeship at Paramount warmonge rin g ord e r. The rap was in on virtually every Wilde r were large ly concern ed with what co uld protagoni st of the next three decades, happe n to th e best-l aid scen arios, but With Hold Back the Dawn, Wild e r and for the patte rn s we re hard-se t. The th e ir re putation as the leading writers on Brackett turned to th e pli ght of ali e ns stren gths and weaknesses of th e next the lot were co nfirmed with th e re lease huddled benea th the Mex ica n bo rd e r, a twe nty-four directions can all be pe r- of Arise My Love (1 940) and Hold Back milieu not unfamili ar to Wild e r, who re- ce ived in th e first six Wild e r-Brackett the Dawn (1 941 ). Both are daring flirta- sided there temporaril y as part of hi s scree npl ays for Paramount and M e tro. ~ tions with the real world outsid e the Spanish ga tes on Marathon Street. The 31

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· ection 33

Jacques Dutronc in Jean-Luc Godard's Every Man For Himself. Veni, Vidi, Video ... fact that certain video artists (Bill Viola sense, the soaps are pure Television.) and Barbara Buckner come immediately The communality of the TV public is ... Or so dispirited movie purists and to mind) are extraordinarily sensitive to militant videologues would have us be- the specific qualities of the video image of a totally different order than that of lieve. The aphoristic comparison, \"Cain -just as it might be noted that Josef von the movie audience. As a child, I re- et Abel = Cinema et Vzdeo,\" scrawled on Sternberg was extraordinarily sensitive member watching the Wednesday night a blackboard in Jean-Luc Godard's to the specific qualities ofstudio lighting telecast of Disneyland and taking enor- Sauve Qui Peut ,perversely reverses this and black-and-white film. Movies and mous pleasure in the knowledge that apocalyptic vision. But if video kills its video are two kinds of Cinema. The right then sets were blasting on all over older brother, it will be slowly-and only ontological difference between America-every kid in the country was with kindness. them is that movies have a chemical- watching the same thing I was and we mechanical basis, while video has an were all doing it at the exact same mo- The great movie-video polarity is electronic basis. What this means is that ment. In other words, Television (in- pretty much a red herring. (The real the video image is immediately retriev- cluding cable, satellite, and low-power polarity, as we shall see, is Cinema-Tele- able as information; it can produce in- TV) is that cinematic event which ev- vision.) In a recent Village Voice essay, stant feedback. eryone talks about the next morning at Carrie Rickey posited the essential work. Considering the monolithic na- movie-video dichotomy as one of scale: Video is not necessarily Television. ture of network TV, the invention of the \"Movies microscope; television tele- For one thing, the latter is continuous. A Sony PortaPak was a far more epochal scopes.\" Sure, unless you're looking at TV set is a household appliance; turn on event than, say, the development of the an 8mm porno loop or watching a prize- the faucet and out comes \"television.\" If 16mm camera. Television before half- fight simulcast on a wall-sized screen. we define Cinema as the gathering to- inch tape was comparable to the situa- Another commonly made distinction gether of an audience to attend a partic- tion in Poland after the December coup: concerns the nature of the image. When ular recorded sound-image event, then a radio, but no telephone. (Or, to be we watch a TV monitor we're staring videotape played in an art gallery is as somewhat recherche: TV before video directly into the light source; when we much Cinema as the unspooling of Abel watch a movie we're catching the light Gance'sNapoleon at the Radio City Mu- = langue without parole.) reflected off a flat surface. Fine, but sic Hall. Television, on the other hand, where does this leave projected video? is predicated on an atomized, far-flung • public. As a cinematic delivery system, In essence, movies and video are the Television creates a simultaneous and The Korean-born Nam June Paik is same thing: a two-dimensional record- metaphysical \"there.\" Its purest form both the inventor and \"first name in ing of moving light, with optional syn- would be something like transmitting entertainment\" of video art, its Vladimir chronous sound. This isn't to ignore the sunshine to stay-at-homes. (In this Zworykin and Milton Berle combined. Paik's 1963 exhibit of doctored TV sets announced the birth of video art; two years later he purchased the first Porta- 34

Pak unit sold in the U.S. By the end of lessly repeat Jack Ruby's assassination of Television, the zoom was one TV device the Sixties, Paik had developed a video Lee Harvey Oswald. The combination which had a major impact on Hollywood production values. \"image processor\" (or \"synthesizer\") of multiple point-of-view and slow mo- The connotations of a made-for-TV that enabled him to lay on electronic tion in \"instant replay\" (or \"instant anal- movie are of a topical, low-budget, fact- blurring, consensus-oriented, dispos- special effects as thick and spectacular as ysis,\" as it is known in TV news jargon) able film, working on an intimate rather than an epic scale. Although the results one of Dagwood's sandwiches. can be considered Television's greatest can be superb (e.g., ABC's 1977 serial, Washington: Behind Closed Doors), the It was part of Paik's genius to see the pure-video contribution. formal innovations are minor. But the TV as an object, as well as to discover It is by no means Television's only development of videotape in the mid- Sixties created the possibility for new video as a medium.· Most of the artists intervention into Cinema. That the pro- kinds of hybrid Cinema. Scott Bartlett and Tom DeWitt's 1967 OFFONwas the who followed him have opted for either liferation of TV sets during the Fifties first of these, transferring film images to video, exploiting video's capacity for object \"installations\" or else videotapes. produced a nation of home-installed re- colorizing and feedback, then transfer- ring the result back to film. The use of A rare exception is Joan Jonas's 1972 vival theaters may have done more than video for titles or special effects in Hol- lywood movies also dates from the late Vertical Roll-a tape that not only iso- any other phenomena to foster a sense of Sixties. Nevertheless, it was only mar- ginally explored. It is symptomatic of lates a specific quality of the video image American film culture. But although the Hollywood's conservatism that the first American feature to make extensive use but which also, given time, creates a cartoons, weepies, and horror flicks of of video transferred to film, Frank Zappa's 200 Motels (1971), came from visual force field that totally deforms the the Thirties and Forties were available the most self-consciously \"freaky\" seg- ment of the culture industry. space around the TV monitor. to students all day long, it wasn't until Not surprisingly, Zappa's effort had Paik was seldom so stringent. With 1961-when NBC floated How to Marry considerably less cultural cachet than Michelangelo Antonioni's more recent sock-a-deJic insouciance, his 1973 aMillionaire as the first Saturday Night at experiment along the same lines, IlMis- tero di Oberwald. Here, the overwhelm- Global Groove scores African rituals, the Movies-that the networks realized ing sensation is of looking over the maestro's shoulder while he fiddles with Navajo rain dances, Korean ballet, and the audience-grabbing potential of the the knobs on the video synthesizer. Only once does Antonioni pull out all leggy tap dancers to Mitch Ryder prime-time feature. In 1963, MCA-Uni- the stops, with a splendid helicopter swoop over Monica Vitti galloping screaming \"Devil with a Blue Dress.\" through pink fields on a blue horse, her punk crimson hair limned against a ca- The half-hour tape, whose images are Although not nary sky. As Vitti earlier exclaimed upon laced with stroboscopic hot pink and specifically invented discovering an assassin stumbling into cobalt blue scribble-scrabble, was origi- her boudoir: \"At last something is hap- nally shown as Video Sea-an installa- pening at Oberwald!\" tion of seventeen monitors, face-up on for television, the Undoubtedly, the most brilliant hy- the floor, blaring and zooming in unison. brid has been Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville's 1975 master- The most ontologically slippery form of zoom was one piece, Numero Deux. Like some Ameri- artist's video makes use of the technol- TV device which can sitcoms, the film deals with the ogy to create closed-circuit feedback had a major impact effect of modern capitalism on the sex systems. When presented on tape, as on Hollywood lives of a young working-class couple, with Richard Serra's 1974 Boomerang, except that it's set entirely inside Go- these systems are clearly video; when dard's Grenoble studio and played out created \"live,\" as in the installations of on two TV monitors. Despite the super- ficial minimal ism, Numero Deux is Peter Campus and others, they are a production values. among the most visually compelling form of avant-garde Television. films that Godard has ever made, using versal invented the made-for-TV fea- the video monitors to develop a dozen • ture with Don Seigel's remake of The new ways of splitting the screen or layer- ing the image (effects which are far more Ever since the mid-Sixties, Televi- easily achieved with a video synthesizer sion has also availed itself of video tech- than an optical printer). nology. This is paradigmatic in its sports Killers (too violent, and so first released coverage-most impressively, NFL to theaters); ABC pioneered a regular Football during the reign of Richard series of made-for-TV movies in 1969. Nixon and ABC's treatment of the 1976 By the end of the Seventies, TV movies Olympics. Sports allow the greatest oc- had become both Hollywood's bread casion for video feedback or \"instant re- and butter and a European means of play\"-created, according to broadcast avant-garde patronage: A substantial historian Eric Barnouw, in order to end- proportion of the most innovative film ·Paik's mainstream analogues should also be narrative and experimental documenta- acknowledged. Since 1965, New York station ries of the last decade were produced WPIX-TV has made a Christmas Eve ritual of under the auspices of West German TV. telecasting a four-hour look of a burning \"yule log,\" thus transforming TV sets throughout the Although the made-for-TV mode in- metropolitan area into the electronic hearths cludes a few aesthetic triumphs (Steven that pundits always said they were. Spielberg's Duel, Roberto Rossellini's Blaise Pascal, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's In terms of video art, Ernie Kovacs is as im- Ludwig), it mainly created a recogniz- portant a pioneer as Paik. At least a decade able and much-maligned visual style before the development of videotape, Kovacs based on over-determined dramatic experimented with multi-camera set-ups to cre- climaxes, shallow-spaced interiors, ex- ate crude but effective video special effects: tended volleys of reverse-angle close- keying, matting, miniaturizing, split screens, ups, the narrative use of automobiles double exposures, negative images. (See my and telephones, and frequent zooms. \"vulgar Modernism,\" Artfarum. February 1982, Although not specifically invented for for a discussion of the Kovacs oeuvre in the context of Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, and early Mad magazine.) 35

With much fanfare, Godard's some- The Cable Boom \"With narrowcasting, you get a lot times patron, Francis Coppola has more efficient buys,\" claims Bob Pitt- moved into video as well. Coppola's Sotheby Parke Bernet is a Manhattan man, a young mogul at one of cable's original intention for One From the auction house, where the subtlest nods fastest growing program services, Heart, as he explained to Jonathan Cott and most discreet murmurs can signal Warner Amex. This hybrid of Warner in their Rolling Stone interview, was transactions worth millions of dollars. Bros. and American Express operates \"taking theater and actually putting it on But tile old establishment had rarely three services: Music TV, The Movie a street in Las Vegas ... and shooting it, played host to so many high-rollers as it Channel, and Nickolodeon, a children's not like a movie but like a baseball did when fifty television programmers service. Most cable execs don't like to game.\" The end result-which, given met there last November. In less than play the numbers game. But in adver- its aspect ratio, color schemes, and I ten minutes of polite bidding, seven of tiser-supported television, the numbers Love Lucy narrative, may actually gain in them had agreed to pay a total of $90 game is what pays for programming. the transfer to home video cassette- million for the rights to bounce their made a more practical, if hidden, use of programs off an RCA satellite set to \"Budgets are still low,\" says Chet video technology. hover 22,600 miles over the earth. Simmons, former NBC Sports president who's now president of ESPN, a Thomas Brown, the recent supervisor Despite a later FCC ruling forcing twenty-four hour sports cable network, of Zoetrope's Electronic Cinema Divi- RCA to scrap the auction and set steep \"because ad revenues are based on a sion, designed an editing system that fixed prices, cable is ablaze. There are universe which is still relatively small.\" could construct a video \"story-board\" So cable services are faced with tight out of artists' sketches, the recorded thirty-nine program services currently budgets, lack ofchannel space, and high script, and musical accompaniment. available via satellite; fourteen more are start-up costs. Their reaction in this so- Once the actors began rehearsing, their scheduled to arrive this year, and a score called \"recession economy\" is unique: scenes were taped and used to replace of others are starting to make optimistic gung-ho aggressive, optimistic. Narrow- the sketches; during the actual shooting, noises. A mood of gold rush fever intoxi- cast services are popping up like lily- the rushes were transferred to tape, co- cates the industry as announcements of pads on a pond. ded, and used to produce an \"instant\" new services and new joint ventures be- rough-cut. \"At every point in the film- tween corporate giants fill the columns One example is Hearst-ABC's Day- making process, you have a complete of trade papers. In just a few months, time, an ad-supported afternoon infor- film at your fingertips,\" Brown told Satellite News Channels, the Weather mation and service show aimed at American Film. In short, Coppola used Channel, and the Cable Health Net- women. \"We intend to offer women an video technology to gain the same free- work called expensive press conferences alternative to soap operas,\" said Presi- dom of continuous revision enjoyed by to throw their gilded hats into the ring. dent Jim Perkins. Daytime kicked off more traditional artists at their easels or March 15, featuring an initial line-up of typewriters. (See page 46.) As with a gold rush, the feeling among Helen Gurley Brown, Julia Child, Phy- most cable programmers is that the first llis Diller, and others. Some of the seg- • ones to stake claims to viewer loyalty ments include ' \"Wife Line\" will be the ones to succeed. So, armed (marriage-related problems), \"Living At present, video is bestowing this with a marketing plan (that targets, say, and Loving\" (sexuality), and \"Parent- power on the image consumer. Home 28- to 45-year-old unmarried females) ing\" (for people who learned from the videocassette recorders (VCRs) compli- and a limited budget, a vast army of first two shows). cate the Cinema-Television duality. On them have set out to gobble up chunks a strictly phenomenological level, The of the six-and-three-quarters hours of Another narrowcast network is the Tonight Show is no longer Television daily TV viewing in each of80 million of Weather Channel, which provides 24- once you have removed it from the Tele- U.S. TV households. (The TV Bureau hour national weather coverage. Back- vision flow and are looking at it two of Advertising set that figure as last ground music has yet to be selected. weeks later. If Home Box Office is a year's national average. Soon, the FDA Local forecasts in text form will be su- technology for transforming first-run will have to quantify \"vidiocy levels.\") perimposed over the video every five movies into Television events, the VCT minutes. ABC anchor John Coleman has is a machine that turns Television into Like magazines and radio stations in overseen the $20 million project. \"Virtu- something for which I know no better the past decade, cable TV is carving out ally every activity, emotional and physi- term than \"Film.\" (Almost alone among specialized markets. It's called \"narrow- cal, is in some way related to the weather current video artists, Dara Birnbaum has casting\"-aiming an entire program -how we feel, how we act,\" Coleman created an aesthetic based on the prem- service at a fairly limited audience, such told a packed press conference in New ise of the VCR: She constructs her own as opera buffs, health nuts, or music York last summer. tapes and movies out of bits of Laverne freaks, to use a few cliches rampant in and Shirley or The Hollywood Squares.) cable chat today. The question that \"If all of the cable networks split up (luckily) won't be answered for a few the revenues from one network [ABC, If Television gave every American years is: \"Is narrowcasting financially vi- CBS, or NBC], there would be enough home its own personal rep house, the able?\" There are 23 million homes money for all of them to survive,\" said VCR has the potential to equip every hooked into cable, but at least half of Warner Amex's Pittman. Since each net- viewer with the equivalent of a Mov- these are on systems with twelve chan- work last year took in $1. 7-$2 billion in ieola or Steenbeck. The appreciation nels or less. The numbers tell the story: revenues, the demise of one would pro- thus engendered for fragmented (or fet- an advertiser paying for time will not vide a fat pie to be sliced. If or how soon ishized) bits of \"Film\" will likely have as reach nearly as many homes as he does a network will fold is anybody's gu~ss, profound an effect on the film culture of on broadcast TV. But not the whole but a recent study put some ominous the Eighties as TV had on that of the story. graffiti on the VHF wall: in the last five years, the networks have lost nine per- Fifties and Sixties. -J. HOBERMAN 36

• captured its satellite space with style. Satellite time is crucial. Without it, it's Cable programming arrives in a viewer's home in two ways: as pan of like having a conveyor belt without the either a viewer-paid or an advertiser- belt. Black Music Cable President Percy Sutton, in exactly forry-three seconds of supported service. The eight pay serv- raising his paddle at Sotheby's last No- ices today offer almost exclusively vember, committed himself to pay movies, about halfa year after their box- $10.7 million for a seven-year lease to a office close. (The \"dogs\" are offered 'trans~)onoer on RCA's Satcom-4 satel- sooner, said one Paramount exec.) With 8 million subscribers, Home Box Office •lite. And that was considered a bargain. towen over its competitors. \"HBO are Before 1975, cable was nothing but a probably the only guys in the business wire that brought clearer TV pictures. making any money,\" said John Lack, Then, when it hooked up with satellite another young mogul at Warner Amex. technology, a communications revolu- \"I'd be embarrassed to show you my tion began to take place. A satellite en- ables a programmer to stand in one place books,\" he told the audience at a New -say, Topeka, Kansas-and shoot his shows up into outer space, bounce them off a transponder on a satellite, and have them return in the form of millions of signals reaching two-thirds of the United States. Satellites cost around $60 million each and can't be launched overnight. Be- cause of the long time needed to build, test, and (God help the impatient) re- ceive FCC approval, there has been a severe housing shortage in outer space. With few transponders available, the price ofa lease has sky-rocketed, upping the ante for entering the cable program- ming game. In a mock-serious voice, Henry Zemsky, general manager of a small Connecticut cable system, says: ''The strong shall survive, and the weak will sell their transponders.\" That state- ment covers a lot of ground toward un- derstanding cable today. Programming, marketing, and trans- ponder leases all cost money. To help spread the cable risks, several American corporations have been mating recently. ABC intermingled its assets with Hearst on two ventures (ARTS & Daytime), with Westinghouse on two twenty-four- Orleans cable convention in October. hour news services (Satellite News Who are some of the fleas nipping at Channels) and with Getty on a pay the networks' ankles? They range from sports venture. NBC's parent company, Christian networks to video game sup- RCA, has opened a joint checking ac- pliers, from news services to adult pro- count with Rockefeller Center Inc. to gramming. Playcable is trying to found perhaps the best-funded cable capitalize on the video game boom by venture: RCTV's The Entertainment offering 15 rotating Intellivision games Channel. This is the culprit who outbid for about $12 a month to the subscriber. PBS for all the BBC programming. The Nashville Network is scheduled to RCTV gets first choice, and intends to go on line in 1983 with live shows from use BBC fare for up to forty percent of the Grand Ole Opry, comedies set in initial programming; theoretically, PBS country diners, country game shows, in- could buy some of the rejects in syndica- terviews, and young entertainers from tion the following year. RCTV also the nearby USA themepark. Another spent about $1.2 million for Pippin star- music service planned is Black Music ring Ben Vereen, and has contracted Cable Network, which doesn't have with RKO-Nederlander for ten Broad- many details on its programming but way plays. 37

Two other cultural services (even Penthouse also set its sights on \"adult\" four or five years off on that. \" though Arnie Huberman, RCTV's Vice cable. The Avis of soft-core announced Christian programmers are also gam- President, often turns blue saying the it would offer the PET Network last Entertainment Channel isn't cultural) October, hiring Telemine to produce bling that narrowcasting has potential- are CBS Cable and ABC ARTS. Both the material, but has yet to broadcast a evangelistic potential. The Rev. Pat .are advertiser-supported, and both are single show. Since Telemine has relin- Robertson is a true American success 'suffering from a common illness: lack of quished its right to its only two story: he parlayed a failing broadcast TV advertisers. In months of service, nei- station into a cable network with 14.7 ther has accumulated even a dozen Video executives de- million subscribers, second in rank only sponsors. to Ted Turner's Superstation WTBS. vise the oddest lingo \"We're not Bible-waving, pulpit-pound- The broadcast networks are hedging ing Christians,\" says Christian Broad- their bets by wading into cable. Many to describe their casting Network's Earl Weirich. \"It's people worry, including the staff at PBS, more of a subtle message. \" what effect the double whammy of hardware. 'We mount Reagan budget cuts and the rise of net- What's a quiz show on a Christian work-funded cultural cable service will the bird next month have on the nation's only non-profit net- network called? Why, Bible BafJle, of work, PBS. The staff there has been and expect to achieve sculpting a cable service of its own, but course. CBN has added a soap-opera as that project seems to have gotten lost in quick penetration,' committee. well. Press releases for Another Life said one cable boss. Countering the doomsayers is George promise it won't avoid \"promiscuity, Marketos, senior vice president at the There were nofeathers nation's second largest public TV sta- adultery, child abuse, aberration of per- tion, WNET in New York. \"First off, I on his lapel. don't think the market is big enough to sonality, jealousy, pride, fierce ambi- handle all the cultural services once the transponders, it's a good bet that a rup- initial hoopla dies down,\" Marketos ture between the two companies is im- tion, and lust. \" Weirich says the biggest avers. \"And second, we're really the minent. founder of this type of programming. difference between Another Life and Our experience should enable us to \"We mount the bird next month and compete effectively. \" expect to achieve quick penetration.\" network soaps is that \"we show there are That's what a sane calm executive in the • adult cable business said recently, look- solutions to life's problems .... We hope ing as dapper and self-confident as could Another ballplayer entering the nar- be. There were no feathers on his lapel. people will come away with some rowcasting field is Playboy. The long- The \"bird\" is, of course, slang for a sat- time king of adult soft-core fare, Playboy ellite, and the hoped-for penetration by hope.\" debuted with four hours of program- Eros, an R-rated cable programming ming January 22 on Escapade, an R- service, isn't sexual but financial. Eros Several other Christian services are rated movie channel with about 200,000 President Brian 0' Daly said he will offer subscribers. A sixty-minute video ver- R-rated films late night on Thursdays, also delivering the Christian message sion of the magazine included an inter- Fridays, and Saturdays. He predicted view with John and Bo Derek at their that his service and Playboy's would into cable homes daily. The Praise the ranch. Opined John: \"Without love, dominate the marketplace. Drawing a [sex] is gymnastic, and I've never cared bead on his competitor, he said, \"We Lord Network, Christian Media Net- that much about exercise.\" don't think people will sit through a lot of service and lifestyle shows to get to work, Trinity, Episcopal TV Network, Also featured was the first video cen- terfold (Shannon Tweed), a ribald clas- Insomething with a little sizzle it. \" Eternal Word TV Network, National sic (Boccaccio's \"The Mercenary Mistress\"), a wrestling match between • Christian Network are all respectfully Taxi star Andy Kaufman and a playmate, and a performance by ex-Bunny De- The accusation of lack of program elbowing each other for channel space- borah Harry with Blondie. Playboy in- quality is often thrown at cable. \"The tends to increase its programming on entire cable production market still adds and soliciting viewers' alms to help fight Escapade until the service will change up to less than a single broadcast net- names and become \"The Playboy work,\" said Ed Bleier, executive vice The Good Fight. Channel.\" president at Warner Bros. TV, who's been involved in American entertain- Advanced technology can make for What's a quiz show on an R-rated ment for more than twenty years. \"You'll channel called? Why, Everything Goes, see there's a boom in production, espe- strange bedfellows: Mother Angelica's of course. Contestants play roles, get cially in the tape area, in lower-cost pro- dressed up like doctors and nurses, or duction, like music and specials. But I Eternal Word network shares a satellite teachers and pupils. \"There isn't total don't know how much of a boom there nudity,\" says producer Scott Sternberg, will be in film production, or made-for- transponder with the U.S. Army. The \"the contestants never take off their G- TV or network series. We may still be strings. \" National Christian Network uses the same transponder by day that Playboy uses occasionally by night. • Ted Turner is the leader of the band in almost every article on cable, which is why he is arbitrarily downplayed here. Any man who loves Bambi and can out- manipulate the networks deserves a lit- tle p ivacy-even if he doesn't want it. • The list goes on and on: Supersta- tions, USA Network, Spanish Network, Jewish Network, news, spons, political, volunteer (public access), and others that even the founders may not be capa- ble of describing. Cable's major flaw could be timing. More than eighty cable program services could become available within a year while channel space and viewership re- main limited. One technician described it this way: \"All dressed up with no place to go.\" -RICHARD ZACKS 38

~OCk '0 Video! they could no longer afford to publicize charm of the Richard Lester's Beatles up-and-coming groups through expen- promo, A Hard Day's Night (1964). Pan- See hear now: Video music may re- sive national tours, they opted to use dering to rock's biggest audience- tapes as a marketing device. AOR's vi- teenage males-the enacted songs place records entirely. Just as advances deotapes, like the music they docu- focus on love, often with a misogynistic in stereo technology rendered monaural ment, are almost always studio efforts, point of view. These illustrated ro- record players obsolete, the silicon-chip carefully orchestrated to present groups mances usually short-circuit; three-and- revolution may makes stereos a thing of in the best possible light. Costing about a-half minutes doesn't allow for much the past. Stereo sound for video cassette $10,000 each, they are a cheap means of exciting visual foreplay. In fact, most recorders and televisions is quickly be- advertising by industry standards. Easily tapes are tamer-and infinitely sillier- coming cheap enough for home use. shown to buyers at trade conventions than Elvis on Ed Sullivan back in 1956. Rock fans, the major consumers of so- and to a mass, young audience on late- The sex on MTV probably never will phisticated stereo systems, will be night network rock shows needing filler, get really hot: Pittman runs a tightly among the first to buy this hardware. promos were understandably an instant censored ship. According to rock critic Though video music is presented in var- Jon Pareles, Pittman rejected The ious ways-broadcast, or screened in art Most promos emulate network TV's Tubes' \"White Punks on Dope\" be- galleries and music clubs-most of it is approximations of real·time perform- cause it pictured scantily-clad women intended for rockers, a mass audience ance: Groups lip-synch lyrics and play and a pro-drug message. Has Pittman with purchasing punch. mute instruments while the camera's watched the network soaps lately? eye lingers on a \"starring\" lead singer. • Yet though they often sell millions of The fevered spirit of teen rebellion records, most AOR groups just don't against family, school, and state, which The first rock-around-the-clock cable have strong visual signatures. A recent energized rock music from Buddy Holly station, Music Television (MTV) pre- Rolling Stone article dubbed these bands to The Clash, is sorely lacking at MTV. miered on August 1, 1981, beamed via \"faceless\" and challenged readers to You'll find a few promos providing social satellite into some 2.5 million U.S. identify photos of seemingly inter- commentary masked as comedy: In homes. The event was a dream come changeable band members. Devo's \"It's AWonderful World,\" an off- true for MTV's programmer, 28-year-old camera singer extolls the world's won- Bob Pittman, a marketing wunderkind Since MTV repeats hit songs about while Booji, the mutant space cowboy, with a practiced smile. Pittman began as once every six hours, the big question is watches scenes ofan America gone mad. a programmer for Album-Oriented Ra- what would motivate kids to repeatedly But most ofMTV's tapes have even less dio (AOR), an amorphous product of the watch footage of performers they barely Seventies that mixes hard rock's sound recognize. Quasi-documentaries are than the insipid AOR lyrics. (piercing guitars, ever-present drums) rarely engaging after the first see, and, The studio-oriented bands who write and pop's melodies, and is packaged to dependent upon formulas developed in and perform AOR hit songs have little please the widest possible young audi- the mid-Sixties, rather tired as a genre; say in their videotape productions. Most ence. video artist John Sanborn calls them \"re- are farmed out to commercials pro- heated Shindig and Hullaballoo.\" Even ducers, and the result is often aestheti- Backed by two years of market re- tapes featuring charismatic performers, cally mismatched video and audio. A search funded by MTV's parent com- -Mick Jagger or Stevie Nicks-pale few performers, like David Byrne of the pany, Warner Amex Satellite after a few viewings. Talking Heads and Ray Davies of The Entertainment Corporation (WASEC), Kinks, insist on making their own tapes. Pittman modeled the style and -sub- Narrative strategies are being devel- Byrne's \"Once in A Lifetime,\" made in stance of his programming on that of oped to enliven reruns. Most lack the collaboration with choreographer Toni AOR. MTVoffers nonstop video songs, Basil, is arguably the best promo yet interrupted only by cheerful hosts made. Byrne's interpretive performance (\"veejays\") presenting soft-music news, of a tongue-speaking evangelist, the occasional live concerts, and commercial song's subject, gives added dimension breaks (eight minutes per hour). Musi- to the lyrics, synergistically fusing sound cal segues are accompanied by visual and image. But few performers have the effects: wipes, superimpositions, and clout to demand creative control over dissolves. It's even broadcast in stereo, their tapes. And so the majority of circumventing television's tinny mono MTV's promos remain entertaining sound via a special \"stereo transmission commercials. processor\" which allows cable operators MTV's use of free promos keeps their (for a mere $1,400) to receive signals production costs low: At present, MTV from WASEC's satellite and launch it pays only a small performance fee, about onto the cable of an available local FM $.14 per screening, to BMI and ASCAP. frequency. Viewers pay an additional MTV's surveys point to increased record nominal fee for home stereo hook-in. sales for featured artists, and labels are likely to continue providing promos MTV's video songs are supplied free gratis. They may even use the promos as by record companies as a promotional ads for their own video-music features effort, like records to radio stations. slated for TV syndication or theatrical MTV has a playlist of over 500 of these release. Innovative independent pro- ducer Don Lett's feature-length docu- ~,promos.\" Most were made in the past few years, the product of fiscal crisis. 39 After record companies realized that

mentary of The Clash, The Clash on most never works on such a wide scale: sive video equipment because it keeps f Broadway was co-released with a promo. the leveling effects of popularization go restless patrons occupied as they await hand in hand with conservatism, a loss of the live sets that begin around 1 A.M. \" His strategy is sure to increase sales aesthetic highs and lows. MTV's video The bar is open, and its cash register of both film and record, and is a harbin- music is no different. The most intri- ringing, at all times. ger of future record company practice. guing video music is presented to a rela- tively small audience in closed-circuit Most of the tapes shown by veejays at There has been little complaint from situations, like rock clubs. clubs are promos, but of iconclastic per~ affiliates-though lots from rock critics formers: The Tom-Tom Club, Laurie regarding the hard sell evident in MTV's Rock clubs cater to the urban seg- Anderson, The Psychedelic Furs. Link- promos. According to MTV, viewer re- ment of MTV's audience: young adults ing tapes together like disco hits, one sponse has been unexpectedly strong. with a passion for music, like 22-year-old tape segueing seamlessly into the next, WASEC's preliminary research had indi- Charlie Libin, a chain-smoking film- veejays combine the skills of a disco cated that MTV's 12 to 34-year-old tar- maker whose choir-boy looks belie his deejay and a manic new-age TV pro- get audience rarely sat in front of a TV, city savvy. When Libin placed video grammer. Their blithe \"borrowings\" of seeing it merely as ambient entertain- monitors over the dance floor at Hurrah off-air footage, old movies, and experi- ment, but more recent studies have Discotheque in 1980, he heralded a new mental tapes enrich their programming, found the kids watching the station for era of club entertainment and made the taking the edge off the promos' com- hours without interruption. MTV's club one of the most popular in New mercialism. (Ivers and Amstrong also critics argue that TV cannot successfully York City. Danceteria followed with a feature their mildly erotic \"Girls Porn: mimic radio: An audience may listen to a TV environment: the Video Lounge, Boys Backs,\" a welcome addition to the song repeatedly but won't look at a vi- programmed by Pat Ivers and Emily male-dominated world of rock clubs.) sualization ofit as often, because the eye Armstrong, former filmmakers who Many veejays also make impromptu needs more stimulation than the ear. named their company Advanced Tv. tapes, spinning records and playing pre- These critics ignore the large playlist of Soon the sight of a new wave audience recorded visuals against them. The ef- diverse groups, providing a visual and honing into the eerie glow of TVs be- fect can be mesmerizing-an Eighties musical stimulation rare on broadcast came all too familiar. A bewildering ar- equivalent of the Joshua Light Show, TV. ray of video equipment also became a whose psychedelic visuals presented at standard club feature: viewers could Manhattan's Fillmore East in the late Much more could be done on MTV, watch tapes on TV set, or six-foot Ad- Sixties. Club video's disco-like format simply by aping the radio stations' appe- vent projected video screen, or even six- will probably last as long as the Light tite for nostalgia. There's plenty of ar- teen-foot Eidophor screen-state- Show: When last heard from, Joshua chive material available: a of-the-art equipment which costs a was a veejay. quarter-century of rock-and-roll TV stately half-million. shows and movies, from Bandstand to The clubs' current excitement is cap- Soul Train, The Monkees to The Magical The fad spread beyond New York tured and preserved in documentations Mystery Tour, Love Me Tender to The when club owners across the country of live performances shot by club vee- T.A.M.!. Show. There are potential clips became aware of video music's assets. jays doubling as tape producers. The from rock-docs (Don't Look Back, Wood- As former veejay Maureen Nappi economy of technical means (frequently stock) and newsreel service-how about only one camera is used) and the per- something from a mid-Sixties Rolling points out, \"video anesthetizes\": Club formers' own post-punk, pre-Vegas the- Stones press conference? The \"spe- operators are willing to invest in expen- atrics make for an engaging form of cials\" need to be more special, rather video verite. Pat Ivers' work with various than settling for the low production new wave bands has been anthologized values of an REO Speedwagon concert. in a series of tapes called Nightclubbing. Alas, it is reported that Pittman has al- She declares that these tapes are best ready considered these progressive ideas seen as \"propaganda,\" a way of seeing and rejected them. He wants it qu' obscure bands, slick, and samey-bland on' the run. Ivers and her partner, Emily Arm- Unlike MTV's main competitor strong, are very careful about who han- Flight, a music-oriented late-night pro- gramming service carried on USA Net- Quarterflash in concert on MTV. work, MTV screens almost no black music, only the occasional new wave group, and no experimental tapes at all. (Sadly, Night Flight's innovative content is often trapped in a corny, formulaic production style.) At present there are no plans to include these types of music on MTV. WASEC does plan other music stations, however, including channels devoted to black and country music. Ca- ble's much-vaunted narrowcasting may lead to a profitable form of segregation. • MTV is slated for a broad spectrum of American rock fans. Real innovation al- 40

dIes their tapes after losing many of their Branca, and George Lewis. Light years over a long period of time. masters during the police raid which away from industry product, the Expensive projects like installations closed down Danceteria in 1980. Merrill Kitchen's video documents offer a Aldighieri and Joe Tripician, who took glimpse of music available almost no- will become a thing of the past if the over at Hurrah when Libin left to work where else, like the rap songs of the Kitchen doesn't get more money; fed- on independent productions, are not so Funky Four Plus One. Preserved in a eral cuts in arts funding have forced it to wary..They have package a sixty-minute tape featuring Bowes' lyrical camera- seek earned income. To test the possi- tape for sale to the home market. work, the group's simple lyrics and pre- bility of lucrative broadcast distribution, Called, Live at Hurrah, this $60 video sentation expose myths of city life. But a forty-minute tape of video music had record features fifteen New Wave rap groups and most of the other bands been packaged. This thought-provok- groups including the Raybeats, the who play at the Kitchen are too avant- ing compilation features only one promo Bush Tetras, and Defunkt. -Byrne's-and two documentaries . Many producers, like Mauree Frank Zappa's Halloween concert at the PaLLadium on MTV. Nappi, are no longer interested in mak- ing documentaries. Nappi wants to be garde ever to gain wide acceptance. The main body of the tape is devoted to pan of the band, her instrument a cam- Since major record companies rarely formal experiments like Static, John era with music controlling the video sig- support unmarketable groups, and Sanborn and Kit Fitzgerald's study of nal. With the growing interest of bands smaller labels cannot afford to make sound-image analogues-what they call in elaborate stage performances, these tapes, the Kitchen's documentations \"visual humming\"-and Frankie Tear- ambitions may be realized. Video in serve as an-world promos. Hour-long drop , Paul Dougherty's accomplished clubs will move from the sidelines onto compilation tapes of music performance visualization of Alan Suicide's song: only the stage, becoming an intergral pan of are packaged for distribution by Bowes ominous sounds accompany these im- the performances themselves. It's un- and Greg Miller, the Kitchen's director ages of death and emptiness. The likely that audiences will ever devote ofdistribution. Most popular in Europe, Kitchen is also acting as producer for a their full attention to video; there are too they have also been show at galleries few feature-length video projects, in- many distractions-drinking, drugs and across the U.S. New Yorkers can see cluding the first avant-garde opera made live bands. Artists who have shown their these tapes on request in the Kitchen's for television, Roben Ashley's Perfect tapes in clubs complain of people talking video viewing room, a small space fea- Parts. This big-budget enterprise com- during the tapes. Most were paid in bar turing daily screenings. bines the hypnotic rhythms of Ashley's tickets, although clubs made money score with John Sanborn's cocky control from drinks sold during the perform- The Kitchen's gallery is the site for of editing technique. ances. video installations, like performance art, a product of Seventies dissatisfaction • • with traditional art categories-multi- The Kitchen hopes to sell these tapes media gesamtkunstwerks, neo-Wagner- to cable. So far there have been many For the art of video, the Kitchen Cen- ian conflations which have never requests but no buyers. Cable program- ter for Video Music and Performance in achieved the popularity or convenience mers have good reason to be cautious: New York's SoHo, is the only major of performance art. Video environments it's doubtful that these tapes will ever avant-garde showcase to include shows are rare. In Rob Wynne's recent exami- have wide audience appeal, even on the devoted to video music-snubbed by nation of topology, a sound resembling arts programming stations. Young rock most an centers because of its commer- an Arctic breeze accompanies this dizzy- fans form the base of video music's audi- cial associations. The Kitchen premieres ing array of videotapes, films, and blue- ence. The Kitchen's tapes are just too video tapes in its loft, on monitors print-like drawings of spinning marbles. idiosyncratic, too difficult for most rock placed at odd angles and different Brian Eno's One Fifth Avenue provides an consumers. Rockers look to video music heights. The audience sits on uncom- admirable model for future installations. for easy entertainment, not for aesthetic fortable wooden folding chairs which Echoing his perceptive statement, \"the challenge. Like AOR radio, most tele- dissociates this viewing experience from slower and more static an image is, in vised video music will feature \"faceless watching TV at home. Tom Bowes, the fact, the more like a painting, the more bands.\" Innovative video music, like Kitchen's wild-haired video curator, op- one could watch it,\" the work features that shown at the Kitchen, will rarely be erates a control board in the back of the music and imagery composed on the broadcast. The realities of the market- room. same principle: simple phrasing that place once again strike a sour note for art varies slightly in color and composition idealists. -ARLENE ZEICHNER A putative descendent of Major Bowes, host of radio and TV's Amateur Hour, Bowes features the best selection of video music around. There are no rigid formats here, no MTV playlists, none of the sense of tokenism entertain- ment that one gets in clubs. The feeling of community among the artists, the Kitchen staff, and the audience is linked to more hippy rock concens in the Six- ties than to today's cool music scene. The Kitchen's support of video music is an extension of its famed support of experimental musicians like Phil Glass, Steve Reich, Rhys Chatman, Glenn 41

Video Art place to show their work, PBS is still discovery of sexual difference. Ed regarded with ambivalence. Eager to Bowes, a filmmaker turned video artist, \"Video Art\"? \"Artist's Video\"? As reach the widest possible audience, has upended this analogy in Romance catchphrases they are no more or less video artists nonetheless object to the (1976), a two-hour, black-and-white accurate than the terms \"Under- \"artist\" stigma placed on their work by tape he produced with his brother Tom, ground ,\" Experimental,\" \"Avant public and cable TV. This isn't Real TV, a video cameraman-editor who is also Garde\" and \"New American Cinema\" the implication goes, just another artsy video curator at The Kitchen, and Karen when used to define films that have freak show. Achenbach, a writer, actress, and fellow made an aesthetic break with Holly- videomaker. Like L'Amour fou and The wood. We can say that Video Art com- Some video artists prefer to concen- Chelsea Girls, Romance weaves a tapes- prises electronic moving images, trate their energies on video installations try ofsymbiotic relationships rather than produced in formats of half, three-quar- in museums and other public spaces. relying on conventional plotting. An- ter, or one-inch tape, which depart from Exhibitions range from the \"memory choring the extraordinary in the every- the aesthetic norm of TV. Video Docu- rooms\" of Joan Jones (at Manhattan's day, the film also uses a figure of mentaries are those taking political posi- P.S. 1 this past winter) to the politically extreme sexual ambiguity to lead the tions unacceptable to TV. Few of these charged environments of Bill Stephens, narrative toward breakdown. works, as yet, combine radical form with whose Fire Four Walls, recording the radical politics. There is no video equiv- effects of fire on the Harlem commu- Tom (Ed Bowes) has been receiving alent to Dziga Vertov's The Man with a nity, was a highlight of the recent Film anonymous letters from someone who Movie Camera . and Video program at New York's Whit- appears to have access to his most secret ney Museum. They include the \"live\" thoughts. His love affair with Cheryl, The Art in video art is a commercial projection work of Peter Campus, the already threatened by his obsession with label, not an aesthetic guarantee. It re- architectural video of Dan Graham and this mysterious correspondence, is fur- fers to the orientation of its makers, as Michael Asher, the raw, propulsive crea- ther shaken by the arrival of Cheryl's well as to the primary sources of its pro- tions of Al Robbins, and the precise brother Tommy. As played by Karen duction, exhibition and distribution. Al- sculptural arrangements of Mary Lucier. Achenbach in leather drag, he/she is a though a few of the youngest video What all these works have in common is model of sexual ambiguity that Genet artists count video as their original me- the escape from fixed duration; outside would have envied-a soprano-voiced, dium, most video makers come from of PBS or cable \"prime time,\" they open sexually-charged six-footer whose ges- other disciplines: film, painting, sculp- up the viewer's relationship, in space tures are half Vanessa Redgrave and half ture, music, literature. Nam June Paik, and time, to the video image. Reggie Jackson, who wants to play with the father and still reigning master of the boys at the truckstop as well as the video, was first a musician and concep- • woman next door. No wonder Cheryl tual artist. Museums, galleries and alter- looks upset when she catches Tom nap- nate spaces (such as The Kitchen Narrative Video. The interest in ping with Tommy. She doesn't know Center for Video, Music, Dance and narrative video coincides with the reas- who her boyfriend's in bed with-her Performance in Manhattan) are the main sertion of narrative in recent avant-garde brother, her sister, or his own double. channels for its exhibition and distribu- film. What's odd is how many video art- Tommy is prone to violence, and when tion. Most funding comes from arts ists are still limited by their fetishizing of his romantic interlude with the neighbor councils at local, state, and national the visual at a time when filmmakers results in her death this strange triangle levels. have begun to question the assumptions is forced to take a vacation from the city. of three decades of avant-garde film. Although public television has pro- The narrative breaks down in the last vided both funds for video artists and a Some film critics have located the scene, as story, characters, even images new fascination with narrative in the dissolve. Tom Bowes' camera drifts analogy between the discovery of the crucial plot point and a young child's 42

around the snowy landscape as if freed duced since 1976 (which were the sub- camera to record , in painfully tight from gravity. The actors wander, de- tached from one another, their figures ject of a retrospective at the Whitney close-up, a hospital nursery full of new- barely differentiated from the gray ground, their voices obliterated by the Museum in March) constitute one of the borns, some barely ten minutes old. sounds of the wind and the sea. In a medium too often lacking in sensuous strongest bodies of work in video. His Here the paradox is the resemblance of qualities, the conclusion of Romance is transcendence. tapes are non-narrative, supported by the still-compressed infant faces to the Unlike Romance, which was originally ambient sound. In the analogies to mu- wizening of old age-and the seemingly planned as a film, Better, Stronger (1978) and How To Fly (1980) were intended for sical forms he makes when describing mimetic relation between the imperfect specific slots on the PBS network. Bet- ter, Stonger is a transitional work. Like his work, and in his placement of vision resolution and definition of video and Romance, it presents a strong central character at a moment of crisis, but its before and beyond language, Viola re- the still-fluid outlines of baby features. development is more agressively and consciously fragmented. How To Fly is minds one of the avant-garde filmmaker Viola has recently completed a long the first in a series of half-hour shows that Bowes wants to offer for syndication residency at Sony in Japan , where he has on local TV stations. The most collec- tively produced of the three tapes-ev- unlimited access to both a very fine low- eryone wrote, shot, directed and acted -it is a web of short scenes loosely held light camera and a highly sophisticated together by their association with the literal and metaphoric meanings of the computerized one-inch digital editing title, How To Fly. system. Unlike the situation at the TV \"At first,\" said Bowes, \"I wanted to make films. I was forced to make Ro- lab of WNET, the PBS station in New mance on video because that was the only way I could afford to get it done. Stan Brakhage. The tapes themselves, York, where the actual editing is done by Then for about two years, I only wanted to make video. Now it doesn't matter to with their extended temporalities and a union editor (sometimes a burden- me which I do. My interest is more in addressing societal and cultural prob- singular overall shapes, are more remi- some situation for finicky videomakers), lems than in making works of art. I want to reach a lot of people. That doesn't niscent of the work of Michael Snow. Viola used the SONY system by him- mean I'll pander to them. But television audiences will stay with programs, even Like filmmaking, video is a two-step self. Had he made them on his own, the the ones that make them angry or that they find too difficult to understand. process. The range of possibilities at the two tapes he produced would have cost That showed up in the analysis of the Nielsen ratings on Better, Stronger when shooting stage is more limited in video it was aired on PBS. than in film . For example, video cannot \"I can't write off as pure coincidence the number of stories that people have be shot in slow motion. And, until now, access to, primarily through television, and the complexity of our society. The the contrast ratio (the relation of the stories function repressively; they sift out most of what consciousness is. brightest to the darkest areas possible in That's why I'm interested in another way of telling stories. \" the image) has been much smaller in approximately $500,000. I asked Viola if • video than in film-one reason the this dependency on the support of a Non-narrative Video. Bowes is a video image seems so much flatter than large corporation, no matter how gen- video purist. But most video makers do not make a strict distinction between film. On the other hand, video offers a erous, did not make him uneasy. He video and film. \"Both work with moving images and sounds,\" said Bill Viola. \"In much wider range of image transforma- replied that he did not feel at all depen- twenty years, all moving images will be tions in the editing. Sophisticated video dent, that he could always return to sim- electronically generated. The Holly- wood people will continue to use them editing systems offer all the possibilities pler means of production. as they always have, and the indepen- dents will continue in their own way.\" of an optical film printer combined with Like Viola, the team of John Sanborn The dozen-odd tapes Viola has pro- l1'li .- and Kit Fitzgerald produces non-narra- tive works, heavy on the image transfor- .. 1IP mation side. Their editing style, more fragmanted and percussive than Viola's, . .... .. : table, and extends cleaner and less \"crazy\" than Nam June Paik, is often uncomfortably close to TV-commercial land. For the past two them both. Images can be compressed years, however, Sanborn and Fitzgerald and expanded in size and duration. have been involved in a provocative col- They can change color, split, combine, laboration with the composer and per- be decomposed and rebuilt. formance artist Robert Ashley. The Bill Viola's work leans heavily on the work is a seven-episode opera for televi- image transformations of the editing sion, Perfect Lives (Private Parts), for stage-with two remarkable excep- which a half-hour overture trailer, Music tions, Chott el-Djerid (A Portrait in Light Word Fire And I Would Do It Again (Coo- and Heat) and Silent Life. In Chott el- Coo): The Lessons, has been completed Djerid, two snow-covered landscapes and aired on New York's WNET. form a prologue to extended views of the Music Word Fire brings the Sanborn- Tunisian desert. These seemingly Fitzgerald anti-narrative forms up slowly shifting landscapes are recorded against Ashley's fascination with story- via \"a high-velocity data flow that makes telling and sung-spoken monologues. it the fastest thing in our daily environ- Like Ed Bowes, Ashley is interested in ment\" (his words). The spatial bends narrative-but dissimilar to TV dramas, and waves caused by the desert light and sit-coms, or Masterpiece Theatre. \"The heat are directly recorded by the video thing that's saved television,\" Ashley camera. They suggest-and are insepa- said, \"is live-action sports coverage. Per- rable from-the electronic instability of fect Lives (Private Parts) will be an opera the video image itself. that's like watching baseball on TV.\" In Silent Life, Viola uses a hand-held -AMyTAUBIN 43

Jack La Rue. Access shows, on the contrary, are so staggeringly crude that the schlep can Cable Freex The spread of cable and satellite tech- feel as though he's stumbled into his nologies has quadrupled that number, own living room. He is reassured: These Remember those thrilling days of yester- causing an explosion of choices, and al- people have no more on the ball than he year-the early days oftelevision, c. 1950 lowing a whole subculture of improba- -when the airwaves were pulsating with ble performers to thrust their does-and they're on 1V! prime-time wrestling matches, MO/logram videosyncracies into the limelight. serials, Jerry Lester and Dagmar? When, Public Access was originally con- in the Today Show slot in Philadelphia, Like many sudden technological ceived as an outlet for community affairs Ernie Kovacs was rousing his audiences leaps, this one brings with it a profusion programming, but soon became a foot- with inspired lunacy? When, for minutes of cultural mutations. Most of these odd in-the-door for guerrilla television. on end, a manic pitchman pushed Charles new programs will succumb to the tyr- Much Access time is going begging, ow- AnteLL Formula No.9 hair cream to the anny of natural selection once the new ing to a lack of community interest in tune: \"They'll oil it, boil it, bake it, shake,! structures are solidified. But, while the watching or creating local programming. Mop it, slop it, whip it, drip it,/Men, chaos lasts-and as long as the FCC Except in L.A. This is a town, remem- Women,/You're ruining your hair!\"? The remains lenient-TV will be spiced ber, where every cab driver has a screen- carnival prehistory of TV gave way to to- with the antics of a variety of cable ec- play under his clipboard, and every day's hypnotic blandishments-at least in centrics. busboy is ready to recite Brando's \"con- prime time, at least on the networks. tenda\" speech at the slightest provoca- Theta Cable provides twenty-two tion. Not surprisingly, Theta's Public Now, though, the cable boom has channels (not counting subscription Access time is filled with programming brought video freex. back on the air. Flip movie stations) to one section of Los that resembles an open casting call. For your cable dial on a New York Thursday Angeles. In the middle of the night, a modest fee, any would-be comedian night and you'll find: Frantic Fran dis- there are never fewer than nine pro- gets his performance transmitted into pensing Yiddishe mamaisms; a scrawny grams for the bleary-eyed video freak to the homes of every producer in town. lad known as The Vole taking rude calls choose from. What seems like a bonanza from viewers (and making rude replies); is tempered by the acute anxiety over The Tinseltown emphasis carries Love and Logic, a variety showfeaturing the choices this runaway programming over to other shows, like the one hosted an articulate gent given to radical philoso- affords. An evening of serious media by Marie Vega, self-alleged \"Haircutter phizing and the mispronunciation of abuse involves flipping through the to the Stars.\" Marie and her guest extol Mayor Koch's name as \"Mayor Kike\"; channel selector like Ann Miller at forty- the holistic properties of almond milk. Midnight Interludes, \"the world's first eight frames-per-second. Program Both women look frail enough to be sus- all-nude talk show\"; and the infamous schedules are unavailable, making it dif- ceptible to swoons. Ugly George, who trots around the Five ficult to linger too long on anyone chan- Boroughs with a backpack camera, per- nel for fear of missing something Marie is followed by The Johnny Re- suading women to undress for him while important elsewhere. Such fears are volting Show. This late-night Johnny, he talks dirty. But, as everyO/le knows, Los largely unjustified: Twenty-two chan- who looks hardly old enough to buy liq- Angeles is the Exhibitionist Capital of the nels do not, alas, increase one's chances uor in California, interviews an agent U.S., and it goes without saying that L.A. of finding something really good to who can get you an agent. Johnny, of has theflippiest cable stars around. Here- watch-only of tripping over something course, is very interested. An insurance strange. It's like playing a Pac-Man that claims adjuster by day, he's Johnny- with, a reportfrom the front. -R.C. talks back. would-be-Carson by night. • On local Public Access channels, In Violent Week in Review, a \"comedy\" tackiness is a virtue. Network TValways news show, disaster and bloodshed are Remember the old days, B.C.-be- emphasizes the gap between the schlep reported with a straight face. The joke is fore cable-when there were six or at home and the characters he watches. nowhere to be found in what looks a lot seven channels, tops? Not any more. like straight news reporting. Community service programs on PA are exemplified by the one where a smil- ing, pleasant woman reads announce- ments of flea markets, swap meets, high school productions of Our Town, benefit dances, etc. from a mountainous stack of papers on her lap. She appears to be auditioning, or practicing her elocution (B +), in a public-service format that makes ridiculous under-use of a visual medium. Mind you, the show is not entirely without movement: every ninety seconds or so, she turns to face a second camera. A woman, a chair, a stack of papers, a wall, and two cameras -Krapp's l:ast Tape, or the latest mini- malist performance piece. • Public Access signs off at midnight; other stations start to drop away. Choices 44

grow limited and more bi:tarre. On the ogy suggests. They have extended video's capabilities to the entire mov- Transcendental Meditation station Film into Video iemaking process. (their very own), an ageless M.M. Yogi \"Electronic Cinema,\" a term coined On One From the Heart, the term by Francis Coppola (0 describe his use of \"electronic cinema\" meant more than spouts profundities in a time-warped video and computer technology in film- video, and began long before registra- making, was also the official name for tion of an image. At the script-develop- acid flash back (0 the Sixties. what amounted (0 a venture subsidiary ment level, Coppola used a word of Zoetrope Studios. It's a designation processor not only to expedite any The Satellite Program Network- that neatly accommodates a practical changes or refinements he wished to philosophy: that video and cinema differ make, but also to store all the previous self-proclaimed \"Pioneers in the New only in degree of technology, not in fun- versions of the script, so that immediate damental aesthetic definition. It seems comparisons could be made without la- World\" -speciali:tes in the all-night only a matter of time before video will borious effort. threaten, replace, and ultimately im- movie programming. But what movies! prove upon cinema's supremacy over The next step involved image. In the image itself-not only in density but what Coppola called \"Previsualization,\" Romance in Vienna with Greta Golinsk, in size of presentation. When video has various versions of One From the Heart solved the challenge of emulsion pho- could be put to rigorous scrutiny. This Delinquent Parents with Doris Weston, tography, cinema will be dead as a tech- allowed a trial run of the script, one nology. As an art form, however, cinema which could expose narrative strength or and the unforgettable Hero in Blue with won't even feel the difference. weakness more clearly than a mere \"reading.\" Traditionally, a polished Jack La Rue. A shelf of reference books Video's present edge-it's faster (0 script remains throughout the shooting process and more immediately accessi- process a calculated gamble based on offers no information about any of these ble-has been virtually ignored by the many intelligent \"readings\" of words on movie industry as a tool where it posed a page by \"experienced\" professionals. films or their stars. except for jack La no threat (0 its denser, older sibling. The record shows a high percentage of The reasons may include old-dog fear of failed hunches. Coppola's technique ef- Rue (according to The Filmgoer's Com- new technology and the threat of craft- fectively and economically distilled the union resistance. script to its essential components, and panion, a \"grim-faced American actor, weeded out superfluous material before Without such a challenge, the adver- such material confronted budgetary born Gaspare Biondolillo, 1903\"). As tising industry has quietly made use of commitment. video as a useful adjunct (0 the process Henri Langlois often demonstrated, un- of making commercials on film. And Previsualization began at the story- from time to time, even movie directors board level. Storyboards have long been expected gems can be found shimmer- have utilized video feedback from the the crudest form of previsualization camera-jack Nicholson, for instance, available to a director; sketches of each ing in the garbage heap of film history. in Going South, to evaluate his perform- scene allow camera angles, set, and ance in a film he also directed. shot-breakdowns of a given scene to be The \"pioneers\" of SPN prove some- blocked out in advance. Their benefit in What distinguishes Zoetrope and the planning stages of a film is clear but thing else: that ten minutes of Hero in Coppola from the occasional, deferential limited, and like the script, inconclu- nod to video's \"mere\" technological ex- sive. In Coppola's \"electronic story- Blue make it appalingly clear why jack pedience, is their full commitment (0 boarding,\" the sketches were stored on a the logical exploitation such a technol- La Rue's face was grim. Before cable, the one late-night L.A. channel hung on with shows like Per- spectives in Education and Today's Reli- gion. Now, cable's own Gene Scott, the preacher from Glendale, seems to be there live, around the clock, with the countentance of one who hasn't slept in years in his vigil against sin. Scott is the perfect evangelist for late-night video freaks; he dares not leave the medium, even for sleep. Obsessed by one grand theme-the collusion between forces of Satan and the federal agencies who dog his operation-Scott rails on. The voice becomes hoarser; the blo\\odshot eves peer out from that body slumped i~ a chair. His doggedness is reminiscent of james Stewart mid-filibuster in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Close scru- tiny, however, lays to rest the suspicion that Scott. by some miracle of God, never sleeps. The varying length of his white hair reduces the miracle (0 video tape, and reassuringly confirms that Scott is home in bed, preaching to those Qr!lilUlIIl lIIlllll who are not. 1111111111111111111111 11 L.A. 's roster of cable characters is , :,UIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII supplemented by New York's joe \".111111111111 11111111 11 Fr.mklin, whose show is made available il 1111111111111111 11 by cable access to New 'ork's Channel 9 'lj:WIIIIIIIIIIII (WOR-TV). When joe signs off, there's : tlll!!lllllll always Ted Turner's Cable News Net- illillilill work from Atlanta, whose broadcasters Teri Garr in a scene from Ronald Colby's Six Shots, se'en on an HDV monitor. arc alert, bland, and aregional, on top of the news at an appalling five a.m. PST. Their start-of-a-new-dav demeanor sounds a clear death knell f;)r the old day out West. It's time to turn off the set and go to bcd. -ANDY KLEIN 4S

video disk, then transfered to videotape into luminous recreations of Las Vegas, vention and thus was able to continue along with rehearsal dialogue. The re- an intricate electronic network was in- his editing there. sult was a crude version of the film. stalled; it provided studio-wide access to When projected from a video console the camera itself. There was also a It was during the post-production pe- onto a large screen, this· marriage of multi-functional audio link-up. riod that Coppola began to design a port- drawings and dialogue produced a pow- able half-inch editing system. He had erful suggestion of how the scene might Coppola's system did not grow over- already modified two tiny commercial actually \" read\" on celluloid . The black- night from a flight of fancy. Long before SonyTV sets into monitors; their design and-white drawings changed angle and Heart, he had hired various \"techno- suggested a more sophisticated applica- focal length within the scene quite natu- brats\" to develop the concept of \"video tion. In the thick of post-production rally according to the dialogue played assist\" for a movie. Thomas Brown, for- pressure, Coppola envisioned a ponable back underneath them. Applied to the merly of George Lucas' ILM, was then system that would allow him mobility entire script, this method was able to hired to make it work-to negotiate while retaining his input and impact on save millions of dollars in scenes that with the companies that would supply the final editing. This system mayor traditionally would have survived the the equipment. With his soft-spoken may not be realized, but it reflects the shooting stage only to end up on the \"born-again\" demeanor, Brown made filmmaker's fervent belief: that the vast cutting-room floor. converts of companies like Sony and potential of technology must be con- Magnatech Moviola-at a time when quered and put to the service of cinema. The previsualization center was a for- the movie industry had all but aban- mer handball court on the Zoetrope lot; doned Coppola for his well-publicized • now it was called the \"war room\". At one financial difficulties. end of the long room stood an enormous A skeptic's question might be: If video console with monitors and their • the system's so great why wasn't the various feeds-videodisc storage units, film a success? Heart's critical worth video playback machines of varying size By the time shooting of One From the is an issue not in any way connected to and sophistication-with buttons that Heart began, the electronic network was the process under which it was made. could retrieve and combine all possible in place. Its heart was a Zoetrope version There is no visual effect in the film that elements at an instant. At the opposite of NASA's Mission Control-an Air- owes its existence to video technology, end of the room hung a large screen. stream trailer custom-designed to give or to the so-called aesthetics of video. It Between the two visible electronic in- Coppola both immediate access to all may be that to legitimize his profoundly stallations stretched a large table that aural and visual material and the power simple modifications of the filmmaking held scale models of the various sets. to synthesize the material instantane- process via video, Coppola should have Along the surrounding walls, in chrono- ously. Officially called \"Image and made a profoundly simple film-a dem- logical order starting from the left of the Sound Control,\" the compact vehicle onstration model, an etude. entrance, were pinned storyboard draw- (containing beds, a full kitchen, an ex- ings, installed so that entire scenes could presso machine, and a bathroom with One From the Heart is a simple fairy be shifted by moving the appropriate Jacuzzi) served as a sophisticated post- tale, but not a simple film-not in ways bulletin boards. Starting from the left production facility, where Coppola that can easily promote acceptance of his and continuing clockwise around the could mix image with multiple sound simplifying of the filmmaking process. room made possible a static visual \"read- feeds at the first playback of a given Video filmmaking cannot guarantee a ing\" of the film . shot. Ten yards from the vehicle's usual film's artistic or commercial success. It parking spot was an equivalent access can, and should, be applied to films of As rehearsals progressed, the draw- facility, where editors could avail them- any budget or scale-by narrowing the selves of immediate information from margin of failure and waste long before ings. were replaced first by Polaroid the sound stage, and provide those in they occupy the diversionary ingenuity photos, then by videotaped rehearsals. of a studio accounting department. At any point, Coppola could instantane- the vehicle with any material they might ously combine any of the progressive request to synthesize a given scene. • visual levels if he felt the need to do so. There were obvious benefits not only to On the soundstage, a video feed Zeotrope's video-assist continued Coppola, but also to Dean Tavoularis, within the camera allowed Storaro-and with the re-shooting of Hammett in De- the film's production designer, and Vit- everyone else involved-to see the shot cember of 1981. A ratio mask was added torio Storaro, the cinematographer. The in progress. Thus the creators could de- to the video screen (not needed with evolving versions of the film effectively cide if it should be printed or a different Coppola's 1.33: 1Heart ratio). Video pro- refined the cut in advance, and estab- approach tried. In addition, for the first vided another advantage: Coppola, as lished the mise en scene. These early time, every crew member from gaffer to executive producer, was able to view \"versions\" of Heart also allowed the grip was able to see the results of his every shot on a large screen in his studio composer Tom Waits, and his producer work immediately. As a result of all bungalow without hovering like an Bones Howe to time the script and be- these innovations, shots were set up and avenging angel over the set itself. He gin their score long before the first frame accomplished more quickly than could phone his suggestions to director of celluloid had been exposed. As a re- thought possible. Wim Wenders-who himself took ad- sult, Coppola was able to \"test\" the mu- vantage of the video feedback, eyes riv- sic over shots at the shooting stage. Video technology did not end on the eted to the screen during every take. sound stage. When takes were printed, Even during the rehearsal stage, they were immediately transferred to • Storaro had an electronic viewfinder to quality one-inch video tape. This accel- help him prepare his shots. As the nine erated the editing process, and made the One Zoetrope involvement in video soundstages were being transformed material more accessible to all. Coppola, experimentation has gone largely unno- for example. carried a half-inch version ticed. Last December, Zoetrope pro- of the film on a trip to a Las Vegas con- duced two short films on high-definition video (HDV) for inclusion in a major 46

Sony's High Definition Camera and the image through the viewfinder.

CBS promotional presentation of what In the CBS showroom, NTSC moni- HOV is seen as an inevitable step in amounts to an entirely new television tors had been placed next to HOV moni- modernizing TV-as stereo replaced technology. HOV runs 1125 lines across tors, and equivalently compared on monaural recording systems a genera- the TV screen (as opposed to 525 lines large-screen formats. Scenes from the tion ago. That step is large enough: it on U.S. sets and 625 in Europe). Its Rose Bowl parade, though not identical means the upheaval of an established development was financed mostly by in content, had been shot in both sys- technology, with an act of Congress in the Japanese government, through its tems. It was immediately apparent that the offing. For Coppola and Zoetrope, national network NHK, to companies HOV \"worked.\" Still something was however, HOVoffers more exciting op- like Panasonic and Ikigama. Sony, inel- missing in what should have been a tions: shooting a film on HOV, for exam- ligible for government funds due to its ple, and then transferring it to celluloid policy ofcorporate secrecy, also commit- breathtaking sense of \"Vive La differ- (a technology as near as June), without ted itself to the necessary research-and losing density and definition. If this is succeeded in far fewer years. ence\" -until the Zoetrope contributions so, the future is here. were shown. The reason is simple: the The press debut of HOV occured in Zoetrope shorts had been shot as fiLms, Now the future must be seized, after late January at CBS facilities in Los not as over-lighted compensations for almost a century of virtually stagnant Angeles. The program consisted of film that emerged from Pavlovian famil- cinema technology. Then there will re- taped scenes from the Rose Bowl pa- iarity to the old video. The Zoetrope main only two areas ofcelluloid suprem- rade, scenes from a segment of ABC's images were underlighted yet clear and acy: exhibition and projection. Those The Fall Guy, a live fashion show of deep. Taking their aesthetic impulse ramparts too may fall. When that hap- movie costumes and the Zoetrope from cinema, they succeeded in sug- pens video will not have replaced cin- shorts. These five-minute works had gesting the true impact of high-defini- ema; it will have become cinema-a been shot in four days by two men, Ro- tion video: that of replacing cumber- universal movie house in the, global vil- bert Swarthe and Ronald Colby, whose some celluloid with a technological lage. And filmmakers like Francis Cop- prior affiliations with the studio were not equivalent far easier and cheaper, with- pola will be liberated to ponder the directorial. They proved to be the pre- out relinquishing any of celluloid's limitless resources of the imagination. sentation's highlights. value. -BROOKS RILEY For CBS and other broadcasters, Teri Garr in Francis CoppoLa's One From the Heart. 48