realized. But I do not base this intimation which I take to be the later in composition, ideological structure, etc. Gaps and dislo- of value on any simple assumption that is incomparably the finer, reasonable, dis- cations only become of positive interest Mizoguchi and Ozu were somehow mys- when they are felt to have constructive tically blessed with greater powers of per- ciplined, and illuminating; I find its position meaning, to be significant-when they be- sonal creativity than Hitchcock, Hawks, almost wholly acceptable. It is a pity that come, that is, an aspect of the film ' s coher- and Ophuls (just as I don't assume that the the Signs and Meaning additional chapter, ence. This seems to me the case with WIND reason Mahler's symphonies are rather dif- because it has the comparative perma- FROM THE EAST. Like any work of art of any ferent from Haydn's is simply a matter of nence of book form, is likely to be far more value, Godard' s film challenges me to look personal temperament). An attempt to ac- widely circulated. (The After Image article at my assumptions about life, to question count convincingly for the superiority deserves to be top priority for any current my own values; it doesn' t throw me out of would clearly involve a very thorough in- compilers of critical anthologies.) itself to other works , except in the abso- vestigation of working conditions, the ex- lutely traditional sense that I am compelled pectations brought by Japanese audiences, I am compelled to say that Wollen's ac- to place my experience of it beside other the conventions and traditions available to count of the difference between our read- experiences. the artists, the general background and ing of modernist works and the traditional history of Japanese culture, the socio- ways in which art has been read seems to The reluctance to specify makes it economic-political circumstances of con- me compounded of confusions, distor- equally difficult to pin down the distor- temporary Japan. I would, at the same tions, and self-delusions in roughly equal tions in Wollen's account of traditional time, envisage no possible way of explain- measure-an extraordinary piece of fren- aesthetics. \"Non-realist aesthetics ...are ing the films' greatness without reference zied mystification. In traditional aesthetics, accused of reducing or dehydrating the to such concepts as \"genius\" and \"per- apparently, the mind was \" an empty richness of reality; by seeking to make the sonal creativity.\" I would see no possibility treasure-house waiting to receive its trea- cinema into a conventional medium they of supposing that the films could some- sure,\" but the modernists force us to do are robbing it of its potential as an alterna- how have come into being without the some work; instead of meaning being tive world, better, purer, truer and so on. presence at their heart of individual crea- communicated it is now \"produced,\" as In fact, this aesthetic rests on a monstrous tive genius. the result of this dialogue. delusion: the idea that truth resides in the real world and can be picked out by a cam- IV. THE MYTH OF MODERNISM Wollen creates continual problems for era . Obviously, if this were the case, The questions raised by the emphasis on the reader (but a compensating conveni- everybody would have access to the truth, ence for himself) by never allowing us any since everybody lives all their life in the real \"progressive\" avant-garde art can be pur- very precise idea as to what he is talking world . The realism claim rests on a sued further via an examination of the con- about: which works, which critics. But we sleight-of-hand: the identification of au- clusion to the second edition of Signs and can safely assume, I take it, that he would thentic experience with truth.\" Meaning in the Cinema . Let me preface this accept WIND FROM THE EAST (one of the few by remarking that, applied to works of art, actual works he specifies) as a representa- Just as it is impOSSible to identify these terms such as \"progressive\" and \"reaction- tive example of modernism. We might \"centrifugal\" modernist works, so is it im- ary\" have no evaluative status; they are conceivably read this film in the way Wol- possible to grasp exactly whom Wollen is purely descriptive. They may, however, len appears to suggest-as a sort of un- talking about here. Who is supposed to take on a relative or transitory evaluative coordinated rag-bag of bits and pieces- hold this incredibly naive and silly posi- force in accordance with shifts and until we have mastered the principles on changes in society. One might argue, for which it is built. When we have mastered tion? Simply to place a Hawks film beside instance, that in a period of revolution, those principles, however, the film is no a Bergman is to realize that they can't both \"reactionary\" art assumes potential impor- more difficult to read than Middlemarch . be presenting an absolute, objective truth; tance in that it embodies concepts and val- to add a third term to the comparison ues that are threatened with obliteration Correction: it is much easier to read, would be to suggest that neither does . and which might have something to be George Eliot's novel making far greater Simply to speak of an artist's \" view of life\" said for them. demands on the reader's intelligence and is implicitly to recognize that he isn' t im- concentration. When I read Middlemarch , I parting \"truth\" in Wollen's sense. \" Au- . There are two important documents by enter into a continuous dialogue with it. thentic experience\" is obviously one of the Peter Wollen on modernist cinema, the And that is the only way to read it. The things the critic is concerned to identify other being his essay on WIND FROM THE mind that is \"an empty treasure-house and evaluate, with all the complexities and EAST in After Image 4. I find them very waiting to receive its treasure\" is fated to qualifications that wiU involve. But who different in quality. The After Image article, remain empty, for there is no work of art of identifies it with \" truth\"? any significance that can be adequately re- ceived by being passively absorbed. These arguments are elaborated to jus- tifya commitment to an avant-garde that \"Modernism,\" according to Wollen, appears barely to exist; apart from recent \"produces works which are no longer cen- Godard, no one is allowed in it without re- tripetal, held together by their own servations. The commitment, nonetheless, centres, but centrifugal, throwing the is extraordinarily intense: \"It is necessary reader out of the work to other work.\" to take a stand on this question and to take What works actually perform this function most seriously directors like Godard him- is not revealed; presumably WIND FROM self, Makavejev, Straub, Marker, Rocha, THE EAST can again be taken as an example. The gaps and dislocations that critics now some underground directors ....\" seek in traditional texts are presumably There is a very curious passage about the raised by modernists to the status of a con- scious artistic principle . potential \"destructiveness\" of texts. \" Ulys- ses or Finnegan 's [sic] Wake are destructive There are serious problems here. Obvi- of the nineteenth-century novel.\" But de- ously, any bad, incompetent work is so be- structive in what sense isn't clear. Obvi- cause of its failures: its gaps and disloca- ously they have made it difficult to write tions. One could argue that an inept mys- nineteenth-century novels, but one hardly tery story in which the solution is inadver- needs to be told that; and one suspects that tently made obvious from the beginning Wollen means it has also made it irrelevant deconstructs itself, gives the reader critical to read them. I find the whole paragraph distance, enables him to inspect the (pages 171-2) extremely confused and con- FILM COMMENT 49
fusing. One can give most of the state- differently . \"His lessons were very in- sert all the time, but that is clearly not the ments, considered separately, a guarded teresting. He never said a word about the same thing. Except when Vladimir and assent, but the overall argument remains twelve-tone system. Not a word. He Rosa supervene, it is difficult to think of a partly unintelligible. looked through what I had written, he cor- single statement (beyond that of uncer- rected it in a very wise manner, and we tainty, perhaps) delivered in a Godard film The passage culminates in this: \"A valu- analysed Bach motets ....\" -the late Dr. that can be unequivocally construed as Au- able work, a powerful work at least, is one Otto Klemperer on Schonberg. thor's Message. The statements are set side which challenges codes, overthrows estab- by side as so many pieces of evidence for lished ways of reading or looking, not Bertolt Brecht, by Rudolf Schlichter. our serious consideration. Godard's point simply to establish new ones, but to com- of view is defined only in terms of the areas pel an unending dialogue, not at random V. IN DEFENSE OF of interest implied by the selection. but productively.\" I am not clear as to the 'WIND FROM THE EAST' distinction implied by that \"at least\" be- The paradox of the artist who has re- tween \"powerful\" works and \"valuable\" Part of the problem raised by Godard's nounced art is central to the critic's prob- ones: 1suppose a powerful work might not recent work can be suggested by the ques- lem. There is a sense in which any film is a necessarily also be valuable, but value tion: Whom are the films for? The obvious work of art and cannot not be, since some seems implied by the rest of the sentence. answer, supplied by Godard and Gorin organizing principle must be in operation. themselves, is for a small educated Marxist Yet there are a great many films- It is obviously true that a great artist-an elite. With this goes the implication that newsreels, for example-where what one artist, that is, who achieves, through per- the films are almost instantl y disposable: must call the aesthetic response is scarcely tinacity, integrity, discipline, dedication, revolutionary tools made for a specific local appropriate, or not appropriate as prime and personal genius, a truly individual purpose, redundant as soon as that pur- consideration, as central focus for discus- voice-modifies our sense of all that has pose has been served. sing our experience. The aesthetic response gone before, forcing us to readjust; and is not, for me, something separable from obvious too that the history of art is a his- Related to this are the questions: How our whole response as human beings; in- tory of continuous transformation and de- does a critic who is not a Marxist, or a deed, its nature is defined by this whole- velopment. But many of the greatest artists Marxist-Leninist, or a Maoist, cope with ness. But it also represents the critic's way have been as much consolidators as in- recent Godard honestly? And how does he of attempting to achieve a relative impartial- novators. Bach and Haydn, for example, do critical justice to an artist who has re- ity, to see and evaluate the work apart scarcely \"overthrew established ways\" of nounced art, short of renouncing him? The from shared or disputed particularities of listening; they built on the formal proce- Marxist answer will be, presumably, that dogma or creed. dures and established idioms with which of course he can't, as bourgeois ideology is their audiences were familiar, developing an edifice of lies and anyone who isn' t a The opposition between \"work of art\" and extending their possibilities. There Marxist is a bourgeois (including the work- and \"revolutionary tool\" may seem at first may be ways in which the B-minor Mass ers, who would far rather see BONNIE AND glance illusory, but I find it inevitable. Re- -which I take it would be generally ac- CLYDE than WIND FROM THE EAST) . Those of volutionary tools and works of art are sub- cepted as both valuable and powerful- us who are sensitive to the enormities of ject to completely different evaluative sys- challenges codes, but any account of it that Capitalism, yet fail to find Marxism an ac- tems, because they invite a different sort of saw its significance exclusively or even ceptable alternative, may feel that the response. The former invite to direct action primarily in such terms would surely be problem is not so simple. (and invitations to direct action form a sig- extremely partial. nificant part of WIND FROM THE EAST'S raw One is helped and encouraged by one's material); the latter doesn' t ask us to do It becomes difficult to separate Wollen's intermittent recognition (despite appear- anything, the response it aspires to elicit arguments decisively from the most naive ances to the contrary) that Godard doesn't being altogether more complex. belief in progress, from a sense that only always find problems simple either. His art that can be unequivocally associated early work, up to PIERROT LE FOU and a bit A work of art may affect our lives deeply with progress is valuable, and finall y beyond, can be seen in terms of, above all, and permanently; but it takes other forms from a desperate commitment to the latest an effort to define and hold in balance his of discourse-reasoned argument, slo- thing, irrespective of quality . Welles, for uncertainties: \"Ie ne sais pas,\" opening line gans, direct exhortation-to send us out example, has come to look \" hopelessly of both CONTEMPT and A MARRIED WOMAN into the streets. As soon as we respond to a old-fashioned and dated,\" apparently be- is an appropriate motto. And, although work as an organic (or at least organized) cause it can now be seen that he was only the bounds of his uncertainty are now whole-respond to what it is rather than an innovator within a certain context- more securely fixed, more narrowly de- what is says-then formal questions of true, I would have thought, of most in- fined, a decent tentativeness, a refusal structure, order, balance, assert their pre- either to assert or to bully (qualities tem- eminence, and the possibility of effective novators. porarily submerged in the tense repres- exhortation accordingly recedes. Such a Wollen actually lets himself get carried siveness of WIND FROM THE EAST), resur- distinction does not emasculate art; rather, face in TOUT VA BIEN . People in his films as- it insists upon its much greater, less (there is a general sense of someone not re- ephemeral (if also less precisely directed) ally in control of his ideas) to the point potency. where he finds it necessary to warn us that Hollywood should not be \"dismissed out The prime purpose (explicit in state- of hand as 'unwatchable.'\" (Whom can he ment, implicit in formal procedures) of be warning of this except himself?) Works Godard's politicized cinema is not to create that challenge existing codes may make \" complete\" works of art for the aesthetic those codes unusable, but they are not de- (moral, emotional) satisfaction of the be- structive of previous works that employed holder, but to stimulate or provoke to re- volutionary activityI Godard's radicalism those codes. No one could or would wish to write a Middlemarch toda y, but Middlemarch 1. The reader will understand that, throughout is not thereby invalidated . What is destruc- this essay, the term \"Godard\" stands for \"Godard! tive is a view of art that insists that its only Gorin,\" or for the whole Dziga Vertov group, real interest lies in its destruction of the whenever the recent films are under discussion . The past, and that sees the critic's first pri- problem is a delicate one: one wants to place the ority as a frantic quest for the latest thing. films within Godard's development, while not al- together losing sight of the possible importance of One of the greatest \"progressive\" artists his collaborators. of the present century saw things rather 50 JULY-AUGUST 1975
has led him repeatedly to demand and an- A precedent might usefully be cited of the theater have been unaffected by nounce a \"return to zero.\" The revolution here: an artist whose aims, though not him. It is now not only possible but easy to is not against certain incidental injustices identical with Godard's, were not dissimi- imagine a ' Brechtian' production of Don of capitalism, but against the whole de- lar; whose work represented a comparable Giovanni (any Mozart opera would re- velopment of western culture over at least challenge to traditional aesthetics; and to spond to such treatment admirably)- the last two thousand years. which is partly why we can pass from it to whom Godard himself repeatedly refers, The Caucasian Chalk Circle without loss of What Godard's attitude now is to the art in films and interviews. In TOUT VA BIEN he equanimity. of the past is not entirely clear to me; it was has Yves Montand (as ex-New Wave always somewhat equivocal. The early filmmaker) say: \" I've discovered things Something of the same process may films swarm with artistic references, like that Brecht was into forty years ago.\" The come to pass with Godard; in some re- fragments Godard wished to shore against remark is made in connection with Mon- spects it has already begun. I find it dif- his ruin, or emblems of allegiances by tand's abandonment of a cherished project ficult to imagine that PRAVDA, BRITISH means of which he would establish an to film a David Goodis novel. Goodis SOUNDS, and WIND FROM THE EAST (and the identity. Yet it was never certain just how wrote the book on which SHOOT THE PIANO second, at least, was made for audiences deep a commihnent this magpie agglom- PLAYER was based, and Godard uses his beyond an intellectual elite) will ever prove eration represented; one might doubt name for a character in MADE IN USA. Mon- as assimilable into the mainstream of tradi- whether it meant to Godard, for example, tand's abandoned project, then, is a con- tion as The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The what Bach evidently means to Bergman . venient synthetic reference-point for the Three Penny Opera, but TOUT VA BIEN may; it The references were always external and pre-1968 New Wave (including Godard's is a film one can learn to enjoy. 0!1 the explicit: The Bach fugue picked out on the own films), with its critical championship other hand, just as Brechtian practice has piano in WILD STRAWBERRIES points us to of and obsessive hommages to the Hol- had pervasive effects on stage production, the structural principle of the entire film; lywood cinema. Its replacement by \"things so Godardian practice has on the cinema. Haydn in LE PETrr SOLDAT is just a record that Brecht was into forty years ago\" Though Altman need never have seen a on the gramophone. epitomizes the replacement of tradition by Godard movie, certain aspects ofTHE LONG revolution. GOODBYE (the way the theme music is Retrospectively, it is easy to see that used, for example) which are not at all like Godard was already, at least in negative Yet Brecht is now himself a generally ac- Godard, would probably be impossible terms, prepared for the step into Marxist cepted and respected part of tradition; his without the fact of Godard somewhere in politicization. He had already formed the plays are produced by bourgeois-capitalist the distant background. habit of regarding the arts as so much theater companies without any sense of material to be pillaged intellectually rather incongruity. Water Benjamin saw Brecht The interest of WIND FROM THE EAST than as offering enriching experiences to as rendering the traditional theater, and (outside its intellectual elite) is not easy to be assimilated into one's inner emotional- such bourgeois forms as opera, obsolete, define. Its aesthetic, obviously, is insepara- intuitive life, and it is much easier to pass and as intrinsically opposed to them; yet to a strictly ideological analysis from the one can now pass from, say, Don Giovanni ble from its revolutionary politics; yet as former attitude than from the latter. The to The Caucasian Chalk Circle quite easily soon as one realizes it has an aesthetic, and a apparent rejection of art in Godard's recent and naturally, with no sense of irreconcila- perfectly coherent one, it becomes possible films could be felt to have been implicit al- ble experiences. to accept the film without necessarily ac- ready in LES CARABINIERS, where the sol- cepting its socio-political position. It be- diers react briefly to a Rembrandt self- This phenomenon is susceptible to vari- comes, in fact, un film comme les autres. The portrait and a madonna-and-child but re- ous explanations. The two most obvious more I see it, and the more I ponder it, the main permanently or deeply affected by are: that time has revealed the permanent more clearly does this revolutionary tool neither; the point of the scene was the artistic value of Brecht's work, its human reveal itself as a work of art. uselessness of art in relation to society at qualities, its power to move audiences to large. From MASCULINE FEMININE onward, tears and laughter independently of any Obviously, if one responds positively to artistic references give place increasingly to political stance or message; and that the WIND FROM THE EAST (and it is not without political references; after WEEKEND they vir- conversion of Brecht's plays into standard its arid stretches) one will be affected and tually disappear from his work or (like the classics is merely another example of how influenced by its attitudes. But that could Western in WIND FROM THE EAST) are refer- the bourgeois ideology \"co-opts\" rev- be said of any work of art. What its champ- red to with a view to ideological exposure olutionary writers, renders them safe by a ions insist on, however, is its anti- and denunciation. process of gradual assimilation and be- traditional nature; its demand for, if not ac- trayal. The two are not of course incompat- tual creation of a new aesthetic that will ef- What, then, is the status of these films, ible: one could easily find both true simul- fectively destroy the old. On a superficial and how does the non-Marxist (but not taneously, or see the first as merely a level this is obvious enough; certainly, one unsympathetic) critic handle them? One bourgeois rationalization of the process can't sit back and enjoy the narrative . On a might add another question which may at described in the second. deeper level, WIND FROM THE EAST seems first sight seem irrelevant to films so de- to prove that it is impossible for a work of terminedly and insistently contemporary But both, even in combination, are un- art to avoid satisfying the fundamental in their concerns, in their range of sub- acceptable without two important corol- criteria denounced as \"bourgeois,\" short of jectmatter, in their provocation to action laries. 1) We may now, having accepted degenerating into a nonsense. here and now, but which is central to this Brecht and apparently rendered him safe issue: What will they look like ten, twenty, for bourgeOis consumption, be uncon- As soon as it becomes possible to re- a hundred years from now? And how shall sciously assimilating his social-political at- spond aesthetically to WIND FROM THE we handle them then? Discard them, as titudes. Absorbed into the general culture, EAST-to take pleasure in its organization outmoded instruments that have served he may have become a more potent, more of complexities, its internal relationships, their purpose? Preserve them as historical pervasive (if less direct) force than he was its coherence-the film automatically takes documents? View them as perverse when his plays addressed minority its place beside the works of the past, and curiosities, or as the tentative, primitive groups, a part of a historical process one is no more forced to accept or reject its beginnings of a new direction not only for operating in multitudinous ways in mul- viewpoint than one is forced to accept or art but for civilization? Or see them, shorn titudinous contexts preparing the world reject the values and worldview of Jane of their contemporaneity, as the works of imperceptibly for a new social order. 2) If Austen. Its complex of attitudes, that is to art they perhaps already are? tradition has changed Brecht by assimilat- say, becomes one of many by which one ing him, Brecht has changed tradition. can choose to be indirectly affected-can Only the most intractably bourgeois areas regard as an \"authentic\" experience to place beside one's own. :;~ FILM COMMENT 51
The mainstream of American film in the is doing stimulates them.\" Two techniques Stevens saw film as a journalistic art, a Thirties, Forties, and Fifties was essentially that Stevens was to use throughout his medium for recording all things under theatrical in origin, with a concentration career were noted . The first was what strict rules of style and taste. Film was to upon acting and blocking and a camera friends called \"the chill\"-\"his capacity for him a diScipline that required the utmost that served as the lively eye of the watchful putting anyone on the defensive at once by experience in all the facets of life and of film director . Films were idealized stage per- tightening his lips, removing all expres- technique. \"If there's one thing that makes formances , doing more than Belasco sion from his face and refusing to utter a the camera attractive today to eight-year- dreamt of, and challenging the theater to word. \" The second was his method of ex- olds and forty-year-olds, it's the fact that it rethink its emphasis on nineteenth- tricating himself from an impasse. \"He just presumably doesn't require the diSCipline century spectacle. Early on, films u- strides up and down interminably while of another kind of expression, the endless surped the naturalist movement; in the everyone waits, \" Agee reported. \"The late process of drawing before you get to paint- Carole Lombard stood it as long as she ing, all that has to be done in the elements hands of Griffith and Murnau, two dimen- could during the filming of VIGIL IN THE of writing before you can compose reason- sions seemed truer than three. NIGHT, finally phoned her agent from her ably well . And on account of the real defin- bed at five o'clock one morning: 'I just ition in writing, and illusive definition with Yet when sound panicked Hollywood, thought what that pacing and thoughtful film, it's almost more necessary that stage directors and performers, used to the look of Stevens' mean .' 'What?' asked the people think and learn the great variety of inflections of spoken performances, were sleepy agent. ' Not a goddam thing/said disciplines, before they put the whole at a premium. Cukor was immediately she, and went back to sleep.\" thing together and say, 'There it is.'\" stylish. Mamoulian made an easy transi- tion. And from a theatrical heritage extend- Regarded in the Fifties as perhaps the The discipline of Stevens and his wil- ing back to his grandmother (who had lingness to submerge himself to his narra- played Ophelia opposite the Hamlet of •• by Bruce Petri ••••• • • •••••• •••••• •••••• •••••• ••••• •••••• •••••• • THE WARTIME COMEDIES Edwin Booth), and to his parents Landers foremost American director, Stevens was tive forms for the sake of entertaining and and Georgia Cooper Stevens (who ran a praised for his ability to apply his formida- edifying the l\")1ass audience give him no Pacific Coast theatrical company) , George ble technique without distracting from the identifying handle other than excellence . Stevens readily understood the require- story at hand, whether it was the lyrically He is a mainstream American director ments and demands of talking performers. tragic A PLACE IN THE SUN (his first whose work is easily accepted because it so Academy Award); the mythic Western nicely matches the moods and tastes of its Already an ace cameraman (having SHANE (the Irving J. Thalberg Memorial audience. The critical inability to pigeon- worked on dozens of Laurel and Hardy Award for \"high quality of production for hole Stevens indicates his success, like that films with Leo McCarey and others), Ste- the current award year [1953) and preced- of Howard Hawks, in handling a wide va- vens quickly worked his way up on two- ing years\" ); the epic family chronicle GIANT riety of genres; and yet, whereas one can reelers for Hal Roach, eventually switching (his second Academy Award, in 1956); or fairly easily define the characteristically to Universal and finally to RKO, where he the tragic war commentary THE DIARY OF landed his first big plum: the opportunity ANNE FRANK (the D.W. Griffith Award of Hawksian man or woman, it's difficult to to direct Katharine Hepburn in ALICE the Directors Guild of America \"in recogni- do the same with Stevens. Perhaps his ADAMS (1935) . Stevens attributed his suc- tion of outstanding creative achievement most defining characteristic is a Norman cess with this classic of small-town over a long period of years\"). Rockwell-like sentimentality-an emotion Americana and with the rest of his films- he can both accept and transcend as in from the rollicking GUNGA DIN (1939) to the The wide variety of genres in this period PENNY SERENADE (up to its fake ending) tragic A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951)-to two and other periods of his career indicates and I REMEMBER MAMA. things: \"The ca mera is one of them . .. . I that Stevens made films with more than know what I can do with a camera. The repetition in mind . \"An audience must be Formally, however, Stevens' films are other one is that I've always wanted to be a responsive thing. It has a creative func- consistent-and consistently rewarding. an actor. Icome from an acting family, but I tion. If it functions as the narrator, that's The cinematographer in him was always never could make it. And I think I know wrong. The real vigor of the motion picture conscious of how the image would look by is lost. The screen itself is basically nega- itself and in relation to the next setup, and what actors want.\" tive, a white sheet with shadows on it. of the surprises the camera could record. Stevens' ability to work with actors was Only the application of the audience's vi- His awareness of the difficulty in capturing tality and creative mental energy creates a the mood and feeling he wanted formed a legendary. Wrote James Agee, \"Actors like vigor that brings the nothingness of the basis for his multiple takes of the same to work for him. His air of knowing what screen suddenly to life. \" scene and, unlike other directors, his re- he is about puts them at ease; his ability to tention of as many takes as possible convey to them precisely what he wants throughout the editing stage, so that he reassures them; his enjoyment of what he 52 JULY-AUGUST 1975
could shift from one to another as the TIlE SUN, as in the visit of Alice Tripp to a cap , and Connie Milligan off their pedes- rhythm of the film warranted. (In order to doctor to ask for a n abortion; or again in tals, he h elped to define and reassure a u- keep track of each take, he kept huge black SHANE, when the camera wa tches Ernie diences that all the world needeed was a editing books containing the first and last Wright approaching in a wagon across the little common sense and a h eart as big as frame of each take as well as its content, so valley floor as the Starrett family goes Jean Arthur's. that he could juggle the images by placing about its chores. them side by side at his work table. He In a sense, the comic phase began with thus had an immediate record of any va- A Stevens film is planned-as meticu- PENNY SERENADE (1941), a nostalgic look at riants he might wish to use .) lously, if not so deterministically, as any \"The Story of a Happy Marriage\" starring Hitchcock. Once one becomes aware of the Irene Dunne and Cary Grant. When Co- At the same time, he knew how to trust presence of a director, his control over de- lumbia's Harry Cohn saw that he was the actors and audience when he wished tails runs counter to his idea of being unob- about to lose Frank Capra, he lured Ste- to make a point. Katharine Hepburn called trusive. The general moviegoer may see vens from RKO, under the assumption him \"the best director in Hollywood\" the raising of the deer's head to frame the that Stevens could provide similarly suc- when she chose him to direct WOMAN OF arrival of Shane in its antlers as spontane- cessful Americana. For his part, Steve ns THE YEAR; Elizabeth Taylor has time and ous, magical, a subliminal indication that cannily extracted from Cohn an exclusive again said that she developed a true in- the newcomer is special; to the student of producer-director contract and the prom- terest in acting while under his tutelage in film, it may seem too contrived, the pon- ise never to talk to him when h e was at A PLACE IN THE SUN and GIANT. He made derous belaboring of a directorial point of work on the set. (Cohn broke the promise films as his curiosity dictated, swinging view. Yet th e planning does not run once, to ask Stevens not to smoke.) from ANNIE OAKLEY to SWING TIME with counter to Stevens' hope to remain unob- ease at RKO, and justifying claims of per- trusive: such episodes arise from his fre- Stevens' propensity for multiple takes A LL PHOTOS: BRUCE PETRI Left : Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in WOMAN OF THE YEAR. Center: Cary Grant and Ronald Colman in THE TALK OFTHE TOWN . Right: Jea n Arthur and Joel McCrea in THE MORE THE MERRIER. sonal interest when he later independently quent experience with improvisation, in from different angles exasperated Cohn, chose such projects as I REMEMBER MAMA the early Laurel and Hardy films on which followed by A PLACE IN THE SUN, or THE he was cameraman, and in his own later who feared the cost of off-the-cuff shoot- DIARY OF ANNE FRANK followed by THE films . The planned details are his contribu- ing; but he soon realized that Stevens had GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD. He gave tion to the give-and-take proceedings . PENNY SERENADE well under control. thought to his projects; and his thought re- Ideally, they pass quickly by before one is Explained Irene Dunne: \"There is a school flected that of the audience for which he aware that they must have been carefully of directors that I seem to have worked filmed a story. worked out in advance. with recently-George Stevens, LaCava, Leo McCarey-that try to give the impres- In his last years (he died this past Perhaps it is this combination of be- sion that everything is spontaneous on the March), Stevens became saddened in a pro- havioral accessibility and a less obvious set. But don' t let them fool yo u . The y found way: he had spent a great deal of visual complexity that has left Stevens in know exactly what is going to happen time in considering the audience, only to relative obscurity. At this point neither every single minute .\" have not just TIlE GREATEST STORY EVER post-mortems nor facile elegies will truly TOLD and TIlE ONLY GAME IN TOWN but his honor him . More appropriate to his mem- Dunne gave a charming performance; entire canon rejected. ALICE ADAMS is con- ory would be an appreciation of his tale nt and for his restrained, emotionally moving sidered a Hepburn film; SWING TIME be- for elevating the everyday through images plea requesting permission to keep their longs to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; both open and harmonious. Stevens may adopted child, Cary Grant received an GUNGA DIN to Cary Grant, Douglas Fair- finally be seen as a neoclassicist in roman- Academy Award nomination as Best Ac- banks, Jr ., and Victor McLaglen. And tic garb . tor. Stevens had fielded an expert romantic while it is true that these stars provide team in a class smash. Katharine Hepburn glorious entertainment in these films , it is THE WARTIME COMEDIES agreed, and when she was preparing a also true that Stevens provides the sur- Nowhere is the Stevens touch more evi- favorite project at MGM over which she roundings that allow them to be seen at had approval ot script, stars, and director, .their best (the \"Waltz in Swing Time,\" for dent than in his masterly trio of screwball she passed over the Lion's roster of example, reels off gloriously uninter- comedies of the early Forties. In these helmsmen to ask old friend Stevens to di- rupted, allowing Fred and Ginger to filmS-WOMAN OF TIlE YEAR, TIlE TALK OF rect. (\"He's the best director in Hol- sparkle as they will). In the later half of his THE TOWN, and THE MORE THE MERRIER- lywood,\" Hepburn said at the time.) Ste- career, this technique of capturing a per- he demonstrated his comic touch in ob- vens delayed his next film for Columbia, formance became a narrative form: the serving the foibles of an America bent ever moved over to offices at MGM, and pro- long takes and slow dissolves of APLACE IN more on launching a heroic war effort; and ceeded to launch one of the most famous by knocking Tess Harding, Michael Light- romantic teams in film history. FILM COMMENT 53
WOMAN OF THE YEAR. Left: The three- leveled baseball game. Center: Objects as foreground. Right : Point-of-view from inside the refrigerator. WOMAN OF THE YEAR Having presented Tess at the selfish ex- enjoy the game that she takes it off and The skill of Stevens in working with treme of total dominance, the film now joins in the sportly camaraderie. comically delineates her attempt to be Hepburn had already been evidenced by submissive to the selfishness of another. At thirty-seven, Stevens was widely re- ALICE ADAMS (then her favorite picture) But Sam, portrayed with the hard-rock garded as one of the best directors in the and QUALITY STREET (which had im- common sense that was the forte of business, and his steadiness helped to measurably advanced his film style). En- Spencer Tracy, disavows such selfishness. draw out the best in both performers. thusiastic about the new project, Stevens In an intelligent end-speech that resolves Hepburn's flinty Easterner, with her drolly analyzed the script for details that their conflict in the interest of coequality, sharply gesticulated verbalizations, had could take advantage of the abilities of the Sam declares, \" Why do you have to go to met her match in Tracy's commonsensical two stars. He fought MGM all the way on extremes, Tess? I don't want to be married Midwesterner (born in Milwaukee, Tracy the lighting for the picture, turning off to Tess Harding-anymore than I want imp~ovises a line about his Wisconsin lights until he had the stars in the shadows you to be just Mrs. Sam Craig. Why can't mother); and their teaming worked to the he wanted: as newswoman Hepburn you be Tess Harding Craig?\" The exemplar immense elevation of both. In a leisurely, seduces newsman Tracy, they kiss in dark- of the common man with his common measured style reminiscent of the baseball ened silhouette; and when Tracy leaves sense, Sam, the lover of baseball_and sport he loves so well, Stevens helped to her in medias res, the camera catches a stand-in for the audience, is, like us, af- define America for itself. By playing the glimpse of the hat he leaves behind as he fronted by those who engage in a put- sincerity of Sam off against the pretensions rushes from the apartment. down of pleasures and necessities, of of Tess , the film strikes a balance that baseball and breakfast, as beneath their brings the two together in an honest, intel- It is a film of role reversals, revealing dignity. ligent union, while making wry observa- character by playing the stars off the tions on the alternative. As Tess ironically stereotypes of male-female relationship. We are delighted when the presump- notes in one of her political columns, Intellectual charmer Tess Harding lords it tions of Tess are deflated; but we are, at the \" Domestic turmoil may be fatal in interna- over fellow journalist Sam Craig. Witty, same time, elevated by Sam to a new tional conflict.\" fast-talking, and decisive, Tess from the awareness and acceptance of the crazy in- beginning treats Sam as a loved one to be tellectual spirit of this vibrant woman. Seeing America enter the war while maneuvered. Tess is the one who wears Both become American heroes . His motto making the picture, and intensely in- is domestic (\"Yankees Won't Lose\" is his terested in the conflict, Stevens stresses the pants and has business engagements opening column banner); hers is interna- the necessity to undercut the dogmatism too important to break. Sam is the one who tional (\"Hitler Will Lose\"). Both are united, in Tess (and, implicity, in everyone) and feels awkward and shy in her world; the so that Tess, with her constant worry about roundly champions the easy give-and- one who puts off sleeping together until Dr. Lubbeck and Nazi infiltration, about take of any healthy relationship, domestic after marriage; buys the new hat to seek at- the effect of domestic crisis on World War, or foreign. As he happily completed film- tention; cooks meals; and answers the is embraced by Mr. America. With presci- ing on the domestic squabble, he turned telephone. A working man, he provides a ence and good nature, with an eye toward his attention in his next picture, less measure against which her selfishness can the German slaughter and the need for it to obliquely but still comically and be judged. There is no give in Tess. Mod- be stopped, the undercurrent of the film philosophically, to a problem needing vital eled on the acerbic columnist Dorothy urges the American male to \"be not moved definition for an America intent on under- Thompson, she lives a domesticated ver- in your devotion\" to Tess Harding and her standing what it stood for-the nature of sion of the Fiihrerprinzip she rails against in cause. In laughing at Tess and watching the legal system necessary to a sound her political column. Like Katharine Hep- her learn to laugh at herself, we have democracy. burn, who plays her, Tess lacks the com- grappled comically with the most frighten- mon touch and an innate sense of humor. ing of daily headlines and learned to ap- THE TALK OF THE TOWN proach them with common sense and ac- To keep its \"philosophy\" from weighing These the Sam of Spencer Tracy has, ceptance. and it is a measure of Sam's own intelli- down its light comedy THE TALK OF THE gence that when Tess dominates him, he The skill of Stevens in handling these TOWN uses three consummate stars. As good-humoredly acquiesces. Only when themes is demonstrated by his use of town malcontent Leopold Dilg, who be- she oversteps the barrier and begins hurt- baseball as a metaphor for the common lieves in a pragmatic law of feeling and ing others, most notably the Greek refugee touch. The visit of Tess to a baseball game necessary violence, Cary Grant exercises Chris, whom she impetuously adopts is skillfully staged in three levels within the his native wit against \"number one legal without Sam's knowledge, does he frame : before Sam and Tess , Sam's fellow genius\" Michael Lightcap, played by explode (\"As a substitution he won't do\"). sportswriters kibbitz on her lack of know- Ronald Colman with a sophisticated flair Tess has th e knowledge; Sam has the wis- ledge; behind them , a burly fan attempts to that seduces the audience into accepting dom. And since Sam draws his wisdom see around the broad-brimmed hat of Tess, law as \"the sum of the experience of from the shared common sense of the au- but it is only when she herself begins to civilized man, the sign that man has dience, the audience is able to join in the emerged from the jungle.\" The plot is the process of reeducating Tess's ego. 54 JULY-AUGUST 1975
old crisscross: Dilg acquires respect for the tual experience. Her confusion neatly Lightcap as modeled after Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.) ordered approach to the law, while Light- plays against the assurance with which she Stevens had again demonstrated his cap acknowledges the necessity of force to had guided Mr. Deeds in town and Mr. credo: \"The more accepted theory says people come to the movies for vicarious back up principles. At the center of the Smith in Washington, and provides both pleasure, to escape. At risk of being disa- greed with, I believe they come to learn cross, loving both men and watching them the ideal companion for common man Dilg about themselves. This is best expressed by their sentimental demand for new situa- march their ways, stands audience rep- and the democratic, unprejudiced jury he tions, new stories, bringing them further re- velations about themselves . Kids live an resentative Nora Shelley, played by Jean seeks in his escape. hour of the life they haven't yet lived, old- sters live the lives they missed living.\" Arthur with an air of good-natured When legal wizard Michael Lightcap ar- The pro-war undercurrent of the film helplessness and deranged insouciance rives at her home a day early, Nora instinc- provides an indication of the life that Ste- vens felt Americans ought to be living. As that enchants Dilg and thaws Lightcap. tively hides Dilg in the attic; titillates the in WOMAN OF THE YEAR, common sense rules the day over intellectualism; the Hol- Because they are stars, with the aura of audience by sleeping under the same roof lywood stars help both to glorify and de- fine the common American; and Lightcap, stars, the film can make use of their mys- as the two imminent bachelors; talks her like Tess Harding, comes ro benefit from experience as well as from books. Stevens tique and their patrician sense of fame and way into serving Lightcap as secretary and cleverly plays the comedy not only against star mystique but also against the head- flamboya nce. Their lives intertwine with cook; and passes Dilg off as the gardener. lines and personalities of the day. With Dorothy Thompson and Felix Frankfurter each other, but not with that of the audi- As Lightcap, Ronald Colman stands for in the background, newspaper headlines in the foreground, and war experience as a ence; and they enact double lies: the \"the philosophy behind the deed\" and rep- subtext, WOMAN OF THE YEAR and THE TALK OF THE TOWN play their comedy off reality. character they represent and the personal- resents, as he did in Shangri-la, a man The omnipresent ticker-tape machine threatening to pursue Sam into the ity they have come to represent. Improp- bound to \"the ideal condition.\" Drawing boudoir, and the Lochester police hounds mistakenly treeing Lightcap instea d of erly used, the mystique of a star negates a on his debonair manner while pla ying Dilg, close in on the heroes until they break out and command their domain, whether role. The audience may be willing to sus- against the spirit of adventure he had it is Sam launching Gerald like a battleship or Lightcap shooting a gun in the air to si- pend disbelief for the sake of a story, but it demonstrated in films since silent days, lence a lynching mob. Violence, however comedic, is necessary in the war atmos- clings fast to the symbols of vicarious Colman enacts a book-bred lawyer whose phere for right to prevail. But as the situa- tion worsened and the country became dreams. But the star system can add a favorite century is the eighteenth, since at wholeheartedly committed to the war ef- fort, Stevens dropped the no longer neces- dimension to the narrative when the star's that time \"Reason, simple and pure, was sary theme of conversion and instead took a delightfully head-on look at actuality. In public persona is used to comment upon a the weight against which human problems the crowded housing condition of wartime Washington, he found one of his most particular role, as in THE TALK OF THE were held in balance.\" Like Grant, he is a compatible themes, a screwball comedy that assumes, along with its heroine, that TOWN. polished matinee idol capable of luring the everyone ought to do his patriotic duty. The opening thriller sequence, for audience into his point of view, so that we, THE MORE THE MERRIER By specifying its reality at the outset example, with its blazing newspaper head- like Nora, anxiously watch the confronta- (overcrowded Wartime Washington) and lines, prison lockup and escape, and rain- tions of the two. swept countryside, introduces Dilg as an The casting of two English actors to alleged arsonist and murderer. The se- argue an American point of view produces quence plays against our love of Cary the needed aura of star unreality and raises Grant as a matinee idol, the ideal represen- a romantic question that serves as an en- tation of sure masculinity. As an audience gaging frame of reference: Which hero is watching a star, we know that he cannot worthy of the heroine-the idealist or the be guilty. And as a 1942 audience that had pragmatist? Once the two matinee idols closely followed the furor over Grant's have completed the crisscross and emerge previous film , SUSPICION, for which Alfred on equally persuasive footing, the problem Hitchcock had filmed four separate end- becomes increasingly vexatious. To solve ings before he agreed not to present Grant it, Stevens diplomatically filmed two end- as a killer, we have the added enjoyment of ings and let preview audiences choose the a follow-up teaser: the mystique had outcome. Lightcap marries the Supreme triumphed before, and we wait to see it Court and embodies, after he has learned triumph again. pragmatic ways, perfect justice. The prac- When Dilg arrives at the country home tical Dilg appreciates the idealism of Light- of Nora, who is preparing to rent it out to cap and, with his blessing, gives the old Lightcap, the ominously suspenseful vaudeville hook at the last moment of the music and mood continue until Dilg faints film to \"the prettiest girl in Lochester.\" at the feet of Nora . Her voice rising and fall- Drawing on social comedies from Ford's ing like the bouncing ball of a sing-along THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING, through a cartoon, Jean Arthur exemplifies the string of Frank Capra comedies dealing good-hearted citizen who wishes no one with justice and democracy, THE TALK OF harm and whose honesty and generosity THE TOWN endeavored to respond to the are so direct that she finds herself befud- Roosevelt Administration's appeal to dled by the inevitable complications of ac- dramatize the Four Freedoms. (Critics saw Objects and subjects in THE TALK OF THE TOWN . Left : Cary Grant. Center: Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman. Right: Jean Arthur, Ronald Colman, and Cary Grant.
by continually referring to topical allusions serving practicality of Connie's fiance window and given his imperious approval (such as the Office of Facts and Figures, Charles J. Pendergast (Richard Gaines) . to the apartment are we brought inside, as Jimmy Doolittle, car pools, Hitler, if his gall were preserving us from the Roosevelt, and an aviator hero going to The contrasts fall into three movements, housing shortage. war in Africa), THE MORE THE MERRIER each propelled by that corpulent Cupid, would seem to be bound by time. Indeed, Benjamin Dingle, but each drawing upon THE MORE THE MERRIER transforms the some of its hearty patriotism is inevitably the nature of one of the protagonists. Con- screen wall into a window; and the staging lost; but the film so successfully comple- nie incorporates the quick-tempoed open- ingeniously incorporates its acute sense of ments its contemporaneous references ing of Dingle's search for an apartment into distance between action and audience into with the self-contained interior world of its her morning schedule, precipitating a the action itself, between the actors, in the own logic, and so completely defines that breakfast steeplechase. Joe, brought in by whisper-thin bedroom wall that separates logic within the space of Connie's apart- Dingle to share his half of the apartment, first Dingte and Connie, then Joe and ment, that it remains among the most time- gives the film a more romantic mood, re- Connie. The doors, posts, pillars, trees, less of screwball comedies. sponding to Dingle's arrangements and and other framing devices placed between talking love with Connie through the us and the action (during Joe's and Con- Throughout sublimely ridiculous action flimsy wall that separates their beds. And nie's sexy walk home at night, for exam- shaped by jokes and situations that curve Dingle lends a satiric touch to the finale, ple) enable us immediately to respond to on delivery, the film tenaciously clings to taking advantage of the FBI raid on Connie their chagrin at the papery wall between its own logic like a legal brief gone berserk, and Joe to coordinate their marriage before them and to empathize with the imagin- citing gag after gag precedent to elaborate a they admit they love one another (\"A ings necessary for them to overcome the madcap premise: the patriotic efforts of schedule is a mighty handy thing at times, obstacle. Our psychological exerciSes Connie Milligan Gean Arthur) to rent half Miss Milligan\") and to reiterate his cry for match those of the characters; and the con- of her apartment to help relieve the wartime action as an epithalamion, gruity gives THE MORE THE MERRIER its en- Washington housing shortage. The film \"Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!\" gaging intimacy. bounces off reality by concentrating on its irregularities, succeeds by catapulting ac- The sequence in which Dingle has both The spontaneity of the film was due not tuality into absurdity, and reassures by Connie and Joe in the apartment, each only to Stevens' sure and sympathetic un- showing a hero and heroine who-just without knowing that the other lives there, derstanding of his actors and to his confi- barely--cope . charmingly epitomizes the manner in dent grasp of developed technique but also which the action passes from -one pro- to the eagerness with which he himself The swift-paced prologue sets the tone: tagonist to another. In the privacy of her contemplated entering the war. During car pools of man-hungry girls; cabs that bedroom, Connie dances an engaging shooting, he ran into Frank Capra quietly won't leave until they get a full load; people rhumba; as he leaves the bathroom, Joe absconding with a battered desk to help sleeping three, four, and more in a bed; No swings with the seductive beat on hisown; outfit his WHY WE FIGHT workspace and Vacancy signs everywhere-all while a Dingle, hearing the music, completes the soon found himself reporting to Capra as a narrator cheerfully eulogizes the hospital- number with a dancing, full stop fillip . The combat photographer. He was among the ity of Washington, D.C. The disparity be- swift and free flow of action is abetted by first to be assigned to the new PRO Special tween what is being said and what we see skillfull camera placement and by a set de- Coverage Section, with the specific task of excites the imagination and establishes a sign that is purposely confusing (although contributing to an American war rule of comic logic that builds to a payoff in the bedrooms are side by side, their doors documentary equal to the British DESERT one of the sexiest love scenes ever filmed. are at right angles) , so that, like Joe, we VICTORY. While Joe (Joel McCrea) walks Connie surrender to mental instead of physical home, she tries to keep her attention away orientation. Studio executives, upset by the dwin- from his romantic advances by talking dling number of top personnel staying in about affairs of state. Even as his hands Throughout the film, the apartment set- Hollywood, ominously warned Stevens grope about Connie's shoulders, Joe ting is treated like a jewel box to be tantaliz- that he might never come back and that if answers in kind. Their words say one he went to war, his career might be thing, but we see quite another; and, en- ingly opened bit by stage bit. THE MORE THE finished. But Stevens went ahead, compil- couraged by the prologue to favor the vis- MERRIER epitomizes Stevens' \"window ing footage for the National Archives on ual, we are rewarded when Joe walks off in technique\"-the director as Peeping everything from Denmark to Dachau, and a daze, half-forgetting that he is leaving Tom-which tends to hide what's not im- developing as he went his inclination for the apartment where he lives. portant, and magnify what is. There is no staged realism over \"reality.\" When he re- cheating; the camera engages us by its dis- turned, rather than being wasted, he had The film is structured on contrasts, not tance . When Dingle talks his way into the developed a sensibility that readily lent it- only between the visual and the verbal, but apartment, for example, the camera holds self to his mature postwar work, I RE- between the compulsive scheduling of discreetly back in the hallway. Behind MEMBER MAMA, A PLACE IN THE SUN, Connie and the well-intentioned bum- Dingle, as if his presence commanded it, SHANE, GIANT, and THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK bling of Dingle (Charles Coburn), between the bedroom door slowly swings open. As the nonchalance of Joe and the double we watch Dingle stroll into the bedroom, -his own personal favorite , and a film takes of Dingle while coping with the the camera switches to the outside so that so moving and real to him that he was apartment, and between the relaxed con- we view the action through the bedroom known to excuse himself from a screening window. Only after Dingle has opened the rather than experience the anguish of its viviality of Joe and the whining, self- characters. :{. THE MORE THE MERRIER. Left : Charles Coburn and jean Arthur. Center : joel McCrea, Charles Coburn , and jean Arthur. Right: joel McCrea and jean Arthur.
SPLITTING JAWS WITH THE HAPPY BOOKER A TALK WITH A ORCUIT BUYER by Janet Maslin For the past seven years, George Mansour, at the same time. Therefore, we get to- Jr. , has been the New England booker-buyer for gether once every three months and make Esquire Theaters (which recently changed its two lists of films--one list goes to me and name to Hallmark Theaters), a Boston-based the other one goes to him. I agree not to chain . His job requires him to preview virtually book- or bid very high for-hi s film , he every new film, and then to gauge its commer- agrees not to play mine. cial possibilities. George has the personal taste of a film buff, but he seldom lets it interfere with his J.R.M. What's the legality of that? That professional acumen . One of his biggest coups was to pick up-for Hallmark Releasing, the sounds ... firm's distribution arm-the American distribu- tion rights to the German-made MARK OF THE G.M. That's illegal, theoretically. But it's DEVIL, the first horror film to offer patrons vomit bags along with the chance to be scared . His done . I mean, everyone knows splits are a share of that film 's astronomical profits has been invested in the posh Beacon Street con- thing; the distributors are aware, and so is dominium which he shares with his lover and where the following interview was conducted I the Justice Department. on various dates between September 1974 and ~ J.R.M. Does splitting mean that the June 1975. George complains that even though he's lived there for several years now, the sec- ~ theaters involved neve r pla y the same urity guards still seem a bit hesitant to let him in. He is the most out-of-the-closet homosexual \\2 things? among all Boston business executives, and has had a hand in most of the gay liberation move- ~ G.M. It's who can play it first . Splits are ment's important fund-raising activities in the city. ~ alternatives to bidding. It often happens Janet Maslin. Exactly how does the pro- o that in large cities you get splits by three, cess of bidding for new films work? George Man sour, Jr., of Hallmark Theaters. four, five people. But where it's two George Mansour, Jr. Bidding occurs in people , the general way of making a split is any large city where there are a number of first-run exhibitors who are vying for the first-run and sub-run are at different times for one person to make two lists of films product from the major studios. Letters are sent out to the different exhibitors in which because they don' t know how long the and to make them as even as he possibly the percentage terms of the bid on a par- ticular picture are suggested, and you first-run is going to be. So they can't set a can. Then the other person has first choice. guarantee an amount of money against those terms. date. Then, the next time, he makes the list, and They even bid \"sub-run\" now. In Bos- J.R.M. Then in order to be a good sub- you have first choice. So it's always incum- ton, it used to be that a film would be avail- run house, you can' t book too far ahead bent upon the person making up the list to able to anyone who wanted to join in on a neighborhood break once the first-run en- anyway , because most of the product make it as even as possible because if he gagement was over, but now, if a film completes its downtown exclusive en- crops up on very short notice. weights it, he's going to be hurt. gagement or its engagement as a first-run film-which means a downtown house G.M. That is correct. And most sub- J.R.M. By the time you're into second- and perhaps three or four suburban houses-they sometimes limit the number runs are not formally bid; you'll get a call run you can do that, because you know of houses that are going to be taken on a neighborhood break, and in that case they from the distributor saying, \"We are mak- what's already been successful. But . .. would bid the picture for a \"sub-run .\" ing available for sub-run a certain picture G.M.. . .when you' re going first-run it Then everyone gets a letter. on a certain date. \" Now if it's a very desir- can be very difficult, yes. For instance, I J.R.M. \"Sub-run\" meaning ...? G.M. Second-run. They might say, \"We able picture, they'll go into actual bidding. had to make up splits for last year' s are going to make sub-run availability on FUNNY LADY for July 4th. \" But if it's a picture that has failed in its Christmas pictures, and, based just on J.R.M. Can you bid on both a first-run and a sub-run at the same time? first-run engagements, they will often call what I felt, I put THE TOWERING INFERNO on G.M. Sure. But usually the bidding for you and say, \"What date looks good for AT one side. LONG LAST LOVE?\" AT LONG LAST LOVE is a J.R.M . With whom were you doing difficult picture to sell because it was un- this? successful not only in Boston, but G.M. I have a split in a northern New everywhere . So they' ll ask you to find a England city; I split with a major circuit. He slot for it, and you will look at what's avail- has two houses, I have two houses (or two able on a certain date and you'll say, \"Well, screens). So, in that town, for Christmas, I there' s a sex picture that's going to the put on one side of the split TOWERING IN- drive-ins. There' s a horror movie that's FERNO. On the \" B\" side I put THE GOD- going to be against the sex picture, but FATHER , PART II. Now TOWERING IN- there' s nothing I can put in my class FERNO, at least from what most people felt houses. There' s nothing that can play the right then, had a slight edge over GOD- Paramount in Newton, for instance, as FATHER II, based on the so-called word- opposed to the Medford Twin Drive-In.\" and, unfortunately, in this business so Now when I want to play something at much is predicated on the \" the word. \" No the Medford Twin, I then face a \"split,\" be- one knew anything about it, nobody had tween the Medford Twin , which is Es- seen these films , but there were rumors. quire's, and the Meadow Glen Drive-In , The gut reaction placed those two at first which is another circuit's. As we're in the and second positions, respectivel y; same town, we can't play the same picture number three was usually the Bond film, FILM COMMENT 57
because they' re always big. So maybe THE was not considered as a second or third J.R.M. How is taste in, say Augusta, MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN was on the choice, and FREEBIE turned out to be a Maine different from taste in Providence? side with GODFATHER II, to help balance it commercial success--bigger than the Bond off. And on the TOWERING INFERNO side, or the Wilder. Isn't that depressing? I'm G.M. Well, it's pretty obvious. I went to you would get THE FRONT PAGE , which still sick over it. I really felt so offended by a screening today, and I saw THE PAS- looked less likely. And between EARTH- it. It had nothing to do with the gay angle, SENGER. Now people were very high on QUAKE, and AIRPORT 1975, yo u gave the either; it was because these were supposed THE PASSENGER ; it's a very interesting nod to EARTHQUAKE . to be cops and they were going around movie Antonioni directed-and clearly beating up people and kicking people in- this time it's not a complete wipe-out like J.R.M. Why? just wanton mayhem. ZABRISKIE POINT. But it's two hours long, G.M. Because AffiPORT'S a sequel, and it's depressing, it's sophisticated, really an sequels tend to be not that strong. Now, But the thing that threw Christmas art film . I think it would be very big in Bos- FREEBIE AND THE BEA N: There had been really off balance was YOUNG FRANKEN- ton, very big in New York, fair in Provi- good things said about it, but you didn' t STEIN; no one considered YOUNG FRANK- dence, Rhode Island, and almost worth- really know, that was a big question mark. ENSTEIN on the Christmas splits. It wasn't less in Augusta, Maine. Now that's just my But these are the things you predicate made available in some of those cities, but opinion-I could be wrong, and I've been your decisions on. You can only go by the even where it was, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN wrong before. But my whole job is predi- cast, by the book, by who made it, past wasn't given much importance on the cated on the fact that I'm not wrong too performances-Christmas pictures are lower parts of a split. People were not that many times. traditionally ninety per cent \" blind-bid.\" excited about it. They should have been. Each major distributor is allowed three J.R.M. Tell me about the times you've blind bids a year, by law. Otherwise, they J.R.M. Why didn't anyone want it? must show their films to you before your G.M. BLAZING SADDLES was the only been right. bid can be binding. Yet very often, you will Mel Brooks hit at that time. It's easy to say G.M. O .K. , the times I've been right, I get a bid letter tha t goes, \"We are sorry tha t now, \" Oh, it's so obvious-it was a Mel we cannot trade-screen our picture at this Brooks!\" but Mel Brooks also made THE love to talk about. You can' t say that I was time . However, we are inviting bids on PRODUCERS and THE TWELVE CHAIRS- right about THE EXORCIST because such -and-such. The bids must be in by a critical but not commercial successes. So if everyone felt THE EXORCIST was going to be certain date .\" he made disastrous pictures and only one big. J.R.M. Is this on top of the three they' re hit, why should anyone take a chance? allowed? Everyone blew their brains out on ZABRISK- J.R.M. Did it turn out to be less than G.M. Yes . So then they're allowed to IE POINT because Antonioni had made everyone expected? say, \"You have a forty-eight-hour escape BLOWUP, the one before. Big Deal! clause, however. We will screen the film J.R.M. How many screens are you re- G.M. Yes. It turned out to be a $10 million for you, and you will have forty-eight bus- sponsible for? MARK OF THE DEVIL is what it turned out iness hours to cancel your bid after seeing G.M. I book for sixty screens, but to be. It was huge to begin with, and drop- the film .\" That way, they could show it to Hallmark now has upwards of 100 screens, ped precipitously. It wound up doing $66 you one week before Chrishnas, in which and I'm influential in the booking of some million, which is an awful lot of money but case their forty-eight-hour escape clause of these. nowhere near what people thought it was would be worthless. By then , there's no J.R.M. What area do they cover? going to do from the opening grosses. THE other Christmas picture that you could G.M. From New Jersey to Maine. There GODFATHER-the first one--was $20 mill- buy. Eighty per cent of the Christmas pic- are some in downtown New York City; the ion bigger than THE EXORCIST because it tures would be bought, at this point. others are mostly in the mid-Atlantic and had far, far greater penetration of the mar- J.R.M. Which ones wouldn't be bought? midwestern states, and booked out of ket. THE EXORCIST had a relatively small, G.M. The ones that are a little nervous, New York. but very effective, penetration. the ones that you're not sure of. FRONT PAGE probably was still available in some of So I can't call THE EXORCIST much of a the smaller cities, or FREEBIE AND THE BEAN, coup. The ones you're really right about or the Disney film, THE ISLAND AT THE TOP are the pictures you could buy ahead of OF THE WORLD. time for not too much money because J.R.M. What happens when a Christ- mas picture that's been blind-bid turns out an absolute disaster-like JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL two years ago? G.M. Ha! No one knew at Christmas time that JONATHAN LIVINGSTON SEAGULL wasn't going to go eighteen or twenty weeks, which were the terms of the bid. But Paramount gave yousomethil1g to fill in the empty time. If you played SEAGULL and you dropped dead, you could get this other film . Generally, you were assured of the other film-I think it was DON'T LOOK NOW. J.R.M. Well, how did last Christmas's splits work out? G.M. TOWERING INFERNO was bigger than GODFATHER II, and the Bond bigger than THE FRONT PAGE . And between EARTHQUAKE and AIRPORT '75 we gave the nod to EARTHQUAKE, which was right. So everything was right, except that FREEBIE 58 JULY-AUGUST 1975
people weren't high on them, the so-called it was American International, and AlP this, this is terrible. \" And yet when I heard about th e campaign they were goin g to \"sleepers.\" Of those, there are really very doesn't ask very stiff terms--you can get mount, I saw how effectively the movie could be presented . I bought it few. The most recent one, the most obvi- ou t of certain bids easily. everywhere, and DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY ous one is AMERICAN GRAFFITI. Saw that at The thing that you don' t know-even was a much bigger grosser than SUGAR- LAND EXPRESS. a screening, bought it in Springfield, Mas- after looking at a film , and deciding that it Now SUGARLAND could ha ve been sachusetts, where there's a bidding is commercial, that it's good, thatit's going exploited the way DIRTY MARY was. It had all of the ingredients--cars, action , sen ti- situation-it's one of the cities where to have a certain critical reaction-is how mentality. It had everything going for it in spades, more than DIRTY MARY. But they there's no \"splitting\"-and I must bid the studio feels about the film. You don' t didn't sell it that way. They sold it as a straight, regular kind of movie. The ads against Redstone, General Cinema, E.M. have any idea what kind of campaign it's said Goldie Hawn, SUGARLAND EXPRESS- it looked like a frothy comedy, yo u had no Loew's, and the Mann Theaters. I won the going to be given, what kind of history it's idea what was going on. They didn't want to saturate it; they felt that was se lling the film exclusive with a $5,000 guarantee. It going to develop before you play it. For in- picture short. There's always that decision: they can say, \"We're going to saturate the ultimately grossed $200,000. stance, a New York opening is very impor- movie and make a lot of money,\" or they can say, \"We're going to go for the class J.R.M. Did these other people bid on it? tant. And when you buy a film for a route and make a lot more money. \" If they G.M. Some circuits didn't even bother medium-sized city and find out that rather try for the class route and then fail , there's to bid on the film. Some didn't even bother than going into a Cinema II in New York very few times where they can say, \" O.K., to show up at the screening! And this is the with a class campaign, it is going to go sat- now we'll try saturation. \" By that time, the problem: with an EXORCIST, everyone is uration with only $50,000 spent, you begin bad word has gotten around , even to sort of warned or aware of the film. With to feel nervous . You're upset then; you're in drive-in customers. AMERICAN GRAFFITI, six months before it trouble. And this is what happened with was released, people did not even come to CHARLEY VARRICK. THE BALLAD OF CABLE This summer, it looks like there are the screening. This is the danger in allow- HOGUE, which I liked very much and I won going to be a lot of exploitation movies. ing the so-called \"word\" to guide you as a the bid for Providence, wound up playing And those are the movies that saved la st booker-buyer. You've got to see every Providence before even playing New York summer: things like BORN LOSERS, DIRTY film, you've got to make up your mind. City. Before even being screened for the MARY CRAZY LARRY. Those are the movies J.R.M. On things that turn out to be national press, it had its first engagement: we made money on, that saved our drive- sleepers, is the advance word just non- saturation in Los Angeles drive-ins. So, ins . It wasn't CHINATOwN-that just didn't existent, or can it be negative? obviously, the film was doomed. do it, even though in the small towns we G.M. It's usually nonexistent; very sel- paid huge amounts of money for it. It did dom do you get a negative word and then J.R.M. You have no control over that? O.K., but it just got us by. find out the picture is a great blockbuster. G.M. No, you have none. And you Though recently, there were two big ex- have no recourse. But very often bids don't But exploitation movies: You can get ceptions: MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS come due until after the New York open- them quickly, you can get them cheaply. and ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE. ing, and in that case you immediately There are bigger and bigger campaigns, BUTCH CASSIDY was a movie that people know what the situation is. and television plays a tremendous role in weren't keen about, and I bought that. J.R.M. If you have to bid on something what's going to be popular during the EASY RIDER is an obvious example. But too early, is that usually a sign of trouble? summer. Right now, my favorite is Paul then I've bid highly for pictures that I G.M. Yes, exactly. But you always run Bartel's DEATH RACE 2000 from Roger Cor- thought were going to be big. I also bought the chance of hitting a BUTCH CASSIDY or an man' s New World. It's tremendous. It' s THE SUGARLAND EXPREss--disaster. CHAR- AMERICAN GRAFFITI. You never run that going to beat ROLLERBALL, and I bet it's LEY VARRICK-a disaster. Believe it or not, chance if you bid a movie after it opens in going to be better than ROLLERBALL. in places where I bid for both, I won New York. Everyone in this business AMERICAN GRAFFITI but lost CHARLEY VAR- knows what the picture does the first hour Lately, TV saturation has sometimes RICK; the bids for CHARLEY VARRICK ran at the box office. And from that, the entire meant something that's relatively new. twice as high! But I would love to have United States--in fact, the entire world-is Two films have used national advertising then projected. -THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK and BREAKOUT. Very often, a company will not trade- Both claimed that they spent $2 million on national advertising: So this meant that in- screen a movie in a screening room just for stead of going into each individual city, buying certain time and so on, they were buyers--and this is particularly true of a able to go on The Tonigh t Show. They were able to buy prime time on, say, The Man) comedy. They're desperately afraid that Tyler Moore Show for a movie. That has been unheard of. you aren't going to laugh, there won't be J.R.M. What if it works? any reaction, there won't be any rapport. G.M. Well, both movies left the ques- tion unsettled-they didn' t flop, but they I'm sure if they'd ever screened AMERICAN weren't such smashes as to totally justify spending so much money. But there are GRAFFITI as a \" preview\" in a theater with going to be more campaigns like that, and if a couple of them really succeed they an audience, the bids would have been could revolutionize the way pictures are re- leased. And, unfortunately, it would make very high, because it was an \"audience pic- this more and more of a boom-or-bust bus- iness. ture,\" quote unquote. Sometimes that's good, sometimes it's bad. Sometimes they feel that the critics are going to hate it, but people will love it. PETE 'N' TILLIE was this kind of movie. J.R.M. SO though Sidestepping the cri- tics was wrong for THE BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE, it was right for some other movies? Is that what you're saying? Obviously, won CHARLEY VARRICK because seeing it in \"saturation\" success was the right history a screening room, I thought it had a great for BILLY JACK or WALKING TALL to develop . deal of commercial potential. Let's see Though also those pictures had campaigns what other big bloopers ...THUNDERBOLT far in excess of $50,000 per market! AND LlGHTFOOT-I thought it was going to G.M. Right. They did that thing with be a big success. I loved it. Or DILLINGER, I DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY, which was es- bought DILLINGER and thought it was mar- sentially a bad movie. When I saw it, my velous. But I didn't lose too badly because first reaction was, ''I'm not going to book FILM COMMENT 59
J.R.M. And more like television. Ben Sack was looking at the film, and my combo.\" And obviously there's a big ap- G.M. That's right. Because you must play the film at a certain time. So you must friends and I were in the front of the peal to mixed combos. have 2,000 or 3,000 prints available throughout the country. It must open at all screening room. He was in the back. My J.R.M. Is this draWing a mostly black these houses almost before it has any kind of critical or public reaction. friends and I loved it, we laughed and audience, or mostly white? J.R.M. Would yo u like to see it work? G.M. No, not really. There would be no applauded and had a great time . And G.M. No one knows ye t. Right now, such thing as a little movie any more. There would be no such thing as a HAROLD Sack, at that point, literally had to bid for they feel thatit's getting a mixed audience, AND MAUDE ever, or a KING OF HEARTS. the picture because Walter Reade had en- getting whites too. I think a lot of white J.R.M. That would be O.K. G.M. That would be O.K. Oh, well! But tered a certain bid. He didn't like it, but we middle-class girls will go see MANDINGO, would it be really? You would then have movies based on the taste of T71e Mary Tyler were laughing so much he figured, \"If that and that's why I have booked it. But if it Moore Show, which is pretty nice-I love Mary Tyler Moore. But they would have to weirdo and his friends like it, there must be gets the reputation of a black picture they appeal to that many people. And you'd find people less likely to take the risks. something in it. \" So he bid on it, and, of may be scared away, so you're taking a J.R.M. How many risks do the major studios take now? course, it was a disaster. He really got risk: Is it going to be able to be what the G .M. Oh, it's not so bad. You still have stuck with it. Now every time he sees my novel was? Still, it looks like a good quickie people like Karel Reisz making THE GAMB- LER, or Robert Altman making CALIFOR- boss he says, \" You owe me $25,000 be- commerical movie. NIA SPLIT, which may not seem terribly ar- tistically adventurous to us right now. But cause that guy you've got working for you The only other movie Paramount has it would seem very far out if everything else were THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK and BREAK- thought SAVAGE MESSIAH was great.\" Well, coming up is THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, OUT. I thought it was great, but I never booked it which they may move up to late August. J. R. M. Have you got a n y particular weak spot w he n it comes to your taste? anyplace. That's Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway, Are there certain kinds of films that you just can't gauge very well? J.R.M. Are you ever influenced by audi- and it just looks tremendously commer- G.M. I think everyone has, yeah. If a ence reaction? cial. Well, Sydney Pollack. THE YAKUZA? film has Robert Redford with his shirt off, I automatically buy it. I can't help it, you G.M. Oh yeah, you can't help but have Unplayable, totally unplayable. You know? It's just one of those things. I bought LITTLE FAUSS AND BIG HALSY, be- some doubt about your own response should have seen some of the grosses on cause ... yea h , I did, oh I did. I bought LIT- TLE FAUSS AND BIG HALSY. Well, there yo u sometimes. But too many times you'll that: $20, $22. That's a whole day in first- go. come out of a screening room, and there'll run situations. It got some fairly good re- I think you've got to have some weak- ness. There's got to be some element be a bunch of guys waiting for someone to views, too . It's just that when you put where your personal tastes come into the situation. If it has Beau Bridges, like THE say, \"Whaddaya think of that one? In- \"Yakuza\" up, the audience just doesn't LAST AMERICAN HERO, I buy the picture too . teresting?\" They're all waiting to pick each know . YouGan sometimes do that-KLUTE : other's brains; they're aH afraid to say what did \"Klute\" mean? J.R.M. Jeff. G.M. Jeff! I'm sorry, Jeff-Beau too, but something unpopular. ~ Jeff primarily. Now if they ever come out with a picture with Jeff Bridges and Robert J.R.M. Can you tell anything from ~ Redford , I will not go. I'll have to send someone else' watching the other buyers? ~ J.R.M. And is there anything you would balk at for personal reasons? G.M. No, I usually don' t watch_other ~ G.M. No, there is absolutely nothing :J that we wouldn't play, if someone would buyers. But I usually have reactions to 0 buy a ticket for it and knew what they were buying. We opened a movie in New York movies-I laugh, or I cry, or I get a hard- ~::!: City called P, and P is exactly that-it's about two women pissing on a guy. It did on. That's more or less how I judge how 11: rather well, actually. things work out. I don't think there's anything that I have the right to say I would not play, if there is And a great many buyers really aren't in- an audience. We'll play things that I per- sonally don't like, or there' ll be movies I terested in movies; they're not movie love that .. .In fact, I went to a screening once with a group of friends , and Ben people . They'll occasionally fall asleep, Sack-the biggest Boston exhibitor at the time-was there. It was SAVAGE MESSIAH. that sort of thing. J.R.M. What are you expecting from the summer pictures? Ra nee Blakely in NASHVILLE. G.M. At this point the summer looks terrible. No one has any idea what the Let's see, summer product: Right now, summer's going to bring . Paramount's JAWS looks like a big, huge hit. If you have summer product was supposed to have any choice of any film for the summer, you been THE DAY OF THE LOCUST; THE DAY OF would be playing JAWS. Universal's terms, THE LOCUST is considered, despite some however, are so incredible, so high, so firm good reviews, a very, very nervous prop- that you don't know if you've won or not. erty. They are now rushing DAY OF THE LOC- They are selling it for twelve-week CUST in and, amazingly, the picture they' re minimums, with terms of \" ninety-ten\"; in bringing in behind-to save DAY OF THE other words, you have to give them ninety LOCUST?-is NASHVILLE, which is the same per cent of each week's gross which ex- thing. It doesn't make any sense, but it's ceeds your weekly expenses. As part of the what they have. bidding pro(ess, you state what your NASHVILLE requires very special hand- house expense is, and then you have to ling. It could be huge , or it could be fight to get them to accept that figure in the nothing-a boom-or-bust movie . It hope that you can make some kind of a shouldn't just be rushed in to substitute for profit. Universal knows, of course, that an arty flop. I was just electrified, I just your \" house expense\" is watered-but to loved it. Paramount also has MANDINGO what extent? So they're looking very hard and ONCE IS NOT ENOUGH, which I've at that figure . A \"ninety-ten\" deal stipu- booked everywhere. And MANDINGO is a lates that if you don't make the house ex- bit of a risk, because it's supposedly a black pense, the distributor gets a minimum of movie. Most of the exhibitors who saw it seventy per cent for the first four weeks. In say, \"This is a black movie. It's O.K. , it'll other words Universal will have the option do business downtown and in New York of taking either ninety per cent over your City\"-and it has . It's opened huge. Oh, house expense or seventy per cent of the incredible! It's like four times DAY OF THE total gross, whichever is higher. You must LOCUST! It broke all records. It is the first play JAWS for twelve weeks; if you don't, \" class\" example of what we call \" mixed you'll be billed for the unplayed time . And 60 JULY-AUGUST 1975 1
RELEASING THE SHARKS and the film did not do that well. After something new: You must contribute a cer- that, as far as they're concerned, the film is tain proportionate share to the national J.R.M. As a distributor, Hallmark is zilch . Now, even if we went to them and advertising campaign-they will deter- mine what it is and present you with a generally considered the most effective said, \"Look, we'll bail you out, we' ll buy bill-which is over and above the local ad- exploitation outfit since AlP, what with the rights, we'll give you $200,000, we can vertising campaign . You also pay for the LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, DON'T LOOK IN do something with it\"-Metro will, at that THE BASEMENT, MARK OF THE DEVIL, THE point, be embarrassed . If some hole-in- local campaign, but in that case the dis- DRAGON DIES HARD, and TOGETHER. The the-wall company in Boston took one of tributor will pay for the major proportion . rumors are that you're pretty audacious. their pictures, which they had bought If he takes ninety per cent of the gross, he G.M. Well, we will often test campaigns from a producer-well, that producer isn't has to pay for ninety per cent of the adver- without having pictures! Rather than going to go to Metro next time. He's going tising. JAWS will be a big hit, but it'll be very going to the expense of buying a movie to say, \" You're jerks, I'll find someone like much like THE EXORCIST. Nobody kept any and then trying to devise a campaign and Hallmark to release my picture.\" So that it money. J.R.M. Why are you so certain it'll do hoping that the money we've risked in was a case where they would not even sell buying the film is going to bail us out, we it to us. You could rent it for $50 a week, well? G.M. I don't know , because I just will concoct a campaign, open it any place you wanted. somewhere--in a drive-in, possibly-and J.R.M. Why didn' t they re-release it with screamed when I saw it. It' s as simple as that-I went to see it and I fainted dead use a film that has not been shown very the TEENAGE RUNAWAYS campaign? much that more or less conforms to the G.M. Because someone who is making away; I thought it was fabulous. I still don' t campaign that we've devised. Then, if it's $250,000 a year said that this picture is a understand how it's a PC, though . I still have a mental image of that first successful, we will go out and purchase a failure . Now it is just as important for that movie that more or less repesents the cam- person to be right about failures as it is to shock when they finally go out looking for be right about hits. And there are times the shark, tossing meat overboard, and the paign that we've used. For instance, we played a movie called when a picture will deliberately be de- face of the shark comes right up out of the TEENAGE RUNAWAYS in several spots in stroyed because some executive has said it water, and it's totally unexpected! Just fan- tastic! New England. Now there is no such movie will not sell . ROLLERBALL is one that people are con- as TEENAGE RUNAWAYS . The movie that we However, we currently are re-releasing used was four years old and had a very a movie originally released by someone sidering. There's a new Woody Allen, LOVE AND DEATH, which will be important. limited release by an independent else-sHARK! There's BITE THE BULLET, which people are company-it had Charlotte Rampling and J.R.M. How did you get hold of that? Bruce Oem. I rented it for a flat sum of $50, G.M. We bought the rights from divided on. There' s THE RETURN OF THE we then put our title on it, spent a large National Television Associates, NTA. PINK PANTHER , which has opened to amount of money on the campaign, and There are two films-actually three--that smash business. J.R.M. Is the Woody Allen one people we had a big success. are trying to cash in on JAWS before it J.R. M. A title alone is enough to do bus- comes out. Columbia is moving rather are just guessing on, or has an yone seen it slowly trying to reissue BLUE WATER, WHITE yet? iness? G.M. There were graphics too. DEATH-which is a smart idea, but by the G.M. The Woody AlIens have become J.R.M. A photograph? time they mobilize everything the way like Mel Brookses or Jerry Lewises. They G.M. Yeah, a photograph of someone major companies do, it'll be over. UA has a have a certain commercial value that seems to never go below a certain sum and may . who does not even appear in the movie. picture made by Cornel Wilde called go higher. Woody Allen is one of the few We just made up this whole thing. And the SHARKS' TREASURE, with Yaphet Kotto, people you can say that about: A Woody whole thing does business when we open that's doing lots of business right now in it, and then we know we can go out and Florida . And Hallmark-us-has pur- Allen means x amount of dollars. J.R.M. Is ROLLERBALL going to be risky? get another picture. Just as when ANIMAL chased a 1970 movie by Sam Fuller called G.M. A lot of people don't think so, but I LOVER was doing business, we seriously SHARK! which stars Burt Reynolds, and considered buying another animal sex which has actual footage of a man being think it is. The whole futuristic dea th- movie. And we seriously considered titles, killed by a shark, and the man being killed game business is not so fresh, and it has such as ANIMAL SMACKERS, LOVE WITH THE is the cameraman. They fortunately had a never been appealing to a wide audience. PROPER ANIMAL, MY LOVER, MY PET, DOG camera going, and the tag line for the film Also, it's unusual in that it's basically an ac- EAT DOG: A PLAIN GIRL AND HER CANINE. will be: \"The most expensive shark adven- tion movie tha t' s be ing sold as a class movie . That's very risky, to have an action But in the end we decided not to get into ture ever filmed-it cost a life to make!\" the bestiality game. J.R.M. How much did the rights to this picture sold for twelve weeks. JAWS and J.R.M. Once you know TEENAGE RUNA- cost you? TOWERING INFERNO are different; they're WAYS is going to be a success and you're G.M. Uh, a very low sum. action pictures, but they' re also spectacles. ready to buy a picture, what do you buy? J.R.M. And how did Hallmark happen The only action movie I can think to com- G.M. We'll go to Europe, or some inde- to think of it? Was it your idea? pare ROLLERBALL to is DELIVERANCE. And pendent in the United States will come to G.M. No, someone else's . I remember DELIVERANCE really didn't make it as a us and want to sell outright a film that has there was a big deal in 1970 because Fuller first-run movie; it was O.K. in New York, not been released. was upset about the editing of it. In fact he but in Boston it didn't become a smash J.R.M. Why can't you just buy the one wanted to take his name off, but the prints until sub-run. That's what I'm afraid of you used in the first place? with ROLLERBALL. that we have still have his name on. G.M. Because most major companies, J.R.M. Have you bought all the prints of There really isn't anything else major. even independents . .. MCM had a picture it? Warner Brothers looks very weak-the that we wanted Hallmark to buy that I G.M. Well, it was released theatrically, only thing there is THE DROWNING POOL, liked very, very much. It had maybe 100 and it's been on television. There are like Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in a playdates all over the United States, but it thirty prints in the deal. What good are the mystery. But you're sure it's going to be a was a brilliant movie--Paul Bartel's PRI- prints to them? They sold them all. disaster because Stuart Rosenberg-ooh! VAT~ PARTS. It's fantastic, absolutely fan- So there are going to be movies cashing What has Stuart Rosenberg got on Paul tastic. However, MCM decided, when in on the shark craze but the only company Newman? I mean, after WUSA, how could they had its previews, that the movie was that has a real shark killing somebody is anyone .. .? This man has got to be the no good. They then went into saturation, Hallmark Releasing! Otto Preminger of grade-B movies. He just FILM COMMENT 61
ha sn 't made a commercial movie in years, Low-Profile Giant sal's OTHER SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN . No- and people still give him big properties. body else seems to think so. J.R.M. In no time, it seems, one of your I mean ROSEBUD: Did you see the grosses Bos ton - based com peti tors-General G.M. I couldn't stand it. I walked out. It on ROSEBUD? But I'm sure Preminger has Cinema-has become the country's largest just seemed like Doctor Welby on a wide another movie lined up that someone's circuit. What is it like to deal with-Dr screen. I could be completely wrong, given him several million dollars to do. If against-them? though. There's certain things you have you went to look for a job and you had a blind spots about, and that one I could not resume like Preminger's, In whICh yo u G.M . Well, at first they concentrated to- see at all. hadn' t done anything that made any tally on second-run product-they mostly money for fifteen years, you' d never get to have suburban houses. Lately, they have So you have all of these films for work anyplace. been bidding for first-run product, and summer-and with the major circuits that they've been getting some fir~t ru.ns . But are planning ahead, most of their Christ- So Warner Brothers doesn't have any- generally, they take the infenor first-run mas pictures are set. THE LUCK OF BARRY thing. They've got LEPKE, with Tony Cur- product, even though they have very good LYNDON, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, SHERLOCK tis, a Jewish gangster mOVIe which sounds houses . Part of that is that they Just would HOLMES' SMARTER BROTHER, THE MAN WHO depressing. Doc SAvAGE, which is unsell- not pay the very high terms that other cir- WOULD BE KING, LUCKY LADY. able, horrible-supposedly a camp mOVIe cuits would, and they weren't very aggres- about this character called Doc Savage, sive. J.R.M. Has blind-bidding begun on any Man of Bronze. Just terrible. Ron Ely is in of these yet? it and he doesn' t even take off his clothes. J.R.M. Why not? G.M. Well, they're a very, very big out- G.M. The Twentieth Century-Fox ones: , J.R.M. What about THE WILD PARTY? fit, and they must constantly be on guard SHERLOCK HOLMES and LUCKY LADY . against being termed a mo nopoly. The y G.M. Unpla ya ble . It's typical James have the largest group of movie houses not J.R.M. Are these things you would take Ivory . I mean they' re having ~ea in Bombay only in the United States, but in the worl~. a chance on? and thinking up these preCIous proJects. Like General Motors will give AMC their It's the equi valent of a va nity pr~ss no~e} . patent for an automatic ttans~ssion j~st G.M. I would, yeah . But you never can They make these precious little thmgS---It s so they will not be hit with antHrus~ S~ltS. tell . There are two schools of thought: Take based on a poem that appeared in Th e New General Cinema is not out to anmhllate a chance now, buy it and you're set, or wait Yorker, a blank verse poem . And the v.ocal competition. until your competition buys up every- backgro und is rhymes, or so methIng, thing, because there's always somethmg throughout the whole thing. Part of It left over. And when they're locked in, you looks like outtakes from SAVAGES. can come and buy something for very little money, because there's no ~ne else todo J.R.M. One summer release that I saw it. So yo u' re really playIng RUSSIan recently, that struck me as a potential hit if Roulette. Or rather, do you take Curtain it were promoted properly, was Umver- Number One, Curtain Number Two, or ..Curtain Number Thr. e~~e? The Price Is Right! THE FOREMOST AUTHORITY ON Super Deluxe Gold Lined Labels FILM CARE AND REPAIR Only $2.00 SCRATCH REMOVAL. INSPECTION COMPLETE FILM REJUVENATION PEERLESS PROCESS FOR NEW FILM PROTECTION FllMTREAT INTERNATIONAL 730 SALEM ST . GLENDALE CA 91203 . 113/142-2181 250 W64 ST • NEW YORK NY 10013 • 2111799-1500 Monthly lists of scarce cinema Dr. John Leonard books & magazines sent 2545 Walnut Street airmail - $5.00 yearly . Anywhere, Californi a 9 4544 A. E. COX, 21 Cecil Road, ltchen, 50uthhampton 502 7HX, 500 GOLD LINED ENGLAND. RETURN ADDRESS LABELS . . all at most reasonable prices Quick and easy way to put your Name and Return International Film Guide. address on letters, books, records, etc. Any Name. Address and Zip Code up to 4 lines beautifully pnnted ElI1112'1' Bel'llstellYS (II_U.IC COllECTiOn with large Gold Strip . 500 labels only $2.00. • @ '@~ '~ '. '~ ' ~' ~' ~'@'.'. Dublin Valley Press, 11683 Betlen Drive. Dublin . Calif 94566 . featuring new recordings of complete classic film scores by such composers as Steiner, Waxman Herrmann, Friedhofer, Rozsa, available' on a membership basis only. Send this ad to P.O. Box 261, Calabasas, Ca. 91302 for a free copy of Film Music Notebook. _ 62 JULY-AUGUST 1975
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 29 (13) Metaphysical problems- where a (b) a French episodic format running from particular man becomes Man. Sometimes Renoir's two fellow-traveling films to adaptations) and Hans Christian Ander- it's under the aegis of the liberal sermoniz- the Resnais-Marker-Godard et aI . FAR FROM sen's The Little Match Girl (after adapting it, ing excoriated by Andrew Sarris; some- VIETNAM; (c) Russian montage-Futurism Renoir called Andersen a \"terribly hard' times it's in the transcendental mode of (the New Deal is illustrated by s peeding writer). It reappears in another semi-fairy SUNRISE, where George O ' Brien and Janet tale, MIRACLE IN MILAN-the luxury ex- Gaynor are simply \"The Man\" and \"The DC-3s and streamlined train s); (d) a press halts alongside shanty town. It Woman\"; sometimes it's via Expres- modulates into terms of motherly love sionism's \"lowest common denominator/ paranoid left-wing populi s m: try ing to locked out (by class style) in both versions highest common factor\" equation of mur- popularize yet camouflage its thesis of of STELLA DALLAS. It shapes the title of EAST derer and prostitute with suffering human- class struggle, and hitting on a conspiracy SIDE, WEST SIDE. John Boorman contrasts ity. In Dmytryk's GIVE US THIS DAY, Sam terminology oddly anticipatory of McCar- two styles of gluttony, in LEO THE LAST. In Wanamaker's hand impaled on a spike in thyism, but left-to-right reversed; (e) the RED DESERT, Monica Vitti purchases a generous remorse makes one man Jesus, Ma rch of Time- WHY WE FIGHT genre; (f) the half-eaten sandwich from a workman with and all men. Universality may be sought documentary thriller, then still a-boming; whom she suddenly comes face to face; the through the blank-stare pantheism of Ros- (g) good old U.S. progressivist muckrak- confrontation builds into an elaborate sellini (GERMANY YEAR ZERO, STROMBOLI), ing; and (h) the militant-radical traditi~n . thematic structure-her animal instincts and implied by Renoir's nature/human na- are not too fastidious, but her lifestyle and ture pantheism (LA FILLE DE L'EAU) . But In their different ways, LE JOUR SE LEVE, lovers asphyxiate her. transcendentalism tends to minimize THE BIG NIGHT, and SWITCHBOARD populism, for much the same reason as in OPERATOR are poetically , morally, and (8) Strikes, co-operatives, collective ac- LOST HORIZON, and it's often purely rhetor- emotionally quite as finely textured as any tions. Four co-operatives: OUR DAILY ical, a pretext for universalizing bourgeois, middle-class drama. Nonetheless we do BREAD (right-wing Populist), THE CRIME OF Christian, or liberal concerns. populism and social realism alike the same MONSIEUR LANGE (left-wing anarchist), THE disservice which we would do the Western SOUTHERNER (the latter spirit transposed (14) Children as emblems: SHOESHINE, if we forgot their common roots with all into terms of the former) , CHANCE OF A GERMANY YEAR ZERO, THE QUIET ONE, LOS those B movies or TV series in which, un- LIFETIME (English Liberal co-ownership). OLVIDADOS, A KID FOR TWO FARTHINGS; but derstandably enough, few critics care to Anti-strike, but from a populist viewpoint: not THE FALLEN IDOL, OLIVER TWIST, immerse themselves . But if criticism SHIPYARD SALLY (Gracie Fields), I'M ALL OLIVER. The movies' children , like their forgets them altogether, or remembers RIGHT JACK (the Boultings), THE ANGRY noble savages, tend to miss too much of them only to see nothing but the be- SILENCE. Pro-strike: THE SALT OF THE the adult game. trayal which infests them, it lends itself EARTH, ADALEN }1, THE MOLLY MAGUIRES, only too well to the dream factory' s untir- THE ORGANIZER, JOE HILL (whose hero is a (15) Cinema-verite, notably Rouch- ing efforts to make realism seem a margi- special individual but also a kind of Morin's CHRONICLE OF A SUMMER. It's not nal genre, not so much caviar for the intel- Everyman), TOUT VA BIEN. so easy to account for one's hesitations lectual as sops to a schoolmarm con- over certain anthropological films- science. The exclusivist elitism of radical (9) Furnished Rooms for Rent. THE Rouch's LES MA'ITRES FOUS and JAGUAR, chic, and the regressive nostalgias that LOWER DEPTHS, HOTEL DU NORD, PENSION Chagnon's THE FEAST. Maybe any such obfuscate so much auteurism and genre MIMOSAS (Feyder), DOSS HOUSE, Berkeley's exclusion is parochial. Only a failure of im- theory, haven' t helped us to see how over HOLLYWOOD HOTEL (but certainly not agination makes these \"simpler,\" too un- the last twenty years a resurgence of GRAND HOTEL or TEN THOUSAND BED- familiar for us to feel \"we\" with them, populism/social realism/middle-class ROOMS), THE L-SHAPED ROOM, THE LADIES rather than \"they\" or a too-abstract realism has steadily asserted itself as a do- MAN, The Hot I Baltimore. humanism. minant stream, inspiring its own genres as well as invading almost every other. -): (10) How the Other Half Lives. In liter- (16) TV documentaries. From a rich ary documentary, George Orwell's Down source, one example: We Was All One la- To the editor: and Out in Paris and London, James Agee's ments rehousing's break-up of the old East Under the heading \" WHAT IS THE Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (whose style End solidarity. Moving in its own right, it's of self-consciousness about his task pro- useful background material to the other- BF!?\" (January-February issue) your read- vides a fascinating contrast with wise somewhat esoteric SPARROWS CAN'T ers were treated to a long partisan, conten- Godard's) . In film, the heroes of MET- SING and TILL DEATH DO US PART. tious and often inaccurate account of re- ROPOLIS, THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, UP THE cent industrial action at this Institute. For- JUNCTION, LEO THE LAST, TOUT VA BIEN. (17) The melodrama of honest toiI- tunately the Institute continues to function THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT; TREASURE OF SIERRA effectively, serving not only its 40, 000 (11) The episode film -a special form MADRE; GIVE US THIS DAY; BITTER RICE; THE members but also keeping its many con- of omnibus and cross-section. It may WAGES OF FEAR; GERVAISE; HELL DRIVERS. tacts with film enthusiasts and scholars weave back and forth between populism throughout the world. It is a pity that Miss and high-life, as in IF I HAD A MILLION, (18) Problems of Socialism-MAN IS Glaessner seems unwilling or incapable of CARNET DE BAL, TALES OF MANHATTAN, DEAD NOT ABIRD; SWITCHBOARD OPERATOR; MAR- separating her personal viewpoint from OF NIGHT, A LETTER TO THREE WIVES, and TYRS OF LOVE; VOLGA-VOLGA. her, often inaccurate, information. I doubt Zavattini's various episode projects. But if your readers wish to be treated to the social center of gravity of LA RONDE is Though realism is sometimes supposed another long recital contradicting her per- far too high. to be self-evident, our triad of genres turns sonalised view . I will limit myself to saying out to be the least homogenous of styles. that the BFI comprises 300 people who are (12) Collective heroes The absence of An apparently simple film like Paul constantly reviewing the Institute's role continuous personal identifications isn't Strand's and Leo Hurwitz's NATIVE LAND and attitudes, and what is more, doing so anti-populist in BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, not only reveals two separate strands-its in a public and open way. For my part this KAMERADSCHAFT or FIRES WERE STARTED. New Deal spirit and its particular kind of is infinitely preferable to a vegetable like However, BATTLE OF ALGIERS is social Marxism-but can be linked with (a) quiet and I am happy to stand by our rec- realist rather than populist. Populist anti- Anglo-Saxon documentary, for its idyllic- ord, even if the price we have to pay in- populism gives us the crowd as rabble in liberal view of workers building the U.S.; cludes articles like Miss Glaessner's. THE ANGRY SILENCE, populist misanthropy gives us the crowd as rabble in Duviviers crowds in PRELUDE TO WAR . Lean tak es a middle-class -Keith Lucas, Director, PANIQUE (after Simenon) .19 view of the crowd as mon ster in DR . Z HIVAGO . Frit z The British Film Institute Lan g's fondness for maddened crowds (METROPOLIS, 19 The friendly Odessa Steps crowd expresses a ma ybe M , certainly. FURY~ is ambiguous as to populist moment. Capra makes a theme of Fascist whether it's liberal realist or misanthropic. FILM COMMENT 63
BACK CONTRIBUTORS lin is film editor of Th e Phoenix (Boston), PAGE and rock critic for New Tim es. James Jean-Pierre Coursodon is the author of McCourt, who wrote on BROKEN GODDESS CORRECTION Buster Keaton (Editions Seghers) and co- for the January-February 1974 FILM COM- In th e edi ting of last issue's Back Page author, with Bertrand Tavernier, of Trente MENT, is the author of Marwdew Czgmvc/nvz ans de cinema americaine. Renee Epstein is a (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) . James piece by Austin Lamont on the ongoing freelance writer. Larry Lichty is co-author, Monaco has just completed The New Wave: work of the America n non-theatrical film with M.e. Topping, of American Broadcast- Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer, Rivette, com munity, an imputation was made that ing: A Source Book on theHistory of Radioand Resnais for Oxford University Press. Ted the Committee on Film and TV Resources Tel evision (Hastings House) . Antonin Perry is director of the Department of Film (Th e Mohonk Conference) \"played an im- Liehm, who teaches at Richmond College of the Museum of Modern Art. Bruce Petri portant part in defeating the AFI Bill.\" The (CUNY) , is the author of Closely Watched wrote his doctoral dissertation at Harvard phrase, which was the editor's and not Mr. Films: The Czechoslovak Experience. Dusan on George Stevens. Richard Seaver is the Lamont's, is not true . As Sally F. Dixon, Makavejev's remarks are from an inter- editor of Richard Seaver Books, and the ch airman of the Committee, points out, view with Edgardo Cozarinsky and Carlos translator of the LACOMBE LUCIEN paper- \"We took no position in regard to the bill Clarens, the rest of w hich was published in back . .\"J,\" and would like to emphasize that there have been AFI participa nts on the Com- the May-June FILM COMMENT. Janet Mas- mittee si nce its formation.\" FILM COM- MENT regre ts th e error, and w ish es the Scenes From Conference well in its avowed \"aim of A Marriage unified effort within the film community.\" S.AlYAJIT RAYS • distant A May 22nd news release from Con- thunder gressman John Brademas (D-Ind.) an- nounced that he has introduced \"an om- Now available in 16 mm from nibus bill to extend Federal support for the arts and humanities through 1980.\" The Cinema 5 • 16 mm legislation, to support the National En- dowments for the Arts and Humanities, is 595 Madison Avenue, New York 10022 co-sponsored by Congressman Alphonzo (212) 421-5555 Bell (R-Calif.), and a similar measure has been introduced in the Senate by Senators Claiborne Pell (D-R .I. ) and Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.) . Ofinterestto the film community is the fact that the legislation would \"ear- mark four per cent of the funds approp- riated for the Arts Endowment for the American Film Institute .\" As such a line item in the NEA budget, the funds would go directly to the AFI without the current review by a panel of professionals. Since the last attempt by the AFI (see previous FILM COMMENT pieces by Austin Lamont) to obtain funds directly from Congress was opposed so much by members of the film community, particularly educators and in- dependent film and video artists, no doubt this new attempt will stir up further de- bate . For further information contact: the Subcommittee on Select Education; phone 202/225-5954. • Our Film Noir issue (Nov.-Dec. 1974) was a complete sell-out, so we've re- printed it. The package contains articles on the Film Noir society, the Nightmare World of Fritz Lang, Raymond Chandler's novels and films, the Noir actor, and Film Noir today. (Plus the regular complement of articles, interviews, and departments.) The iss ue costs $2.00; bulk rates are cheaper. 64 JULY-AUGUST 1975
Sexuality in the Movies Edited by Thomas R. Atkins In entertain ing , intelligent, lavishly illustrated essays, the authars examine the camplex evalutian af sex and sensuality an the screen in relatian to the changing , aften ambivalent values of the public. Tapics include the histary af film censarship, the treatment af sex in spec ific genres-the Hollywaad feature, the flesh film , the manster film , and others-and probing stUdies af six landmark films. 288 pages, photos $12.50 The Birth NOW AVAILABLE LATEST RELEASES IN of the IN PAPERBACK Talkies FILMGUIDE SERIES Authors FROM EDISON on Film Harry M. Geduld and TO JOLSON Ronald Gottesman Edited by General Editors By Harry M. Geduld Harry M. Geduld \" . .. each campact baak presents a thaughtful and intelligent analysis Prepared in commemaratian af the \" The writers af this callectian , 35 af the cantributians af creative and fiftieth anniversary af the talkies, technical film peaple and haw they this is the first camplete , autharita- in all , write af their hapes, fears, work tagether to' achieve a single tive accaunt af haw saund cinema work af art. Readable far laymen was barn. The stary begins in 1877 and aver-all attitudes abaut the film and casual audiences as well as with the inventian af the phana- being impartant dacuments far the graph and cancludes in 1929, the and its relatian to' the art farm O'f seriaus student af the mavies.\" first year in which a talkie wan an Academy Award. An engrossing writing. . . . The selectians, as in- -Publishers Weekly study by a recagnized autharity an film . telligent as they are prabing, can- Filmguide to Odd Man Out By James DeFelice 352 pages, index, filmography stitute a truly exciting cantributian $12.50 Filmguide to Triumph of the Will to' the literature Oof film . Geduld is By Richard Meran Barsam to be cangratulated far a small Filmguide to BV2 By Ted Perry gem. \" -Choice 96 pages paper $1.95 cloth $6.95 320 pages, index paper $4.50 cloth $7.50
\"SUCH A THOROUGH DELIGHT IT LEFT ME FEELING HIGH. DON'T MISS IT!\" -Vincent Canby, THE NEW YORK TIMES \"BRILLIANT, WITTY, HARD·HITTING- ALREADY A CONTEMPORARY CLASSIC!\" -Amos Vogel, FILM COMMENT \"SEE THIS FILM. SEE IT MORE THAN ONCE. THEN SHOW IT TO OTHERS.\" -Ralph Gleason, ROLLING STONE Superb! <D A Rare A~hievement! P A Joy to Wat~h! CID Delightful! @ Remarkable! ® Marvelous! ® Wonderful!® Funny, Absolutely Riveting!® Lively, Witty Entertainment!® I Jay Cocks, TIME MAGAZINE 1. Maureen Orth, NEWSWEEK 3 Robert Hatch, THE NATION 4 Bruce Williamson, PLAYBOY S Nat Hentoff, THE VILLAGE VOICE 6 Jon Landau, ROLLING STONE 7 Penelope Gilliatt, THE NEW YORKER 8 Michael Kernan, THE WASHINGTON POST 9 Charles Champlain, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES \"Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed.\" Dav.d Le ...lne COIIv\"gM If' 1968 NYRE V A fUm by Jerry Bruck Jr. I.F. S T O N E ' S WEEKLY-rr Distributed by Open Circle Cinema, P.O. Box )IS, Franklin Lakes, N.J. 07417 Tel (1.01) 891·8240
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