VOLUME 21 - NUMBER 05 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1985

Acquire an appreciation for fine films. Presenting the Cinematheque Collection. Not many film makers can turn a dream into a poetic vision. Change the way we look at life. Uplift our spirits. In the whole world there are only a handful of truly great movie makers. Their films, unfortunately, are not readily available. Not easily seen. Until now. Until the Cinematheque Collection. A unique gallery of movie masterpieces by such greats as Luis Bunuel, Eric Rohmer, Ruy Guerra and Jonathan Demme. And the collection will continue to grow in the months ahead. If there ever was a reason to start a film library, the Cinematheque Collection is it. \"The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie:' \"Pauline At The Beach,\" \"Erendira:' and \"Who Am I This Time?:' available in October on videocassette. MEDIA HOME ENTERTAINMENT. INC. A Heron International Company Los Angeles, California

•Sl•SSUe published bimonthly by the Film Society of Lincoln Center Volume 21, Number 5 September-October 1985 Fonda, Streep and Hare ........... 13 Midsection: A Separate Cinema . . . . 29 Ordinary people making Like the Negro Baseball play- extraordinary choices in exem- ers before Jackie Robinson, so plary films: these are the char- were black filmmakers before acters played by Jane Fonda Sidney Poitier: scrambling to and Meryl Streep. In Agnes of display their talents on a shoe- God and Plenty, Hollywood's string before a cheering home favorite smart women wield crowd. Donald Bogle their scalpels to probe religious reprises the undersung history ecstasy and political anomie. of \"race films ;' stars like Man- Marcia Pally observes and tan Moreland and directors like admires (page 13). With Plenty the inimitable Oscar Micheaux and its companion film (page 31). And Armand Wetherby , David Hare proves White scans the plight of black himself a spectral satirist of artists in an \"integrated\" indus- post-imperial Britain. He chats try (page 39). Plus ten color knowledgeably with Steve pages of posters and sagacious Lawson (page 18). comment on early black films. Japan Tandem: Mishima Ran...... .48 TV's Golden Age (1955, '85) ........62 East meets West in two eagerly Thirty years from now, will the redis- awaited films from Japan . Ran , covery of 1985's Amazing Stories Akira Kurosawa's fifth picture elicit the cultish thrill that sizzled in 20 years, is a free (indeed, through TV fans · when Jackie Glea- oneiric) adaptation of King son announced he had found 75 Lear with a touch of Lady Mac- \"lost\" episodes of The Honey- beth; Peter Grilli visited the mooners? We can't say for sure. But set and talked with the old mas- we'll bet you never thought of Ralph ter who do run Ran (page 48). Kramden as Falstaff, or Alice as the Paul Schrader's violently sty- goddess Kali. J. Hoberman did, lized rendition of the life and though, in his Honeymooners hagio- works of Yukio Mishima pro- graphy (page 62). The other big TV voked outrage among Mishi- news is the revival of Fifties-style sus- rna's supporters and detractors pense shows by Steven Spielberg and even before it was seen in that crowd. Elvis Mitchell has the Japan. Frank Segers traces early poop on a quartet of promising the controversy (page 49) . prime-time anthologies (page 63). Also in this issue: A Little Bit of Art . .... . .... . .23 Video: Censored!. . . . . ........72 Dim Sum mixes Capra and Ozu in a deft The courts put a damper on sexy movies Journals ............. . ...... 2 and winning comedy drama. David on TV. Lois P. Sheinfeld regrets . Three festivals: Marc Mancini from a Thomson talks with Dim Sum's director, world's fair of 21st-century technology in Wayne (Chan Is Missing) Wang. Pensees: Growing Up Western .. 76 Tokyo; Mary Corliss amid May showers Richard T Jameson likes Silverado. at Cannes; and Harlan Kennedy on the Las Vegas Strip ... . ..........69 prowl for Esther Williams in Taormina. Onscreen, Jerome Gary's Stripper offers Letters: Cuban Imbroglio . . .... 79 Also: Michale Walsh finds a sneaky tears and titters. Offscreen the action Schicchi hiding in the soundtrack of was even hotter. Scoop monger Jim Ver- Back Page: Quiz #15 ...... . ...80 John Huston's Prizzi 's Honor. niere went undercover for the story. Cover photo: Orion pictures. Editor: Richard Corliss. Executive Editor: Harlan Jacobson. Business Manager: Sayre Maxfield. Advenising and Circulation Manager: Tony Impavido. An Director and Cover Design: ElliOt Schulman. West Coast Editor: Anne Thompson. European Correspondent: Harlan Kennedy. Research Consultant: Mary Corliss. Circulation Assistant: Deborah Freedman. Back Issues: M~rian Masone. Controller: Domingo Hornilla, Jr., Editorial Assistants: Marlaine Glicksman, Manha Goldhirsh. Executive Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center: Joanne Koch. Second class postage paid at New York and additional mailing offices. Copyright © 1985 by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in FILM COMMENT do not represent Film Society of Lincoln Center policy. This publication is fully protected by domestic and international copyright. FILM COMMENT (ISSNOO 15-1 19X) , 140 West 65th Street, New York, N.Y. 10023, U.S.A., is made possible in pan by suppon from the New York State Council on the Ans and the National Endowment for the Ans. Subscription rates in the United States: $12 for six numbers , $22 for twelve numbers. Elsewhere: $18 for six numbers , $34 for twelve numbers, payable in U.S . funds only. New subscribers should include their occupations and zip codes. Postmaster: send address changes to FILM COMMENT, 140 West Sixty-fifth Street, New York , N.Y. 10023, U.S .A. .

Hotflashes from Tsukuba, Cannes, Taonnina, and another aria altogether SHADES OF '39 I t was the biggest fUm event in Japan's ~t_~_-L~ ~A.'tvr\" history. But it wasn't the Tokyo Film Paying homage to Sony s Jumbotron. Festival, a disjointed and disappointing affair, which was termed \"epoch-making\" No matter what gimmick each of these becomes largely irrelevant past a few by some journalists. (\"Eleven films in 3-D presentations pursued-one projec- yards. Showscan's image is reminiscent of which pubic hair was shown were tor or two, flat screen or concave-the television-though of incredibly greater screened without censorship:') No, the usefulness of each (beyond specialized crispness-probably because TV con- real cinematic extravaganza staged 1,400 events) appears limited. Tsukuba's 3-D structs its images at 30 frames per second. screenings per day over six months, in 40 shows left the brain feeling tricked and the That \"video\" look, then, which aestheti- theaters, and was visited by one out of nose dented. Until holography accom- cians have long tried to describe and every six Japanese. It was the Tsukuba plishes efficient movement, present film- explain, may be more than a matter of World's Fair. depth experiments seem tiringly unreal. lines and pixels but may derive also from projection speed. Tsukuba continued the tradition of A different version of technological expositions as prime venues for cinema's mimesis, however, exists in Show- Showscan's effect is enhanced by very technological avant-garde (FILM COM- scan, featured at the Toshiba Pavilion (and large screen projection, a strategy that MENT,Jan.-Feb.1983) . In fact, no event in at several sites across America). It is the more than half of Tsukuba's ftlmic presen- the ISO-year history of world's fairs has brainchild of producer-director-special- tations employed. Field-of-vision-filling plastered its walls so madly with screens effects artist Douglas Trumbull, who had screens, with exotic forms of 70mm pro- and monitors as has Tsukuba. hoped to project the \"mind\" sequences of jection, were ubiquitous, leading to a thor- his Brainstorm in this format. Trumbull oughly amusing glut of statistical puffery, About 40 miles northeast of Tokyo, believes that 24 frames per second, the hubris when it comes to names, and theat- Tsukuba is Japan's answer to America's Sil- cinematic projection speed of ordinary rical one-upsmanship: SEE THE SUN RISE icon Valley or Route 128. No surprise, comprehension, is an inadequate stand- ON THE IBARAKI PAVILION 'S DEMI- then, that its 2S0-acre exhibition site is as ard, and that 60 frames per second more SPHERICAL SCREEN! TAKE A \"TRIP TO high-tech as can be: robot acrobats, holo- nearly approximates the speed with which THE PLANET BIO\" UNDER MIDORI'S FIVE- graphic treasures, and computer-assisted the brain absorbs information from the PLANE \"SUPER OVAL' DOME! VISIT CIVILI- everythings - non~ of which was able to eye. ZATION'S GREAT RUINS THROUGH untangle the fair's epic waiting lines. CINEMA-U! which the Shueisha Publishing He may be onto something. The pre- Company claims is \"the world's largest 3-D proved to be the fair's trump card, sentation at Tsukuba would surely shake motion picture system:' (The Shueisha despite its widespread staging in conven- Andre Bazin into reformulating his theor- publicists seem blissfully unaware that just tional theaters over the past few years. ies of realism. Showscan heightens clarity, down the expo block was the Health and Hitachi, Sumitomo, Fujitsu, and the Japa- eliminates strobing, and, above all, con- Sports Pavilion, with its Japacs Projection nese steel industry all gambled on 3-D and veys the feeling that what you see is actu- Hall and a screen even loftier than theirs.) were rewarded by fairgoers willing to stand ally taking place before your eyes, as on a And just next door-the gall of it all-is in line two hours, don polarized glasses, stage or through a window, and hence Suntory's 1MAX Theater, with its boast of and then dodge the creatures that some- seems more real than 3-D. Man's stereo- \"the world's largest one piece screen:' At what predictably hovered two inches from scopic eyesight, Trumbull reminds, 8S by 11S feet, you better believe it. their noses. Sumitomo, especially, seemed a magnet for visitors, not so much for its Earth Song short as for the architec- tural and metaphorical cleverness of its pavilion-a yellow cube seemingly half in and half out of its mirrored surface. Rap- idly becoming the dean of 3-D film- makers, Murray Lerner (whose Magic Journeys is a highlight of Walt Disney World in Florida) presented an animated film for Hitachi that is the first to mold computer graphics in stereoscopic depth-a natural, obvious extension of special effects that until recently had pre- sented rather considerable technological hurdles . 2 d

309 UPTOWN IS YOUR TICI{ET TO THE NEWYORK FILM FESTIVAL! Don 't worry if your favorite into your home, featuring Don 't miss out - UPTOWN New York Film Festival events MEPHISTO, DODES' KA-DEN , are sold out. You can still see DANTON, and more. can b e your ticket to great e n- the best of past festivals on UPTOWN, Manhattan's Movie- And that 's not all! Coming tertainment all year. For one channel, starting September this fall , UPTOWN brings 27th. That 's when UPTOWN you THE BROTHER FROM low price, you 'll be able to se e kicks off its 4th Annual New ANOTHER PLANET', BIZET 'S .at least twenty-four films each York Film Festival 'Thbute. It's CARMEN, A LOVE IN month. For more a special celebration that GERMANY, and a WIM brings the best in cinema right WENDERS FILM FESTIVAL . details , or to ~,­,~, order UPTOWN, call Group W ~ CAlILE • Cable at -~ 567-5150 . UPTDIIN ChannelN MANHATTAN'S MOVIECHANNEl *UPTOW N is a pay TV service available only from Group W Cable in all serviceable buildings in Manhattan north of 86th Street on the eastside and north of 79th Street on the westside .

To top this , you'd have to project onto may be the most creative the Tsukuba fair Ingmar Bergman's film of The Magic Flute the side ofMt. Fuji. Worry not, if you can't had to offer. or Francesco Rosi's Carmen, but in subver- build them bigger, build them weirder. sive ways that are practically private jokes. Stack two 33-by-66-footers, one over the And what of the content of these exer- other, the way the gas company did. Build cises in audio-visual overload? A few films Francis Coppola, who knows a thing or a projection surface like a three-panel are passably thoughtful , like the U.S. two about opera, snuck some into Apoca- Shoji screen-that's what Kodanska Pub- Pavilion's To Think, which depicts a long- lypse Now in the helicopter gunship scene lishing came up with , then project the memoried computer as the glue that holds set to \"The Ride of the Valkyries\" from story of a boy, a robot, and a skunk. This is together a family's several generations. Wagner's Die Walkuere . That heady not a put-on; Mitsui did just that on a Many of the films are sensitive to Japan's sequence was not only the highlight of the screen with a waterfall in front. Another long-standing veneration of nature, ances- fllm but also the fmest realization of the approach: aerial views of the world were try, and grace, though this too often de- hard-charging Valkyrie music I have ever projected downward onto a concave generated into miso-bean soupiness. Most seen; Wagner would have loved it. In fact, I screen, which audiences viewed through chose to soothe or to startle, rather than to wish Coppola or Steven Spielberg would 12 isosceles windows while leaning on a provoke. And more than a few of the films make a short ftlm that could be shown in tubular, cage-like structure. This was took a childish posture, as if the audience the opera house during the opening of called Birds-I-Vision, in something called was mostly made up of kids , which it Walkuere's Act Three, and free us from the a Heartopia. Very strange. Very uncom- clearly was not. hefty breastplated ladies that directors are fortable . forced to put through their embarrassingly Most peculiarly, there was a preponder- earthbound paces while implausibly imper- P ress releases hawked Tsukuba as the ance of WASP characters in many of Tsu- sonating flying warrior maidens. home of \"what movie theaters will be kuba's media presentations. In fact, one like in the 21st century:' Typical expo non- pavilion portrayed early man as a glorified The movies' cleverest use of music that I sense. The fair's one prediction, however, blue-eyed blond. Many of Expo's filmma- have heard in a long time has turned up in that most promises fulfillment concerns kers were American or Canadian. Is this a video. The greatest prophesy, at least in case of gross insensitivity, or is it one of sJohn Huston's Prizzi Honor. The movie's size, is Sony's Jumbotron. It stands 82 feet pandering to Japan's fascination with all high and 130 feet wide, the equivalent of that is foreign? Japanese advertising, after wry, cracked tone seems to have puzzled 10,000, 20-inch color TVs (there go the all, is disproportionately populated with many ftlm critics-should they zotz this publicists again); it's nothing less than a Caucasian faces. picture or fall in love with it? - but I'll wager video drive-in screen, surprisingly view- any decent music critic had no problem able in bright sunlight, wonderfully bright at nighttime. While the potential for sdivining Huston's intent. For Prizzi Honor Times Square and The Ginza makes one shudder, Jumbotron's quality leap in sta- In the end, Tsukuba, like many pop is an opera manque, a gloss on Gianni dium instant replays could undermine artifacts, reflected all the contradictory Schicchi that requires for its complete umpires and referees everywhere. truisms that brush the surface of a culture. enjoyment a knowledge of Puccini's comic A little less boggling were Toshiba's Even though the fair was grossly over- masterpiece. high-definition TVs with 1,125 scan lines, more than double the current 525-line crowded, its staff was unfailingly gracious. A quick precis: Gianni Schicchi is the standard. With ~ll the hype for world-wide The exhibits were often strikingly bold, third in a triptych of one-act operas called II system conversion, viewing Toshiba's set is somewhat of a letdown. Its images are yet their power came from perfect deriva- Trittico , which was premiered in 1918 at the sharper, but not substantially more than those of a conventional well-tweaked mon- tion: Every major attraction at Tsukuba- Metropolitan Opera. The story, drawn itor. The quality of Panasonic's large liquid crystal video screen is even cruder- the giant robot, the 3-D extravaganzas, a from Dante, concerns the eponymous though flat, wall-hung LC screens seem the future of home entertainment. diorama of a city of the future-traced its J Florentine rascal who jumps into the just roots directly to Flushing Meadows, 1939. deceased Buoso Donati's still-warm bed in But high creative marks must go to NEC's Theater, with its rows of consoles Sadly, this latest world's fair left no order to fake a will that is supposed to leave and spaceship pilots' seats. At each posi- tion is a touch-sensitive monitor linked to works to be remembered like New York's Donati's money to his conniving relatives a computer-controlled 20-by-80-foot multi-paneled screen. As audience mem- documentary, The City, Paris' 1937 mas- instead of the Church. But the crafty Schic- bers encounter meteor swarms, black holes, and the like, they respond to com- terwork by Picasso, Guemica , or even an chi cheats everybody by leaving to himself puter-generated options. The majority's decision determines the visual display architectural statement like the 1889 Eiffel the choicest bits of the Donati estate, and, thus , the course of the fictional space voyage. An electronic updating of the old Tower. It will be remembered as the expo- excusing his actions to the audience at the Czech Laterna Majika, and a Dragon's Lair arcade game on a grand scale, the sition that not only sired films in record opera's end by pleading extenuating cir- NEC exercise in interactive entertainment numbers but embraced them-movies, in cumstances. It's only business, you under- every form, in just about every pavilion try- stand. ing to dream ahead. Huston's joke is telegraphed the minute -MARC MANCINI Alex North's pastiche score begins and the distinctive motif of a falling second, which PRIZZI'S OPERA symbolizes the crocodile tears of Donati's relatives, is prominently heard. (Boo of the M usic critics know better than anyone month to the picture's credits, which make else that the opera ain't over till the fat no mention of either Puccini or Rossini .) lady sings, but we also know that the pecu- Themes from the opera underpin novelist liar synthesis of music and drama called Richard Condon's tale of perverted honor opera makes a potent art form of treacher- among thieves throughout the film, and O\\JS subtlety and nuance. Opera comes in canny old Huston finally gives the game many forms: by Verdi and Wagner in the away in the scene in which Maerose (Anjel- opera house, of course, but by Andrew ica Huston) tells her father that Charley Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim on Partanna (Jack Nicholson) did it to her- Broadway, too. Occasionally, it even turns three times, Papa-right on the floor. At up at the movies - not, obviously, as in this point, we hear on the radio the opera's 4

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most famous (indeed, only) aria, \"Oh! mio intense fortnight. When Carmes took the Snodgress mumble and scratch in the pon- babbirw caro:' which is sung by Schicchi's pulse of pictures this year, it was faint but derous darkness. Other fums , hoping to daughter, Lauretta: \"Oh, dear daddy, I like still beating. And yes indeed, on a few days give pleasure, provoked pain. Ted Kot- him, he's so handsome.. .:' Not to mention the sun came out and blessed a few filins. cheffs Joshua Then and Now probably this big. Immediately, we know that while meant to be a tart, funny epic about grow- Maerose may be saying one thing with her Perhaps the slowness one ftnds in Euro- ing up lower-class jewish in Canada, with a mouth , her heart and other organs are say- pean and Third World f~ms at Cannes is gangster father and a mom who performs a ing another, and her ultimate triumph is only in contrast to the bustle outside. The never in doubt. The counterpoint of refer- diligent moviegoer races out of one theater, striptease on her young son's birthday. The ences neatly summarizes not only the down the rue d'Antibes, and into another- comedy was leaden, though, the acting and ethos of the ftlm but the function of music and there he flOds a filin that takes ftve mise en scene crass. Same, sad to say, for in opera as well. minutes to show an old man washing his joseph Losey's ftnal f~m, Steaming. Nei- hands, or the moon rising languorously ther nostalgia for a flOe director nor the There are other musical jokes. When over Rumania. Energy outside the screen- work of Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles Charley and Irene (Kathleen Turner) are ing rooms, inertia inside. This contradic- can save this sentimental feminist harangue planning the kidnapping of a corrupt bank tion may help explain the rapturous recep- from being as tepid as a bath in last night's official, the score quotes Rossini's overture tions granted to Alan Parker's Birdy dishwater. to La Gazza kuira, which means \"the thiev- ing magpie:' At a big Prizzi family function, Norma Aleandro and Cher: Best Actresses. a third-rate tenor sings \"Una furtiva lag- rima\" from Donizetti's L'Elisir d 'amore, (Special jury Prize), Cher's performance in Some small measure of praise, then, to a Pavarotti encore specialty. And when Mask (half of the Best Actress award) , and mms that strove to blend the realistic and Don Corrado receives the temporarily William Hurt's in Kiss ofthe Spider Woman surrealistic. Shuji Terayama's Farewell to repentent Irene at the center of his dark (Best Actor). While other mms and actors the Ark is no masterpiece, but it is of a web in Brooklyn Heights , he is listening to looked lethargic, these three were at least surpassing weirdness. In a remote japanese a recording of \"Questo 0 queUn \" from busy. Too much so, in Hurt's case. His village, an old man breaks and buries all the Verdi's Rigoletto, the unscrupulous Duke's hands fluttering in a semaphore, his voice openlOg aria. swooping through the middle register in clocks but one. A young man named Sute- search of poignance, Hurt was determined kichi loves his cousin Sue, whose father has Huston, in other words, is playing Prizzi to triumph over miscasting: a gruffly mas- made her wear an unbreakable chastity for laughs, and the jokes aren't all in the culine American actor as a flighty Argentine belt. Sutekichi kills an honored rival, script. In opera, the orchestra acts as an homosexual. Hurt may be a prince among escapes the village with Sue, and goes mad. unseen protagonist, commenting on the young actors, but he is no queen. Director He loses his memory and forced to attach action and sometimes dictating it. It does Hector Babenco should have chosen labels to everything: DOOR; MY WIFE; ME. the same thing in Huston's stylish filin, but another talented veteran of the off Broad- Ghosts haunt him; the villagers kill him not a single movie critic that I have read on way stage: Charles Ludlam. when they learn he has acquired a clock of his own; a strange woman's infant son grows sPrizzi Horwr has pointed this out; the Alas, the capering spirit of Ludlam's suddenly to adolescence and has sex with Ridiculous Theatrical Company was all the village women; the chastity belt joke's on them. And while I am far from absent at Cannes. There were plenty of miraculously springs open. Farewell to the asserting the general superiority of music silly mms this season, but not many that Ark, which has all the flaws and gifts that critics over their colleagues in f~m and the- meant to be. Pale Rider was one such flow from an overripe imagination, was still ater (one only needs to read the papers to unintentional hoot, with Clint Eastwood the best new f~m at Cannes by a dead see how foolhardy this would be), we have trying to keep a straight face while method director. Terayama died of cirrhosis in an advantage in confronting something like actors like Michael Moriarty and Carrie 1983. He was 47. Prizzi because we are accustomed to listen- ing for and to a subtext. Then again, we have to listen for and to the fat ladies, so nobody's perfect. - MICHAEL WALSH SHOWERSANDSARD~S Y es indeed, it rained quite a bit in Cannes this spring. Yes, the local Midiprix did a bigger business in parapluies thanin Bain de Soleil. And yes, for the third year in a row, attendants of the International Festival of Film were faced with a stringent choice: see movies or dry the laundry. But not to worry. The pictures were OK this year. Perhaps one expects less of an art form as it (and oneself) approaches middle age. The pace of f~ms is decelerating, their ambitions are decreasing. At 38, Cannes is no longer a rite of passion; it is more a businessman's holiday, a place to see the cream and the curd of world cinema in one 6

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Another weird Japanese guy, Yukio Mis- is also found in the performance of DESPERATELY SEEKING hima, committed seppuku in 1970 at age Marianne Sagebrecht, the plump mortuary ESTHER 45. This poet, novelist, and playwright was worker who falls in lust with a dishy subway a kamikaze for beauty-and \"beauty;' he conductor in Percy Adlon's comedy Sugar I t is 30 years since Esther Williarns last had said, \"is a small rotten tooth, rubbing Baby, and of Norma Alejandro (who, as co- dealings with the Ancient Roman Empire. against your tongue and asserting its impor- Best Actress, had to share with Cher), Who could forget that stirring chorus from tance:' He was given to such extravagant strong and subtle as the conservative Jupiters Darling, \"Ha-nni-bal! (rum-ti-tum) metaphors; he turned his art, his life, and schoolteacher whose eyes open slowly to Ha-nnib-bal!\", when Esther, Howard Keel, especially his death, into one. Paul Schra- institutional fascism in the Argentine and a large number of elephants sang and der's fum Mishima attempts to synthesize, drama, The Official Story. It is found as well danced their way through Italy? It gave a or at least suture together, the conflicting in every frame of The Purple Rose ofCairo, whole new perspective on the Punic Wars. tendencies in this suicidal samurai. But its the best new fum at Cannes or any place Now she was back in the sun-wracked splen- mixture of death march, flashbacks, and else. For one day, the gentle radiance of dor of the ancient world: namely Sicily. She dramatized snippets of his novels fails to Woody Allen's valentine to movies light- lined up with Eva Marie Saint, Jaqueline jell-perhaps because Mishima's psycho- ened the Cote d'Azur. Bisset, and Tony Curtis, the Taormina Film pathy is alien to western minds, perhaps Festival's four guest stars from Hollywood. because Schrader's fum style here is so Toward the end of the festival, the town's They were paraded around town in glittering remote, clumsy, stilted, lifeless. There are mayor thanked America for sending earnest that this was the year the Taofest was stylized, imaginative sets by Eiko Ishioka Cannes two things this year: The Purple out to become Italy's biggest showcase for illustrating the snippets, and Philip Glass' Rose of Cairo and James Stewart. Gen. new U.S. movies. score is his most sonorous and romantic. Jimmy came to France to launch a reissue But Schrader's dogged literalism turns Mis- of his 1954 biopic, The Glenn Miller Story; Japan's Funerals. hima into a Japanese Taxi Driver with liter- the fum's honey-voiced co-star, June A1ly- For this year's American Film Week at ary pretensions, and without the saving son, was there too, a petite dynamo. When Taormina, the festival's third, many of the delirium of Martin Scorsese's camera Stewart was asked to name his favorite pics' perpetrators were flown in: Susan energy. French director, he graciously replied: Seidelman of Desperately Seeking Susan; \"Waaall, Frans:;ois Truffaut:' Other stars John Glen of A View to a Kill; Chuck There are those who suspect that Jean- were in Cannes to pay homage to Truffaut: Norris of Code of Silence; that crowd. In Luc Godard has died, too, and gone to two dozen actors who had appeared in his addition, Jack Valenti represented America auteur heaven. His recent statements sug- films. The simplicity of the festival's tribute with many a big smile, striped shirt, and gest as much. \"It's impossible to make pic- was touching. The huge stage of the Grand message of interest. He even flashed his tures any more;' he told director John Boor- Palais was illuminated by a single, empty racket out on Center Court at Taormina's man, Dutit is still possible to go through spotlight- Truffaut's place-and one by tennis club (6-0, 6-0, 6-0). the motions:' How true. Godard is no one the actors emerged as their names were Nightly the U.S. movies were skywritten longer interested in, or capable of, making a read by Jeanne Moreau. Uaud, Deneuve, on the giant screen of the 2,000-year-old picture that stirs or troubles the emotions Depardieu, Denner, Dubois, Bisset, Azna- Greco-Roman theater. The honey-stoned (Breathless, A Married UiJman, La Chi- vour, Ardant, and many other old friends bowl, cradled between sea and stars, rang noise), but Detective shows he can still who had been brought to life through Truf- to the gladiatorial duel between famous make handsome pictures. The fum has the faut's eyes, took their bows, then posed for American stars and the Italian dialogue they structure of an ancient French farce: four a family portrait. A copy of that photo will were dubbed into. These incongruities hotel rooms filled with four different groups reside lovingly in the memory of everyone didn't bother the 20,000-strong audiences of people, each spying on or manipulating present that afternoon. ranged on the worn stone seats. They the others. A top cast, includingJean-Pierre Uaud, Nathalie Baye, and the desiccated The man who loved movies would have pop star Johnny Hallyday, brings some res- been smitten by Papa s Away on a Business onance to the prevailing bleak chic. And Trip, the fum that won the Palme d'Or. Like there are a few pretty young women around so many Truffaut works, Papa is a child's as ornaments, to take a sweater off or have view of a society infused by variable their breasts pummeled by a boxer. But like amounts of pain and joy- in this case Yugo- Godard's other recent work, Detective has slavia in the late Forties as it passed from the feel of a posthumous fum. A director Stalin's control to Tito's. Papa's \"business rises from the grave,of his cynicism, and his trip\" is really political exile, but he is no message to humanity is: Life stinks. martyr saint; he can be as cruel to his long- suffering wife as he is attentive to every L ife, though, is what we're stuck in. woman in town under 60. His young son And life is what we look for in movies, has an eye for the ladies too, particularly the even at Cannes. This year that vital impulse doctor's pretty daughter-one night he could be found in Bliss, an outrageous Aus- sleepwalks out of his house, down the tralian satire about a man brought back street, and right into the little girl's bed. At from near-death and rejected by his family, the end of this wonderful folkloric fable the who then finds sustenance in a young hip- lad is literally floating past treetops, a pie's affection and in the planting of trees. dreamy surveyor of the landscape of human (Note the hallucinogenic heart attack, the actions and passions. Cannes at its best insects crawling out of his chest, the riotous gives a moviegoer the same teeming over- grandeur of nature. Note the sardines.) Life view of world cinema. Even this year, through all that rain. -MARY CORLISS 8

cheered the movies, and they cheered NYU Film Program more loudly the makers and megastars Alumni brought shyly onto the platform to take a bow, including many luminaries from the (partial listing) Italian cinema: Gina Lollobrigida, wearing a sumptuous gown and cutaway smile; Martin Scorsese Giulietta Masina; Claudia Cardinale; Director Monica Vitti; Giancarlo Giannini; Lena Wertmuller (on the jury); Sergio Leone, in Raging Bull Taormina to open an exhibit of photos from Once Upon a Time in America. Jim Jarmusch director Once offstage, they diversified fascinat- ingly. Three years ago in Taormina you Stranger Than Paradise cduld not part a cypress tree without fmd- ing Tennessee Williams behind it. This Joel Cohn year you had only to take an innocent stroll director through the San Domenico Hotel gardens Blood Simple to stumble upon Jaqueline Bisset. With the paparazzi popping their tungstens, Bisset Marty Brest was plugging her HBO film Forbidden. She director was also praising Italy. \"I love Italy;' she said in answer to such questions as \"Is there a Beverly Hills Cop mystical element to the infrastructure of your film?\" and 'What lured you to the role Susan Seidelman of the Silesian countess who defies the director Nazis?\" Pressed further, she would add , \"I have always been a great admirer of Anto- Desperately Seeking Susan nioni:' They learned filmmaking It's the sign of a true star that, like Garbo, making films at NYU. her hair blows the wrong way when she stands on the edge of a ship or hotel terrace. You could too. Bisset's was blowing thus. So was Esther Williams' when I saw her standing by the N .ORKh' M · --------- ---------- ------ pool at the San Domenico. The big ques- r.,.W tion on everyone's lips at Taormina was: Ple.1Se send more information on I Will she go in? Esther kept us in suspense for several days, during which she merely the Departtnent of Film and Television. I inserted a discreet toe into the shallow end I and smiled with effulgent courtesy at the o undergraduate 0 graduate press , most of whom were disguised (like o summer sessions I me) as innocent passersby. I A critic cannot, however, stay at the shal- low end of events at a film festival; he must Tisch School of the II discover the matters of moment that lie I beneath the surface mardi gras. I rang Jack Arts Admissions Name I Valenti. I asked him why Hollywood had booked this mass package holiday to Taor- New York University Address I mma . p.o. Box 909 VALENTI: Hi, Harlan. Nice to talk to Cooper Station you. I New York, N.Y 10276 City/ State/ Zip Code KENNEDY: Hello, Jack. Jack, why has Hollywood booked this mass package holi- L JI I day to Taormina? New York University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity institution. pes 1985 ------------------------------~---- VALENTI: Glad you asked me. We're here to give American films the biggest possible showcase before they begin their theatrical run in Italy. We're also working with Italian exhibitors to try and lengthen the movie season. At present most Italian theaters close at Easter and reopen in Sep- tember, due to lack of air-conditioning or the expense of providing it. It doesn't need to be that way. The audiences we've had in Taormina prove movies can be popular- 9

and should be popular-the whole year works by new directors. Nightly in the San perky Oye for Oye (An Eye for an Eye), round. So we're investing a lot of energy Nicolo cinema (converted puppet theater) which marries, somewhat at the point of a into this, the third American Film Week and the Olimpia (sliding roof opens to stars, shotgun, an insurance-fraud thriller with a here, and we're already making plans for night breezes, and neighboring windows Fassbinderish love tale between young next year. Taormina is going to be the top where Sicilian families scream, play, eat, Arab and older Norwegian lady. launching pad for U.S. films into the Italian and grind coffee) you may witness the market. teething pains of fums from Norway, New The Golden Cariddi top prize went to Zealand, Russia, Britain, the Philippines, Juzo ltami's Ososhiki (Funerals), a natty So this was the Hollywood plan: to break and the Ivory Coast. .iconoclastic comedy about the Japanese into Italy from the south, like Garibaldi. No way of death. Britain's Maggie Smith and wonder they had brought Esther Williams Taormina has its share of clinkers each Liz Smith both copped acting prizes for the with them. Memories of Hannibal and year. It would take a heart of anthracite not pig pic A Private Function. These guer- Howard Keel would completely confuse to giggle at John Reid's Leave All Fair, dons were lavished on grateful recipients at the opposition. They would expect the where Sir John Gielgud quavers miscastly the last-night gala in the Teatro Antico. invasion to come from the north over the through the role of John Middleton Murry, Every year at this event, under a sparkling Alps, with large and clumsy beasts of bur- ex-husband of writer Katharine Mansfield Mediterranean sky, three hours of insane den like the new Burt Reynolds pic miracu- Oane Birkin). In sunlit French scenery televised show biz unfurl: dancing lously navigating the snow and ice. JM.M. recalls his life with Kath and their chorines, stand-up comics, ladies in leo- circle of ever-so-robust literary chums. tards, pratfalling pagliacci. At the end the But how would the world's stars and \"Lawrence and I used to shoulder our ruck- one moment of true magic happens: Every- directors respond, once having entered sacks and sally forth into the countryside;' one in the outdoor auditorium lights a can- Italy, when they discovered their offspring croons Sir John, who looks unlikely to have dIe in gratitude. As the flames multiply, it's mixing interlingually and speaking with for- shouldered anything more testing in his like a convocation of fireflies, or the Ave eign tongues? youth than a Vuitton picnic basket. This Maria sequence in Fantasia seen through a New Zealand fum should have been made kaleidoscope. There are more pinpoints of \"It's weeeeirrrd;' Susan Seidelman told with a built-in laugh track. light than there are superstars gathered on me over the phone. '~n expert job;' was the Teatro Antico stage. John Glen's verdict on the dubbing of A We may also speed past such fums as Tikoy Aguiluz' steamily catchpenny Ang The only cloud over Taormina's tri- View to a Kill. 'The Italians are the best in Bangkero (Boatman), where a young man umphs this year was the illness of fest chief and woman try to make ends meet, more Guglielmo Biraghi, who has built this event the world at this. They got all the nuances, than figuratively, in Manila's live sex-show up from an egg-and-spoon race in the Sev- even to a change of tone whenever Roger business; or Dutch director Dimitri enties to a big-time, smooth-running festi- Moore curls his lip!\" And Chuck Norris, Frenkel Frank's De ljssalon (The Ice val. This year Biraghi lay in his Taormina after seeing Il Codice del Silenzio, said, Cream Parlour), set in Nazi-occupied HoI- hotel amid a spaghetti of drip-feeds suffer- 'They must have gone through hundreds of land, where Bruno Ganz and Renee ing a severe bout of sciatica. Midway he was guys-my character's voice sounded just Soutendijk wade through a tutti-frutti script rushed to a hospital in Messina and back. like mine, even in Italian. And the theater is knee-deep in winsome overemphasis. Felice auguri, Guglielmo, and the great. When you've heard 20,000 people speediest possible recovery. cheering on your picture, it spoils you for Alessandro di Robilant's nuttyish film Radio City Music Hall:' nair from Italy, Solo per Amore (Only for My final glimpse of the Taormina Festival Love), was something else. \"Brambilla has a was of Esther Williams. Or should have Nothing, though , could spoil me for friend called Bongo, who is a nasty semi- been. In the last hour before my taxi was Esther Williams. Back at the San blind character. Madeddu, the policeman, due I headed to the Domenico. Unfortu- Domenico pool I had prepared my boldest madly in' love with Brambilla, shoots him- nately, when I got there, I was told that plan yet to catch her in jlotante. Days of self in front of her:' For once the fractured Signorina Williams had just flown back to synchronized-swimming rehearsal with my literalism of a pidgin-English press synopsis America. I had missed her by minutes. friend Jill, during which I held my tape captures the film's crazy-paved spirit. recorder arm-high above the water while Weaving its way through such everyday I turned away disgruntled. But I had not backstroking at her side, prepared me for matters as murder, voyeurism, suicide, and got far before a cloud of paparazzi were at the watery interview. This would surely the drinking of dog's blood, the movie my heels, clicking their lenses, flashing astound my publishers and secure the shows that even non sequiturs and near- their pencils, and asking me questions in handsome advance I needed for my forth- insanity can be part of life's rich woof. E.M. overlapping Italian. To my horror, I learned coming biog, Dangerous When Esther. Forster's \"Only connect\" here becomes a that they had seen me so often, a shyly more Mediterranean \"Only collide:' Robi- retiring Galahad in the distant wake of Miss But I had no sooner reached the lant and his British cameraman, David Williams, that they thought I was a fellow Domenico gardens when I saw a crowd of Scott (both graduates of the London Film star and perhaps the lady's Mediterranean paparazzi gathered round the pool. Their School), inflect street-life neo-realism with escort. I attempted roundly to disabuse cameras were clicking like cicadas while comic-strip costumes and cutting, and with them, but in the end I had to give up and something long, white, and surfy streaked a claustrophobic kismet where everyone hold a press conference. back and forth in the water. This was bad keeps bumping into the last person he news. If Esther was doing a high-speed wants to. Larky, lissome, and original. PAPARAZZI Ipassim): Is your relation- crawl instead of a ladylike backstroke, I ship with Miss Williams personal, profes- needed more time and a waterproof tape Hail also to Desire Ecare's Visage des sional, or artistic?/ Do you think the politi- recorder. I went back to the hotel and the Femmes (Faces of UVman), where femi- cal attitudes of Million Dollnr Mermaid are drawing board. nism hits the Ivory Coast. Tribal costumes, revisionist or Gramscian?/ Is Miss Williams karate, dancing, the economics of fish mar- planning a return to the cinema? Every evening in Taormina, just when kets, and red-hot sex in a river. What more you thought life was one long star-hunt, would you want? And hail to Gianni Lepre's KENNEDY: I love Italy and have always there were the fums. While playing Prince been an admirer of Antonioni .... Charming to Hollywood, the Taofest also plays Svengali to world cinema: running a -HARLAN KENNEDY Main Competition for flIst and second 10

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A Film by Ken Burns Produced by Ken Burns and Richard Kilberg If you were living in Louisiana you knew you were living in history defining itself before your eyes and you knew that you were not seeing a half..drunk hick buffoon performing an old routine, but witnessing a drama which was a version of the world's drama and the drama of history too: the old drama of power and ethics. Robert Penn Warren For more information contact: RKBlFlorentine Films P.O. Box 613 Maple Grove Road Walpole, NH 03608 603·756·3038 in NYC 212·925·8970

COMMENT Plenty ofStreep. times disastrous decisions. Consider, for Plainer Jane. example, Kate Nelligan in Eleni, choosing by Marcia Pally between her own torture and death, and her, who knew about it, who killed the the death of her son in the 1948 Greek baby? The young woman (Meg Tilly) W omen, it seems, are particu- civil war. Or Jessica Lange as Patsy Cline · remembers nothing of the incident and is larly well suited now to sit in in Sweet Dreams, and Streep, again, as so childlike that her sanity is questioned. Solomon's seat. In the last Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa-two When the court sends a psychiatrist 15 years it's become a con- women who knew that the life expected of (Fonda) to check her out, a conflagration vention: they get the dilemma-exploring them was suffocating but that bucking it erupts between Dr. Livingston, who roles. Demanding the right to make politi- threatened isolation and self-doubt. insists life can be explained by logic and cal and personal decisions , women do not science, and Mother Superior (Anne Ban- yet determine the options from wh~ch they In fact, most of Streep's best roles , croft), who believes in the unexplainable. have to choose-at least not as a group. So including her part in the upcoming Plenty, For the older nun, the novice Agnes is the group has emerged as the symbol of hang on torturous choices-not all as gru- neither retarded nor hysterical but crossroads and crossed purposes. Just as eling as Sophie's, but nevertheless deci- touched by God; the baby could've been . the Jew, always present yet always apart, is sions that contort experience and enrage His, for all we know. Livingston (and the the inevitable (and even tiresome) arche- the mind. So have the; top performances of audience) must decide by what set of type of alienation, women-increasingly that other most popular American film beliefs-faith or Freud's-to interpret willful but basically powerless-are the actress, Jane Fonda, and perhaps none events. perfect theater for observing the effort and more than her character in the current pain of choosing. The sight of it fascinates Agnes of God. Fonda frequently takes a In adapting his tightly-wrought play to a us like an insect struggling to get out from less heroic stance than Streep, if in a more expansive film, PieLmeier rounded under glass. harder-edged style. She tends to bumble out some edges and lost his most horrify- toward confrontation and change, rather ing scene. Agnes, confiding in Livingston, This fall, more than a half dozen pic- than look dilemma in the eye. But cutting tells how her mother burned her with ciga- tures focusing on female protagonists will choices are still at the crux of even these rettes \"down there:' Theatergoers sat open, and almost all involve tough, some- plainer-Jane partS. upright in their seats and collectively gasped; onscreen, the passage is hurried (Ironically, it's been male directors and screenwriters who have used women as a metaphor in this way. Many female film- makers of the same fifteen-year period have spent their celluloid revealing the repetition and boredom of the average woman's life, in films like Chantal Aker- man's Jeanne Dielman and Joyce Buiiuel's Dirty Dishes. [FILM COM- MENT, Sept.-Oct., 1983JThis may be cin- ema as catharsis: women justifiably getting their anger off their chests, scripting much needed exposes, and leveling their long awaited 'j 'accuse: Metaphor and myth- making may be the next step.) Agnes of God is an embarrassment of auspicious philosophical choices, though Norman Jewison's film of the John Piel- meier play masquerades as a whodunit. A novice gives birth in her room at the con- vent; she's found unconscious and the infant is found dead. Who impregnated 13

of safety, authority, and self-reliance. All women, until recently, were courted with promises of care and security, and all offered obedience and fidelity in return. MarryingJesus, as nuns do, differs only in the domestic arrangements. (Priests don't marry Jesus, I'm sure much to the dismay of some of them. They become, instead, his \"lifelong companion:' as the obits put it.) The dilemma Livingston faces stands in, somewhat elaborately, for the choices of all women, and eventually for choice itself. Agnes of God could not have been done in a monastery, even modifying the plot conceit. Not that men don't come to crises and wretch over their alternatives. But the p.articular position of women, floundering between acquiescence and assertion, makes them for better or worse sharper metaphors for this sort of crunch. Bancroft as Mother Superior and Fonda as Dr. Livingston, everyone presumes. Plenty also poses questions of self-reli- ance and dependence, but with the by and flat. modern skepticism and generally more possibility of faith removed and feminism Pielmeier also loosened the script's upbeat (something movie moguls like, not even a gleam in Friedan's eye. Play- since they believe depressed audiences wright David Hare adopted his script to structure. Act One, on stage, leans heavily depress ticket sales). In the play, Agnes is the screen and like Agnes, it's a successful toward reason: Mother Superior is the deemed insane by the courts, and placed effort in spite of significant changes. Jewi- spirit of Vatican II-unpretentious, funny, in a psychiatric institution where \"she son managed to lift Agnes out of the one and not above taking sarcastic swipes at stopped singing... and eating... and where bare convent room it inhabited on stage, the church. And the religious m. o. is heav- she died:' In the film, shes judged equally transforming it without the expected ily indicted when we learn that Living- insane but the court, in its wisdom, claustrophobia and staginess. And Fred ston's sister died iI) the convent-of appen- returns her to the convent, where she lives Schepisi (along with director of photogra- dicitis-because her Mother Superior on m mnocence. phy Ian Baker) turned in a detailed and didn't see the need to call in modern medi- elegant Plenty. Streep, as Susan Traherne, cine. -The turn toward faith which follows Remarkably, in spite of the alterations, looks beautiful, her hats are beautiful, and in the second act therefore is sharp, classi- Agnes remains a wrenching work and Piel- the rooms she sits in are beautiful. cally dramatic, and quite successful in meier's point comes through. In both play bringing you round the bend. and film, Livingston confronts the lure of Susan, however, is not content to be shelter that the church provides. She is beautiful. She would like to be efficacious, By contrast, the first half of the film single, has no children, and lives by her as she was in the Resistance, and can't gives no special credence to 20th-century wits-not only by supporting herself but quite tolerate the simpering options avail- living. Bancroft, usually earthy and witty, by relying on her mind for information and able to her in postwar England-whether is a surprisingly less worldly Mother Supe- explanations. For her, human knowledge as a single or married woman, poor or rior than Geraldine Page (who played the is the final resource and authority. Mother increasin&ly palmy. She tries to go it alone, role on stage), and the details of Living- Superior finds this sort of wisdom lacking working In a crummy office, then in a ston's sister's death are never explained. and is soothed only by the belief that what better one, and finally in advertising, Consequently, there is no marked turn we don't understand, God does. Agnes is where the mutts in the dog food commer- toward faith as the film progresses; there's something Mother Superior doesn't cials are smarter than the execs. She can't barely a shift. Fonda's psychiatrist fights a understand, and she's grateful for it as a stand the stupidity. She tries to have a defensive battle from the start-one sign of God. There is so little evidence of child, intending to raise it alone, but fails, knows all along that faith has its function. Him in this modern day, so little left unex- and - in the tradition of Mary Tyrone, But she fights hard. Fonda's performance plained. Zelda, and most pointedly, Plath - has a is economical, urgent, and searching. breakdown. Agnes ofGod begins as a contemplation With the plot weighted toward religion about religion but, because it's played out Rescued from the hospital by an old throughout the film, Pielmeier and Jewi- among women, opens up other questions lover, Susan marries the well-meaning fel- son can afford an ending less critical of low only to despise the hypocrisy of his work in the Foreign Office and the compro- mises that encompass his life. They end up posted in Jordan and, surrounded by vacant desert, Susan skips religion and goes for the original opiate. (So much for Mother Superior's cure-all.) Through all this, she mourns the war, its challenges, 14

and the intensity of relationships under fire-especially one, a brief encounter at a French dawn. Back in England, Susan's frustration mounts , and at her wit's end again , she bolts. The end of the film is banal, and in Susan's case, banality is what's tragic. During all these downs and downs , Streep never becomes maudlin or predict- able. Rebellious at one point, acid or even pathetic at another, she keeps turning her character over, exploring Susan's attempts to grapple with her surroundings. Kate Nelligan played Susan on stage as a kind of Cassandra, and if Streep performs the role with less single-minded rage, her more contained interpretation stands up well under the scrutiny of the camera and saves Streep from the mannerisms that have marred other roles. As a bonus, Streep's restraint and the realism of cinema offer more play to the supporting cast. Charles Dance gives a sympathetic, almost endearing, perform- ance of Susan's very plain husband. And Sir John Gielgud steals scenes with his straight-faced rendition of the straight- laced elder statesman , Sir Leonard Darwin. As always with Gielgud, you want to abscond with the thief. Plenty is capped by a short coda, a flashback to a sunny day in 1945 when a much as fighting the 'Nazis. The scene with a dilemma worth agonizing over: girlish Susan gazes over a French meadow ends with her breakdown and we never given her options to strangle, how is .the into the future , which she believes will be see the artist's gear again. But what if she'd French lieutenant's woman to live her life? as bright as the sunset. The scene is sappy and gratuitous, and Schepisi's only false chucked advertising and waitressed to Her 20th-century alter ego is merely move. The rest of the film proceeds support her painting? What if she'd been asked to choose between an old lover and insightfully, if sadly, from her youth to persuaded to take the risk by her friends or her new leading man. It could be tougher. middle age. By contrast, the play jumps the good fellow in the foreign service The modern sections, ironically, offer back and forth in time, beginning with the (whose income would certainly have made Streep a rather standard and traditional end. The switch to a continuous chronol- it less risky)? What if she'd fallen into the role; the period passages contain the ogy lightens the story (as the changes in company of a group like the Pre-Raphaeli- wicked catch-22's. Streep responded to Agnes do): you don't know at the outset tes-as did that other Streep heroine, the the difference: in the contemporary that Susan is doomed. French lieutenant's woman? scenes, she's simply nervous. In the 19th- Nevertheless, Susan's (and Hare's) cri John Fowles'sfemmefatale was the first century ones, she resonates with frustra- de coeur prevails: we are struggling in role Streep played (1981) where a woman tion and fatality. vitiating circumstances, trying to make faced with untenable options becomes the Even before The French Lieutenant's our way among ennervating prospects. center of the film (The focus of Kramer Woman, however, Fonda had come out And again, the female protagonist is the vs. Kramer, 1979, is unmistakably on with three films developing the drama of preferred symbol of our pointless efforts- Dustin Hoffman). This \"unfortunate\" lady women and choice. The first, of course, partly because women in the Fifties, sud- faces the choice between prostitution and was Klute; Julia and Coming Home fol- denly released from riveting rosily, were in stultifying (and certainly powerless) pro- lowed. a ludicrous predicament , and partly priety, but gets bailed out by the artist's because of the tourniquet of contradic- community of Pre-Raphaelites , who film that found its moment, Klute was Ations that bind women now. both traditional-and therefore encouraged her talent and intelligence. There is only one moment in the film The French Lieutenant's Woman flits soothing-and subversive. It was romantic where Susan can choose a different path , between this 19th-century tale and the and ended with Donald Sutherland's cop one that might not lead to yet another cui supposedly parallel story of the actors rescuing the fallen woman from danger de sac: She's still single and working in making the period film within a film. But and sin-a double whammy for the Dud- advertising, when the camera pans her the 19th- and 20th-century passages don't ley Do-right crowd. But the moment that apartment and reveals an easel, paints, and have equal impact. Not only visually more exploded the nascent feminism of the day several canvases. It's the only indication vivid and dramatically more developed was the admission cum challenge of Fon- that Susan has taken up something that than the contemporary scenes, the 19th- da's character, Bree Daniels, that the only could engage her energy and intellect as century sequences present its heroine way she could feel powerful was turning a 15

I average housewife is that she can make a difference in her life. Even about her body, Of the area she probably thinks she least con- I trols. Fonda and Donald Sutherland in Klute. 11 The program is enormously popular not only because of the national health and I fitness mania but because women are engaged in trying to get a hold on their trick. How did a woman get to the point ersatz Indian blouses , has an affair with a lives. And it's available to women stuck at home with the kids or unable to afford a where she felt her alternatives fell between wheelchair-ridden war-resister vet, and health club. While toning up the body may seem a frivilous place to start-or worse, a whoring and despondence? How did begins to doubt the morality of the war. charade of efficacy proferred women who still earn 59 cents on the male dollar-it's women come to the state where this The story is about growing up and com- actually primary and intimate. If you never look a day under your 42 years, working woman stood in for them , and her desper- ing into one's own, but it's not just an your muscles hard and getting results tells you that you can work hard and get results. ate options for their lives? In Klute , Fonda evolutionary tale. Each move that Fonda's The lesson generalizes. made plain women's predicament (as character makes is the result of a decision M eryl Streep' has had her share of \"ordinary women\" roles, too, but Virginia Woolf had done in prim, 60 years not to follow her husband's lead, as she's they've never been her best. Her charac- ters in Still of the Night and Falling in earlier). She said out loud the complaint expected to do , but to venture indepen- Love were silly, the films dismissible, and her performance highly mannered, as it that the Susan Traherne of the Fifties dently. A simple progression of lifestyles usually is when she's not guided by a strong director or a prescriptive historical could never quite form . doesn't produce much tension; the wind- style. Julia and Coming Home, made within a up in Coming Home accrues from actions Karen Silkwood, on the other hand, did not remain ordinary. Anybody blowing the year of each other, both feature a shel- taken against his instructions and in spite whistle on Kerr-McGee would've faced threatening obstacles - how much harder tered, naive protagonist who walks back- of his inevitable anger. for a woman to decide to expose the deception. ward into a briar patch . Getting out Fonda's army wife reflected America's Silkwood was a woman in the screw of becomes a rite of passage. unease about the war, but, interestingly, 'impossible choices: death now, at the hands of Kerr-McGee's henchmen, or In Julia, Fonda (playing Lillian the crisis in national pride and military death later, at the mercy of Kerr-McGee's product. The film should've been a gut- HeUman) is askeo to smuggle money to an ability launched by Vietnam is acted out puncher-on a par with The French Lieu- old school chum working for the under- here through a woman's contest with the stenant Woman if not Plenty, and a good ground in Nazi Germany. Fear tells her to rules of marriage. Obviously, a male pro- deal more disturbing than The China Syn- drome, Fonda's fictional antinuke movie. refuse; friendship and the memory of tagonist could not have substituted. And But the script undermined its heroine (let- ting Streep hang herself in affectations) Julia's idealism persuade her to try. She the doubling-up of critiques about war and and frittered the story away. In Streep's career, Silkwood remains an anomaly: too tries-and gets a little more independent gender not only makes for a layered film well-intentioned to be trashed, but too botched to be any good. about her own affairs, as a result. No won- but suggests a connection between mas- Oddly enough, Kramer vs. Kramer was der Hellman's short story garnered such culinity and militarism that we haven't more successful, both as a film and in making the woman heroic-even without interest among women in the Seventies. seen as clearly since Dr. Strangelove's the benefit of a David-and-Goliath plot. In that sense, Diana Kramer comes closer Julia could never make sense with a general feared for his precious bodily flu- than any Streep role to the Fonda heroines (though Streep had a chance to warm up male lead. Patriotism and buckets of natu- ids. (Some of Fonda's lesser films like Nine for the part with her brief appearance as a wife-who-got-out in Manhattan). ral bravery would instantly quash any to Five and Fun with Dick and Jane look As an average, yuppie Manhattanite, hero's doubt about so puny a project. But at women at a point of change, but the Mrs. Kramer falls into the classic feminist crisis about marriage, motherhood, and with a leading lady, the film was poignant comedies have neither the emotional nor self. She has to leave the protective nest and deal with the world on her own. and timely. Vanessa Redgrave was lustrous theatrical impact of a Coming Home or as Julia, and Fonda, quite credible as a Julia.) scared, spoiled American getting a taste of Perhaps Fonda's biggest boost in the fascism. Fonda's fanfare for the common arm of the little woman-and certainly the woman. most sustained-is her workout program. She sounded the roulade again in Com- In a way, it's her longest running movie and ing Home , where a timid army wife takes a it, too, hangs on choice and change. What- few steps on her own while her husband is ever one may say about the workout's slick on tour in Vietnam . Mrs. Peck 'n' Peck packaging and bountiful profits, the mes- moves off the base, lets her hair frizz, buys sage Fonda's books and tapes send to the 16

(Streep's Manhattan lady went one step further and became a lesbian .) Kramer vs. Kramer enacts literally the social scenario salluded to by The French Lieutenant Woman and Coming Home. It is, in fact, the scenario that generated interest in women and choice in the first place. Though most of the screen time is spent on Dustin Hoffman's David Kramer, all the major turning points of the ftIm are Streep's. (The Turning Point is yet another fUm focusing on women and their choices, but the careers of Bancroft and MacLaine demand another essay.) She first recog- nizes a breakdown of identity, leaves home, reshapes her life, returns and insists on custody of her son. Mr. Kramer experiences surprise and inconvenience at his wife's departure, but nothing as dramatically or psychologically drastic as loss of self. At bottom, neither marriage nor paternity alter male identity Streep with Kurt Russell in Silkwood. the way they impinge, even today, on women. In fact, Mr. Kramer becomes equally doomed, but the incident would birth by the anxious knowledge given interesting only when he places himself in remain unique to war. It doesn't pick up on them that one is alone in this world; that the position contemporary women have man's usual condition and would resist one is never taken care of; that life is a created for themselves, with all its aspira- generalization. Played out by a woman, naked battle between fear and desire ... tions and frustrations. the drama exceeds the boundaries of that desire is whetted only if it is reinforced The slew of paternity fums that followed Auschwitz precisely because it calls up the by the capacity to experience oneself.... Kramer-Author! Author!, Table for heated and unresolved issue of women The woman who knows deeply that she Five, and Mr. Mom-may have been and power. Sophie's burden becomes an will marry and be 'taken care of-that this spurred by the realization that, except for allegory, and once an allegory, it has mean- is the central event of her life-is in some the heroes of earth or space shoot-outs ing for men and women alike. vital sense being removed from the battle- and the parts Ben Kingsley has a knack for The same can be said of all these Streep field. She hands over her experiencing self landing, most of the gripping film roles of and Fonda roles, and those of other to her husband:' the last decade have been women's. Ever actresses over the last ten years. While few How can women retrieve the \"experi- on the cutting edge, Hoffman and Sydney characters-or people-confront Meng- encing self;' Gornick asked, and under Pollack put out Tootsie. ele, they face convention, the expecta- what conditions could that experience Sophi'e's Owice, Streep's most challenging . tions of others , and simple fear, instead. become a metaphor for human existence? film till Plenty, draws from masculine So in smaller, less illuminated arenas, the A dozen years ago , Gornick praised a and feminine spheres, but the woman's fight to preserve sanity and self goes on. few books-Kate Chopin's The Awaken- dilemma dominates. The horrors of the sec- These heroines have made a metaphor ing, and the works of Paula Fox and Myrna w.u-ond World (one of our favorite shoot-outs) from the details of women's lives. They're Lamb-because they flesh out their hero- serve as a backdrop for a mother's most foils for all our efforts to control what ines so well that female lives stand in for crushing torture: to be forced to decide becomes of us. To literally self-determine. life. The best of the films that follow wom- which of her children should go to the en's boredom fall into this category; Vovens. ivian Gornick wrote an essay in 1973 Jeanne Dielman is the classic. But some- Sophie is an elusive and difficult part to about female sensibility. All of culture thing more has happened in both literature play. She carries the cast of war as an and consciousness, she noted, is nothing and film since then . And Gornick sug- underlying pallor even in the cheerful more than our continuing efforts to gested it when she wrote \"as [women] postwar scenes, without ever quite betray- describe the self, what we do and feel. Yet move closer and closer toward their own ing the extent of her tragedy. Streep suc- for centuries, the cultural record has been experience, impelled now by need rather ceeded in portraying her; perhaps only the record of male experience. And so than dominated by anxiety, so will the Hanna Schygulla could have brought more both men and women \"recognize our- female sensibility grow:' bearing to the struggle against ruin. selves and make identification ...with what Women have begun to catapult them- Cranked up to explosive dimensions by we find in the literature of our culture:' selves out of the paralyzing protection of · the extreme setting, Sophie's choice is par- Women have been removed from the the Victorian family; many have refused to ticularly the modern woman's bind: at a effort to describe who mankind is , she \"be taken care of.\" Their call for self-deter- point where she must grapple with a rather continued, ·because of \"the ingrained con- mination has been sounded often and by brutal world (without the special protec- viction-shared by both men and many voices; the agony and injustice of tions of chivalry or pedastal), she hasn't the women-that for women marriage is the dependence has been made vivid in so training, tools, or clout to negotiate, let pivotal experience. It is this conviction, many ways. It must be registering, for the alone win. ' primarily, that reduces in women that flow demand - if not its satisfaction - is be- A man in Sophie's place would be of psychic energy that is fed in men from coming a metaphor for all. ® 17

Hare Apparent Facing choices ofhonesty. David Hare interviewed Wlnessa Redgrave in Wetherby. by Steve Lawson 18 T here may be nothing more disconcert- ing to a writer than the effect of delayed reaction . It's arriving before yo ur time and knowing that the Customs and Immigration flunkies who guard a culture do not know to greet you with smiles instead of indifference. So it is time, it seems, for D avid Hare to finally arrive in America. He has been a successful playwright in London for 15 years, since the production of Slag in 1970. Here, Hare's works - among them , Washington's Folger The- ater production of Teeth 'n Smiles , the off- Broadway Knuckle, and the Public The- ater and Broadway runs of Plenty-have received their American premieres any- where from two to seven years following their London debuts. This , though , has been a good year for Hare. Theatrically, Hare's 29-character epic Pravda, written with Howard Bren- ton, is playing to standing-room-only houses at London's National Theatre. His 1983 A Map of the World is having its U.S. premiere at the Public Theater this fall. And Hare is bidding to make a big impression with his first two films. For Plenty, starring Meryl Streep, Charles Dance, John Gielgud, Sting, and Tracy Allman, Hare wrote the adaptation of his own play for Fred Schepisi to direct. And for Wetherby, with Vanessa Redgrave in the leading role, he wrote the screenplay and made his debut as a feature film direc- tor. He is planning a third film, The Butter and Egg Man , for early 1986. Hare was born in Sussex in 1947. In his early twenties, he ran an experimental stage troupe, Portable Theatre, which toured Britain. Simultaneously he was lit- erary manager at the Royal Court Theatre, that source of so much energetic play- writing since World War II. As the Court's resident dramatist, Hare worked on Slag, a witty, mordant play revolving around three woman teachers. Following Slag's transfer from Hampstead Theatre Club (birthplace later of The Elephant Man) to the Court, Hare won the London Evening Standard award as Most Promising Play- wright of 1970 - and he was off. The Great Exhibition , Brassneck, Knuckle, Teeth 'n

Smiles, Plenty, Map of the World, bluffed his way into Jean's house and life. well-don't you think you should leave?\" It Pravda: the plays flowed. For the last dec- He then commits a stunning act of vio- took us about two and a half hours , and he ade, Hare has also staged the first produc- lence. The rest of the film probes why was scaring this girl to death . She was tions of his works, acquiring a name as a something so terrible and unexplainable absolutely petrified by this man who was highly gifted director. He also directed has taken place. completely silent. That's where it came Plenty and will direct Map in America. from: the idea of an uninvited guest. Such summaries may make Hare's writ- Fairly early in Plenty, Susan Traherne, ing sound clinical, bloodless. Not so. His How many versions did you try out? the play's leading character, tells the man characters-Curly Delafield, Peyote, I just wanted to write something very who will befriend and ultimately marry her M'Benbgue, Inch, Codename Lazar, much from my subconscious; a lot of work (at a terrible cost to them both) , \"I just say Lambert LaRue- are vivid. Hare's sub- I'd been doing had been willed. The first look at me-don't creep round the furni- jects are large, his concerns epic. Unlike draft of the film was almost completely ture-look at me and make a judgment:' David Mamet, say, or Harold Pinter, he incomprehensible. It free-associated That's Hare's methodology in the mouth paints on a broad canvas . Perhaps Hare between dream , reality, past, present, of one of his most articulate creations. reveals himself in the epigraph he chose future. Spun everywhere. Simon Relph, Slag \"addresses\" women's rights and sexu- from Oscar Wilde for the published script our producer, said there was no chance of ality and English boarding schools; of Map of the World:'~ map of the world anyone understanding this at all! So I Knuckle \"takes off' on gangster pictures; wrote a second draft which was much Teeth 'n Smiles \"traces\" the dissolution of Writer-Director Hare. more a psychological thriller- a police a rock band in a single night; Map of the investigation, rather conventional and World \"opposes\" political systems at a that does not include Utopia is not worth lame. Then I wrote a third draft that tried poverty conference. These verbs do not fit to combine the freewheelingness of the him, because Hare's writing resists our even glancing at, for it leaves out the one first with the narrative structure of the urge to pigeonhole or label. His best works second. are icebergs, the surface glinting seduc- country at which Humanity is always land- Did you have Vanessa Redgrave in tively in the sun of our comfortable mind while you were writing? sightlines, while nine-tenths of their real- ing. And when Humanity lands there, it No, but the minute it was finished it was ity spreads just below the surface. There apparent there wasn't anybody else who comes a point when eloquence falters, looks out, and, seeing a better country, could play it. when the subtle pressures on Hare's char- [ know you and Fred Schepisi had three acters strike the nerve, as in Plenty: sets sail:' -S.L. weeks of rehearsal with the actors in Plenty. How did you prepare them in BROCK: Please can you stop, can you H ow did Wetherby begin-as an Wetherby? Sit down and chat, or... stop fucking talking for five fucking min- image, a person, a story? Vanessa's a very difficult person to sit utes on end? In a rather mundane way. One evening I down and chat with. We had a rehearsal was staying in a house and was called down period, and I think she as much as any- SUSAN: I would stop, I would stop, I by a girl who lived downstairs and who body was thrilled to have such an ensem- would stop fucking talking if I ever heard could not get rid of a man who'd arrived ble. But we'd argue out every single scene anyone else say anything worth fucking claiming to be a friend of the owner. We as we got to it. Remember, she hasn't done stopping for. literally couldn't get him to go! Because we much contemporary work since Morgan! were very English, we didn't say: \"Uh, or Blow-Up , 19 years ago. She's done a lot \"Oh, God , I really have no idea,\" of classics and period work. One reason is sighed Hare when I asked if he she has such strong views on life as it's could identify his major themes and preoc- lived today that it's almost unbearable for cupations. \"I suppose - in Wetherby and her to do contemporary material, she feels Plenty, at least - I'm obsessed with the that deeply about it. cost of telling yourself or not telling your- Speaking of actresses: the published self the truth. Choices of honesty:' playscript of Plenty is dedicated to Kate Nelligan, who played Susan Traheme At the end of Plenty (both play and onstage in London and New York. Why film), we flash back 18 years to where didn't she get the film role? Susan Traherne is celebrating the libera- She was my first choice. Fred wanted a tion of France. Exuberant, she tells a new slant, and he also wanted to work with farmer, in French and then in English: \"[ Meryl. Both he and I had loved climbed the hill to get a better view.\" Silkwood.... Here was a film star not only (Emphasis mine.) That line has a terrible giving a very brave performance, but ful- beauty, coming after we've seen Susan filling an honorable role- getting many, move from wartime idealism to growing many people to go see a serious film on a disillusionment with the postwar Britain of serious subject, thanks to the force of her peace and plenty, her severed conscious- personality. Meryl has this amazing gift for ness affecting everyone around her. popularizing difficult material. Do you see links between Wetherby On the surface, Wetherby is more mys- and Plenty? terious but no less gripping. Jean Travers, a Wetherby's much less overt, much more schoolteacher in her late 40s, played by a work of imagination and less of intellect. Vanessa Redgrave, invites friends to din- ner at her Yorkshire cottage. The next day, a young man who'd accompanied two of her friends returns, revealing that he'd 19

Cinema It's about an inner dream world , it's about occurred to me , it was one of those Studies: what loneliness and repression and real unhappy accidents. If I were Christopher sexual need feel like. It's about something I'd've been furious, but he was very gra- An education people either recognize or don't. cious about it. for our time There's one technique you use in both, Tim McInnemey, who plays Morgan, Film is the art fonn that defines our though: time shifting and the fragmenta- the intruder, has to be memorable-and time. Films by Eisenstein, Bergman, tion oftenses. is. How 'd you settle on him? and Fassbinder, for instance, offer pen- etrating insights into human behavior, Right, but in a much more complicated Everyone who read the script asked cultural change, life as we live it and way in Wetherby, All the time I was shoot- who was going to play that part. The thing perceive it. At New York University's ing, I was thinking: 'What have I come out was to find an actor nobody knew; it's not a Tisch School of the Arts , we believe of? Where am I going to?\" And the shot character role you can give to an actor the study of film develops analytic was often determined not by where it who's famous . Tim went into a cafe the skills , hones critical thinking, and belonged in the scene, but where I knew it other day, and the woman opposite him broadens perspectives. It offers under- would belong in the cutting. And the graduates superb preparation for many actors would wonder: Why on earth is the had to stop eating and get up - because he of life's callings. camera over there? was the man in Wetherby. Our program in cinema studies If you go to Wetherby hoping for a McInnemey ~ vel}' different from your allows undergraduates to study film thriller, you'll be disappointed. [Laughs] I original outline, where Morgan was with the same distinguished scholars went to a terrible thriller the other day- heavyset with a mustache. who teach our graduate students. The Witness . One of the most manipulative department's film archives , variety of and nasty little pieces of work I've seen in a Those descriptions are never written in courses, and viewing facilities are long time, And this cynical attitude: stone. But people take stage directions so exceptional. And, students have access 'Weve drifted along this far, but now were literally. What makes me laugh about tele- to all the film screenings that make near the end, so we've got to have a lot of vision is that each department underlines New York City the richest film center violence:' I wasn't willing to do this , so the whatever concerns it. If the page reads , in the world. end of Wetherby doesn't spill buckets of \"He sits on a green chair;' this lorry will blood. turn up with eight green chairs. I'd explain Because film is a truly interdisciplin- I didn't want a green chair, I just sort of ary art fonn , the program includes the One ofthe best characters in Wetherby thought of it as a green chair. They're not study of related subjects: art, history, is Karen [Suzanna Hamilton], the all that concerned with bringing you the psychology, and even film production. girl who shows up on Redgrave's door- right one, but if it's a green chair you'll get As a result, our students get a broadly step. How much did you tell her about the eight of them. based education as they undertake a part? serious study o! cinema. How did you shoot the dinner party? On the page, the part barely exists: We literally built the set for certain For more infonnation, return the Shes this little slip of a girl who's totally shots. The crucial thing was you had to coupon below or call (212) 598-7777 . passive and blank, shes got a \"missing want to be there- all this food , the wine. ... faculty:' When I met Suzanna, I asked if When I went to Berlin, the Germans said: Tisch School of the Arts Admissions she thought the character needed more 'We'd love to come to England if you have explaining, that a lot of people had wanted dinner parties like that!\" That was their I New York University a bit more, She said, \"No, no , no - I know idea of lovely English life. I P.O. Box 909 . Cooper Station exactly who she is:' It's exactly the same There's a sensation ofsomething hang- with Chrissie, the police inspector's ing over that party. .. New York , N.Y 10276 girlfriend, Penny Downie told me that That long table with the lights on it- ever since she played the part people you should feel the whole thing's moving I Please send information on the cinema studies who've seen the film in England have I program . come up to her with, \"Oh, you're the mysteriously, that you're drifting in the extraordinarily blank girl in that cafe dark around those people. I o undergraduate 0 graduate scene:' They think shes like that, just I because her performance is so wonder- In short, you weren't seeking versimili- fully low-key. tude. 1- Name lVu don't feel the need to profile your If dream is the form, you've got to get an II Addre...:.. people. artist to sketch that dream for you. Then you try and realize it. I wasn't much con- I Ci' ylS,. ,eIZ,p Normally characters have bits, a little cerned whether houses in Yorkshire really I ~ew York Unlvcr,lIy I!\\ a n alli rmall Vl: iJl-lInrVt:qual orrtlnun ll ~ biography. But Wetherby is a film without _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Ln'::l~ bios. looked like that. Does this apply to the soundtrack, too? When the young man, Morgan, com- Take car noise: that long scene where mits this appalling act, I couldn't help thinking of Christopher Hampton's play Roger and Marcia are driving. I was look- The Philanthropist. ing at North by Northwest, and theres Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, and the Yes, and I felt terrible. I didn't realize car's totally silent. Go to a Wim Wenders until Chris came to see a rough cut of the film and all you hear is the engine; you fum. Simon Relph said, \"Do you realize in can't hear a word they're saying. It's a clas- the flfst scene of The Philanthropist a sic problem for a director: to what degree man does the same thing?\" It had never do I stylize? Throughout the film you mix realism with elegance: catastrophes set against a beautiful backdrop. ~C9/ 85..J 20

And there's a danger of getting man- That was a happy find . C hance. Most of pass this pink, steaming window shining in nered . Vanessa said to me: \"I can't enter the cutting was planned , but we couldn't the night. T his image of water and steam another bloody room where the lights afford to shoot the plane going to Malaya. and pink light. When we shot the bloody aren't on!\" I couldn't dissuade her from a So I asked for some stock footage. I always thing, we were standing in the streets of two-and-a-half-minute sequence where knew I wanted a shot that didn't belong. To Bradford at 4 a. m. in the morning, and we she bathes Suzanna's hand, puts a tourni- me thefeeling was important-it's a pass- couldn't get the steam guns to work . quet on it, even though I kept saying: ''I'm ing-over image, a passing over into death. not interested in the wound - all I'm inter- Every time we tracked along this incred- ested in is you sitting in the right light;' But Did you find it difficult to technically ibly expensive shot with all those wonder- great film actors are all obsessed with real- realize a vision? ful rain machines pelting down, you got to ism . \"How do I make this real ?\" Ciga- the end of the shot and there was this man rettes, lights , drinks , cups oftea .... We made a mess of one shot that's key to in a window, desperately aiming his steam the style of the film: where Vanessa is gun at a piece of polythe ne . 60,000 How did you do the wonderful silent pound s wo rth of night shooting, no shot of the plane flying through the walking down the street and the Chinese chance to do it again. The shot went to the clouds? restaurant hoves into view. Which we'd lab and was processed, and we put a false spent weeks planning. It shouldn't look like a Chinese restaurant, she should just PROFESSIONAL FILM BOOKS! by Film Professionals FILM DIRECTORS FILM SCHEDULING/FILM A Complete Guide '85 BUDGETING WORKBOOK Michael Singer, Ed. Ralph S. Singleton THIRD ANNUAL I!l I!l I!l INTERNATIONAL EDITION II!I I!l t. Companion to \"Film Schedu ling\". v' 1400 DIREC TORS-DOMESTIC FILlA Conta ins the entire screenplay to Francis & FOREIG N Coppola's Academy Award nominated THE CONVERSATION as we ll as v' Birthdate, Place, Yea r, Addresses, sa mple production an d budget forms Agents . to be completed by the reader. v' Full length features, telefilms ALL SHEETS PERFORATED. v' Alphabetical cross· reference of 14,000 films ISBN 0·943728·07·X 296pp. $15.95 v' Index of Directors v' Interviews & Photos of Jo hn MOVIE PRODUCfION & Badham, Arthur Hiller, Randa H ai nes, etc. $34.95 BUDGET FORMS ... INSTANTLY! ISBN 0·943728·15·0 8Vz\"x II \" C lorh 436 pp. Ralph S. Singleton FILM SCHEDULING This book plus one photocopier equals ....... ...'·\"\"10\"'.... . . ..,..\"..... Or, How Long Willlt Take every production and budget form To Shoot Your Movie? needed to make a fu ll length feature \"' -' or teleplay. Completely redesigned and Ralph S. Singleton integrated forms that are 8 If2 \"x II \" format-easy to tea r out and use again The complete step·by·step guide to and aga in. professional motion pictu re scheduling, detailing how to create a production ALL SHEETS PERFORATED board, shot·by·s hot, day·by·day. Complete production board of THE ISBN 0·943728·14·2 136 pp. $15.95 CONVERSATION in color. YES'• Please send me FC :85 ISBN 0·943728·11·8 224pp. $16.95 the following books : CALIF. UPS Recommended for college courses. TAX SHIPPING QTY. BOOK PRICE 2.27 . / L O N E E A.GLE\" \\ . FILM DIRECTORS '85 $34.95 1. 10 5.00 FILM SCHEDULING 1.04 2.50 $ FILM SCHEDULING/BUDGETING WKBK. 16.95 $ MOVIE PRODUCTION & BUDGET 15 .95 1.04 2.50 $ FORMS . .. INSTANTLY! 15.95 2.50 $,- - -- - - YOUR SOURCE fOR PROF£SSIONAL FIlM BOOKS SHIP BOOKS TO : TOTAL ENCLOSED $_________ 9903 Santa Monica Blvd. : Name State Zip LONE EAGLE PUBLISHING Beverly Hills, CA 90212 : Company 9903 Santa Monica Blvd. 213/471-8066 : Address Beverly Hills, CA 90212 : City 213/471-8066 21

Unlike Plenty or much of your stage work, Wetherby seems nonpolitical. It's an attempt to write about England zoom lfl . On a normal schedule, we now. The politics are s.ubmerged . could've gone back. she had Alice's light touch. But she's there What do you say to those who insist D id your original adaptation ofPlenty change a lot ? with Raymond , who plays the wet blan- you're constantly berating England in In my desire to freshen , I threw out ket, telling her she doesn't even like jazz, your work ? much of the play. It was Meryl who insisted on restoring big chunks; I remem- which is true. Susan's tragedy is that she I don't think that's quite fair, do you? ber her saying: \"What's remarkable about Susan is not so much what she felt , but doesn't swing. Even in Plenty, there was Susan's \"lover's how she expressed it:' Meryl wanted to And Alice's role's expanded. quarrel\" with England; the country was have those speeches, those pieces of elo- It only seems that way. Fred [Schepisi) the backdrop . The other criticism I get is quence. So the whole rehearsal period that my work is \"so English :' If that's so, I involved striking a balance between the told me a funny story about the pace of don't see why Plenty went so well in New play and the new, epic style Fred was eager Barbarossa. He screened it for Bruce York and was seen much more clearly than to implement in the film. Smeaton, who told him the first 15 min- in London. utes were too slow. So Fred recut the film From the first scene, there's an acute impression of \"opening up.\" You don 't and showed it again to J3ruce, who praised But many still criticized Susan for just have Susan rendezvous with the cou- rier, as she does in the play-you include it, saying it was so much quicker. Fred being \"cold. \" an entire Resistance platoon. looked at him and said : \"It's three minutes People in England are much more Onstage, Plenty was organized by scene and focused on the development of a char- longer!\" frightened of a strong woman than Ameri- acter. On film, we had the chance for more narrative drive and could show a lot of You cut out two characters from the cans are. I think she scared the shit out of history -the Coronation sequence, for example. In terms of visualizing 20 years play, Dorcas and Louise. people in England. [Laughs) In the film, I of a woman's life, film can be much purer. Too much material. I'll tell you straight don't think this'll be true. Why'd you add the scene where Susan and Lazar [Sam Neill] hide from the Ger- out, and this goes for 85 percent of all the But you weren 't at all keen on seeing mans on the bridge? films I've seen: a lot of films are good for Plenty become a film . To show that extraordinary courage was needed in occupied territory. about an hour. Then comes that dreadful I certainly had my doubts. How to do it, There's another new wartime scene- moment when everything fall s apart. For let the air in, let it breathe? It's funny: Mike the one. in which Susan and Lazar begin to make love. Plenty I wanted a sense of drive, rhythm- Nichols saw the play at the National back I think this makes things clearer than \"What's coming up next?\" in '78 and told me what a wonderful film the play did: that much of what Susan's trying to recapture goes back to one night The scenes in Jordan seem deliberately it'd make. But only when it went to the during the war. My play Licking Hitler suggested this , too-that sex under such slower... Public and then to Broadway did I begin to circumstances has a special charge. In the theater you have to do it with words ; lan- Of course. I'll never forget Meryl's work see how it might work. guage is a kind of surrogate. And I think this scene makes their reunion in the sea- in there, with the great lobotomized look One question comes up over and over side hotel that much more powerful. she mastered. You look at this woman and in your plays and now in yourfilms: How But doesn 't it make Susan 's war memo- ries· more sexually oriented? The recur- it's Valium land. are people to live together? Is it ever ring image ofthe key chain implies she's longing for one man , notpassion for a set Did you ever consider including Scene possible? Think of Susan and Raymond ofideals. One of the play, where Susan and Alice in Plenty, or Mike and Chrissie in You're right. There's a danger people may interpret the film as a series of are talking as Raymond sleeps ? Wetherby.. . or Morgan and anyone. fucks-a Sam Neill type, a Sting type, a Charles Dance type, rather like La Ronde. I felt I'd juggled time enough. You have An American girl came out of Wether- But the last encounter's very elliptical. to do that either wholeheartedly or not at by's first night in London and said to me: Why the jazz club scene? I liked the idea of these people seeing all. As it turned out, only the final scene's 'That line!\" She meant the moment themselves as the only bohemians in Lon- don. Here's Susan after the war, wishing out of synch chronologically. where Stanley (Ian Holm) says to Jean: \"If you're frightened of loneliness, never get Which filmmakers do you admire? married:' So this American girl went on: \"I Hitchcock. Well , actually, I like got married last week. Thanks very the names everyone else does - Orson much!\" [Laughs) I had to assure her I Welles , all those people. In England now, I hadn't been thinking of her marriage. like directors outside the English realistic In your afterword to the published tradition. I'm a great Nic Roeg fan. playscript of Plenty, you write: ':4s a Are there any actors you'd like to peopLe, we are cruel to each other, but direct? always quietly. \" It's funny you ask - I just worked with There's a phrase at the dinner party in Anthony Hopkins in Pravda at the Wetherby: \" Life is dangerous .. .And National, and he gives an extraordinary sometimes there's nothing you can do:' performance. He was someone I'd always We were very flattered by the censor in wanted to work with. England. Before he finally relented , he'd In Plenty I was particularly struck by insisted on having a minimum-age level for sTracy Allman work as Alice. audiences. And we said that's ridiculous- Yes , Tracy's very good. In the play, the there's no sexual explicitness , there's character of Alice was a witness , but she almost no violence at all. I mean, Sylvester trailed away. In the film, Alice's disillusion- Stallone would mock this! The censor ment with men is a strong counterpoint to said: \"It's not any single piece or scene you Susan; it liberates her to bring Susan back can cut-the film has a pervasive atmo- from Jordan. Tracy really helped make sphere of violence:' And that's the highest Alice much more satisfactory. compliment he could've paid me. @ 22

Chinese Tal~eout Wayne Wang interviewed for Wayne Wang, largely financed by Vin- by David Thomson cent Tai, an architect and real-estate devel- oper in the city, and co-produced by Tom A widowed mother is nearing the age at Wayne Wang. Sternberg, late of Zoetrope and the two which a fortune teller told her she Black Stallion pictures . The budget was would die. She takes American citizen- \"Sacramento\" is nearly lost in the icono- small, if 20 times that of Chan Is Missing. ship, even if she prefers to answer the graphy of Chinatown. Geraldine's sister But it is a huge step forward. Gentle, questions in Cantonese. She wants to go has a black daughter ; in Wayne Wang's funny, subtle, poignant, swinging between \"home\" to China to pay her last respects , mind she comes from a broken marriage, English and Cantonese, laughter and and she hopes her daughter, Geraldine, not explained in the film , but just another tears, Dim Sum combines the vitality of will get married. She visits China and instance of the ambiguity of home, as well Frank Capra and the grace of Ozu. But it is comes back persuaded she's going to live as the richness. The black child is loved ; more than a tribute; it is clear proof that longer. Geraldine is not quite ready to her grandmother still likes to run her hand Wayne Wang is an artist with a voice of his marry yet, and so life, and the problem, go through the girl's strange \"untidy\" hair. own. It is a film that takes apparent confu- on. sion and, with montage, makes it whole As soon as one talks to Wayne Wang, agam. That's the story of Wayne Wang's Dim one finds extra reason to admire his calm, Sum. As the uncle character might say, it his openness, and the quality of Dim Sum. The camera style seems simple and sounds like one of those old Japanese In an American movie he would be a very direct, but its impact is altered by editing movies. He means the films of Yasujiro mixed-up man, a figure of torment even, that has disparate iinages working Like Ozu, where the families sit and talk, worry his own roots are so tangled . But Wayne is ideograms. The film is always cutting away and hope, where the problems go on for- an American citizen, born in Hong Kong, from the placid family scenes to shots of ever, just as persistent as meals and the married once to an American, Terrel Selt- San Francisco, the water in the Bay, or pleasure and ritual that are involved in zer, and again to Cora Miao, a very popular empty parts of the house: the meal table taking green tea or eating a little bit of dim actress on Hong Kong television and a waiting to be reoccupied, the stairs, the sum. supporting player in Dim Sum. What's collection of shoes. The drama is seldom more, Terrel worked on Dim Sum, too, as accentuated, in the script or the mise en China is not seen in Dim Sum. There Wayne's co-writer. It's a way of living that scene. The problems are talked over was no way the modest budget would get goes from one language to another in the behind the backs of what is problematic. there; and, anyway, China is a phantom same sentence, and it's only possible There are no confrontations, just hints, home for the mother compared with her because of kindness, acceptance, and a regrets and attempts, an assembly of San Francisco house, where we become quiet handling of difficulty that is not moments . The style is Ozu-like in its still- accustomed to the way the sunlight falls at always American. ness and its distant group shots, but the the foot of the stairs and the net curtains irony and the tenderness are quicker than stir like seaweed in the nagging breeze. Dim Sum is another San Francisco film Ozu , more American, and helped by a One of the many discreet treasures in the sparse score in which Oriental strings min- film is the unemphasized full shot in which gle with a bluesy saxophone. Just as in the the mother makes a small, unnecessary characters' lives, there is room for Confu- straightening of a curtain before she goes cius and Dynasty, but only because off on her great trip. Wayne Wang and his camera have found a tender neutral place to watch from , which While Mother's away, Geraldine and her is not just the site for style, but a way of uncle cook for themselves and make a seeing that embodies emotion. hash of authentic Chinese cuisine. So they go to McDonald's and settle for a Big Mac This is a career more than most that one and Chicken McNuggets. The film looks forward to following. For if the doesn't stress the cultural loss or its own advance from first film to second is irony. These people are cheerful in repeated, then this is a director who might America-they are Americans-and Dim invest a film nair with Ozu's pregnant Sum rides on a buoyant subtext of ethnic tranquility, or explore the ravaged Shang- variety. In Uncle's bar, we see a Buddha hai of 1949 with Capra's eye for eccenuic- while we hear a radio commentary on a ity and optimism in the surviving casual- Giants-Dodgers game in which Pedro ties. Guerrero is at the plate. The street sign -D.T. 23

Where are you from? Not just place, Filming Chan is Missing. but in terms offamily background. From Hong Kong. Actually, I was born without them ever saying, was the fear of years before I did, and I was not sure about only a few days after my parents escaped communism. It's still there today. I did leaving. My parents were nudging me. But from China. My mother was pregnant hear stories about the Sino-Japanese War when the '67 trouble came, they were with me all the time they were trying to and the cruelty of the Japanese. There was sure, and I came to the U.S. to be a stu- run from Tsingtao, where they were living, a lot of anger there. And also how terrible dent. to Shanghai and eventually ending up in it had been to run away from China, and Hong Kong. Basically, my parents are from how much I was a burden to my mother GrrM,ing up, »hat languages did )VU speak? an upper-middle-class merchant back- because she was pregnant with me. They At home, I spoke Mandarin only. Then ground in China. When they went to barely made it. I think I was born six days when I started school, since all my friends Hong Kong, they were in the export- after they got out. were Cantonese, I picked up that. I always import business. My dad was in business, went to Catholic schools, Irish Jesuit and he was crazy. Anything. One day he'd Had they left relatives in China? schools, and they taught in Chinese and be selling seaweed, another day he was On my father's side everybody got out. English at the same time. It wasn't until tearing a boat apart to sell the sheet iron. But everybody on my mother's side, I the last couple of years in high school that think, stayed in China. I have never met I started speaking English more. When I lbu were born in. . . ? them. Only a few letters when I was very came over here, it was tough at first. 1949. Really I was born when Hong yo ung. In Dim Sum, what language does the Kong was born, because it was not much I*re your parents happy in Hong family speak? of anything until after the revolution when Kong? Cantonese. everybody from China went to Hong I wouldn't say they were. They had had Is there an in-between, a kind of Kong and started the whole place. very little money, and it was hard. Hong pidgin? But you're now an American citizen? Kong was mostly Cantonese. My dad was There is a little, mostly by Auntie Mary. Yeah , I just became an American citi- never very comfortable with that; he Sort of mixes the two languages, some- zen. spoke Mandarin. The north and the south times in the same sentence. That mix is With your father that way-a little don't get along at all, and my father still pretty prevalent in Hong Kong. Auntie reckless-were there ups and downs? refuses to speak Cantonese. He's been Mary in the film says certain words in a Oh, yeah. I didn't know the details as a there 35 years. They're both still there. way that sound pidgin English. kid, but I could sense his moods change Was there ever a prospect ofthem going At what point did you say, \"I*U, from day to day depending on what he was to live in Taiwan, or America? maybe I want to become American\"? And involved with. He was a true entrepreneur; They are actually in the process of com- what does that mean to you? wherever he smelled there was business, ing here now, and at different times they've I have a complicated back-history on this. he would go there and do it. You see, when he thought of going to Taiwan. I think they Because of the complete avoidance in talk- was in Tsingtao, which was a seaport, it seriously thought of moving there after ing about China, and having grown up in a was greatly influenced by the Germans , '67, when there was a big riot and it British colony, and my parents being and then the Americans. As a kid he was became very unstable. The riot was pretty very pro-American, I grew up with no working with the American Navy; that's much politically instigated; it was the wave sense of identification with a country. My when he started seeing American movies of the Cultural Revolution coming to inclinations were all toward America. My and speaking English. So he's very into Hong Kong. It died because China wasn't father gave me an English, or American, America and m,ovies. I grew up seeing willing to let Hong Kong completely col- name, and he would say, \"In America the probably every B movie that was made. I lapse. But at that period a lot of people and oranges are bigger:' The dream, the myth, probably saw every Audie Murphy movie. money left Hong Kong. That was just the movie myth, was so powerful. I think I When you were a child in Hong Kong, when I left. My older brother left four was already half-American even before I did your parents talk to you much about their childhood in China? It was very closed. I knew nothing about what their lives were like in China. The only thing they would really talk about was what they ate: \"If you had only had the things we used to eat;' and \"This meat doesn't taste right, because where we come from it tastes like this .\" The newspa- per we read was Taiwan-oriented, and I had no idea about China and the revolu- tion and all that stuff. Because they didn't teach it in the schools, either. It wasn't until I came to America that I had a broader historical picture. Even now I don't know very much of their life before Hong Kong. Did they have hopes ofgoing back? I think they really wanted to go back, but they were pretty resigned that it would never happen. The biggest thing I did feel, 24

I wanted to be completely American, to the point I was almost a drug addict. Then I went all-Chinese and went back to work in Chinatown. ever set foot here. And when I arrived I there I could get in almost immediately, I can make a good film in terms of the tried very fast-and very badly-to and be a director or a producer. I got in as a experimental art crowd. become almost American. director to take over a TV series that was very popular in Hong Kong at that time , Dim Sum has been some time in the You made a mess ofit? Below the Lion Rock. I had all these crazy making. How did it come about? Completely! I was going to school at ideals about the films I wanted to make, Foothill College the flfst year. And every- and this was straightforward All in the Films are never easy to get made, once body would get together at the end of the Family kind of soap opera. I lasted there you're over $100,000. After Chan came day and drink beer and tell dirty jokes, and three months and then came back here. out in 1983, I spent some time trying to I wanted so badly to be able to be part of And actually Terrel [Seltzer] went back raise independent money in New York, that. When half the time I didn't know with me during that period. Because we'd and also in Los Angeles. At all the major what the humor was or what the language just got married. studios. I pitched a lot of stories there, and really meant. On top of that, trying to be worked on different scripts. There was integrated really quickly in the dating sys- Folklore has it that Chan Is Missing one script, by a good friend of mine, which tem. Not being aware of the racist aspect, cost $20,000. Is that right? I came in on, and it almost went into a because I had thought in America every- production deal. I turned it down out of body treated everybody equally. Which $22,000. There were no deferred pay- various reasons, partially because I wasn't was an advantage to a certain extent, ments , and the actual cash that went out sure I really wanted to do it, and in some because I didn't know what to be afraid of. was $22,000. There was so much stuff sense I was afraid of it. It was called Who But I still made a complete mess of it. You that was donated, and nobody who You Know, and it's written by Henry Bean, had to have a car to take somebody out. I worked on it got a cent. But everybody who used to be in the Bay Area. It's a asked somebody for a flfst date and I only owned an equal share and got paid much remake of In a Lonely Place, but in this had a bicycle. In Hong Kong, you took a more in the end than they would've front. story the man does think he's committed bus! People laughed at me. Everything I the murder because he tends to have very did was a total mess. You talk about being American. But violent relationships with women. There's Sexually America was quite liberated, your two films set in America are about a part of me that liked the script a lot. And and my parents never taught me even the non-American people. Or are they? a part that wasn't sure about it. It was aU basic birds and bees. The only time I American characters, except for one began to find out was Health 121 in col- Some of them are American - they just Asian. It went through many different lege. Then to see that on a second or third happen to be Chinese, too . In terms of my cycles. At flfst HBO was going to 00 it date people kissed each other, and did all wanting to be American, I've gone through under Ron Howard's company. It got so this crazy stuff-it was mind-boggling! cycles myself. First I wanted to be comple- close to signing before I said, wait a min- That had a pretty strange effect on me. I tely American, even to the point that I was ute. They weren't going to do it for a lot of tried so hard to follow suit, thinking if I almost a drug addict! That was around '72, money, and I thought then it needed a didn't I'd really be left out. I didn't have when I went back to Hong Kong and bigger budget. Because $3 million for Hol- time to think about what I wanted to do, or realized I didn't fit there. Then I came lywood is nothing. Then Warren Beatty could do for myself. That was also the back and went through an all-Chinese was interested in it. Many different cycles. time of all the demonstrations and drugs, period. There was a lot of political move- and I got involved with all that. ment in all the minority communities, and But you turned it down. There was I went back to working in San Francisco's something in the material you didn't like? H ad you all along known film was Chinatown, not in film at all, and became what you wanted to do? all Chinese. Then I came out of that cycle Yeah , and by the time it came back close I'd always loved film. But I wasn't sure if I and said, ''Well, I'm not really that Chi- to production again, Dim Sum was already could do it; it seemed like such an nese, so maybe I'm a mix:' Now I think I'm in the process. And I looked at what I immense, difficult task. When I first came going through a period, since my second really wanted to do , and I knew I wanted to over here I was in commercial art because marriage, where I'm going back to being do something I felt down here rather than my parents said, \"You can't just do fine art. more Chinese in a less conscious way. But something I was attracted to because of its You have to be able to make a living.\" I took I'm very aware that I'm very American. genre and the feeling of Hollywood film- that for one year, and then gave it up and making. So Terrel and I worked on the first went into painting. Only at graduate To what extent did you make Chan draft, which we also shot some stuff for, school, at California College of Arts and more accessible to Americans? which was a story about five women. But Crafts, when I'd done some film history, then Dim Sum focused more on the did I start with a very simple production That wasn't really thought about at all. mother and daughter, and more on the class. The audience I wanted to reach was the mother because she came out so well in Asian-Americans of my generation. I was the early footage. In the beginning I wasn't After I graduated, in '72 or '73, I went accepting myself as a mixed-up Chinese- sure she could carry through as a main back to Hong Kong to try to work and live American, and most of my friends then character, because she'd never been in a there. If you're American-educated, there's were Chinese-Americans just becoming movie. a sense of victory going back. For me to yuppie. The only aspect I thought about get into the film industry or TV here for the American audience was the aes- How much did you shoot on that first would have taken five years at least. But thetics , the more formal aspect: the struc- go? ture of the film, how it was shot, and taking a film noir and reworking it. In We shot quite a bit. About half a movie. terms of content I was trying to reach the We were going ahead, making a movie Asian-Americans, but I wanted to say, see, about five people. 25

And only one or two ofthem are in the a last respect to her homeland, and that's final movie? very spiritual and symbolic, so I wanted her trip to be symbolic on the screen. But Yes. The scene where the young ladies to be symbolic, it's difficult to actually play mah jong is much more what the show it. movie was before. In hindsight, I didn't realize how much pressure there was. Part T here are two obvious points ofrefer- of the mistake I made in the early stuff in ence, Capra and Ozu. For you, how Dim Sum was I was going after a more do they feed into the film? slick, commercial film, without going down to my heart and saying what did I My father's favorite director is Capra, feel about these characters. I caught and I grew up loving those films. In terms myself in midstream and said, \"Hey, Ter- of first film training, that's it. And Ozu was rel, this is not working. It's interesting, more influential later on, when I was at flashy, there's a lot of complexity, but I film school, going through that cycle of can't get down to the heart of it:' That's trying to get in touch with what's Asian when we looked at the stuff we'd shot, and about myself. But there weren't many mas- Tom Sternberg said, \"What do you really ters of Chinese film to copy, so Ozu want to do with this?\" That was a key became like a father. Those two are placed point. very purposefully; they're the major influ- ences in Dim Sum. And as far as I know, You halted production? Ozu was not really as highbrow in Japan as We knew we had to completely overhaul he seems to be outside. He felt he was just the script. We halted shooting. making movies for families who went to How did that affect the funding? the movie house. Well, I've got to give a lot of credit to Vincent Tai, the producer. He believed in Capra's people give full vent to their me enough to go with it. But there was feelings. But emotion in Ozu is not as enough in the first footage that was strong openly expressed-it's in the style. His enough to know something was there. characters can't always express their And he was patient enough to say, ''This is feelings. So isn't there a conflict there? our first project, let's get it done right:' What was the time gap? Well, in terms of the movie's style, I'm It was about six months. We started the pretty much Ozu. But as to character, I summer of '83, the first time. We stopped consciously used the uncle to become the everything in January '84. We resumed Capra character. Because I knew to make June '84 and finished it by May '85 in time the movie more interesting, I needed for Cannes. When we started again, the some protagonist who's willing to talk and script was very tight, and we followed it. be funny. Because a mother and a daugh- Every line was written by that last draft, or ter never say exactly how they're feeling to a few on the set when they needed to be each other. The mother says everything changed. We shot a lot of stuff and did a lot indirectly. And that's part of her culture. of work in the editing. Dim Sum has its What I like about the Ozu films is the power in its simplicity. There was no short distilling and the emphasis on the environ- cut to that. It was so deceptively simple, ment, which Hollywood never does and yet it's hard not to overload the movie. because every time they cut to the envi- We had to re-learn that constantly. Take ronment it has to say something very scenes out. A lot of the editing was that. important. For me, the house in Dim Sum We made it very complex, and then too is as important as the three main charac- simple- in and out like an accordion. ters. And the shoes, the first image. From How much ofthat first shoot is in? the writing to the editing, I knew that I was Very little. Some of the stuff between dealing with a narrative film, but I didn't the mother and the daughter. That's the just want to squeeze the emotion out of only thing that survived. every scene. The first ten or 15 shots in What's the final cost? the movie are three stills of the chief char- It's roughly $500,000. The original acters, and each portrait ends with the budget was $250,000. environment. The mother sews, with the Did you ever think of showing the birdcage downstairs. Geraldine sits by the mother's trip to China? water. Uncle's in the bar. That's a way of No, never. I couldn't afford it-and that establishing the language of the film. It was definitely a consideration. Then we also comes from reading a lot of people's said, artistically, what would it do? And for writing about Ozu. Some filmmakers don't me it's so interesting because the whole like to do that. But I like to use that to try movie is talking about fate and chance, to go beyond what Ozu has done. and it would be explaining the movie too much. The reason she goes back is to pay How optimistic are you about the size ofaudience for this cool presentation? That's a very important issue. I wanted 26

to have a distinctive style that might test 1000's &1000's of Video the audience a little bit. But I was sure I on VHS. BETA, CEO &Laserdisc- could never be indulgent with it. I give the audience interesting characters, a culture Nobody Has More! they know very little about, but where they could sympathize with the feelings. I Written, by give them a narrative, yet I'm testing all Movies Unlimited We're those things, too. I hope there's enough of Only $5.0 an audience to identify with these things ORDER WITH CONFIDENCE and be interested in how it was edited and FROM ONE OF AMERICA'S shot. I worked with Ralph Wikke as editor, and his favorite is a Wes Craven film. His OLDEST AND MOST RELIABLE sensibility is Cannon Films and Roger HOME VIDEO SERVICES Corman. He's never even seen an Ow like adult movies? Enclose an addition film, and I was hoping we would come to some middle ground that's not a compro- -------------------------®----$3.50 for our huge Adult Video Catalog. mise. It's a style that comes out of limita- MOVIES UNLIMITED6736 Castor Ave.- Phila., PA 19149 - 215·722-8298 tions. What does the title mean? o Enclosed is S5 cash . check or money order (S10 outside USA-in US funds only). Send me your new There's a lot of eating, and I wanted a o video catalog. plus periodiC updates of new releases and sale items. title that refers to food. And dim sum Enclosed is 58.50. Please include your adun video catalog . I am over 18 years old. means, literally, \"a little bit of heart;' which Name ____________~_____________________________________ is what the movie is about. I wonder ifusing that as a subtitle isn't Address _________________________________________________ rather cute? City _______________________________ State ____ Zip _ __ Well, part of it was that we worried Phone ( © 1984 Movies Unlimited Inc. about it being very easy for a critic to say, \"All of this added to a very dim sum.\" And also, outside of the big cities maybe people don't know what dim sum is. The attitude to family life is very com- plex. It's warm, but it seems to say that people who live together, and love one another, still cannot quite communicate directly. Do you feel that? Not only that. Because they care, and want to do something for the other per- son-but still, what they want to do may not be best. They're at cross purposes. The mother understands English but refuses to speak it. The daughter under- stands Chinese but doesn't feel confident with it. Basically, they talk to each other in two different languages . Do you think Dim Sum represents Chi- nese-American family life accurately? Is their life richer? I think it's accurate in comparison with American families. There's more empha- sis on staying together. And they don't yell at each other with problems. But it's not all sweetness and light. There's a lot of problems and guilt. Have real Chinese-Americans adapted to America as well as these characters? That's not too accurate. It's more me. Most Asian-Americans are more inse- cure or defensive. I didn't want to deal with that in this ftlm. sWhat the pressure on you now to make biggerfilms? I'd like to make a Hollywood film . But I feel a responsibility to do Chinese- American films, and to stay independent. 27

In Dim Sum, a mother and a daughter never say how they're feeling to each other. The mother says everything indirectly. That sher culture... I know I'll always come back to those home in some sense, and I want to make a you talk to him? two. But the American part of me wants movie with an international cast and story. Of all the Chinese film people I've met, to make a mainstream movie. Hong Kong hasn't been captured on film, in American films. The change coming he's the most accessible and talkative. I C ould you make one with the depth of there will be less than people expect, but think he'd seen Chan at the Berlin Film Dim Sum, or might it become a it's still open, depending on the Chinese Festival, but it didn't go to China. movie about old genres? leadership. It'll change whatever happens. At the dinnerfor Xie lin, all the waiters I've got to deal with characters and a Have you been to Mainland China? came in at the end, and people said, \"Do story I really feel something about, that's No. they really know this director?\" But, of not just something I've seen in another Have you deliberately avoided it? course, they wanted your wife's, Cora s, film. Killing Fields is a good example- it's Yes, I think there's a part of that. I don't autograph, because shes so popular in a powerful, well-made, mainstream movie exactly know why. I'm going to get there Hong Kong. Have you been asked to that has a strong story with characters and very soon, but I know I have avoided it. I return and make a picture starring her? human depth. I think it's possible but diffi- really want to do a film there-maybe I'm cult to find the right story and the right keeping a sense of mystery for myself. Many times. I was tempted each time I situation to make it in. And I'm still influenced by my parents' was asked. Cora sees the situation back attitude. But it's getting very close now. I there more realistically than I do. She tells What is in the future for you? know my mother would do it like that if I me it would be a real mistake if I did it Tom Sternberg and I have been working said let's go back on a visit. My father is because every movie she's in is made for with American Playhouse to do a book I'm very close to making that step. I'd like to money, and shot so sloppily, that they're interested in, called Eat a Bowl of Tea, by make a film about Shanghai in 1949. not worth making. She keeps telling me Louis Chu. Judy Rascoe is writing the These are still Chinese-American pro- unless it's a special situation in Hong Kong script. It's about New York Chinatown jects. Is there an American film on the I would be stepping into a trap. We're around the late Forties and early Fifties, horizon? thinking of starting a family and having when the society was predominantly male Still to come along. Though the Hong kids, but she wants to do one or two because of the immigration laws. They Kong film would have a very mixed cast, movies first. And we know each other so couldn't bring their women over. There's and even the one in Shanghai is very cos- well, there are things I can bring out of her also a story I want to do about Hong Kong. mopolitan. as an actress that probably no one else Actually several different stories which I know you met the Chinese director can. Yet at the same time I know when sometimes combine. Hong Kong is my Xie lin recently in San Francisco. Could she's \"acting;' too. It cuts both ways. But I'd love to make a film with her in the lead role. If not Hong Kong, here. ~ Geraldine and her widowed mother in Dim Sum. 28

ection A Separate Cinema One ofthe most magnetic folk legends to appear in early race movies was the black cowboy, as personified by real-life cowboy Bill Pickett. Known for his skill ofbull-dogging (riding after a steer, then leaping onto it, grabbing its horns, twist- ing its head, and finally wrestling the animal to the ground), Pickett had been a rodeo star in the States and Europe dur- ing the early 1900s. Among his early assistants were Tom Mix and Will Rogers before their movie star days. Black audi- ences got a chance to see him in action in the silent black westerns, The Bull-Dog- gers (1923) and The Crimson Skull (1921). On screen, Pickett was the proto- typical western hero: tall, lean, silent, ruggedly graceful, and supremely self- confident. 7h~ color poslers in the MIDSECT10 N are pan ofa collection compiled by John Kisch , a New lfJrk photographer lNho aLso shot the rronsparencies.

AETOA FILms CORP. Interspersed in the 1938 melodrama Mystery in Swing are songs, comic routines, a murder mystery, and some heavy- ~ handed performances, all perhaps revealing the confusion of the filmmakers. Produced by the white-owned company MYSTERY Aetna Films , the film was made with the coarsest ofcommer- . ft'- cial considerations. By the mid- and late Thirties, race mov- ies had undergone a dramatic change , becoming less socially motivated and more purely exploitive-of the black audi- ence's needfor a set ofheroes, role models, and archetypes. Because many production companies felt black audiences always liked musical numbers, spicy cabaret sequences were illogically thrown into films. Even Oscar Micheaux often included nightclub scenes, hoping to keep his audience tap- ping its feet until he could bring on the social messages or melodrama. Sometimes, when a desperate producer was unsure what would sell, he tossed in a little ofeverything, as Aetna did in Mystery in Swing. Also on hand performing a series of coon antics was Flournoy E. Miller, who, years before with his comedy part- ner Aubrey Lyles, wrote the bookfor the Noble Sissle-Eubie Blake musical, Shuffle Along. After Lyles' death, Miller teamed up with Mantan Moreland in a comedy act and also wrote scripts and dialogue for a variety ofblack movies. Olb:wnr.'MEN OF ACTION BLAlE A TIlAJI. OF UJVE AND J.fATJ AS LAW AND OlDER COMES TIJ THE HOLLYWOOD PRODUCTIONS Ihe..... • an InTERnATIOnAL ROAD SHOWS RELEASE • As the star of the black western Bronze Buckeroo (1938), singer Herb Jeffries (using the name Herbert Jeffrey) emerged as an authentic hero for ghetto audiences in the late Thirties. He had all the markings of a true cowboy star: dashing good looks, fancy silver spurs and guns, a white horse called Stardusk, a trusty sidekick named Dusty, always a pretty sepia heroine to rescue , andplenty ofTex Ritter/Gene Autry heroics. And he sang, too, becoming black America's first singing cowboy in the movies, often sending ladies in black movie houses into a swoon. His westerns include: Two Gun Man From Harlem (1938), Harlem Rides the Range (1939), and Harlem On the Prairie (1939). The latter and Bronze Buckeroo were filmed on location at a black dude ranch near Victorville , California. Also appearing in Bronze Buckeroo. and Harlem Rides the Range were the singing Four Tones, with whom Jeffries toured the country to promote his musical westerns. Success- ful as a singer appearing with the big bands ofDuke Ellington and Earl Hines, Jeffries regarded movies as a sideline. He had a pair of hit records in the Forties, \"Flamingo\" and the schmaltzy, dreamy \"Cocktails For Two.\" 30

No Business Like Micheaux Business 'B'•••for Blacli Micheaux-who scrambled for money Company, The Norman Film Manufac- by Donald Bogle (from the black bourgeoisie or white back- turing Company, The Frederick Douglass ers) and quickly formed production com- Film Company), so me black owned, oth- T he heroine of Oscar Micheaux's 1937 panies, determined to make all-black films ers white controlled, sprang up in places as film God 's Step Children is Naomi, a that stressed black America's achieve- diverse as Jacksonville, St. Louis, Phila- high-toned, light-skinned black girl who ments. Their first film s - The Birth of a delphia, Chicago, and New York, often wants to be white. She frets , pouts, plots , whines, and, well,just plain acts up, turn- sRace (1918), The Realization ofa Negro using the abandoned studios of main- ing her tiny black community topsy-turvy. Finally, Naomi does everyone a great ser- stream film companies that had fled to vice; she throws herself into the river and, California. Their low-budget films, fre- like a nasty stain on her race, is washed away. For white moviegoers during the quently crude and misshapen , were shown Depression, Naomi's trials and tribula- at segregated theaters in the South, at big tions passed unnoticed . But for black audi- city ghetto movie houses in the North, ences, Naomi's was a lopsidedly caustic and on occasion, at black churches, and cautionary morality tale about cultural roots and loyalties , racial heritage and .schools, and social gatherings - almost pride. It was only one of many such narra- anyplace where it was possible to reach a tives told in a long forgotten branch of black audience. Before this movement of American movie history: race movies , independently produced films with all- independer.ts ended, approximately 150 black casts, made outside Hollywood, in such companies had come into existence. an attempt to merchandise mass dreams Hundreds of films had been produced . for black America. And race movies themselves had under- America's race movies-from the early gone two distinct phases and points of years of the century to the late Forties- flfSt turned up as a kind of alternative view. cinema, made in response to the general movie fare of the time, all those crude, Ethel Moses. Sometimes plodding, sometimes didac- corny, insulting, racist little ditties with tic , sometimes deliriously disjointed , titles that just about said everything: The Ambition (1916) , Trooper of Troop K some of the early race films were, quite Dancing Nig (c. 1907), For Massa's Sake (1916) , and The Homesteader (1919), all frankly, terrible. A movie like Spying the (1911) , and the Rastus series (How Rastus initially serious tributes to black endur- Spy (1917) , produced by a white-owned Got His Turkey, How Rastus Got His ance and ambition - were important company (Ebony Pictures) , was almost as Pork Chops , Rastus and Chicken). In the mainly because they proved that black cin- stereotypical as any Hollywood product, early years of the 20th century, all a black ema could exist. with a bug-eyed lead character called audience could expect to see of itself was a Sambo Sam. shocking parade of stereotypes stumbling Afterwards scores of other film compa- across the screen. Naive , doltish toms. nies (Reol Productions, The Unique Film But others offered rousing, optimistic Feisty mammies. Contorted comic coons. stories of black derring-do . The Bull Dag- Worse, the roles were almost always gers (1923) featured Bill Pickett as a cow- played by white actors in blackface. boy performing feats of heroism and honor. The Flaming Crisis (1924) focu sed The same was true, of course, of even on a tough black newspaperman falsely D .W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. accused of murder, fighting to prove his More than any other movie in history, innocence. The Flying Ace (1926) Griffith's 1915 Civil War epic, with its spotlighted a daring black aviator who, in images of marauding Negro troops, midair, rescues a fair black damsel in dis- power-mad mulattoes, and lusty black tress. In these films , black Americans saw bucks, sent shock waves through black themselves incorporated into the national America, galvanizing its leaders into an pop mythology, and a new set of arche- uproar of protest and action. The NAACP types emerged: heroic black men of launched a formal protest movement action. Whether cowboys, detectives, or against the picture, setting up picket and weary army vets, many of the early charac- boycott lines. And soon there appeared a group of independent black filmmakers- ters were walking embodiments of black assertion and aggression, and, of course, Emmett J. Scott, the brothers George and they gave the lie to America's notions of a Negro's place. Noble Johnson, and the legendary Oscar But the early race films touched on other matters , too . Among the most inter- esting were those that were high-minded statements on the nature of black life in America or on the racial dynamics -divi- sions and tensions - within the black com- 31

munity itself. Nowhere was a race theme Lorenzo Tucker (right) in Daughter of the Congo. more apparent than in the 1927 produc- tion Scar of Shame. Produced by The white audiences interested in black camp. script and gave it a black slant. Under- Colored Players of Philadelphia, this slow- Micheaux's shrewd promotional sense world (1937) was a gangster film with a moving and melancholy film told the story kept him in business, enabling him to black gangster (he's the recent grad of a of an ill-matched marriage between a produce, direct, and wr.ite, by some good colored college, who's gotten himself young, black concert pianist and a poor, counts, almost 30 films from 1919 to 1948. mixed up in Chicago's crime world) and a lower-class, young black woman. Secretly black gun moll. Daughter of the Congo ashamed of his wife, the young man keeps Micheaux's features were similar to Hol- (1930) was an African adventure story with her hidden from his socially prominent lywood's, only technically inferior, resem- a colored cavalry officer bent on rescuing a middle-class mother. Through a series of bling B-movies of the period. Lighting and young Negro girl lost in the savage tropics. likably implausible plot maneuvers, the editing were usually poor, and the acting Temptation (1936) was a sophisticated sex two part. He begins life anew and falls in could be dreadful- ranging from winging drama in the DeMille vein. love with another woman, only to meet up it to grandstanding. Often a scene was shot with his wife again. She still loves him but in a single take, as the camera followed an On occasion, Micheaux focused exclu- knows she can never be his equal. actor through a door or down a hallway. sively on race as subject, as in Birthright Socially-despite both being black-they Since he was forced to shoot scenes so (1924), the story of a young black Harvard are of different worlds. Despondent, the rapidly, he seldom had time (or money) to graduate who returns to his home town in wife commits suicide and frees him to do retakes. Consequently, an actor might Tennessee bent upon founding a colored marry the other woman, his social equal. flub a line, then just pick up the pieces of school to \"uplift the race:' Naturally, he Melodramatic but effective, Scar of his sentence and keep on going. encounters opposition, some of which Shame was a surprisingly eloquent state- comes from his fellow blacks, who agree ment on the class and color caste system The action in Micheaux's films some- with white Southerners that education that existed within the black community. Though Hollywood would never have times centered around one set. In God s ruins a Negro. In its own corny and sly touched, least of all understood, the sub- Step Children, several key scenes way, Birthright made a definite plea for ject, the film reached and moved black audiences in a personal, intense way that occurred in front of a staircase. Filming in black unity while satirizing the old-style Hollywood never did. the home of a friend, Micheaux discov- turncoats and toms. Micheaux liked this ered that the staircase area offered the best material so much that he remade the film Of all the early black filmmakers, the lighting angles, and thus he worked his big in 1939. most important (and one of the few to scenes around it. Oddly enough, his limi- work in both silent and sound pictures) tations - the uncontrolled performances M icheaux also gave his actresses vivid, was the indefatigable producer/director and the lived-in look of some sets- important roles. Several of his films Oscar Micheaux (1884-1951). A charis- endowed his films with a strange realism. were also \"women's pictures;' with inde- matic showman with a dash and flair he no One half expects to hear Micheaux call pendent, strong-willed heroines. Gods doubt felt befitted a motion picture direc- \"Cut\" and to see the actors walk away from Step Children was part woman's film, part tor, Micheaux was dedicated to his own the camera or talk about how they're actu- race-theme movie, its heroine Naomi concept of black cinema (a heady mix of ally making a movie. punished with death perhaps precisely subliminal social messages and sheer because of her free-wheeling indepen- entertainment) and perhaps also to the Intertwined in all his films is the con- dence. creation of his own personal legend. He had once been a Pullman car porter, then a sciousness of how race is a force in black Oscar Micheaux's greatest contribution farmer in South Dakota, and by 1915, a life. Just as Negro newspapers and maga- is often viewed by some contemporary self-published novelist. Within a few zines took major news stories and black audiences as his severest shortcom- years, he turned to film, his fervid enthusi- reported them from a black angle, asm for moviemaking eventually carrying Micheaux took the typical Hollywood him to Chicago and later New York. Early on, Micheaux realized (and relished) the importance of promotion. He is said to have toured the country to publicize one film and at the same time to seek financing for his next, often stepping out of cars and into meeting halls as if \"he were God about to deliver a sermon:' \"Why, he was so impressive and so charm- ing;' said Lorenzo Tucker, an actor who appeared in several Micheaux films, \"that he could talk the shirt off your back:' On his tours, Micheaux approached white Southern theater managers and owners, often persuading them to show his black films at special matinee performances for black audiences or at special late shows for 32

ing. That his films reflected the interests actor Clarence Muse also was able to co- bered by weighty messages about race, and outlooks, the values and virtues, of the black bourgeoisie has long been held write and star in Broken Strings , techni- the new features nonethe less - simply against him. Though his films never cen- tered on the ghetto, few race movies did. cally one of the better made features of the because of their all-black casts - could They seldom dealt with racial misery or decay. Instead, they concentrated on the period. Spencer Williams , too, with white never leave the race iss ue behind. Thus problems facing black \"professional peo- ple:' Then, too, his leading performers- backers, directed two highly idiosyncratic the new leading players, whether dapper as was typical of race films-were often close to the white ideal: straight hair, keen films that touched on the black religious Ralph Cooper as a smooth-as-silk doctor features, light skin. experience: The Blood ofJesus (1941) and in Am I Guilty ? (1940) or Herbert Jeffrey To appreciate Micheaux's films one must understand that he was moving as far Go Down Death (1944). Williams wrote as a spiffy cowboy immaculately dressed as possible from Hollywood's jesters and servants. He wanted to give his audience the scripts for several other films, includ- in tight riding clothes and fancy silver something \"to further the race, not hinder it:' Often he sacrificed plausibility to do so. ing Harlem On the Prairie (1939) and spurs and guns in Bronze Buckeroo He created a deluxe, ideal world where blacks were just as affluent, just as edu- also directed Juke Joint (1947) and a (1938), remained indelible black middle- cated, just as \"cultured\" as their white counterparts. Oddly enough , as such, raunchy black version of Rain called Dirty class heroes, still promoted as an ideal for they remain a fascinating comment on black social and political aspirations of the Gertie from Harlem , USA (1946). Ironi- the black masses. past. And the Micheaux ideal Negro world view popped up in countless other race cally, Williams is best remembered today Pepped-up and faster moving, escapist movies. His films likely set the pattern for race movies in general. for his role as Andy Brown on TV's Amos and high-spirited (some reflecting the The audience for black films grew rap- 'nAndy. optimism of the postwar era), the later idly (particularly between 1915 and 1923; eventually there were about 600 theaters films often featured musical stars or intro- on the race-movie circuit). But a number of unfortunate events halted this burgeon- F or the most part, though , the produc- duced new personalities. Lena Horne, ing black industry. Distribution problems ers of the later race movies were deter- dewy-eyed and giddy, no doubt caught up proved hard to lick. When talkies came in, mined to make slick and glossy products \" in the excitement of making her first film, many companies lacked the capital to keep up production and to acquire the new that resembled typical Hollywood fare: was the plump but very pretty ingenue in sound equipment. The release of the big- studio black musicals , Hearts in Dixie black westerns, mysteries, boy-meets-girl The Duke Is Tops (1938). Endearingly (1929) and Hallelujah (1929), spelled disaster for the small independents. Then stories, and gangster pictures. Concentrat- lovely and fresh in Ebony Parade (1947), the Depression killed many off. Ing more on entertainment unencum- Dorothy Dandridge became one of black Curiously, during this period (from the mid-Thirties through the war and postwar AnAl1 C D Cast years), independent black films for black audiences underwent a significant change: \"' They were made almost entirely by white filmmakers. Such men as Ted Toddy, Jack \" fiatur/ng' and Bert Goldberg, and Robert Savini, heading such companies as Herald Pic- OIl f~ll~lN, l()l J()I1N1V~ tures, Astor Pictures, and Jubilee, eventu- ally moved into the market. & ()I(A~ FULl) During this second phase of the inde- ANGEL GABRIEL OF- \"T-HE- GREEN PASTURES\" pendents, there were some interesting films, among which The Emperor Jones wCM \\'SLlCK\" CHESTER and ET+-lEL MOSES (1933), starring Paul Robeson , was one of the best of the lot. In 1938 National Pic- J)istribured by M ICtiEAUX PICTUR£5 CORP'N, New York City tures released The Spirit of Youth, dra- matizing the meteoric rise of a black boxer. Joe Louis played the central charac- ter, a figure closely related to the champ himself. As might be expected, Louis' act- ing was wooden. But what a hero for black audiences. In 1940, veteran Hollywood 33

America's great cultural icons of the Fifties , when she starred in Otto Preminger's Car- men Jones (1954) and Porgy and Bess Stepin Fetchit and Sheila Guyse in Miracle in Harlem. (1959). Then she committed suicide. Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Dizzy Gilles· did Louis Jordan have a chance to jam with with a new view of the Negro and his role pie, The Mills Brothers, Nat \"King\" Cole, his Tympany Five group but he was the in American life. The old race movies and jazz vocalist Helen Humes all per- formed for the later race-movie cameras. star as well: As Jordan moves from boy- could not compete with the technically So, too, did entertainers who, having meets-girl plot mechanics to musical well-made Hollywood products. More- endured the Hollywood grindstone for years , needed a break and a breath of fresh sequences and then back to the plot, the over, the black audience had an altered air. Stepin Fetchit, Nina Mae McKinney, Mantan Moreland, Bill \"Bojangles\" Robin- pictures give a portrait of the Negro per- vision of itself. son, and Louise Beavers were launched as genuine stars in their race movies with former who's also a person with some Following World War II, black America, roles tailor-made for them. Ironically, Fetchit was cast as the same shufflin', dim- semblance of an offstage life, with cultural aware that black G.I.s had fought abroad witted soul he'd always played, but with a twist. In the all-white environment of his connections and roots he can always for the freedom of whites only to return Hollywood features, Fetchit was a talented black comic yanked out of his cultural return to. home to find economic slavery, had context; this man who had started in black vaudeville, performing for black audi- become increasingly more vocal about the ences, was clowning it up for whites. In his all-black films , he's simply an oddball fun- Perhaps that's where so many of the nation's racial codes and divisions, its nyman in a world full of diverse black later race films (as well as some of the injustices and inequities. It sought a differ- Im ages. more socially conscious earlier ones) suc- ent kind of movie product, too, consider- The later independents also made a place for a figure Hollywood seemed to ceeded best: as fundamental celebrations ing the racially hermetically sealed worlds have no use for at all: the unabashed, unchangeable, raunchy or rowdy ethnic of cultural roots and communal spirits- of the race movies passe. In the Fifties, star who wasn't about to clean up his or her act (to tone down cultural differences or and also as pure, undiluted celebrations of during the rise of the civil rights move- smooth out rough ethnic edges) to please a large white audience. Thus Jackie black style. Such movies as Broken ment, black audiences preferred to see \"Moms\" Mabley, Dusty \"Open the Door, Ri chard\" Fletcher, Dewey Pigmeat Strings, Boy! What a Girl! (1946) , Sepia Sidney Poitier in No Way Out (1950) , Markham, and the great rhythm-and- blues star Louis Jordan did star spins in Cinderella (1947), Bronze Buckeroo , and Edge ofthe City (1957), and The Defiant such film s as Killer-Diller (1948), Board- ing House Blues,(1948), Fight That Ghost scores of others introduced a new rhythm Ones (1958), which promoted the then (1946), and Look Out Sister (1946). to American cinema. Vocal inflections and acceptable themes of racial integration and In Louis Jordan's black films, Holly- wood clearly missed something else. intonations set the ears abuzz. The man- cultural assimilation - and which also, When the big studios did employ Negro entertainers, the black stars usually per- ners , gestures, postures, surprising double despite serious compromises, touched on formed during an \"interlude\" when the white stars might rush off to a nightclub or takes, swift interplay and commmunica- the conflicts between black and white. party for some fun . Thus in Rhapsody in Blue (1945), Hazel Scott suddenly tion between the characters is a world unto The latter was something race movies had appears in a European supper-club sequence, singing George Gershwin's itself, capturing, despite whatever other rarely done. So they faded away. \"The Man I Love;' in French and English. Scott's innate poise and dignity and her distortions or failings , a segment of black Today, many of the old films have van- skilled performance evoke an enigma: She's a blazing symbol, a sophisticated American life and culture. ished or been destroyed . Surviving films black woman at home in the most conti- nental of settings, yet we sense Hazel By the late Forties, race movies were on are often dated, mangled, and sweetly Scott's isolation , so completely cut off is she from everything else in the film. their last legs , victims of changing atti- naive , yet they remain vivid cultural arti- But isolation or star alienation are the tudes within black America and of the facts , comments on black America's past last things one sees in the old race movies. In Caldonia (1945) , Beware (1946), and major studios' budding interest in blacks as fantasies , obsessions, attitudes, and aspi- Reet, Petite, and Gone (1947) , not only vehicles for the metaphor of American rations , a rare glimpse of the way black justice. In 1949, Hollywood released a America was once willing to look at itself. series of problem pictures, Home of the And sometimes, as in some of the films of Brave, Pinky, Lost Boundaries , and Micheaux, of the direction in which black Intruder in the Dust, all of which dealt America once hoped to see itself move. 34

Before she became MGM's black-beauty-in-residence, Lena ill Home made her movie debut in the independently produced black film The Duke Is Tops (1938). Tops he may have been, but the picture was soon forgotten. But after her success in HoLLywood s two all-black musicals of1943, Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather, Toddy Pictures retitled Home's debut movie, calling it Bronze Venus , and sent it into re-release, hoping to cash in on Home's new fame . As the first black woman in HoLLywood films to be fully glamorized and pro- moted by her studio, Home appeared in 13 films (from 1942 to 1956), usually performing a musical number in features that starred whites. 1f the studio felt Home's singing sequences might offend Southern audiences, her scenes were simply cut. This was not always a very happy periodfor Lena Home, and it shows. She frequently gave very tight, overly controlled, ice-maiden performances. 1n Bronze Venus, Home-far from the maddening Hollywood crowd-has a natural, fresh quality. Home returned to HoLLywood for an appearance in The Wiz (1978). As the star of King Vidor s all-black musical Hallelujah (1929), Nina Mae McKinney was on her way to becoming Hollywood's first black love goddess: a sexy, energetic cupie- doll of a star with a naughty little girl pout and bounce. Though both Vidor and Irving Thalberg held high hopes for McKinney 's career, the movie capital was not yet ready for a black leading lady. She left the country, singing abroad in Europes cellars and cafes where she was sometimes billed as 'The Black Garbo', and playing opposite Paul Robeson in the 1935 Britishfilm, Sanders in the River. Back in the States by the Forties, McKinney worked occa- sionallyin afewHoLLywoodproductions (pinky, in 1949, was her last) but mostly in race movies such as The Devil's Daughter (1939). Here she was cast as a well-brought up young woman returning from New York to her family s home in Jamaica to fight with her sister over an inheritance-their father'S rubber plantation. Of course, the real battle is the clash of values within the black community. McKinney also appeared in Straight To Heaven (1939) and Gang Smashers (1938). McKinney s careerfaded in the early Fifties. She died in 1967. 35

Among the great 'colored' vaudeville acts to star in a series of black musical shorts was the singing-dancing team of Buck and Bubbles. These two Kentucky-born entertainers (Buck was Ford Lee Washington; Bubbles was John William Sublett) worked together from 1919 to 1953, performing with an unparalleled precision and dexterity that turned them into legends of the vaudeville stage. The duo appeared in the sZiegfeld Follies, also at the Palace and London Palladium and entertained in such Hollywood films as Varsity Show (1937) , Atlantic City (1944), and A Song Is Born (1948). On his own, Bubbles created a flashy Sportin' Life in the 1935 production of Porgy and Bess. Later in Vincente Minnelli's film version of Cabin in the Sky, he sang \"Shine\" and did a mean jitterbug number with a zaftig but mighty energetic Ethel »lUers. I•n HIGH TDNES I TWO GREAT STAGE COMEDIANS DISTRIBUTED BY SUJREME DISTRIBUT One of the most successful black figures to emerge from the ranks ofindependents was Spencer Williams, writer-director ofMarching On (c. 1943). In this documentary-style study of black military life, Williams examined the pressures ofsegre- sgation on America colored troops. But his film ended by being something ofa propaganda piece, saluting the idea of national unity and the importance of the Negro's role in helping his country promote the war effort. Williams' career dated back to the silents, when he wrote, directed, and produced the all black Tenderfeet (1928). He wrote or co-authored scripts for a lineup of diverse short feature films including: Framing the Shrew (1929), The Lady Fare (1929), Son of Ingagi (a 1940 black horror film) , and Harlem Rides the Range (1939). His peak years were the Forties when he directed more personal projects of greater interest to him: The Blood of Jesus (1941), Go Down Death (1944), Beale Street Mama (1946), Juke Join~ (1947), and Dirty Gertie From Harlem, USA (1946). He acted in Bronze Buckeroo (1938) and Harlem on the Prairie (1939), among others. In the Fifties, he appeared on TV as Andy Brown in Amos 'n' Andy. Williams died in 1969. 36

Of aLL black America's early folk!cultural heroes, none was ever quite like Joe Louis, so popular and famous that he was cast in films that both exploited and extended his legend. ALL the Louis films simplified his complex position as a black sports star and as a quintessentially American tragic hero. In The Spirit of Youth (/938), hisfirstfilm, Louis played a boxer battling tough opponents inside the ring and a fast woman outside it. Later in black producer William Alexander's The Fight Never Ends (1947), Louis was cast as himself, but this time as an almost saintly hero trying to help young black juvenile delinquents straighten up. Hardly anyone's idea of an actor, Louis communicates an earnestness and shy mod- esty that transcends the shabby plot mechanics of his films. He also made cameos in the Hollywoodfeatures, This Is The Army (1943) and Square Jungle (1955), a boxing picture star- ring Tony Curtis. In 1953, a low-budget movie biography, The Joe Louis Story, starred Coley Wallace as the champ. Also featured in The Fight Never Ends was Ruby Dee, who appeared in several race movies before she worked in the Edge Of The City (1957) and A Raisin in the Sun (1961). HARREL TILLMAN EMMm (BABEl WALLACE GWENDOLYN TYNES 1i!. /~QSfd IJ't ALEXANDER RELEASING CORP. Race movies were rife with stereotypes, as Fight That Ghost (1946) weLL illustrates. Here audiences saw the typical bug- eyed, scared-out-of-his-wits coon characters, as played by Dewey Pigmeat Markham and a sidekick, John 'Rastus' Murray. Markham also appeared in House Rent Party (/946) and Shut My Big Mouth (/946), as weLL as two which he also produced: Mr. Smith Goes Ghost (1940) an4 One Big Mistake (1940). His movies were intended as 'laugh riots' for black audiences aware that the actors onscreen are role-playing: hamming it up, exaggerating supposed 'racial characteris- tics' to the point ofabsurdity. Beginning his career as a child peiformer in carnivals and tent shows in the South, Markham eventually worked on the same bill as Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. In time, he became a headliner on the black theatre circuit, including New York's Apollo, Philadelphia's Standard, and Chicago's Regal. Famous for his 'Here Come da Judge' routine, Markham's loud, rowdy, fiendishly aggressive, slapsticky ethnic comedy was edgy humorpitched directly at the black communityfrom the late Twenties through the Forties. Whites saw him per- haps for the first time in the late Sixties, when Markham made a number ofsuccessful appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. He also cut a series of race records: comedy albums with extended monologues and routines that played on the old stereotypes. 37

Many of the independent products-the black westerns, gangster stories, and detective tales-were male fantasies in which black womenfunctioned much like their white counter- parts in many Hollywood films : as lush dreamy dolls to be fawned over or admired, pursued or put in their place. Sometimes films such as Chicago After Dark (1946) and Lucky Gamblers (1946) , both of which featured Lollypop Jones, seemed-simply by the nature of their promotion campaigns-to be blatant tributes to male chauvinism. Although women were prominently featured in race movies, few films focused on their inner tensions or conflicts, except for the movies ofOscar Micheaux, whose driven and restless female characters were among his most interesting. Musical cavalcades like Ebony Parade (1947) were commu- nal celebrations ofsorts, giving audiences a chance to see a network of black stars, young and old. The entertainers seemed astonishingly alive, almost as ifplaying live before a black audience in a black theatre. Ebony Parade was a bit like a collection of videos: one smash act after another, in which audiences could see the similarities and connections in style and attitude, the very cultural links and roots that made black performers of the past so fresh. It remains of particular interest, not only because it spotlighted Count Basie, Cab Calloway, and the Mills Brothers but because it recorded now obscure performers who were once popular. And, it showcased the young, pretty Dorothy Dandridge, whose name was misspelled. In the Fifties , as the star ofOtto Preminger 's Carmen Jones (1954), Dandridge emerged as a great cultural icon for black America, getting an Oscar nomination as best actress and her portrait on the cover of Life. Then in Island in the Sun (1957), Tamango (1959), and Malaga (1962) , she was thefirst black actress romantically cast opposite white actors. Although compromised, the films were provocative. Just as Jackie Robinson entered major league baseball and so pro- vided the spark that would later flame into the civil rights movement, Dandridge was viewed as part of a new day of integration in Americanfilms. Perhaps because ofher tragic suicide, Dandridge'sfilmed performances have a melancholy romantic aura. 38

Blackfilmmakers are outside... letting It on the Mountain by Armond White subverts this image in order to expose the Independent Film:' Yale professor James aesthetic, erotic, and political mysteries A. Snead, the series' curator, app lied struc- \"That the movie star is an 'escape' per- that cloud the distance between reel and turalist theory and scholarship to advance sonality indicates one of the irreducible real life, Hollywood and its public. He isn't an understanding of the current, appar- dangers to which the moviegoer is afraid to admit that movies have over- ently vague movement to create a serious , exposed: the danger of surrendering to whelmed ethnic and experiential differ- authentic black film culture. Snead's mon- the corroboration of one's fantasies as ences to capture and mark black people's ograph described black independent film- they are thrown backfrom the screen.\" imagination. More deeply imagined than makers \"revising visual codes surrounding -James Baldwin ~ black skin on screen and in the public realm ;' and identified as new a project Rejection or acceptance? Because the black filmmakers have been engaged in for biggest hoodwink this century was decades. The only thing new may be the effected by film moguls who coded their (our) dreams in wASP-face, that question . resonance between the segregated race most disturbs the daydreams of blacks cinema of the Twenties and Thirties and since discovering and asserting their contemporary black filmmakers yet strug- minority status. Director Stan Lathan gle to gain :;creen time now. crystallizes this dilemma in his 1984 film Ironically, while Go Tell It on the Moun- of James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Moun- tain zeroes in on a rarely stated emotional tain, when a black boy from Harlem goes truth (the Thirties' setting and its produc- to the movies. The feature he sees is Of tion outside the commercial mainstream Human Bondage, right? But it's the scene for PBS' American Playhouse conve- where Leslie Howard tells Bette Davis: \"I love that music, whenever I hear it I think niently locates and defines the black film- of you. How pale you are. How strange. making impulse), the actual progression of How cold.\" The masochistic dialogue black filmmaking pulls away from achiev- becomes a clever, oblique expression of Baldwin's bitterness about the deprivation ing that ideal. Unlike black pop musicians, black viewers have suffered from Holly- who proceed from an established cultural wood (stated at length in his 1975 essay advantage, black filmmakers (through ''The Devil Finds Work\"). But the evi- industry and financial restrictions) begin dence of the scene complicates Baldwin's virtually from scratch, working outside the rant. industry as indentured mavericks , per- force against that very HoUywood tradi- Lathan intercuts those glowing 1934 tion that entices them. images with shots of the young boy-as entranced by them as we are. This creates Go Tell it on the Mountain. T he longing to create and sustain a a surge of conflicting emotions that even- black cinema still exists, as suggested tually conveys a shrewd sense of a mov- the whole of The Purple Rose of Cairo, by Steven Spielberg's filming of Alice iegoer's fantasy. By counterposing cine- this one scene transforms Go Tell It on the Walker's The Color Purple-an odd his- ma's allure and remoteness, the film Mountain from the story of a Depression- torical precedent if ever there was one- queers Hollywood's practice of myth and era black boy's struggle to make sense of yet the fact proves as elusive as ever. It was eroticism (largely white) and subtly criti- his personal heritage into a key statement ten years before Richard Wright could cizes its affront to black audiences. on black filmmakers' difficult, awestruck mount a production of his own Native Son efforts to join the general discourse of in 1951 (doomed by an inept, renegade Lathan, a 13-year veteran of TV series American films . production), and 32 years for any filmma- from Sesame Street to Cagney and Lacey ker to adapt a Baldwin novel. What and director of the Moms Mabley film, Only a black person as committed to Spielberg comes up with could change Amazing Grace, and last year's Beat filmmaking as Lathan would connect movies forever- instituting the full-scale, Street, brought his sharpest instincts as a these t\\>,IO endeavors and articulate how unstinted treatment of the black experi- black journeyman-familiar with the pro- they converge. This was also the impor- ence, replete with the dream-provoking cesses of Hollywood but never a part of its tant assumption of the Whitney Museum's ethos of a technically proficient big-screen inner circle-to bear on the dialectics of major early-summer film series \"Recoding production . But short of such a miracle, this scene. Lathan makes the spellbinding Blackness: The Visual Rhetoric of Black apparition of a young, blonde Bette Davis the most difficult work addressing the flirting at you over a glass of champagne longing for black films belongs to black seem closer than reality and positively independent filmmakers immediately dreamy. Lathan borrows, illuminates, and involved with the challenge to accept or reject Hollywood. It's a cultural impera- tive. At the moment, no black filmmaker 39

could conscionably command the appa- results: alerting the industry that the black down to Kusini demonstrate an awareness ratus of light, carefree films like Desper- film audience was a thriving, lucrative mar- of this, but Van Peebles acted on it with an ately Seeking Susan or Blood Simple, ket (thus blaxploitation) and encouraging unholy vengeance. Sweetback is actually a because such escapist forms only involve a the black filmmakers in the margins of TV lousy movie, but it has a rampaging portion of their imaginations or of what production, theater, and university f.t.Im spirit-absent in a Michael Schultz or Sid- they know about the world. This is also courses to approach a politically con- ney Poitier-directed ftlm-that carried it all true for whites, but a black Susan scious, and now responsive black audi- the way to memorable. . Seidelman or Joel Coen would be politi- ence. cally indefensible. Realizing their work is Van Peebles never made good on his more than a matter of shading genres, V an Peebles understood - better than threat to radically introduce a vital black contemporary black fummakers can't use Baldwin-the value and liberating screen fantasy world or a black fum ideol- the m.o. of race movies, even though they thrill of having your fantasies enlarged and ogy, but by linking the political motiva- are impelled by the same interests in per- electrified (\"corroborated',) onscreen. Van tions that grew out of the civil rights move- sonalized myth. In the Seventies, fumma- Peebles played directly to the black audi- ment with the autonomy of American kers Warrington Hudlin and William ence's urge to escape (through the independent f.t.Im, he helped create a new Greaves proclaimed their artistic indepen- uniquely cinematic pleasure of interwoven hermeneutics, a new paradigm for alterna- dence through choice of subject, tech- movement, music, and fantasy), because tive black cinema. And this is the model nique, and format (as did William Miles he sensed how powerfully fIlm could instill still in use whenever there is a basic differ- working in documentary). They chose to ideas and even, through escape, corrobo- ence between independent black films stand apart from directors of the old sepa- and the old race movies or what's being ratist, stigmatized race movies and from Killer of Sheep. done in Hollywood. the newer Uptown Saturday Night, Fast rate one's real-life sense of self-worth. He Forward, The Last Dragon, Mahogany, was after a better understanding of the The neo-realist plots about quotidian and Lady Sings the Blues generation of angry, oppressed man's dreams. As fums that did not betray rage at the narra- Baldwin's literature expressed the truth of events, the alternatingiy naturalisticltheat- tive forms they imitated and at Holly- his generation, it would change later con- rical acting, and the cinema-verite tech- wood's indifference to everything they are. sciousness about race, heritage, and art nique used in films like Charles Burnett's and bestow II different, intensified, mytho- The Killer of Sheep and My Brother's Experiencing this disaffection teaches a logical need-unlike that answered by Wedding, or Bill Woodberry's Bless Their hard lesson: that although blacks and movies of previous generations. It is a nat- Little Hearts, rough out an aesthetic whites have shared the myths of Holly- ural effect of pop culture that creates a determined by the f.t.Immaker's realization wood-dreaming at the same icons and need for immediacy in art, to have our that the classical filmmaking style, which projecting fantasies into a common pool- feelings and experiences defined as singu- developed synchronically with the generic it has been an anomalous activity and a lar or timely. myths of. Hollywood, never included a deeply superficial relationship. The critic realistic or truthful appreciation of black Julie Burchill recently ridiculed a \"beige\" What the stargazing boy in Go Tell It on American experience. (The object, David tendency in popular music that refused \"to the Mountain felt, Van Peebles also felt, to Bordwell has noted, was \"a fundamental recognize any difference between the the point that he knew black people were emotional appeal that transcends class and interests of black and white-just to missing something by not being allowed to nation:') Black independents go back to dance, to feel good:' Black independents dream of themselves. Ossie Davis' Cotton the basics to recognize their response habitually avoid simply restyling Holly- Comes to Harlem, Gordon's Hilr, Count- mechanism and discover their creative wood genres, or making chocolate edifices resources instead of following Hollywood's (like Beverly Hills Cop) that repeat the lead. usual Hollywood deception of inoculating the public against its history and ignoring a In Henry Miller's Death of a Dunbar portion of the population by segregating it. Girl (1977), a two-character power strug- Their cautiousness grows out of the American independent movement that gle between a vaudevillian mother and her produced John Cassavetes' Shadows middle-class daughter, the heated discus- (1960), Michael Roemer and Robert sion about caste resembles the resent- Young's Nothing But a Man (1964), Larry ment and spite bouts of Bergman's Peerce's One Potato, Two Potato (1964), Autumn Sonata but with the spare visual Shirley Clarke's The Cool World (1964), style of After the Rehearsal. The fum is and Herbert Danska's Sweet Love, Bitter almost didactic in its concentration on the (1967), which attempted the first politi- issues (putting the polemic foot first), but cally informed black screen characteriza- its reliance on monologue, close-ups, and tions. brief flashbacks to illustrate the women's histories is a deliberate refutation of con- The disillusionment and rejection of ventional narrative. Miller perceives narra- Hollywood implicit in those earnest depic- tive as a weapon once used against black people, and so to be avoided. Snead rec- tions of the other America achieved its ognized this skepticism as a response to most explicit articulation in Melvin Van formula, noting, \"Plot seems to limit blacks' freedom, based as it is upon a sPeebles' 1971 Sweet Sweetback Baadass sense of general social possibility:' Conse- quently, black independents move away Song. Through ineptitude and anger Van from authoritative conventions of popular Peebles assaulted the white bourgeois culture. fllmgoing experience with two significant This is apparent in two recent video- 40

tapes presented in the Whimey series: semi-documentary, encapsulates the filmmakers' unconscious faith that their Color, directed by Warringt:on Hudlin and divided interests that prevent even the disparate efforts might all converge into a written by Denise Oliver, explores obes- most perspicacious black filmmakers from commercial movement where black film sion with white beauty standards, and taking that next step. Using a \"good\" and artists can hold their own . Mary Neema Barnette's Sky Captain \"bad\" marriage to outline the social and These independents, who may simply focuses on a lonely, parentless teenager's economic pressures wearing down the be too good , too smart for their chosen need to escape. Structured around two black family structure, codirectors Larry careers, have reached a point that requires long-take inversions of the Calvin Klein Bullard and Carolyn W. Johnson never a specific recoding of love, humor, pain, and anger-emotions that decades of confession ads , Color reviews the period connect the two social strata observed or of self-hate predating \"Black Is Beautiful;' investigate a common machismo in the black caricature have obscured or ren- symbolized by a prominently featured two troubled marriages. This convoluted dered unrecognizable. Because black poster of Diana Ross and the Supremes, attempt at enlightenment is most interest- experience has never been transformed while Sky Captain uses a figure in a reggae ing when the characters withdraw from into an acceptable movie myth , there's an band as its protagonist's most empathic their dilemma in a girl-talk session or all- unease inside even the most radically sty- concept of the proper artistic mode for male rap. But it's also static. Compiling led independent films about how to frame blacks. The Supremes represent a past these scenes doesn't produce a complete and present action. The distortions of the measure of progress and success of mostly picture of a social phenomena so much as old race entertainments aren't reliable nostalgic value now; their style and man- strain toward a totality of black experience guides. If such industry B-productions as ner compromised, like race movies, with by its all-inclusive display of language, atti- Anna Lucasta, The Jackie Robinson the dominant ideology and white enter- . Story, Go , Man, Go!, Carmen Jones , and tainment forms. By contrast, reggae's poli- . Putney Swope comprise the major black tics are overt and intransigent. film heritage , then the independents understandably have no foundation to A nd so is Charles Lane's 1977 A Place build upon. in Time, a short, Afro-styled, Cha- plinesque silent that parodies the notion of H ow black characters might be pre- the struggling independent artist's moral sented in a politically correct, emo- superiority. It self-consciously presents a tionally resonant situation depends on the black street artist ignoring signs of poverty filmmaker's mythic or visionary sense of and desperation in his community yet his subject. That's what the boy's trek to seeking a rapproachement with other the movies symbolizes-in Go TeUlt on the black artists. The film's open-end plot Mountain. Like the hero of Delmore (Where will the artist get his inspiration? Schwartz' In Dreams Begin Responsibil- How will he make his art?) puts surprising ity, he stands in the same relationship to emphasis on the larger issue of black inde- the movies as he does to the commanding pendents working to arrive at an expres- characters of his parents (Paul Winfield sive language. and Olivia Cole in fine, persuasive per- Alile Sharon Larkin's A Different Image formances), who have richer dimensions shows the progression toward a cohesive through their fount of memories, which development of subject and technique, weave in and out of the story. Mountain but the story of a young black woman's pinpoints the importance of myth and of sexual independence (the freedom to have heritage as an enlivening, troubling, emo- a platonic friendship with a man) loses its tional buttress. Lathan controls this mate- equilibrium as Larkin's feminist issue Bless Their Little Hearts. rial , exploiting effects of memory and fights the more immediate romantic filmic representation, and ultimately drama. As a technician , Larkin refrains tude, and situation. In both A Different works the system of black film financing to from exploring the sensual, aesthetic val- Image and A Dream, the logic and docu- more significant effect than any filmmaker ues of the story that first compel a viewer's mentation is sound, but there's an obvious in years. But he only gets close to great- attention; this confuses Larkin's desire to yearning for an interpretation of these ness. transcend existing filmmaking modes with ideas-for art-that remains unfulfilled. The embarrassments made in race the complications of sexual involvement Regrettably, this kind of filmmaking movies, the insults instituted in Holly- itself. The le~d characters are conceived in doesn't build a mass audience, and black wood's past (Green Pastures) and prac- naturalistic terms, their behavior motile filmmakers already have trouble reaching ticed in the present (Weird Science, St. and plausible beyond the denigrating the public through the limited venues of Elmo's Fire, and Volunteers) have made it shorthand of caricature that Oscar the Harlem Studio Museum, the Newark necessary for black filmmakers to reinvent Micheaux employed. But Larkin comes Black Film Festival, and various PBS for- the wheel. Foregrounding pertinent short of letting her very good instincts play mats. (During the Thirties, at least, there themes, as in A Dream Is What You Wake dramatically, and instead grips her subject were upwards of 600 theaters in the race Up From, or overtly manipulating stylistic with a journalist's tenacity that Steinem or movie circuit nationwide.) Gearing their tropes, as in Sky Captain or Color, is the Brownmiller would easily approve. Her work for these alternative outlets shows an filmmakers' attempt at political integrity. politics are rigorous, but she fails to break audience concept that is just diverse It's an art film answer to a junk movie into sensuality or the basic pleasure of enough to describe a potential, sizable hunger. Above all, it's a means of conquer- narrative. market of political, parochial, and aes- ing the magic and mystery of movies from A Dream Is What You Uizke Up From, a thetic-minded tastes. It also suggests the the inside out. ® 41

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Although jazz and rhythm-and-blues star Louis Jordan tem- porarily left the bandstand to make movies-LOok Out Sister (1946), Reet, Petite And Gone (1947), Caldonia (1945), and Beware (1946)-he always carried his music and his horns (an alto sax and a clarinet) with him. Born in Arkansas in 1908, Jordan joined Chick Webb s orchestra in 1936, occa- sionally performing vocals with Ella Fitzgerald, and record- ingduets with Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong. By 1938, he had formed his own group, The Tympany Five, and in the Forties had jukeboxes jumping with \"Knock Me A Kiss,\" \"Gonna Move To The Outskirts Of Town,\" \"Choo Choo Ch' Boogie,\" \"That Chicks Too Young To Fry,\" and \"Is You Or Is You Ain't My Baby?\" With a large following, both black and white, Jordan was a major influence on such Fifties music stars as Little Richard, Chuck Berry, B.B. King, and Ray Charles. His race movies set him at the center ofthe action, making excellent use of his outgoing, souped-up, anything- goes, mildly manic personality. In Reet, Petite, And Gone, he appeared with another music star, singer June Richmond. Jordan retired from performing in the Fifties, making rare appearances atfestivals and small clubs. He died in Califor- nia in 1975. WHEN HE'S1M S~ ', HE'S Sl\"\"tr:.t ' WHEN HE'S'7t4t S~\"ti\"', HE'S LiWUt '- 43

There's DANGERI TERRO,,, MYSTERY' Generally considered a technicallandmo.rk in the history of With a Killer on the.oose. race movies, Miracle In Harlem (1948) appeared toward the end of the independent black film movement. Ostensibly a \" glossy murder mystery centering on a candy-store swindle, sthe film actually looks at post-war black America vision of sitsfuture promise and prosperity. Miracle lead characters- serious, noble, educated, bourgeois, less ethnic-stand as embodiments of the new social-economic philosophy: they are attractive, optimistic, capitalistic go-getters who believe in the American system offree enterprise and are determined to mo.ke it work. They are primed for the integrationist movement that will arise in the Fifties. Turning up in Miracle In Harlem are some interestingfaces: Sheila Guyse-well-mo.nnered, clean-scrubbed, a bit pam- pered-was one of the post-war new-style black leading ladies. She appeared in Sepia Cinderella (1947) and the underground favorite, Boy! What A Girl! (1946); William Greaves, a skilled and relaxed young leading mo.n, later left acting to become the independent producer-director of the 1974 documentary, From These Roots, and also the execu- tive producer of the 1981 Richard Pryor film, Bustin' Loose. And Stepin Fetchit. As Hollywood's first important black actor, Fetchit has long been criticized for his slow-moving, shuffling coon fig- ures. Once his Hollywood heyday had come to an end, Fetchit made rare appearances in independent features. In both Miracle in Harlem and Big Timers (1947), black audiences did not object to his dimwitted characters; he was but one comic figure in films offering an array ofblack imo.ges. For years, writer Richard Wright had hoped to see a screen version ofhis novel, Native Son. But the mo.jor studios would not touch this tale ofa Chicago ghetto youth, Bigger Thomo.s, who commits two violent crimes. Finally, in 1951, eleven syears after the book publication, a film version was inde- pendently produced in Argentina. Wright co-wrote the screenplay with director Pierre Chenal. Released by a smo.ll company, Classic Pictures, the film was a fiasco , technically ill-conceived and most importantly, lacking the sense of place essential to the story. Footage of Chicago's southside was intercut with sequences shot in Argentina, undercutting both the needed sense ofoppression ofthe system and the city. But the movie's greatest liability was its star: Wright, then 43, played the 20-year-old protagonist, Bigger. No mo.tter, the subject was ahead ofits time. Following in the wake of such problem pictures as Pinky (1949) and Home of the Brave (1949), both 'gentle' pleas for racial tolerance, Native Son said America destroyed lives and bred violence. Interestingly, rather than focusing on an insulated all-black community, it exposed tensions between black and white, as new directions for black cinemo.. But ssome were threatened. Variety reviewer wrote: \"With a certain modicum of subtlety, the picture seems to have been made with intent to create anti-U.S. feeling. It is rather sad that a number of British and U. S. residents in Argentina should have been enticed into collaborating in this under- hand stab at the U. S.\" The picture failed. 44

In his early Hollywoodfilms-Pennies From Heaven (1936) and Going Places (1939)-Louis Armstrong often JuuJ to Tom and coon it up, performing stereotyped comic shenanigans in between playing his hom. Many black audiences, found this hard to watch, and so lost sight ofhis rich talents and skills. Almost 20 years later, Armstrong was the focal point of the documentary Satchmo The Great (1957), which sought to revise opinion on Armstrong as a black man, humanitarian, and international artist. An Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly production, Satchmo The Great grew out of an earlier CBS \"See It Now\" broadcast, expandedfrom its origi- nal halfhour to 63 minutes. Murrow narrated the film which covered Armstrong on a European tour, highlighted a trip to Africa 's Gold Coast, and ended with his triumphant appear- ance with Leonard Bernstein and The New York Philhar- monic at Lewisohn Stadium. Far from a race movie, Satchmo The Great JuuJ a similar intent: to reinterpret black American life and culture. Introducing ARMSTRONG and EDWARD R. MURROW wltb Leonerd Bernstein' W.C. Hendy • , ,, by EDWARDR. MURROW and FREDW. FRIENDLY · Rllllild tbru UnilidArtl... a new era in motion pictureS! In the Eisenhower era, Hollywood looked as if it might be trying to revive the idea ofrace movies with the release ofOtto -PORGY Preminger's all-black musicals, Porgy and Bess (1959) and Carmen Jones (1954). Unlike race films , though, where black and actors seemed relaxed with one another and their environ- ment, in Porgy and Bess, one senses the black performers BESS struggling to transcendfake dialects and a thin , hokey plot. It didn't help matters that in 1959-a period ofsit-ins, boycotts, -';0( and protests in the South-there stood up Sidney Poitier in Porgy and Bess singing \"I Got Plenty 0 'Nothin-and nothin's SIDNEY POITIER ·DOROTHY DANDRIDGE plenty for me.\" SAMMY DAVIS,Jr: PEARL BAILEY Still Porgy and Bess and Carmen Jones, along with their ,,_ ~ 6{0R6{ GERSHWIN. ~\"• ., DuBOSE IiFfWARIl big studio predecessors of1943, Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather, are valued today as dazzling cultural documents , 1..1...-. ~ l)o\\ltll!il ll tY'll\" I U •.& I k.AGI.lSII\"I~ (1 .......... , ........, ' I'W\"Q'~, 1\"'lIIbl.: ... 1)I~l n n' 1 1 ('\"\"~'O I thanks to their lineup ofblack stars. Nearly every legendary fIo. . .,,..-....r....'w ..... .., ..... n...,,.(:.,;w·s.-........,&a,\"t' .ICII ~.nX'ASIi black entertainer is splendidly showcased in one or another ofthese four films: Ethel Waters, Lena Home, Eddie 'Roch- -. _.-__--_----- --.... OTTO'PREMIN6ER . ,........, COlUMB~ ~CTURES ester' Anderson, The Nicholas .Brothers, Duke Ellington , . ..TOOO~AO' . TECHN ICOLOR' . S TEREOPHONIC SOUND Cab Calloway, Butterfly McQueen, Dooley Wilson , Bill . --~- ­ 'Bojangles'Robinson, Fats Waller, John 'Bubbles ' Sublett, Louis Armstrong, Mantan Moreland, Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., Harry Belafonte, Diahann Carroll, Pearl Bailey, Brock Peters, Max Roach , and the black heartthrob of the Fifties, Dorothy Dandridge. 4S

For black audiences, the star ofsuch raunchy race movies as Come One, Cowboy (1948) and She's Too Mean To Me (1948) was the little guy with the fastest eyes in the Jtest. No one could widen or pop their eyes with quite the abandon of Mantan Moreland. He appeared in over 300 movies and is best remembered for his work in Hollywood, particularly his role as Birmingham Brown, the chauffeur-sidekick in the Charlie Chan mystery series. In his Hollywoodfeatures, he usually stood by the hero s side, unless, of course, he saw a ghost or criminal coming. Then he'd cry out, \"Feets, do yo' stuff!\" and take offfor the hills. But his blackfilms set him up as something ofa comic, sporty, ladies man and also laun- ched him as a true star. Mantan Messes Up (1946) and Mantan Runs For Mayor (1946) stand as testaments to his boxoffice appeal on the race movie circuit. Moreland repeatedly displayed an arsenal ofgestures and grimaces which he used to develop his characters and steal scenes. He executed perfectly timed doubletakes and mas- tered the trick of running in place without ever moving. Moreland's career began in circuses, road companies, car- nivals, and tent shows before Joe Louis got him an important role in The Spirit of Youth. At one point, he teamed with FE. Miller in a comedy act. Later in the Forties and Fifties, he worked with Redd Foxx. He also made comedy albums for the race market. Morelands great ambition to do a 'serious' piece oftheatre wasfinaliy realized in 1957 when he was cast as Estragon in an ali-black New York production of Waiting For Godot. He continued working in films and Tv, appearing briefly in Carl Reiner s The Comic (1969) and Melvin Mln Peebless Watermelon Man (1970). He died in 1973. ~Mantan MOIEIAND ~Mef!\"\"tI!!'-'4 (~rI\"'\"i ~M'r'~ oJfII' JOHNNYLEE F. E. MILLER AU. STAR caOREDCAST

New Documentary Features From Direct Cinema Limited In Her Own Time The Statue of Uberty .•....iIi THE STATUE OF LIBERTY is a lyrical , compelling , and pro- vocati ve film that explores the history of the statue and the >- meaning of liberty itself·on the occasion of the statue 's renova- .0 tion . This definitive and compelling work deals with two con - cepts : The Idea, and The Promise. o The Idea ~~ The story of the statue 's origin and creation in France , and its !~ Number Our Davs subseq uent installation in America is illustrated with an exten- Academy Award 1977 Best Documentary Short sive collection of rare archival photographs , drawings, and paintings that detail every phase of construction . Narration by Professor Barbara Myerhoff's study of a community of elderly David McCullough guides this historical drama, punctuated by readings of actual diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts of Jews in Venice, California , Arecsaudlteemd yinANwUaMrdBfEorRBOeUstRDoDcAuYmS~n­ the statue 's progress Jeremy Irons, in the role of sculptor the film that won the 1977 Frederic Auguste Bartholdi , leads the cast of readers , which also includes Derek Jacobi , Paul Roebling , Arthur Miller , and tary Short for director Lynne Littman. NUMBER OUR DAYS Milos Forman . also gave Dr . Myerhoff national prominence as a cultural an- The Promise thropologist and interpreter of the American Jewish The question of liberty itself, and the significance of the statue to American life are explored through a series of interviews experience . with ordinary and extraordinary Americans , including New York Governor Mario Cuomo , writer James Baldwin, former In 1981 , continuing the important work begun in NUMBER Congresswoman Barbara Jordan , film director Milos Forman , OUR DAYS, Dr. Myerhoff began studyi ng the Fairfax neigh- poet Andrei Codrescu , writer Jerzy Kosinski , and musician Ray borhood in Los Angeles . Here Jews of every description from Charles. The film challenges audiences with the deceptively all over the world live in a \" voluntary ghetto.\" Myerhoff felt that simple question , \" What is liberty? \" The possible answers are the revitalization of Fairfax was largely due to its growing thoughtful and provocative population of intensely religious Jews , particularly the ultra- Orthodox Hassidic movemen t known as Chabad. She was Although serious in form, THE STATUE OF LIBERTY contains fascinated by the way that the religion and the neighborhood both poetry and humor. Charlie Chaplin, Jimmy Stewart, Jose worked together to create a community . She decided to make Ferrer , and Charlton Heston are all seen in Hollywood en- a film about this special village in the heart of Los Angeles. counters with Liberty The iconography of the statue is shown In popular art and in advertising for every1hing from Liberty In June 1983, Dr. Myerhoff learned that she had cancer . The Bonds to funeral homes and personal hygiene products. Fairfax project would probably be her last work. Throughout Ultimately, the film celebrates the American ideals of freedom the research and filming of IN HER OWN TIME , Dr. Myerhoff that will continue to enoble our country , long after the present also explored her own evolving relation ship to Orthodox renovation is completed , and Liberty is remo ved from the Judaism . In doing so , she revealed how rel ig ious traditions and bonds of scaffolding . practices have meaning for families living active lives in the world today. IN HER OWN TIME touches on much more than urban or religious anthropology. Like NUMBER OUR DAYS, this is a personal as well as social exploration that has meaning for all individuals, all families , all religious groups. Both films encom- pass vivid philosophies of life and a challenging approach to illness and death. Seen together , they create a moving pro- gram about enduring values and commitments that is unpar- alleled in the history of film . In Her Own Time Produced by Vikram Jayanti , Lynne Littman Directed by Lynne Littman Based on the Field Work of Dr. Barbara Myerhoff in Association with The University of Southern California 60 minutes Color 1985 Number Our Days Florentine Films Produced and directed by Lynne Littman A Film by Ken Burns Based on the Field Work of Dr. Barbara Myerhoff Produced by Buddy Squires and Ken Burns 29 minutes Color 1977 60 minutes Color 1985 For information contact: Direct Cinema Limited ~, P.O. Box 69589 Los Angeles, CA 90069 cmema (213) 656-4700 limited

Notes on the making of 'Ran' by Peter Grilli and obsessive perfectionism had long had earlier worked on Red Beard and since scared off the japanese studios. Kagemusha. As they honed , the rumors Kyushu, Sept. 7, 1984-The two-hour Despite the international acclaim accor- kept circulating: Ran could never be pro- drive from Kumamoto airport on ded his films , japanese audiences no duced-too grand in scale; no japanese japan's southern island of Kyushu gives me longer flocked to see them . In 1964, Red producer would touch it-too expensive; time to collect my thoughts. I'm driving up Beard far exceeded both its shooting Kurosawa has finally been promised the into Mt. Aso, an active volcano that occu- schedule and its budget; when it was money to begin shooting; no, the deal fell pies most of the central plateau of Kyushu, finally released , it just barely recouped its through. Four years earlier, when Kage- on my way to meet Akira Kurosawa, costs at the boxoffice. In 1970, Dodes 'ka- musha won a Grand Prize at Cannes, the another active volcano , who is hard at den had not done well at all, and not long rumors began to fly again: Surely now work on a new film. The great japanese afterward Kurosawa attempted suicide. Kurosawa will be able to find a producer director, who made 23 features in the first No japanese studio would risk working for Ran; a Hollywood studio is about to two decades of his career, is 74 and work- with him after that, and his next film, sign the deal; no, it has to be produced by ing slower these days. Ran is only his Dersu Uzala (1975) , was shot in Russia, a a japanese studio; no, it's too expensive- fourth film in 20 years. Mosfilm production made with Soviet if it's to be done at all, it will be by an funds. In 1980, Kagemusha-which American or European producer; no , Kurosawa is attempting one of the most Kurosawa brushed off as merely \" a they'd never be able to work with Kuro- elusive masterpieces of Western literature, rehearsal for Ran\"- was of intimidating sawa. King Lear, which, he has retitled Ran scale, at least to Japanese producers, and (\"chaos\" or \"disorder\"), and the japanese ultimately was produced only when Kurosawa and I got to know each other press has been calling it the culmination of George Lucas and Francis Coppola well in 1981, when he came to New York his life's work. At work on Ran nearly a helped arrange an international distribu- for a complete retrospective of his films at decade, he has spoken of little else. But tion deal with 20th Century Fox. A critical japan Society. At that time there had been just as Lear has defeated some of the if not popular hit abroad, Kagemusha was renewed talk about Ran. The translated finest Shakespearean actors and directors received coolly at home and made little script was passed around, and many in the West, it has come to seem that the profit. thought it splendid. It seemed only a mat- more Kurosawa dwelled on Ran, the more ter of time before a producer would step distant grew the chances that his vision Would Ran ever be made? Kurosawa forward with pen in hand to sign a con- would ever actually appear on the screen. first completed a script around 1978, and tract. But no. Silence and no action. Kuro- in the intervening years continued to sawa returned to japan to continue rework- Kurosawa had first conceived a plan for revise it, writing with Hideo Oguni, who ing the script and sketching his filming Lear in the early Seventies but had collaborated on nearly every Kuro- storyboards. Suddenly, interest in Ran was could find no backing in japan for the pro- sawa script since Rashomon in 1950. This ject. His reputation for tyrannical behavior time they were joined by Masato Ide, who (Continued on p. 57) 48