VOLUME 09 - NUMBER 03 MAY-JUNE 1973

Tnl: \"'~~pWl.-IILNL B~f~~1~<t AVAILARLI: AT LON6 LAST! Apart from a few clandestine screenin gs over the years, Charles Chaplin 's feature film s have never been show n on a non-thea trical basis be- fore. rbc fiInv is the exclusive non-thea tri cal distributor for the film masterworks of this comic genius. This is a rare and excitin g oppor- tunity for programmers to present a compre- hensive series on Chaplin that will entertain and enlighten all audiences who have not had the pleasure of viewing these classic films. Chaplin 's major features, which will onl y be released as a complete series, include : THE CHAPLIN HEVIEW comprising A DOG'S LIFE· 1918, SHOULDER ARMS· 1918 & THE PILGRIM • 1923 THE KID· 1921 & THE IDLE CLASS· 1921 THE GOLD RUSH (with sco r-e & commentary hy Chaplin) • 1925 THE CIRCUS· 1928 CITY LIGHTS· 1931 MODERN TIMES· 1936 THE GREAT DICTATOR· 194 0 MONSIEUR VEHDOUX· 1947 LIMELIGHT· 1952 -. A KING IN NEW YOHK • 1957 Also The Chaplin Documentary made in 1973 by filmmaker's Peter Bogdanovich and Bert Schneider' on Chaplin's life and works will he included in the series, For furth er informati on or date rese rva tions, contact us soon. A free brochure is ava il able upon request. e I 933 North La Brea Avenue Los Angeles, California 90038 CI (213) 874-5050

STAFF VOLUME 9 NUMBER 3 editor MAY-JUNE 1973 RICHARD CORLISS CONTENTS book editor / assistant editor MELINDA WARD JOURNALS Paris / Jonathan Rosenbaum graphic design Los Angeles / Beverly Walker MARTHA LEHTOLA page 2 managing editor JOHN HUSTON: AUSTIN LAMONT HUSTON MEETS THE EYE by Tom Reck assistant managing editor page 6 SAYRE MAXFIELD REFLECTIONS ON A GOLDEN BOY ::tdvertising manager Howard Koch on John Huston NAOMI WEISS page 12 corresponder)ts TALKING WITH JOHN HUSTON London RICHARD ROUD an interview by Gene Phillips Los Angeles STEPHEN FARBER page 15 Paris JONATHAN ROSENBAUM THE EYEHOLE OF KNOWLEDGE assistants voyeuristic games in film and literature research MARY CORLISS by Alfred Appel , Jr. page 20 design LINDA MANCINI subscriptions MAR Y WESTROPP JACK LEMMON subscriptions NATALIE SILLERY interviewed by Steven Greenberg page 27 editorial board JOSEPH L. ANDERSON , Director TO HAVE (DIRECTED) AND HAVE NOT (WRITTEN) Film Program , Ohio University reflections on authorship JAMES A. BEVERIDGE, Director by Robin Wood Programme in Film , York University page 30 HOWARD SUBER , Chairman , Critical Studies Motion Picture / Television Division, UCLA TATI'S DEMOCRACY Jacques Tati interviewed by WILLARD VAN DYKE , Director Jonathan Rosenbaum Department of Film , Museum of Modern Art page 36 The opin ions expressed in FILM COMMENT KEN RUSSELL 'S BIOPICS are those of the individual authors and do not grander and gaudier by Robert Kolker necessarily represent the opinions page 42 of the editor, staff or publisher. THE ENGLISH CINE-STRUCTURALISTS FILM COMMENT , May-June 1973. by Charles W. Eckert Vol ume 9 number 3, published bimonlhly page 46 by Film Comment Publishing Corporation , 42 Dustin Street, Boston MA 02135 USA . LINGUISTICS, STRUCTURALISM, Second class postage paid at Boston, Massachusetts. SEMIOLOGY Copyrigh t@ 1973 by Film Comment Publishing Corporation. approaches to cinema, All righls reserved . This publication is fu lly with a bibliography protecled by domestic and internalional copyrighl. by Charles Harpole and John Hanhardt It is forbidden to duplicate any part of this page 52 publication in any way without prior written FILM FAVORITE permission from the publishers. Joseph McBride on Subscription rates in the United States: WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? $9 lor six numbers, $17 for twelve numbers. Elsewhere: $10.50 for page 60 six numbers, $20.00 for twelve numbers, payable in US funds only . New subscribers please include your occupation and zip code. CRITICS: Raymond Durgnat Subscription and back issue correspondence: by Jonathan Rosenbaum FILM COMM ENT box 686 Village Station , Brookline MA 02147 USA. and Raymond Durgnat page 65 Editorial correspondence: FILM COMM ENT 214 East 11th Sireet, New York NY 10003 USA. BOOKS Please enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope with manuscripts. page 69 Microfilm ed itions available from on the cover : THE MISFITS, University Microfilms , Ann Arbor MI 48106. from left: Russell Metty Printed in USA by Printing Division , AVCO Corporation. (cinematographer). Arthur Miller, Distribuled in the USA by Eastern News Company, Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, 155 Wesl 15th Sireet , New York NY 10011 . Marilyn Monroe, John Huston and International distribution by Worldwide Med ia Clark Gable. photo: United Artists. Service, 386 Park Avenue Soulh , New York NY 10016 USA. Distributed in Great Britain by Moore-Harness Company, London . FILM COMMENT partic ipates in the FIAF periodical indexing plan . Library of Congress card number 76-498.

.JOURNALS AVAILABLE NOVEMBER PARIS L.A. for showings Jonathan Rosenbaum Beverly Walker in all gauges LES IDOLES, Marc 'O's film version of his Beverly Walker is a publicist and free- at own theater piece , originally opened in Paris in May, 1968, when many of its lance writer whose articles and interviews UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES potential spectators were out in the street have appeared in Esquire and Sight and SCHOOLS and presumably had other things to think Sound . about. It was released again early this FILM SOCIETIES year ; but after a nominal run in one of The phone rings. It's Mister X, a good MUSEUMS AND ART CENTERS the several new mini-cinemas that have friend. Less than a minute of small talk been springing up lately all over the Left precedes his announcement that he has CHURCHES Bank, it seemed to vanish into oblivion just sold his first script for upwards of RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS a second time, only to re-emerge in a $300 ,000 . I congratulate him , say good- NON-MILITARY CAMPS neighborhood house in early February, bye, and sit gnashing my teeth for ten CLUBS AND ORGANIZATIONS where it is currently playing . Talent does minutes. SHUT-IN INSTITUTIONS usually seem to find a way to reassert itself. Marc'O's sarcastic parody about The phone rings again . It's Mister Y, SHIPS the making and merchandising of pop a friend of X and also a writer. Did I hear HOTELS AND RESORTS stars has nothing particularly profound or that X sold his first script for $500 ,000? original to \" say\" about its subject, but Not that much , I pooh , more like $300 ,- PRIVATE HOMES it I:lappens to have three of the liveliest 000. Or even a little less , I lie consolingly . performances in the modern French cin- Oh , sighs Y , somewhat mollified . EXCLUSIVELY From ema . The phone. It's Susy Q, my friend , an CINfuR. e l... Bulle Ogier, Jean-Pierre Kalfon , and acquaintance of X and also a writer. Can Pierre Clementi , as the three pop stars , it possibly be true , she asks in the tone 13 ARCADIA ROAD dive into their parts with such enthusiasm of one inquiring of the health of an adver- OLD GREENWICH, CONN. 06870 and expertise that the screen comes alive sary, that X sold his script for $200 ,000? with their electric energies , and one is More, I warn : almost three. Silence. We PHONE (203) - 637-4319 led to speculate on how much more change the subject, chat a few minutes, spectacular they must have been on the and then I excuse myself to go to the stage. (Despite some clever attempts at unemployment office. adaptation , LES IDOLES stubbornly re- mains another variant of filmed theater-a Contrary to popular (read : Eastern good thing to have, under the circum- seaboard) myth , few people migrating stances , but like Shirley Clarke 's even westward to this ratty part of LA called more ingenious recording of THE CONNEC- Hollywood expect to make that kind of TION , it cannot really offer an equivalent money from the sale of a script. Oh , they to the excitements of a live per·formance .) hope they ' ll be comfortable and maybe , A theoretical problem about parodying yes maybe , they 'll be rich . Someday . Over French rock is the fact that, at least to a decent period of time. But money's not American ears , most of it tends to sound really the name of the game. What like parody anyway; but Ogier, Kalfon , Dorothy Parker and Fitzgerald and and Clementi overcome this obstacle with Faulkner did for bread , they do for love their dazzling variations on the very no- or art or because they 've caught the tion of Star Presence. Clementi's Mick movie disease and haven 't any choice. Jagger imitations are somewhat less than They know the stories of the miserable inspired , but are still marvelous fun to rich fi 1m writer of yesteryear who saw his watch ; Ogier intermittently captures and work decimated and his friendships un- squeezes the soul of ye-ye until it done by studio-induced competition . squeaks ; and in one virtuoso comic They're delighted not to be part of a number, apparently Lewis-inspired , Kal- stable where maybe fifteen lines of their fon beats his own master by leagues in script is siphoned off into another that his evocations of sheer hysteria. And as eventually mayor may not carry their an extra added attraction , Bernadette name. Proud to be in the tradition of the Lafont makes an engaging guest appear- starving artist, they deprive themselves of ance as a singing nun at a pop wedding . every comfort except the omnipresent California sunshine and write their own TRAITEMENT DE CHOC . Alain Jessua ' s personalized thing . That , they've heard third feature, starring Annie Girardot and a million times , is what separates the Alain Delon , is a somewhat sympathetic artist from the hack. failure , but after LA VIE A L'ENVERS (LIFE Even the more success-oriented film continued on page 4 students-and film students are far and away the most voraciously ambitious- continued on page 5 2 MAY 1973

A magnificent epic on the themes of collaboration and resistance. . -Pauline Kae/ , The New Yorker .. .. . . .... .~~~ A tension is created, between An artistic and intellectual triumph. the people on the screen and in the audience, that gives the film the - Time Magazine effect of explosion. National Society of Film Critics -Alfred Kazin, New York Times Special Award .... A film of extraordinary public interest and One of the greatest fi Ims ever distinction. made, 'The Sorrow And The Pity' is a contribution to history, to social 'The Sorrow And The Pity' is about psychology, to anthropology, and to four and a half hours ... but, in art. If there's any justice in the terms of moral, intellectual, and world, Marcel Ophuls' monumental emotional absorption, it is one labor will be studied and debated of the shortest movies of the year. for years. -David Denby, Atlantic Monthly -Andrew Sarris, ViI/age Voice Now available in 16 mm from Cinema 5·16 mm 595 Madison Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10022· tel. (212) 421-5555 When writing to advertisers please mention FILM COMMENT

PARIS JOURNAL continued from page 2 currently pulling in more customers than sounds in the film . But in order to under- any other first-run film in Paris-but they UPSIDE DOWN) and JEU DE MASSACRE (THE compromise the blunt edges of the cri- stand the function of sound in the story KILLING GAME) , a considerable disappoint- tique , and all but reduce Jessua to a ment. Six years have elapsed since Jes- superior version of Dr. Delon , who also proper , it is necessary to consider the sua shot his second film (which is proba- has ideals and seeks to please his clieflts. bly his best) , and according to recent visual style it plays against: an elliptically interviews, at least four of these years Each of Jessua's three features deals were spent in America, where Jessua with some form of mental aberration that cut give-and-take between dark exteriors tried in vain to get several film projects is treated rather abstractly. If the social off the ground , notably a science-fiction aberrations that are covertly dealt with in and smokily lit interiors that keeps most script called \" The Blue Planet\" and a TRAITEMENT DE CHOC had been handled political film called \" The White Pan- less abstractly, the protest might have of the characters , settings , and plot in a thers. \" Although it is useless to speculate registered a lot more meaningfully. As it on whether any particular aspects of the is, the Portuguese workers seem to wind mysterious moral and spatial limbo . In older projects found their way into up being servants and victims of the plot, TRAITEMENT DE CHOC , the new film does as well as of the hospital-faceless de- such an impenetrable atmosphere , even attempt to cross-breed a science-fiction vices in the service of both mechanisms , horror plot with a political allegory, and which the presence of the phoney- Inspector Maigret (Pierre Renoir) fumbles the virulence of the central premise does looking dummy only helps to spell out. suggest that Jessua has more than a few in his search to solve a pair of murders. fish to fry. According to standard marketing pro- cedures , a film is \" new\" in relation to But if the lighting and cutting are respec- Annie Girardot arrives at the super-lux- when it is released , not when it is made. urious Institut de Thalassotherapie on the Sometimes this can work in a filmmaker 's tively expressionist and metaphysical in picturesque Belle- ile-en-Mer. The sani- favor: Tati 's PLAYTIME , still unreleased in tarium , presided over by Doctor Delon , the states , is newer than TRAFFIC , and I'm effect and implication , the direct sound resembles a ritzy resort, and offers ex- told that several people who saw it at the perimental treatments designed to relieve last San Francisco Film Festival assumed is neo-realist and concrete , constantly depression and bring back the patients' it had been made afterwards, not four youth. As she starts undergoing the treat- years before. The fact that LA NUIT DU locating and leading us into specifics of ments, and acquaints herself with the CARREFOUR , a thriller shot by Jean Renoir other rich clients, Delon , and a few of the forty-one years ago, has not yet been locale and plot that the visual style usually Portuguese immigrants who are working released in the U.S. , thus entitles me to on the premises at menial jobs, she announce it as a new Renoir film . But obscures. begins to notice strange things going on even without this rather tenuous argu- around -her, etc ., etc. , until a Grand Gui- ment, it is probably the newest French Most of the action centers around a gnol denouement reveals that the Portu- film I've seen since PLAYTIME or L'AMOUR guese workers are being drugged and Fou-that is, the most alive to the future truck stop, garage, and neighboring disemboweled , in order to provide her possibilities of cinema. I don 't even think and the other privileged clients with fresh it would be exceptionally perverse to call houses. Early in the film , when Maigret cells-at which point she stabs Delon to it, after LA REGLE DU JEU , the most exciting death in his nether regions with a syringe . film in the entire Renoir canon . Yet apart and an assistant stand conversing on a I'd feel a little less guilty about unveiling from fairly regular screenings at the Ci- this \" surprise ending \" if Jessua himself nematheque, I don 't know of anywhere street, the increasing volume of a car that hadn't given the game away with such else in the world where it's possible to ostentatious, camera-nudging hints in the see it. approaches from off-screen sets up a first reel; and although his horrific climax does manage to provide a few jolts-a la This early sound adaptation of a contrapuntal tension worthy of Hitchcock Franju, but without the poetry-the effect Georges Simenon mystery (entitled Mai- is marred by the use of an unconvincing gret at the Crossroads in English transla- (the car nearly runs them down) and dummy of a Portuguese cadaver that is tion) might well qualjfy as the blackest too silly even to qualify as a Roger Cor- film noir in the French cinema: black in establishes a strong sense of spatial man reject , and winds up provoking at its creepy nocturnal moods ; black in its least as many giggles as shivers. characters , which include as many poetic depth beyond the frame that transforms oddball types as one could find in THE Jessua 's allegorical message , and his OLD DARK HOUSE ; and black in its extreme- the nature of what we see . (For an in- more specific assaults against many of ly confusing , quasi-paranoid plot, with the assumptions of modern medicine, are the sort of missing explanations of who teresting· consideration of sound used in strong and persuasive, at least in theory , killed whom and why that characterize but they tend to be worked out pretty THE BIG SLEEP (although Simenon 's an antithetical way, to dislocate the spec- laboriously on the screen. The additional novel, unlike Chandler's, clears up most problems of locating a potentially radical of the confusion). But perhaps what is tator in relation to the image , cf. Phyllis statement within a patently commercial most remarkable about the film is its framework become insuperable, and too unprecedented use of direct sound. Goldfarb's analysis of TOUCH OF EVIL in many banalities and frivolities-none of them objectionable in themselves-keep The soundtrack and its articulations \"Orson Welles 's Use of Sound ,\" Take getting in the way : a bossa nova score are crucial to the narrative from the very that is intended to relate to the Portu- beginning. During the credits, a musical One, Vol. 3. No.6.) Elsewhere , repeated guese characters, brief glimpses of Delon theme that subsequently figures directly and Girardot in frontal nudity . .. just the in the plot-a gramophone record played sounds of water dripping from a faucet, sort of thing to keep the paying custom- by the leading female character (Winna ers happy-and TRAITEMENT DE CHOC is Winfried)-alternates with the abrupt, accented by brief cutaways to the source , brutal noises (and accompanying images) of a car motor, a sautering iron , play against the rhythms of a police inter- and shots from a pistol : a precis of key rogation , as do shots of newspaper headlines from various editions about the murder in question , which we see and hear being swept away by water into a gutter; heavy rain persists throughout much of the action around the truck stop, and the sounds of pans catching leaks add an unnerving obbligato to several other scenes . The grating noise of a mechanic sharpening a tool interferes- deliberately, as we later discover-with a phone call Maigret tries to make in the garage, and additional aural colorations are provided by the strange foreigh ac- cents of Georges Koudria and Winna Winfried . I don 't mean to suggest that all my enthusiasm for LA NUIT DU CARREFOUR is based on strictly formal elements. Winna Winfried 's vamp performance happens to be one of the sexiest things I know of in the French cinema , and I would gladly choose its eroticism over that of every film cited in FILM COMMENT's recent \" Cinema Sex\" issue-although , admit- tedly, pornography often has a lot more to do with science (instruction) than art (eroticism). And there 's a car chase through winding streets at night-shot from the front of the car in pursuit, in virtually a single take-that is one of the purest and loveliest kinetic pleasures that Renoir has ever given us. Come to think of it, that's pretty se xy too . 111I1111 4 MAY 1973

nal material. Unfortunately, very little dollars and carte blanche to make a original material is being bought (except L. A. JOURNAL continued from page 2 for the new black movies). More than movie . The new morality allowed as how ever, the people who run the industry are daren't hope to sell a script for that kind looking for pre-sold product. A play will this young genius had to do his own thing . of heavy money. Not even the Hollywood do but a book is best. It is almost always grapevine , which is practically telepathic , the veteran writer who gets the lucrative Don 't worry about the script-the kid' il gets the news of these megabuck deals assignment of turning a best-seller into as quickly as film schools. It's awfully a movie script. The vast majority of these take care of it. Well , the mov ies came out hard to discuss Budd Boetticher at ten veteran Writer's Guild members never in the morning if you 're color dreaming write anything other than adaptations. after lengthy sojourns in the editing room. in tones of green ... Nonetheless, they all This is a major reason why there is almost secretly pray to whatever god that they 'll no contractual protection for original ma- Critics sneered, audiences stayed away, be elected to follow the footsteps of terial. USC 's John Milius , last year's Hero from and the touted \" American New Wave\" his expensive scripts of THE LIFE AND TIMES A second reason for despair is that OF JUDGE ROY BEAN and JEREMIAH JOHN- everybody is writing in a moral vacuum . was kaput. The money men began to look SON , or 1973 ' s Hero-to-date (another will Very few of the people in a position to come along before the year is out) , acquire or commission material have for something more solid out-front before UCLA's Paul Schrader, the editor of Cin- ideas or any real understanding of what ema , who will introduce the Japanese the audience wants. Desperately looking financing a film . Mafia to American audiences via THE for trends , they base their decisions on YAKUZA. (The film schools take careful note momentary chic. Violence always makes An astonishing number of successful of who has the most graduates making money , so there is a bottomless market it big . At last count USC was way ahead .) for blood-drenched scripts. At the pre- films are now identified with the writer as sent time , however, writers are being This divine idealism (for some : prag- asked to concoct stories about women , we ll as the director, and a goodly percen- matic expectancy for others) lasts about hoping to cash in on the new women 's a year. Going into year three, it's every lib consciousness . It's really the backlash tage of new directors were writers first. man for himself and god help you brother they 're aiming at, though , because all cause I can 't. Fierce jealousies and re- they ' re doing is maintaining the old genre The problem seems to be that niggling sentments set in , leading to almost inde- format but changing the sex of the lead- scribably bitter infighting and gossir . At ing character. THE WILD BUNCH in drag! feeling that anybody who tries hard a recent dinner party, the wife of a young writer-director with one perfectly re- A third and probably decisive reason enough can come up with a script. spectable movie behind him stated that for the malaise is Hollywood's insidious if a recent Big Sale was discussed she caste system. Insinuating itself into the Screenwriting is still looked upon as a would throw up right into her pate. That most seemingly private aspect of one's was cool for everybody there: they had life, it determines, to a great extent, one 's second-rate profession . If only the heard about that $300 ,000 deal so often social life, friendships, even lovers. that they too were about to choke. Which agency , even which agent you 're screenwriter could create a mystique signed with is part of this system. You're There are a number of reasons for this not even on the totem pole if you don 't about himself . . . li ke the director and sorry situation . Competition is ferocious have an agent. Other cities have their because the market is overloaded . There chic circles, true , but I have never seen even the cameraman. But the industry is has never been an abundance of respect one 's social status so tied to one 's ability for the screenwriter's craft, so everybody to earn a living. Unlike New York or Paris in no mood for a new critical theory or from school teacher to policeman is writ- or London , a talented person in Holly- ing a script. The rest want to direct. Since wood is nothing and nobody unless he a new bunch of geniuses. Craftsmanship directing is even more difficult to break sells. Those who have \" made it\" isolate into, would-be directors are also writing. themselves from the strugglers as if in has become respected . Now the onus is fear of catching a disease. And truly, how Very , very few people sell a script for can one feel comfortable in his best on the studios to help create better work- several hundred thousand dollars. This friend 's new mansion if he 's still living in is , of course , what gives big sales such a $175-a-month pad in Venice. (A \" pad \" ing conditions for writers, and on the a dramatic impact. Exact percentages that would be thoroughly acceptable are difficult to ascertain , but I gauge that anywhere else in the world! ) writers to show more pride in their profes- fully half the people seriously writing-not to mention the dilettantes-are doing it Is it any wonder, then , that when a sion. 11111111 \"on spec .\" (That euphemism simply writer breaks through with a spectacular means they ' re making a living some other sale , it throws his peers into a suicidal 1. Eye and camera way, hoping to interest somebody in their mood for a month? Is it surprising that 2.Camera and shot work upon completion.) A large number the quality of writing is often so poor, ). Shot and scene of others are working for from $1500 to given this atmosphere of panic and igno- 4.Fragmenting the scene $5 ,000 per job , if they 're not in the Writ- rance in which writers (and writer-direc- 5.Who is the camera? er's Guild and from $6 ,000 to $10 ,000 if tors) must work? 6.Parallel action they are . This sum, less ten percent agent's fee , often has to stretch over a Despite all of this , the attitude toward Des igned as a complete painfully long period of time . A few people the screenwriter has changed radically in instructi onal sequence, are lucky enough to get money to develop just about three years' time . Back then , a project, based upon a treatment, but the director was still king because of the In Toronto , Canada : only a few. auteur theory 's belatedly strong in- Visual Educati on Centre . fl uence. Men formerly thought of as So , the situation is this: an extraor- crackpots or freaks were handed a million When writing to advertisers dinary number of people are writing origi- please mention FILM COMMENT FILM COMMENT 5

Huston Meets the Eye Tom Stokes Reck teaches film at Chico State That the pursuit can be illicit and materialistic University, has published film criticism in Common- (for the black bird in FALCON, for Mexican gold in weal , is the film reviewer for the Butte Bugle in TREASURE , for stolen jewels in THE ASPHALT JUNGLE), Chico, and has a novella about life as a Fifties movie and the punishment therefore \" morally\" justified, theater usher entitled \" The North Main Theatre \" in might push Huston toward stern piety if the suspect the Spring issue of December magazine. He is quest/failures were not balanced by right and spiri- tual ones, also doomed, but not deservedly (the currently at work on a project he titles \"All Those revolutionaries in WE WERE STRANGERS , Ahab in MOBY DICK , Morel in THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN , Shannon in Awful Mitchum Movies. \" THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA). There may appear to be a touch of wicked amorality in Huston 's allotment James Agee's Life magazine piece on John Hus- of identical fates to unequal undertakings; but he ton was one of the first to draw American attention is actually the hunter ensnaring destiny in its favorite away from stars and to directors. It is less that Agee sin of irony, for , at the core , Huston himself main- canonized Huston prematurely than that he eulo- tains a strong moral sense. gized him without explaining why, and was satisfied to write things like , \" His style is invisible. \" And while For Huston the heroism in questing is broader it is true that auteurists do not particularly flatter than any moral particular at hand , in that it spells Huston for reasons about to be dealt with , the man dedication and perseverance against strong odds. who has made three of the two dozen or so most Or the nuances of moral heroism are smaller than memorable Hollywood films (THE MALTESE FALCON , the larger ambiguity of human values anyway. Only THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, and THE AFRICAN in the context of Western morality does Sam Spade 's QUEEN) can at least be seen as something more than pursuit of truth and justice in THE MALTESE FALCON \" Less Than Meets the Eye. \" emerge as more \" heroic \" than that of Greenstreet and Lorre forthe object of their live fetish , for Huston From THE MALTESE FALCON in 1941 , through THE photographs his two \" villains\" far too lovingly. The LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN in 1972, John illicit search for gold , which is really for the truth Huston has directed twenty-seven films with a vari- about one 's own nature , in TREASURE , comes from ety of content and form that indicates versatility and the noble human will to rise from the depths and curiosity rather than lack of commitment. Beneath reach for knowledge . A jewel heist in THE ASPHALT the camouflage of heterogeneity is a deliberate and JUNGLE is executed with such skill , and the common serious theme: that of powerful quest, probably criminals drawn with such humanity, that we have failure , and ennoblement despite. Even when Hus- the ingredients for heroism here. So expertly and ton does allow achievement , it is incomplete or so doggedly does killer Kirk Douglas go through expensive: Toulouse-Lautrec 's art at the price of nine victims in THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER that much human misery in MOULIN ROUGE; Freud 's dis- his failure in a tenth attempt, just by scoreboard coveries at the cost of great ridicule in FREUD . tally, does not prove much against him. And even Bogart's victory in KEY LARGO comes with a tab of the cheap World War II patriotism in ACROSS THE several deaths. Even the triumph of Charlie and PACIFIC is undercut when Huston lets a reverence Rose over the elements and the Germans in THE for Japanese ritual and thought sneak out. AFRICAN QUEEN was a last-minute capricious reversal in a script that originally called for them to die. 6 MAY 1973

A new look at the director by Tom Reck In his lighter films (THE AFRICAN QUEEN , HEAVEN cynical decadence, for his resignation works finally From left: KNOWS , MR . ALLISON), Huston hides heroism beneath as a veneer , much as it does for Sam Spade in THE MALTESE humor, as he and the characters smile at their own FALCON-who , after an hour and a half of apparent FALCON ; disasters. A commercial venture like THE UNFORGIVEN amoral neutrality, in a vulnerable moment peels off Humphrey looks like a standard Western until Huston presses the mask to reveal a fine moral sense beneath Bogart, Peter for valor in man 's will to withstand the solitude of ( \" When a man's partner is killed, you ' re supposed Lorre, Mary the Western experience. In SINFUL DAVEY, the frivo- to do something about it\"). Huston cannot resist Astor and lous antics of the Irish rebel are offered in the a humanism which shows trust in mankind despite Sydney perspective of Quixotic heroism . Since attempt is its lapses and the general world-envelope of evil. Greenstreet. inherently admirable for Huston, and goal subservi- His humanist's affection for the immoral (Sydney BEAT THE ent to dedication , the uncurious and the timid are Greenstreet in FALCON), for the stupid (Sterling Hay- DEVIL; Peter his true villains. den in THE ASPHALT JUNGLE), for the weak (Tully in Lorre, Robert FAT CITY), can push beyond awe to patronization Morley, Unlike John Ford , who baptises his characters' when he has a character with the stuff of greatness, Humphrey failures in reverent tragedy , Huston chucklingly such as Toulouse-Lautrec or Sigmund Freud. Hus- Bogart, Gina douses his in small ironies. The bird that costs lives ton 's heroes embrace negativism in order to build Loliobrigida, and dollars in FALCON is imitation ; a fortune in gold scar tissue , for survival is preferable to defeat. In and Jennifer is inadvertently flung to the winds in TREASURE ; the TREASURE , for example, Huston constructs a world Jones. THE \" uncriminal\" who has extended little thought or composed of hunger, greed , and violence , as some- TREASURE OF energy assumes the fortune rather than the \" crimi- thing you must know about to be able to rise above. THE SIERRA nals \" who have plotted and killed for it in BEAT THE Howard (Walter Huston) survives because he is not MADRE ; Walter DEVIL; the homosexual army major who thinks the surprised at the malevolence, and he transcends Huston and young man has come to tryst with him learns he it, while it destroys Dobbs (Bogart) and leaves Curtin Humphrey is actually visiting his wife in REFLECTIONS IN A (Tim Holt) with a psychic wound . Bogart. THE GOLDEN EYE. The universe Huston perceives is ulti- AFRICAN mately less to be lamented than laughed at, and Huston 's·threaded optimism in the blanket of final QUEEN ; literally laughter on the sound track is what happens failure can be verified by the individual components Katharine at the end of both TREASURE and BEAT THE DEVIL. of his vision . The dogma of adventure as an ethic Hepburn and Huston preaches practical , gOOd-natured resigna- for living , and of experience as the source of morality Humphrey tion rather than missionary reforming , since the and wisdom, would not otherwise take up his imagi- Bogart. heroes he likes best (Frank in KEY LARGO ; Billy in nation . This is why Huston must usually go outdoors , BEAT THE DEVIL; Sam Spade in FALCON) do what they for here the variations for adventure are greater; All photos : can in the face of so much malevolence, but without here the physical experience , which must su persede anguish or self-pity. Failure may be forthcoming , but or accompany the mystic and moral, gets full play. Museum of it is survival over defeatism. Thus Huston 's theme The similarity of his Bette Davis vehicle , IN THIS OUR serves as explanation for his own willingness to work LIFE, to those made for her by the various \" indoors \" Modern Art / within the commercial malevolence of Hollywood directors, together with his success with the in- without despairing of his \" compromise.\" doorish FALCON , proves Huston 's preference for the Film Stills outdoors to be personal and not unequivocal ; he Yet the vision stops short of nihilism , or even can do the other just as well. Archive FILM COMMENT 7

From left : Huston 's \" virile \" style, evolving from his theatrics dom is. From a philosophical reference , life is KEY LARGO ; with action and violence , is less an end in itself (as serious, but less deadly when not taken seriously. Dan Seymour, it is with an alchemist like Don Siegel) than a From an aesthetic reference , when life is heavily philosophical jumping-off point. Yet his most in- drawn (FREUD , MOULIN ROUGE) , an unfluid sobriety Li onel structional films are mobile rather than talky. He sets in. Barrymore , moves back and forth across San Francisco in Claire Trevo r, FALCON ; allover Me x ico in TREASURE ; through great Very much a part of Huston 's \" vision \" is an John Rodney, stretches of Africa in THE AFRICAN QUEEN ; traverses assured and personal sense of place. No one has Edward G. the seas in MOBY DICK ; goes from place to Nevada recorded Mexico 's brooding fatality, stark inno- Robins on, place in THE MISFITS. In addition to the ethical func- cence, and pure white violence better than Huston Thomas Gomez, tion , the acti vity has an aesthetic advantage . It mutes in TREASURE and IGUANA. The Africa he offers in THE Lauren Bacall the moral fiber and sucks venomous preachiness AFRICAN QUEEN and THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN is impene- and Humphrey and tedium from it. Since Huston prefers to offer trable and awesome, but not exploited with stagey the two-dimensional man (one who draws his ethics shots of animal and native . Reno is a microcosm Bogart . out of the abyss of his actions), the best lessons for the contemporary West and the country alto- THE ASPHALT are those taught almost off-handedly, incidental to gether in THE MISFITS . Havana in WE WERE STRANGERS the storyline (FALCON , BEAT THE DEVIL , KEY LARGO ). is a stark , black-and-white , newsreel tinderbo x of JUNGLE ; With an aggressive message (THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN , political and moral danger, over twenty years before Sam Jaffe, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS . In the relatively flimsy SINFUL DAVEY at least we loll with Huston in the splendor Sterling of the Irish countryside . FAT CITY generally has the Ha yden , feel of life on a skid row , and specifically the sense Anth ony of the San Joaquin Valley. Huston is a great Caruso and respecter of \" places\" and such reverence may come easy with quaint Mexico or green Ireland , but James for Huston to honor the dubiousness of the big city Whitmore . in THE ASPHALT JUNGLE or the tawdry West in THE MISFITS without satire or condescension implies a THE ASPHALT JUNGLE , even the end of TREASURE ), humanistic respect even for mankind gone awry. sanctimony threatens to surface. The sense of place is always thematic , does not smack of self-indulgence or self-adulation . The at- Huston 's screenwriting before he began directing mosphere of Mex ico is a scenic correlative to the ironies and violences of TREASURE and to the themes seems to bear this out. JUAREZ and DR. EHRLICH 'S of agony and endurance in IGUANA , much as the fearsome dangers of Africa lie as the basis for MAGIC BULLET differ from the other big biographies themes of courage and perseverance. of the period (like LOUIS PASTEUR and EMILE ZOLA) Huston 's sense of place and history grants him a time-machine perspective into historical milieu x mainly in that their obligatory moralizing is better which he then uncannily reconstructs. RED BADGE OF COURAGE comes to us as Matthew Brady 's Civil written . Despite its charms , SERGEANT YORK pushes War photographs ; MOULIN ROUGE has the color and texture of nineteenth century Paris and of Tou- its hillbilly hero at you rather too strongly. If the idea louse-Lautrec 's painting ; MOBY DICK looks like steel engravings of whaling scenes ; and FREUD matches of the gangster as savior in HIGH SIERRA works pretty etchings of European capitals at the turn of the century . These are period pieces in which the sense well , it may be because the film is externally all action. Huston's humor is usually taken from character eccentricities, rather than from a general comedy storyline (Lorre 's foppishnE?ss in FALCON , Bogart 's bad manners in THE AFRICAN QUEEN , Burton 's quaint se x uality in IGUANA, Oma 's alcoholic illogic in FAT CITY) . The appearance of frivolity in his content , in his working style and life style , is deceiving and defensive. Bogart and Hepburn's charming charade in THE AFRICAN QUEEN is acted out against a treach- erous jungle milieu . Greenstreet and Lorre's funny fetishes bring on a couple of murders in FALCON . Behind the slapstick adventures of Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr in MR . ALLISON is a hideous war . The base for the amusing relationship between Oma and Earl in FAT CITY is alcoholism , promiscuity , and racism. Let the characters be funny, since life sel- 8 MAY 1973

of place mingles thematically with the whole . In equalizes the weightiness of the material ; and the From left : addition , \" place \" and \" moment \" are also used to contagious and differing postures of the participants THE NIGHT OF blunt the symbol and the sermon in much the way toward the project suspend the sobriety of Huston 's THE IGUANA ; that action is . The morality of the myth of quest in world vision. The principle holds, for when \" fun \" Ava Gardner TREASURE moves behind the aura of Mex ico . The has been absent during the filming , there has been and Richard symbol of the slaughter of the elephants in THE immediate disenchantment and final didacticism. Burton. THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN is camouflaged with African action BEAT THE DEVIL, in fact , was born entirely out of the MISFITS ; and scenery. \" fun \" rather than from a plan , a purpose, or even Marilyn Monroe an anticipation that the project would ever really and Clark Yet too much story or scenery seems to have be completed . The headlines and the anecdotes Gable. at times been irksome to Huston . If he is more (THE AFRICAN QUEEN , THE MISFITS , IGUANA) may en- comfortable with compact material , as FALCON , KEY gender publicity; but primarily they create energies LARGO , and IGUANA suggest , it is less a lack of control that are balances against solemnity. than it is his instinct to use action as ethic rather Huston 's skill with actors is not obtrusive. Yet he than for sheer spectacle. Limited scope does work has won Academy Award nominations for Sydney to get him more depth , since the ambitious and Greenstreet, Humphrey Bogart, Sam Jaffe, Walter sprawling MOBY DI CK and THE BIBLE are more shallow Huston , Claire Trevor, Katharine Hepburn , Jose than the material demands. Yet it is not altogether a confusion in the face of too many levels of mean- Ferrer, Colette Marchand, Deborah Kerr, Grayson ing , nor panic from unwieldy logistics or choreog- Hall, and Susan Tyrrell. (The general excellence raphy , for Huston has been as successful in drawing of Jenn ifer Jones in BEAT THE DEVIL, Robert Mitchum sense from spectacle as any postwar director. in MR . ALLISON , Marlon Brando and Brian Keith in REFLECTIONS has gone relatively without accolade.) Never just gimmicks conceived solely for exploi- Huston 's admission that he gave Brando virtually tation , Huston's Fifties technical innovations were no instructions for REFLECTIONS is evidence of ex- relat ive to his content, if they did at times evoke pectation rather than uncertai nty. He dictates less a child 's fascination with a toy. For example, Huston because he chooses well. FALCON is likely the most used filters to mute the Technicolor in MOULIN perfectly cast film of all time . Huston 's habitual use ROUGE , and black-and-white negatives superim- of \" friends \" above \" actors\" suggests that he wants posed over color in MOBY DIc K-experiments which to like and respect his casts (Bogart, Kerr, Hepburn , at the time were thought rather bold . (Later in the Garfield), and it means trust in encounter and illus- Si xties , when Huston chose golden filters to suggest trates the meeting of humanism and aesthetics. sexual repression in GOLDEN EYE , the technique seemed anachronistic to many.) It's been charged As for his intuition with actors , he was the \" dis- that the films in which these experiments shine most coverer \" of the Bogart mystique (which has got to brightly run amok on general grounds. But that's be one of the two or three most significant finds not proof of playfulness or technical fetishism , only in American cinema) and guided him through five evidence that technique can 't salvage a suspect of his nine or so definitive characterizations. He point of view. \" discovered \" Marilyn Monroe and Sydney Green- street ; he is the only one ever to use Sterling Hayden Cinema as an experience occurs for Huston (in THE ASPHALT JUNGLE) and Audie Murphy (in RED during filming-to the extent that the filming is an BADGE ) to intelligent advantage . He drew gold from end in itself, separate from result. This fact speaks Marilyn Monroe, Robert Mitchum , Ava Gardner, about Huston 's own personal quest for recompen- Lauren Bacall , and Errol Flynn when others saw only sive joy; and it works usually on behalf of his aes- glitter; brought resurgence to the limping careers thetic . The charisma of FALCON comes largely from of Claire Trevor, Mary Astor, Edward G. Robinson , the \" chem istry of the cast. \" The same applies par- and Marlon Brando; cleverly used Jennifer Jones, ticularly to THE AFRICAN QUEEN , ACROSS THE PACIFIC , Gina Lollobrigida, John Wayne, and Richard Burton BEAT THE DEVIL, and IGUANA. \" Frivolity\" on the set FILM COMMENT 9

against themsel ves , and in at least three of these giving-ins and giving-ups , came when he could cases w ithout the ir knowledge . command as much autonomy as any Hollywood d irector . In his defense , he can show scar tissue As an adapter, Huston is alternately reverent and from battles with the usual Hollywood demogogues inventive. He transcribes rather exactly from some (Jack Warner over TREASURE and KE Y LARGO ; Dore novels , li ke Falc o n and Red Badge , but with flagrant Schary over RED BADGE ; Louis Mayer over THE AS- license from Beat the Devil and We Were Strangers. PHALT JUNGLE ; Darryl F. Zanuck over THE ROOTS OF He is loyal to Broadway 's Iguana but casual with HEAVEN ; David O . Selznick over A FAREWELL TO·ARMS ) its Key Largo. The reputation of the model and his in attempts to win the war that Stroheim , Welles , own personal respect for it decide the amount of and Lang lost before him. That Huston has made interference . He has avoided original scenarios , and twenty-se ven films to Welles ' twelve in roughly the as if in deference to his own beginnings as screen- same time period (they both \" came out \" in 1941 ) writer , is wont to use a co-author in h is adapting . does not mean pure and simply quantity over quality. No professional virg in, Huston can make two kinds Because Huston adamantly remains a jeune , he of films : his own and somebody else 's. Having no has lost those who mistake the jugend/ich for sham need for the chast ity belt , he is able to find his or shoal. Intellectuals do not find the sophistication integrity anew , since from the patness of MR . ALLISON of Lubitsch , the literacy of Mankiew icz , the erudition can come the personal ness of FREUD , and out of of Welles, or the pure action they discovered while the gloss of MOULIN ROUGE can rise the edge of BEAT slumming with Siegel. FALCON and BEAT THE DE VIL THE DEVIL. are \" sophisticated \" primarily because of the cast members assembled ; their director, Huston, remains Yet , it works in reverse as well. Just when Huston largely a boy . Yet he is less intimidated by his has his harshest critics eating the ir hats with FAT material than he is respectful of it, and his CITY, he releases an uncertain JUDGE RO Y BEAN . boyishness carries with it energy, sincerity , inno- There is surely a case to be made for the worthiness cence . His boy 's preference for adventure over of inconsistency, a quality with a degree of charm thought and talk , his na'ive belief that behavior ought for anyone except the ossified . The reasons for the to be moral , and his adolescent awe of history and ups and downs are speculative . With FAT CITy -a literature come to mean a purity of response and restrictively compact outline ; the rec ipe of mi xi ng execution . toughness with sentiment; three evocative milieux, of skid row, bo xing , and the San Joaqu in Valley; If they mean also sometimes an unfinished quali- and the familiar ground of a loss that is hero ic , but ty, emerg ing from his adolescent low attention span , with a challenging twist: not only a hero who they at least push him forward to a quantity of spec ifically loses, but one who is a generalized loser . endeavor . Still , it is unfortunate that the backbone With JUDGE RO Y BEAN-perhaps too much d isjointed and blueprints behind RED BADGE can abruptly give clowning on the set, individuals working too much way to discouragement-that he can do an about- with themselves in the ir own vignettes and not as face and allow others to hack away at his handiwork . a team ; certainly too little independence from the Patience and the test-tube develop unusual color current cycle of fash ionable neo-realist Westerns processes for MOULIN ROUGE and MOB Y DICK, and (from BUTCH CASSID Y through MCC ABE to DIRTY LITTLE then casualness and hurry fumble script and char- BILLY) ; and an excess of the kind of \" comedy \" that acterization . The impression sometimes left is of precedes character and incident rather than evolv- parts and not wholes . In fact , there are always fat ing naturally from them . moments amid even lean assemblages (the surreal- istic hunt in the sandstorm in THE UNFORGIVEN , the A consc ious film artist but not a devoted one , delicate Japanese detail in THE BARBARIAN AND THE Huston balks at channeling all energies into cinema. GEISHA , the mythic flight of Cain over the black That his other life interests (hunting , pre-Columbian lava pits in THE BIBLE ). In THE KREMLIN LETTER there art, acting , travel , friends) at times supplant artistic are two winn ing vignettes, irrelevant, you feel , ex- directives comes to mean , in a sense , that he is cept to Huston 's own amusement in stag ing them : larger than the c inema . It suggests an unpresump- a wrestling match between five seedy Mexican tuousness and a security that makes compulsive, whores ; and George Sanders as a transvestite in self-congratulatory endeavor unnecessary. What heavy mascara and low decolletage. Such moments this has to do directly with his films is that Huston can also be found in the bad work of good directors must enjoy himself. When the objet d 'art ceases to like Welles and Sternberg ; but it is easy to see a amuse, he will move away to the next diversion . Call film by Cukor (THE CHAPMAN REPORT), Hawks (THE it fickle and impudent, or independent and judicious. LAND OF THE PHARAOHS ), or Minnell i (THE LONG , LONG , But it's not sacrilege, since , however he chooses TRAILER ) with little of the d irector and less of saving to honor his talent, he does so without disrespect, grace. fraud , excuse, or embarrassment. His open \" sins,\" committed without deceit or design , are easily ab- As for the charge of sell ing out, Huston 's \" stan- solved . That Huston first learned to survive in an dard fare \" li ke ACROSS THE PACIFIC and IN THIS OUR age when people were making Movies and not Films LIFE represents his powerlessness when he was a speaks about his achievement and his procedure. fledgling . It is true that his amicable signature in 1956 on a frankly compromising contract with Huston 's opposition to tyranny tends to subtract Twentieth Century-Fox for high profit, and his other from an impressive auteur scoreboard . He e xerc ises reluctance to impose always his point of view, and 10 MAY 1973

allows story, character, or perfo rmance to stand inquis ition and vulnerabl e trip ~ mto unknown terri- above a directorial Hustonesque vision-sometimes to his disadvantage , as when he places his respect tories. Huston 's choice of the moment over the for Arthur Miller's words in THE MISFITS above his own sense of cinema . He really makes films only momentous may appear foolish rather than refresh- as either a day 's labor-a c ontract job for which he is being paid a said sum-or as a very personal ing to the traditionalist curato r; but the man behind follow-through to something which aroused his cu- riosity, sometimes through artistic inspiration and THE MALTESE FALCON , THE TRE ASURE OF THE SIERRA sometimes just by whim . MADRE , and THE AFRI CAN QUEEN , three films which Huston does not make the same film . There is a vast distance of ground between KEY LARGO and stand up under repeated viewings as among the THE BARBARIAN AND THE GEISHA, or between BEAT THE DEVIL and THE BIBLE . If artistic definition requires a most vigorous and tenacious the American cinema director to choose so that he will leave similar tracks for scholars to scramble after, then Huston must has produced , deserves at least this small critical be faulted . Still , his want ing to make the film he wants to make, even if his wanting to is for money , flourish-although in Huston 's case a good drunk and his final devotion to himself above his craft, mean less that he chooses haphazardly than that might be more fitting . Best to forgive Huston his he selects without malice or forethought , with an eye more for the immed iate than for immortality. minor transgressions and honor him by borrowing Huston has pleased a wide variety of tastes. Sydney Greenstreet's grudging tribute to Humphrey FALCON and BEAT THE DEVIL do best for the effete and the true film buff ; TREASURE and KEY LARGO Bogart in THE MALTESE FALCON : \" It was neatly done, please the middlebrow intelligentsia; THE BIBLE and THE AFRICAN QUEEN thrill the popcorned masses ; sir. It was neatly done.\" 11111111 ACROSS THE PACIFIC and IN THIS OUR LIFE are small- profit bread-and-butter genre pieces , and as such , JOHN HUSTON FILMOGRAPHY (1906- appeal to special interest groups ; THE BARBARIAN AND KEY: AUD Macmillan Audio Brandon ; CCC Cine- THE GEISHA and A WALK WITH LOVE AND DEATH play Craft Company; CHA Charard Motion Pictures; COL to hardly anyone at all-which is fitting because it Columbia Cinetheque; CON Contemporary Films; means that Huston has done that too , and that he 's COU Cousino Visual Educational Service; CWF not always pleasing nearly everyone in sight . It's Clem Williams Films ; FNC Fi lms Incorporated ; ICS a plus for Huston that he has made unimportant Institutional Cinema Service; IDE Ideal Pictures; films (\" unimportant\" from the time of conception , MMA Museum of Modern Art; NAT National Film not just after the fact) . Could Wyler bring himself Service ; ROA Roa 's Films ; STA Standard Film Ser- to do so? Could Welles? And Huston 's willingness vice; SWA Swank Motion Pictures ; TFC \" The \" Film to render himself vulnerable by excursions into alien Center; TWF Trans-World Films; TWY Twyman territories is less a search for his niche than an Films ; UAS United Artists 16; UNI Universal 16; WHO indulgence of his artistic wanderlust. Wholesome Film Center; WIL Willoughby-Peerless; WSA Warner Brothers. In summary: Huston the Auteur envis ions heroism in the activ ity of determined quest amid probable 1931 A House Divided ':'; 1932 Murders in the Rue failure. Beneath the weltschmerz and cynicism is Morgue ':' UNI ; Law and Order ':' UNI ; 1938 The a humanist with unabashed admiration for man 's Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse ':' UAS , WIL ; Jezebel ':' AUD , daring to endure. Action and adventure are ethical CWF , UAS , WIL ; 1939 Juarez ':' CON , TWF ; 1940 Dr. responses, and moral behavior is the nebulous but Ehrlich 's Magic Bullet':' AUD , CHA , FNC , STA , UAS , worthwhile goal of mankind . \" Message\" must be WIL ; 1941 High Sierra \" AUD , CON , TWF , UAS , WIL ; camouflaged behind conventional genres, external Sergeant York ':' CHA , CON , UAS ; The Maltese Fal- digressions, and a sense of place which is strong con CON , UAS ; 1942 In This Our Life ; 1943 Across in itself but thematic in its functioning. The filmmak- the Pacific CON , FNC , UAS; Report From the Aleu- ing experience must bear fru it while it is occurring tians (documentary); 1944 The Battle of San Pietro and not just in its finished product . (documentary) MMA; 1945 Let There Be Light (doc- umentary); 1946 Three Strangers ':' UAS , WIL ; The A limited attention span gives rise to parts and Stranger ':' UAS ; 1947 The Treasure of the Sierra not wholes, and sometimes no follow-through . Hus- Madre CHA, SWA, UAS ; 1948 Key Largo AUD , CHA, ton 's talents are for sale without excuse or corrup- CON , IDE , UAS , WIL ; 1949 We Were Strangers; 1950 tion , since he readily rises again from any commer- The Asphalt Jungle FNC ; 1951 The Red Badge of cial workmanship . Exuberance precedes dedication Courage FNC ; 1952 The African Queen SWA; 1953 for him , so his film \" art \" suffers. From his humility Moulin Rouge UAS ; Beat the Devil COL ; 1956 Moby evolves opposition to imposing his vision , but pass- Dick UAS; 1957 Heaven Knows , Mr. Allison FNC; ing auteurship on to cast or leaving it with story 1958 The Barbarian and the Geisha AUD , CCC , ICS , has proven right in various instances . NAT, ROA , SWA, TFC , TWY , WHO ; The Roots of Heaven FNC ; 1959 The Unforgi ven UAS ; 1960 The The variety of content and form in his films means Misfits UAS ; 1961 Freud CCC , ROA , TFC , UNI , WHO ; 1962 The List of Adrian Messenger CCC, COU , ROA, SWA, UNI , WHO ; 1963 The Night of the Iguana AUD , FNC ; 1965 The Bible FNC; 1967 Reflections in a Golden Eye WSA ; Casino Royale (el. al.) AUD , CCC , COL , CWF , ICS , IDE , ROA , SWA , TWY , WHO ; 1968 Sinful Davey; 1969 A Walk With Love and Death FNC ; The Kremlin Letter FNC ; 1972 Fat City; The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean ; 1973 The Mack- intosh Man (to be released) . · Hu ston collaborated on the sc reenpla ys of these film s, but did not direct them . FILM COMMENT 11

Reflections on aGolden Boy Howard Koch on the young John Huston Howard Koch , screenwriter of CASABLANCA, LET- lighted by his previously ne'er-do-well son 's brilliant TER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN , and many other films , accomplishment. has recently completed two screenplays: THE SAV- AGE , to be directed by Barry Shear, and THE WOMAN Beside Walter, other members of the Huston AT OTOWI CROSSING , to be directed by Daniel Mann . family were reunited in Chicago , including their elderly matriarch. There was a close bond between One stormy day in the late Thirties a tall , gaunt John and Granny, as he called her. Every night for young man appeared at the door of my New York a month she occupit:ld a front row orchestra seat apartment. Disdaining hat, umbrella, and raincoat, to watch his performance. As he made his first exit, he wore a rain-soaked light jacket; water still dripped there was usually a round of applause, but one night from his unruly black hair. My first impression was it failed to happen. This was an omission Granny of a force, storm-driven like the elements. His voice refused to brook. With the help of her cane she had a charged intensity which reinforced that im- struggled to her feet, faced the audience with a stern pression when he said , not looking at me so much expression , and stopped the show while she as through me , \" I'm John Huston .\" clapped her hands until the others joined in . Of all the tributes, I think this is the one John enjoyed I had written a play called The Lonely Man on the most. the theme of a young Lincoln returning in the person of a university instructor to find his work of freeing It is difficult to analyze how John projected the the slaves unfinished . The play had been optioned Lincolnesque image without resorting to any of the by Robert Milton , a rolypoly pi xie with pink hair who usual cliches. No stovepipe hat, no beard , no drawl was one of the most talented directors of the period. -just a brooding intensity that came over the foot- The search had been on for a young man who could lights like a physical force . In today 's language John project Lincolnesque qualities without resorting to sent out powerful vibes , both on-stage and off. In the devices and trappings of the various older actors personal relations, when he gave you his attention , who had played Lincoln. Milton had met John at it was total. You alone existed for him but only as a party and had sent him to see whether I agreed long as he could draw out of you what of immediate that he was right for the part. John had very little interest you had to give. Then , in movie terms, professional ex perience in the theater-he was more fade-out and fade-in at whatever next claimed his a writer, an artist and , most of all up to then , a probing concentration . Once you understood this footloose adventurer. But after fifteen minutes with and accepted John on his own terms you could him I knew he was heaven-sent for the role, a gift remain his friend . Women , however, were strongly of Jupiter Pluvius, the god of storms. advised to proceed at their own risk . Many were drawn into the magnetic field of his se xuality; few The play's theme was popular-these were New escaped without some scars. Deal days-but unfortunately I was still a novice and lacked the professional maturity to do justice to the During the Chicago period and later in Hollywood idea . The Lonely Man ran for five months in Chica- I probably came to know John as well as anyone go 's Blackstone Theatre under the joint auspices knew him then or since , but that may have been of Robert Milton and the Federal Theatre-on the very little. The motivations in his life were so com- strength , not of the play's quality, but of John 's plex, and often so contradictory, that I doubt if performance. Critical acclaim for his interpretation anyone could be certain of what was the essential of young Lincoln drew people to see him from all John Huston-perhaps not even John himself. He over the country. Among them was John 's illustrious improvised life, seizing what the moment offered. father, Walter Huston , who was surprised and de- Yet even though he took a zigzag course, there was obviously a direction to his career. The restless adventurer and the creative artist seemed to alter- nate in dominating the different phases of his life, 12 MAY 1973

and the films he eventually wrote and directed some reason it has become a lost chapter. Yet it From left : reflected this dichotomy in their varying quality from was a turning point in his life-the springboard to IN THIS OUR mediocre to great. his film career . Success, as we know , breeds suc- LIFE ; George cess . With the intervention of his father, and his Brent and Bette The adventurous side of his nature was reflected friend , the director William Wyler, he was offered Davis. THREE in his need to gamble . He probably left more money a writer's contract at Warner Brothers. But equally STRANGERS ; in the casinos of Reno and Las Vegas than anyone , important was the change in his personal life. A Peter Lorre and with the possible exception of Darryl Zanuck. But lovely girl of English-Irish descent, a friend of Robert Joan Lorring. it wasn 't only cash that he laid on the line ; often All photos : it was his life . Whether it was roulette-the Russian Milton's taking an around-the-world trip, stopped Museum of kind which he played with Mexican cavalry officers off in Chicago . Leslie Black saw the play, met John , Modern Art / tossing loaded pistols in the air to see whose body and the rest of the world was forgotten . When he Film Stills would receive the chance bullet-or elephant-hunt- told me he was going to marry Leslie , I realized that Archive ing on the African Veldt, or riding to hounds on this time it was not another dalliance but a serious his Irish estate, John courted danger. A story he intention to establish a family and a career. Although once told me about his early life seems revelatory. the marriage lasted only five or six years, it was Apparently his divorced parents had put him in a during this settled period that John did most of what Te xas school where as a young boy he was unhappy I believe to be his best creative work , first as a writer and sickly. One night he made up his mind to settle then as a writer-director. the issue of whether to live or die. He slipped out of the dormitory and , stripping off his clothes, he When John left Chicago, the play closed , and lay all night in the icy water of a nearby mountain for the next year I saw him only on a few occasions stream. If he survived the ordeal of pneumonia, he when he and Leslie came to New York. The follow- would prove to himself that he possessed the physi- ing spring , under John's sponsorship (and with an cal and mental resources to overcome the ill health assist from some visiting Martians), I joined him at and loneliness which plagued his early years. Either Warner's as a very junior writer . During the course he would die or he would live fully. No half-life was of my years at the studio , John and I worked acceptable. together on three screenplays and a stage play , In Time To Come, a tragedy on Woodrow Wilson and John 's later experiences followed the same pat- the League of Nations that was eventually produced tern. It appeared to me that he kept death within on Broadway by Otto Preminger, critically ac- easy reach as a sort of ace-in-the-hole against claimed but a commercial failure. The biggest box boredom , to be played any time he'd exhausted office succ;ess of our collaboration was SERGEANT whatever the world had to offer in creative satisfac- YORK, a picture that was enormously popular at the tion or sensual pleasures. He wanted no traffic with time (1941), but one that, in my opinion on seeing any religious assumption of an afterl ife. Perma- it recently on television , has not aged well. We were nenc€ was anathema to him . He told me, when he under time pressure and were together most of the designed his house in the San Fernando Valley , that time up to production , when he left the project to he was looking for materials that would crumble into begin his script of THE MALTESE FALCON . On our other the ground once he was through with it. His home, collaborations we worked more in tandem . I would like his body, was to be used up, then returned to do a draft and John would criticize and perhaps nature , not left as a monument. rework a scene and then pass it back to me. In none of the many articles about John Huston Ellen Glasgow 's In This Our Life is one of those have I seen a reference to the Chicago experience. novels, whatever its literary merits, that should never Even John himself never mentions it in the various have been made into a movie. The story is diffused interviews when he has discussed his career. For and , by its compression into a workable length for the screen , the famale leads, played by Bette Davis FILM COMMENT 13

and Olivia deHaviliand , were drawn in too sharp a possibilities was allowed to pass by in silence but , contrast-one good , the other evil-two fine act- when I came up with an idea of any value, he'd resses hemmed in by the exigencies of the plot. know it instantly. His head would pop up and he Perhaps if, in writing the screenplay, I had discarded would begin to elaborate on the idea with excite- more of the material and hewed to a straight dra- ment. His approach to dramatic material was oblique; matic line, the characterizations might have been lowe him a great deal in learning to avoid the g iven more depth and , therefore, more credibility obvious. and interest. At any rate the film was a disappoint- ment to me and , I assume, to Huston , although I At this stage of his life John was never content don 't recall discussing it with him after the produc- until he had probed as deeply as possible into a tion. Perhaps we decided that silence was the best character or situation . Although we both strove to way to dismiss it. tell story largely in visual terms for the screen , we had a mutual respect for the spoken word-so often Why did we take the assignment? Usually I turned lacking tOday-as long as dialogue was in character, down this kind of material, and the studio heads, actable and connotative. I generally prefer to work albeit reluctantly, had come to accept my reasons. alone, but I found the collaborations with John But the temptation of working again with John and congenial and productive because we shared many a superb cast was too much to resist. Why John of the same attitudes and values, social as well as took the assignment I don 't know. Perhaps for the dramatic. Neither of us felt we were demeaning same reason . He was more at home with strong male ourselves , or being corrupted , by working in the roles in unconventional situations. As I remember , dream factory. Conditions have never been ideal for he shot the screenplay more faithfully than it de- filmmaking in Hollywood or anywhere else. Part of served, neither adding to nor subtracting from our job , as we saw it, was to protect as best we whatever values it had. could what we had created. It wasn 't easy, and sometimes we failed ; but it isn 't , easy today, with THREE STRANGERS was quite another matter, a the means of production more diverse and decen- very cohesive story which relied for its interest on tralized. its bizarre twists and turns . It was Hustonesque, somewhat reminiscent of THE MALTESE FALCON. The Now John and I have each gone our separate story was largely his invention ; my contribution was mostly in writing the scenes he had indicated in his ways. John has become an international celebrity treatment-although I probably stressed the roman- tic elements more than he had intended . but some of his later pictures (not including FAT We wrote the script just before John left for the CITY) have been disappointing . They seem lacking war in 1942. I worked closely with the director, Jean Neguelesco , who shot the script pretty much as it in any contemporary sign ificance , as though their was written . Up to then , Peter Lorre had been type-cast as a sly, sinister, often malevolent charac- selection had been determined by money or geog- ter. This was his first chance to playa romantic lead, an opportunity he craved . Peter and Sydney raphy or the availability of a star-jobs done well , Greenstreet were fascinating personalities, espe- cially in their cat-and-mouse , ambiguous relation- or less well , but without his heart really in them . ships with each other which they maintained on and off the screen . The female lead was another favorite When I think back to the screenplay of THE MALTESE actress of mine , Geraldine Fitzgerald. FALCON, which he let me read before production , When I saw the finished film in a projection room , I felt let down. This is often the case with me: at I recall the impression it made on me of a perfection first showing I see only what should be there-or what shouldn 't. But recently I watched it on televi- that could only be achieved by someone with a sion , and , to my surprise , it held my interest throughout. By this time I had forgotten most of the disciplined talent who cared very much for what he story , as well as my initial misgivings . When he returned to the studio , John never mentioned the was creating. FAT CITY , I was pleased to find, has picture ; I suspect he didn 't care much for it. This is understandable. If he had directed the film-as that care. It is top- level Huston , a return to the milieu no doubt he had intended-it would have had more of.the icy perfection of THE MALTESE FALCON . he knows and likes best. John and I worked well together. While develop- John has never been regarded as an auteur even ing a scene or outlining a continuity, I would do most of the talking . He sat across the desk with a though as a writer he has a greater claim to author- pencil and sketch pad drawing endless portraits, mostly of me since I was a captive model. At first sh ip than most directors. A storyteller on and off this was somewhat distracting. I'd find myself sneaking a look at his sketch to see if he was doing the screen , he felt no compulsion to use film subjec- me justice. When he caught me, he'd say, \" Go on , go on \" -meaning , \" Keep talking, I'm listening. \" And tively to project a self-image, nor did he substitute he was listening. Most of what I said in expl0ring improvisation for screenplay. His scripts , at least the ones I read , were so meticulously worked out as to be almost predirected. Naturally he made changes during the shooting as circumstances sug - gested or dictated , but most of the basic creative work was done before he went on the set. Having recently met John again after all these years I had the impression that the storms had abated and that a more mellow and familial person- ality was emerging. What effect this will have on his future work I have no idea. But if I were to make a list of the twenty best films-which no one has asked me to do-I would include three of John's: THE MALTESE FALCON , THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, and THE AFRICAN QUEEN . Which isn 't bad , even for the son of Walter Huston-and the godson of Jupiter Pluvius. 11111111 14 MAY 1973

Talking with John Huston an interview by Gene D. Phillips Recently, while he was making his latest film , THE Screenwriters at the time were much more con- MACKINTOSH MAN , in London , John Huston took time cerned with the perfection of their work than they out to discuss his career with Gene D. Ph illips , are now. They were on salary; when they finished author of Graham Greene: The Films of His Fiction an assignment they would either be moved on to and The Movie Makers: Artists in an Industry. another film or let go if their work wasn 't satisfactory. Herewith is a transcript of his-remarks , rearranged Hence a writer fought for the leisure to be able to by topic. polish and improve his material before it went before the cameras. The writer handed in twenty pages or Sam Goldwyn brought me to Hollywood in the so of the script at a time, not the finished product. early Th irties on the strength of some short stories If he got behind schedule he would be urged on . that I had published in The American Mercury, but Writers and directors often had no control over their I was a dismal failure trying to write scripts for him . material once they had finished it. Then I went to Un iversal , wh ich was going downh ill at the time. So I left Hollywood and went to Europe The writer never came on the set unless he was where I worked for Gaumont-British briefly. Finally asked for in extraordinary circumstances . By the I returned to Hollywood and became part of the same token , when the director finished shooting a writers stable at Warner Brothers, where I collabo- picture , the 'footage was turned over to the editor. rated on JEZEBEL for my good friend William Wyler This kind of set-up in the studio gave the creative and went on to work on SERGEANT YORK , HIGH SIERRA, writer and director someth ing to fight against. Those JUAREZ , DR . EHRLICH ' S MAGIC BULLET , and other films . who say that there is too much freedom today in the filmmaking business may have a point. In those days the Hollywood set-up was much different than it is now. There was an executive Once I had become established as a screenwriter producer who had a number of individual producers at Warners I got a clause put into my contract that work ing under him . A producer would be given a if I stayed on there they would give me the chance property to film and he would select from among to direct. I saw no great dividing line between writing the contract writers, directors, and actors that the and directing , although few writers had become studio employed those people who could handle the directors at the time-Preston Sturges and Gar material that was to be made into a film . Kanin were , I believe , my only predecessors. After Allen Rivkin and I finished the screenplay of THE MALTESE FALCON [1941] , I asked to direct it. Dashiell FILM COMMENT 15

From left: Hammett 's book had been filmed twice before, but it should be used as a train ing film to show men THE AFRICAN the previous screen adapters didn 't have the faith what was in store for them in combat . There were in the story that we did . Our script simply reduced some cuts , but I believe they were justified. For QUEEN ; example, some of the soldiers with whom I had Humphrey the book to a screenplay , without any fancy addi- dialogued during the making of the film had been Bogart and tions of our own . subsequently killed in action . I had used their voices Katharine over later shots of their dead bodies covered with Hepburn. Before I started shooting I made drawings, set-up blankets , and it was thought that this would have by set-up , of the action . I discovered that about half upset their families should they see the film . FREUD ; the time the actors automatically fell into the block- Montg o mery ing that I had worked out in my drawings, and the The other documentary which I made has never rest of the time I would either bring them into line been released by the Pentagon for screening . It was Clift and with my original conception of the blocking or let called LET THERE BE LIGHT [1945] and was about Su sannah them work out something for themselves . I was combat neuroses , about men who had been torn York . All ph otos: extremely lucky to have such a fine group of actors up emotionally by their ex periences in battle. For Museum of to wo rk with . I had known Humphrey Bogart, who some reason to see a psyche torn asunder is more Modern Art / played detective Sam Spade, for a long time. I had frightening than to see people who have physical Film Stills written HIGH SIERRA for him earlier. George Raft had wounds . Some of the brass said that there was a been approached to play Spade , but he didn 't want question of invasion of the privacy of the men shown A rc h ive to work with a director who was a newcomer. as patients in the film . The men themselves , howev- er, after they recovered , said that they as a group , Warner Brothers was indulgent with me, and I were all in favor of the film being shown. What I was allowed to work with the editor to some extent had done in making the film was to follow a group after shooting was finished , and with the composer. of seventy-five patients from their adm ission into the Ever since I have made it a point to involve myself in the making of a fi lm from the pre-production work hospital until their release . To me it was an extraor- right through to the end of the post-production work. dinary ex perience-almost a religious ex peri- Even when I have made a picture from a screenplay ence-to see men who couldn 't speak, or remember written by another writer, I have worked on it with anything at the beginning of their treatment, emerge him . at the end , not completely cured . it is true , but restored to the shape that they were in when they During the war I made three documentaries for entered the Army . the Army. I was attached to the Air Corps and made REPORT FROM THE ALEUTIANS in the Aleutian Islands While making LET THERE BE LIGHT I had the benefit in 1942. Then I went to Italy where I did THE BATTLE of a quick course in psychiatry by constantly asking OF SAN PIETRO [1944] , a combat picture made to Army psychiatrists questions about various aspects of what they were doing . The figure of Freud began explain why we hadn 't swept over Italy after we came to emerge, and that was the beginning of my later up from Salerno and took Rome. When I put the film about Freud. My original orders in making LET film together it was described as anti-war by the THERE BE LIGHT was to reassure industrialists that brass at the Pentagon . The picture was shelved until they should hire veterans , even those who had been General George C. Marshall saw it, because it was hospitalized , since they were as capable as the next thought that the film would discourage men who man . Since the Pentagon didn 't feel that the film were going to go into combat. He felt , however, that 16 MAY 1973

accomplished this goal , however, the film was One set-up should naturally lead to the next without From left: shelved , and has never been shown theatrically to anyone noticing-it's like a ballet. A good scene tells REFLECTIONS this day. you how it should be shot. I begin by letting the IN A GOLDEN actors so rt themselves out; and often, as I found EYE ; Marlon When I returned to the United States after the in directing my very first film , they do the scene fa irly Brando and war , I directed Sartre's No Exit on the New York well without any suggestions from me at all , falling Elizabeth stage, but the critics didn 't know what it was all into some of the set-ups quite naturally. A bad scene Taylor. photo : about. They thought it was a French love triangle is the most difficult to shoot, since there is no way Museum of instead of a rather strongly philosophic work. So that you can shoot it to make it look any better than Modern Art / I went back to Hollywood , where I co-scripted with it is. Film Stills Richard Brooks and directed KEY LARGO, and won Archive . FAT Oscars for writing and directing THE TREASURE OF One of my favorite films , at least as I shot it, is CITY ; Si xto THE SIERRA MADRE , which grew out of my time in THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE. Lillian Ross in her book Rodriguez and Mexico years before as a horseman in the Mexican about the making of the film , Picture, is extremely Stacy Keach. cavalry . My father , Walter Huston , won an Oscar accurate about what went on during production . as the gritty old prospector in the film. She was a fine journalist, and I say this even though photo : I myself come in for some body blows in the course Columbia There is an objectivity on the set that does away of the book . So, you see , I am speaking with a certain Pictures with any of the regular relationships that one might detachment. I think that she was a little harder on have with these same people off the set. The director the studio than perhaps was fair. There was a power is always the father figure on the set, so I suppose struggle going on at MGM at the time : one group that, while the film was being made, I was my father's wanted to make the film and the other group didn't. father figure . For my part , when I appear as an actor Whoever won that battle would be in charge of the under another director , as I have, for example , for studio. Louis B. Mayer's power was waning . I told Preminger in THE CARDINAL , I am the most obedient him that if he was against my making the picture of actors. My intention is to set a good example that I wouldn 't pursue it. He replied , \" You believe for the other actors in the film , looking toward the in the project, don 't you? You continue to defend time when I might have to direct them . I have no it, even though I am against it. I would be deeply standard approach to actors. I try to guide each disappointed in you if you didn't fight for it. \" actor through his part without letting him know that, as director, I am really acting all of the parts myself. I fought 'for it and the picture was made, and then I had to witness a disaster at the preview. The best Furthermore, I look upon the camera as still scene in the film was the one in which the Tall another actor on the set. The relationship between Soldier dies a kind of mystical death . \" Don 't touch the actors is important but the relationship between me,\" he says , and then he falls dead . His death is the actors and the camera is also important. The witnessed by the hero (Audie Murphy) and by the camera can be as eloquent as the finest actor if Tattered Soldier, who begins to wander around in you know how to use it. You have to be the right circles ; then he too falls dead. This is particularly distance from an actor when he says a line, for shocking because the viewer was not aware that example . Very rarely has my best camera work been the Tattered Soldier was even wounded until he remarked on by either an audience or the critics drops dead . One third of the audience walked out because good camera work should be unobtrusive. at this point. The scene was too emotionally taxing , FILM COMMENT 17

THE LIFE final cut because ultimately the picture always be- AND TIMES OF longs to someone else who may tamper with it after you think the film is finished and have delivered it JUDGE for distribution . After I finished THE BARBARIAN AND ROY BEAN ; THE GEISHA, I went on to Africa to make THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN . After I left, the studio altered the film Paul Newman . considerably , and when I saw it a year later I wanted seated . in the to take my name off it. Even the plot was unrecogniz- able. title role. photo: National FREUD was another of my films that was cut after it was finished . As I mentioned earlier, the impor- General tance of Freud to the psychiatric scene loomed Pictures larger and larger while I was making LET THERE BE LIGHT. I began reading Freud in the intervening and so it was cut. as were some others, bringing years , and it took some time before the idea for a the film down to one hour and forty minutes. I hear film about his life developed in my mind . I got that the film has since been cut to sixty-nine minutes. Jean-Paul Sartre to do the screenplay, but he wrote Of course I couldn 't bring myself to look at the a four hundred fifty-page script. Then he revised present version , but I have been given to understand the first version into another script more than twice that MGM is thinking of re-releasing the original the length of the first! We cut this down to the bone, version . but the final shooting script nevertheless contained the strongest of his ideas and is still very much his My next film , THE AFRICAN QUEEN , in contrast with script. THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, was a joy to make. We shot it in Africa with two delightful people , Katharine The picture was difficult to make. Montgomery Hepburn as the spinster-missionary, and Humphrey Clift was quite ill during shooting ; halfway through Bogart as the river-boat bum . Kate Hepburn was he could hardly see because he had developed enchanted with the whole thing ; Bogey would rather cataracts on his eyes as a result of damage sus- have been back in his house in Beverly Hills . I tained in an automobile accident, and this made the suggested to Kate that she play her role as a lady film a real ordeal for him . When the picture was something like Eleanor Roosevelt. She did and it completed it ran two hours and forty minutes , for was fine. this was the length needed to explain Freud 's dis- covery of infantile sexuality to a movie audience. I went abroad to make THE AFRICAN QUEEN and But the audience had no opportunity to relax during continued traveling to make other films , so finally the whole running time of the film. It was too much I bought a house in Ireland and settled there . But to ask filmgoers to give such close attention to a I have never thought of myself as an expatriate . I film for that length of time. All of the subsequent became an Irish citizen because I believe in being cuts made in the picture-about twenty-five minutes a citizen of the country where I live . If I move back of screen time-were at the film's expense, however, to the United States I will become a citizen there since vital steps in the continuity and progression again . of the story were eliminated . Another of my favorite films is MOBY DICK, al- though neither the public nor the critics have agreed with me. For me the point of MOBY DICK as Melville wrote it is that Ahab hated God, and in essence felt that he was bringing the Judge himself before the bar of judgment and condemning Him. This theme of blasphemy was missed by most people who saw the picture, and who think of Ahab simply as a madman . Hence Gregory Peck 's performance as Ahab didn 't coincide with their preconceived notions of the story. I have often been asked if I have had final cut on my films since becoming an established director. My answer is always the same: no director ever has 18 MAY 1973

John Huston and Paul Newman on the set of THE MACKINTOSH MAN . photo : Warner Brothers In dealing with psychosexual matters so frankly , at the same time the original prints were made, and FREUD was ahead of its time, as was REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE , one of the first American films to it is the Technicolor prints that have been in circula- broach the subject of homosexuality. I seem to have a knack for making films that are either a few years tion ever since. ahead of or behind the times-and one is as bad as the other. Such films of mine are better liked Among my more recent films , the success of FAT today than when they were released . CITY was a pleasant surprise . I didn't expect a I had no directorial problems with Elizabeth Tay- lor and Marlon Brando during shooting. I don 't cast commercial success ; I believed very much in the an actor for his technique but for his personality , and because of my vision of what he will do with film but would have been happy if it was well re- his personality in a given part. My faith in the actors in REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE , I think, was justified . ceived by a selective audience. I had a great interest Taylor and Brando , Brian Keith and Julie Harris all had different acting styles, but people are different in the characters in the film , since I was a boxer too . They turned in an extraordinary group of per- formances that amounted to ensemble playing. I had briefly when I was seventeen. Personally I admire originally intended Montgomery Clift to play Bran- do's role of Captain Penderton , but he died before the down-and-outers depicted in the film , people the film was made. In that role Marlon Brando gave me one of the best performances that I have ever who have the heroism to go on taking it on the chin had from an actor. in life as well as in the ring . The color process in which the film was originally shot was the result of considerable experimentation, Stacy Keach , who played the worn-down pug an(j was perfectly suited to this study of a group of neurotic people. This color process basically had in FAT CITY , is also in THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE a golden amber quality to it; other colors, toned, impinged on the screen , as it were , from behind ROY BEAN, as are Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins , this golden hue. This served to separate the audi- ence somewhat from the characters, who were in and myself. Paul Newman plays the title role , which various ways withdrawn from reality, and to make their story a bit more remote and exotic. One of was played back in 1940 by Walter Brennan in the executives at Warner Brothers objected to this concept of color for the film. (I think he had seen William Wyler's film THE WESTERNER . JUDGE ROY BEAN a beer ad at age eleven and that was the extent of his aesthetic growth .) I got the concession that couldn't be more different from FAT CITY. Whereas the film would be released initially in this special color process in key cities, but the response wasn 't FAT CITY took place in one concentrated area, a big good . Prints in Technicolor had also been processed city slum , JUDGE ROY BEAN is allover the map. It is romantic , sad , and funny-a high, wide , and, I hope, handsome film . We departed from the histori- cal facts and made Bean more of a scalawag than he really was ; but the film is, after all , more of a romance than a historical document. Paul Newman is also the star of my latest film, THE MACKINTOSH MAN , which , like THE KREMLIN LET- TER, is a spy thriller with some amusing moments. Critics have never been able to discover a unifying theme in my films . For that matter, neither have I. Of course , as a director I do interpret reality. Just pointing a camera at a certain reality means an interpretation of that reality. But I don't seek to interpret reality by placing my stamp on it. I try to be as faithful as I can to the material I have chosen to film. Everything technical and artistic in the pic- ture is designed to depict that material for an audi- ence. That, in the end, is what really matters. 11111111 FILM COMMENT 19

Alfred Appel, Jr.'s books include The Annotated \" We rarely attend the cinema here,\" Nabokov said Lolita and the forthcoming Nabokov 's Dark Cinema. later, \" though we did see Fellini's wonderful 8%. A Guggenheim Fellow for 1972- '73, he is on leave L 'ANNEE DERNIERE A MARIENBAD was brilliant, too [Vera Nabokov agrees], but Robbe-Grillet's scenario from Northwestern University writing a study of resists discourse , doesn 't itT-though Nabokov is willing to speak at length of Robbe-Grillet's novels, Nabokov and, instead of watching the Late Show, \"worthy of the Nobel Prize.\" Except for these recent a book titled I Love You , Too: The American Film viewings, a handful of silent classics , an isolated Noir, 1941-1958. Excerpts from Lolita quoted in this genre film or two (THE HANDS OF ORLAC [1925] , THE article are copyright© 1955 Vladimir Nabokov and KILLERS [1946]), and the great comic performers copyright© 1970 McGraw-Hili, Inc. (Keaton et aI. , an important exception) , movies are not Vladimir Nabokov's touchstones for excellence.' An imperious and independent writer, seventy- Yet certain pervasive attitudes, effects, and tech- four year-old Vladimir Nabokov is typical of his niques in his novels could not have been achieved generation in only one way: an indifference or hos- without a knowledge of cinema ; his memory for tility toward most facets of \" popular culture,\" Hol- movies has in fact served him well enough . lywood films in particular (see Edmund Wilson 's The Boys in the Back Room [1940-41], noteworthy for \" From its threshold he would fire half a dozen its representative and influential negative opinions). times in quick succession , as they do in American \" I'm no cineaste,\" says Nabokov;' his first viewing movies,\" writes Nabokov of one of Franz' several of CITIZEN KANE was in 1972, on Swiss television jejune plans to murder Dreyer, the cuckolded hus- (Nabokov and his wife live in Montreu x). \" Extraor- band in King, Queen , Knave (1928) , a novel exactly dinary! A masterpiece . But I think it was mutilated contemporary with Josef von Sternberg's early Ro- by arbitrary cuts.\" A favorite scene? \" Yes , the clutter mantic gangster films THE DRAG NET and UNDER- of the final sequence,\" but Nabokov said no more WORLD .' As a young hoodlum the late Joey Gallo about that labyrinth of impersonal possessions, sin- stylized himself after Richard Widmark 's image in gled out too by Jorge Luis Borges in a 1945 review KISS OF DEATH ; and Franz' unimaginative vision also of the film ! Any other scenes? \" It's curious,\" he suggests the way popular culture forms and fatally answered, \" but I don 't remember most films very twists its consumers . Almost forty years later, Hum- well.\" \" Welles called the 'Rosebud' ending dollar- bert Humbert incorporates in his narrative some book Freud . Do you agree?\" inquired the curious lyrics from \"Little Carmen ,\" Lolita's favorite pop guest, a persistent cineaste. Nabokov shrugged his song , adding his own parenthetical denouement: shoulders, and the conversation turned to soccer, \" Drew his .32 automatic, I guess , and put a bullet an enthusiasm dating back to his undergraduate playing days at Cambridge. ' My article \" Nabokov 's Dark Cinema: A Diptych\" (TriQuarterly, Spring 1973) discusses Nabokov 's negative attitude toward the ' All quotations from Vladimir Nabokov are drawn from my informal commercial cinema and his positive view of Clair, Chaplin , Keaton, conversations with him in Montreux during the course of several the Marx Brothers, and Laurel and Hardy (his favorites) ; it compares visits , the most recent in November 1972. their world and comic techniques with several of Nabokov's works . ' Jorge Luis Borges , \" Citizen Kane ,\" Sur 83 (1945) , reprinted in ' Vladimir Nabokov , King, Queen . Knave (New York , 1968), page Focus on Citizen Kane, Ronald Gottesman , ed . (Englewood Cliffs , 179. N.J . 1971 ), pages 127-28. 20 MAY 1973

through his moll 's eye. \" 5 Reunited with the preg- of the room where a large and unfastidious family nant, veiny-armed , no longer nymphic Lolita, Hum- usually slept . It was now empty save for a mons- bert realizes that he \" loved her more than anything trously plump , sallow , repulsively plain girl of at least I had ever seen or imagined on earth , or hoped for fifteen with red-ribboned thick black braids who sat anywhere else\" (page 279) . But when wan Mrs. on a chair perfunctorily nursing a bald doll. When I shook my head and tried to shuffle out of the trap , Schiller (Lolita) refuses to go away with him only the woman , talking fast, began removing the dingy three pages later, he says, \" I pulled out my automat- woolen jersey from the young giantess' torso ; then , ic-I mean this is the kind of fool thing a reader seeing my determination to leave, she demanded might suppose I did \" (page 282)-a trash-afflicted son argent. A door at the end of the room was opened , and two men who had been dining in the reader (and indiscriminate movie-goer) who be- kitchen joined in the squabble . They were lieves that sentimentalized violence, predictable by misshapen , bare-necked, very swarthy and one of virtue of pop conventions , is truly the heart's re- them wore dark glasses . A small boy and a be- venge and a realization of consciousness. That grimed , bowlegged toddler lurked behind them. verbal trap , or end-game move, is typical of Nabo- With the insolent logic of a nightmare, the enraged kov ; it also has its equivalent in many films and fine procuress , indicating the man in glasses , said he recent novels written in the wake of Lolita and Pale had served in the police, lui, so that I had better do as I was told . I went up to Marie-for that was Fire (vide Anthony Burgess , John Gardner, Thomas her stellar name-who by then had quietly trans- Pynchon , Jerome Charyn , Charles Newman , Robert ferred her heavy haunches to a stool at the kitchen table and resumed her interrupted soup while the Coover, Joseph McElroy, Donald Barthleme, Steven toddler picked up the doll. With a surge of pity Millhauser, and Vivian Darkbloom). dramatizing my idiotic gesture, I thrust a banknote into her indifferent hand. She surrendered my gift During the course of Lolita the reader sees Hum- to the ex-detective, whereupon I was suffered to bert's obsessional lust metamorphose into genuine leave. \" (pages 25-26 .) love, a redeeming passage absent from Stanley The interlude is purposefully reminiscent of the Kubrick's 1962 movie version (as the director \" raw life \" offered in cheap French policiers, old admits ; see his FILM COMMENT interview [Volume 7, American pulp fiction (remember Spicy-Adventure number 4, Winter 1971-72).6 Where Humbert is a [et a/.]?) , and , to move higher in a Darwinian manner, clinical case , Nabokov is no less rerverse in artistic the post-war Italian \" neorealistic\" cinema. Humbert terms. To be sure that readers understand Lolita is humanized by his pity, but what of the readers whose gross appetites have only been stirred by the as a novel about love (insofar as one can say that grotesque mise-en-scene? That enticing \" theatrical any complex work of art is finally \" about \" one curtain \" and the procuress ' \" trap \" describe Nabo- kov 's principal sleight-of-hand trick in Lolita . By discernible, reducible element), Nabokov struc- surrendering son argent, Humbert escapes , but the tures it as a kind of anti-pornographic novel and reader who wants more action (in both the literal film . Only the first thirteen chapters of Humbert's and slangier sense) has had his expectations paro- \"confession ,\" allegedly written in prison, are truly died by Nabokov. \" I do not know if the pimp 's erotic (the trickster 's signal number is a reader 's [photo] album may not have been another link in unlucky omen) . The Foreword by John Ray , Jr., the daisy chain ,\" says Humbert (page 26); it is Ph .D., allows for the book's \" controversial \" (i .e., definitely one of several sex ual \" visuals \" that are Dirty) nature-a titillating prospect-but the coitus promised but then withheld. Instead of an accelerat- interruptus suffered by young Humbert and his girl- ing novel-length crescendo of explicitly sexual een on the Riviera also augurs poorly for common scenes, the subsequent bits and pieces from Hum- readers (page 15). Humbert is soon rehearsing (all bert's tantalizing diary (pages 42-57) only set up the reader-viewer for the next chapter, which concludes too succinctly?) his shoddy , unsatisfactory en- the arousing aspects of Lolita. The remainder of counters with nymphet-like prostitutes in Paris: Humbert's narrative is diminuendo , a word that lends itself to an obvious but relevant pun . \" . . . an asthmatic woman , coarsely painted , gar- rulous , garlicky , with an almost farcical Provenc;al \" I want my learned readers to participate in the accent and a black mustache above a purple lip, scene I am about to replay ,\" says Humbert (page took me to what was apparently her own domicile, 59), inviting the audience into his peepshow. A and there, after explosively kissing the bunched tips metteur-en-scene for the nonce, Humbert erects of her fat fingers to signify the delectable rosebud and unreels the sequence as though he too were quality of her merchandise, she theatrically drew a scenarist and filmmaker, like his nemesis Clare aside a curtain to reveal what I judged was that part Quilty. \" Place: sunlit living room . Props: old candy- striped davenport, Mexican knicknacks,\" and Lolita ' Vladimir Nabokov , Lolita (New York, 1958) , page 64 . Subsequent (page 59) . \" Pity no film has recorded .. . the mono- page references will be placed within parentheses in the text, and grammic linkage of our simultaneous moves ,\" Hum- refer to this hardcover edition and my own edition , The Annotated bert says of his orgasmic grappling with the uncon- Lolita (New York, 1970) , which have the sam e pagination. Refer- cerned girl seated on his lap (page 63) . It is the ences to Nabokov 's Ada (New York , 1969) are also in the text. ' Although Nabokov received sole screen credit for Kubrick 's sce- nario, the situation is rather complicated . Nabokov 's original effort would have ru n for seven hours, he says (his version of Greed) , and Kubrick understandably refused it. Nabokov then prepared a considerably shorter version , of which Kubrick used only about twenty percent. The Lolita screenplay which McGraw-Hili will pub- lish within the next year is not an exact replica of Nabokov 's second attempt : he has made further revisions , and arranged and dropped scenes , and of course kept certain interludes deleted by KUbric k. Given Kubrick's methods (ad ho c and improvisatory-the ping pong game was Sellers' idea), it is doubtful if his shoot ing script is available . A rumor persists that Calder Willingham also did a treatment of Lolita, all of which suggests that critics ought to proceed more cautiously when giving Kubrick the auteur treatment. FILM COMMENT 21

GOLD the reader who wants to see Quilty 's Duk Duk film ; DIGGERS OF it is not \" shown \" in any further detail ~ Nabokov 1933. The ch ild has effected an infinite regress of broken promises. lifts the curtain The \" author of fifty-two successful scenarios \" on the girls. and creator of a \" private movie ... of [Sade 's] Jus- photos : tine \" (page 300), Qu ilty is Humbert's sinister alter ego and mock-Doppelganger. (Good and Evil selves National Film are not neatly divisible in Lolita, and , as excellent A r c h i ve as James Mason is, Peter Sellers should have played both Humbert and Quilty in the film ; \" Wonderful most overt \" sex \" exhibited in Lolita and an anti- idea! \" agrees Nabokov.) Movie man Quilty also climax, considering what does not happen later. doubles, but unambiguously, the desires of those \" And nothing prevented me from repeating a per- disappointed \" learned readers\" (page 59) who , ig- formance that affected her as little as if she were noring Humbert's sorrowful warning (\" I have only a photographic image rippling upon a screen and words to play with! \" (page 34) , had nevertheless I a humble hunchback abusing myself in the dark,\" hoped for the replaying of a good many \" sexy\" says Humbert, but the performance is not repeated scenes. Teasingly located at the start of the affair, (page 64); the procuress ' curtain has been lowered but never repeated , these explicit passages and for the duration of the novel , the pimp's album will scenes formulate the reader-vi ewer's voyeuristic remain firmly closed. prurience. Stolen away from Humbert by shadowy Quilty, On Lolita 's last page, his fictive life ebbing , Hum- Lolita in turn flees from his Duk Duk Ranch ' when bert's voice becomes strangely distant and au- Quilty tries to enlist her services in one of his thorial : \" And do not pity C. Q. [= Quilty.] One had pornographic home movies. \"He was a complete to choose between him and H. H., and one wanted freak in sex matters , and his friends were his slaves ,\" H. H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, says Lolita. (How so? How so? we wonder.) As for so as to have him make you [Lolita] live in the minds the movie: \" Oh , weird , filthy , fancy things. I mean , of later generations\" (page 311). Quilty, then , might he had two girls and two boys, and three or four have been the putative author; one wonders how men , and the idea was fo r all of us to tangle in the many readers, denied further access to Humbert's nude while an old woman took movie pictures \" diary, have unconsciously wished that Quilty had (page 279). Poor girl; he had promised her a part narrated Lolita, and that his movie had formed the in GOLDEN GUTS , a Hollywood tennis opus . Pity too body of the narrative, the bodies in the narrative. \" The mirrors of possibility cannot replace the eye- ' Duk is an obscene Oriental word for copulation , sometimes ren- hole of knowledge ,\" writes Nabokov in \" The Assis- dered in English as dak or dok, from the Persian dakk (\" vice \"; tant Producer \" (1943) , his most cinematic fiction .\" \"evil cond ition \") and dokhtan (\"to pierce \"). It blends quietly with the French obscenity on page 279 of Lolita , to which all true Nabokov's trope limns what has always been the scholars will now turn . cinema 's basic or base appeal , the vantage point which allowed unspoiled audiences of SUSPENSE (1912) to share and enjoy the prowler's keyhole view of a nursemaid and child . This perspective was reversed in FOOTLIGHT PARADE ' S \" Honeymoon Hotel \" number (1933) , when the midget, dressed as a baby (the apotheosis of Freud 's view of infant sexuality?), romps through Ruby's and Dick's nup- tial chamber , and is ejected only to peer through their keyhole, and then turn toward the audience to wink lewdly. The pornographic peepshows that grace current \"Adult Entertainment\" parlors are only an extension of the first American box-office hit, THE KISS (1896), Vitascope 's fifty feet of torrid film drawn from the play The Widow Jones. \" HOW THE PUERTO RICAN GIRLS ENTERTAIN UNCLE SAM ' S SOLDIERS \" declared a Mutoscope ad , ca. 1895 (\" Drop Payment in Slot-Keep Turning Crank to the Right\"). Mack Sennett, whose fortune was not built on slapstick alone, transported this peep-show ethos to the conventional movie house, but with a crucial difference: his Bathing Beauties, a passel of animat- ' Quilty 's avatars have of cou rse since filled-in these interstices; PROFESSOR LUST (ca. 1967) is the present writer's favorite only because it recalls lecturers Humbert and Quilty, who , had he been allowed to live, might now be an auteur millionaire. ' Vladimir Nabokov , \" The Assistant Producer,\" Nine Stories (New York, 1947) , page 95. This important concluding page was inadver- tently omitted from all subsequent editions-Nabokov 's Dozen (1958), The Portable Nabokov {1971 )-and anthology reprints. 22 MAY 1973

ed September Morns, cavort alone on the screen , il~=~ REAR WINDOW. Sennett's cleverly respectable bourgeois version of the strip-tease . In his most representative Bathing 1f C) The audience Beauty scenes (ca. 1918) there are no males present as voyeur : to break the dream-free circu it of audience iden- James Stewart. tification and participation , by definition vi c arious . The screen The dark eyes of Sennett's garlanded nymphs are world : fi xed on the audience: they smile and wave at our the cou rtyard fathers and grandfathers, and invite them in for a set. photo : swim . They disrobe, they gambol , they splash (chil- National Film dren , don 't laugh at their suits). Out of the sea , they Archive change their wet togs behind a coyly curtained blanket (GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 updates the image, correlative for the screen world ; each window re- and Lolita uses it, too) or a large striped beach veals (and conceals) a don nee for a feature-film of umbrella, wh ich begins to spin, faster and faster, its own , from Honeymoon Farce to Murder Melodra- its vorte x filling the screen , an abrupt comic dis- ma. When the wife-murderer across the yard learns tancing that reasserts the gestalt's flat, rectangular of Stewart's presence and invades his apartment, surface and reminds our somnolent dreamy fore- Hitchcock is attacking an audience as well as an bears that screen eroticism is artifice. actor. \" What do you want of me? \" asks the killer (Raymond Burr), with surprising poignancy, as he Max Beerbohm 's well-known caricature of Henry looms in the doorway, and Stewart defends himself James at a keyhole (ca . 1910) may have been correct with the tools of his trade: flashbulbs. What, indeed, about the passional life of the autho r of The Sacred do readers and viewers really want? Fount (1901 ), but it missed the point by localizing a general condition . Except, possibly, for the Soviet Because his needs and fears and traumas are so Union and People's Republic of China (where so- complicated , one hesitates (briefly) before claiming cialist realism remains puritanical), movie-going , if that James Stewart's role in VERTIGO is also an not reading , is by definition voyeuristic , and Nabo- extension or reflection of an audience 's experi- kov's assaults on audience-expectations have sev- ences. Formerly a detective (a profeSSional voyeur), eral contemporary analogues. The voyeuristic pro- Stewart has retired from the police force because tagonists of Alfred Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW , of acrophobia (fear of heights). Hired by a wealthy VERTIGO , and PSYCHO , a trilogy of sorts , perversely former friend to shadow his stylish blond wife, Mad- complement and comment upon audience psychol- eleine (Kim Novak), the sexually passive Stewart ogy-the deep needs and desires that mayor may falls in love with her from afar, despite the fact that not be fulfilled in darkened theaters. (\" These new Madeleine appears to be a suicidal schizophrenic. films are not like the old ones,\" complains the (Only recently, thanks to R. D. Laing , has this be- murderous narrator of Julian Symons' 1972 novel, come attractive.) At first Stewart's behavior may not The Players and the Game. \"Though I liked PSYCHO, seem strange ; as in REAR WINDOW , Hitchcock qUietly that was good. The shower cabinet, the blood run- casts Stewart against his screen persona, the audi- ning away . And there is one called PEEPING TOM , which sounds as if it should be good .\"'O) REAR WINDOW, the center of the \" serious \" or \" moral \" Hitchcock as first put forth by Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer in their Hitch c ock mono- graph (Paris , 1957), is by far a more obviously telling and nastier film than PSYCHO (or even VERTIGO) because James Stewart is presented as a \" normal \" fellow . A news photographer with a broken leg , he eases his boredom by spying on the activities of his neighbors in the apartment building across the courtyard . Because James Stewart is after all James Stewart (fresh from his triumphsin mannlyWesterns), the audience is slow to recognize the character as a Peeping Tom . By profession a passive witness , an invader of privacy , a dispassionate recorder of mayhem and misery (the apartment is decorated with his photographs of violent events) , Stewart is psychically as well as physically immobilized ; he recoils from his fiancee , Grace Kelly , in favor of the variegated scenes caught in his telescopic viewfinder (an amazing enough preference, a clini- cal symptom). If his point-of-view represents the audience's perspective, then the apartment world into which he peers is , as has been suggested , a \" Julian Symons , Th e Players and th e Game (New York, 1972) , page 18. FILM COMMENT 23

FRENZY. Barry Like another sick man , Humbert by name, who tried to recreate a live creatu re in the image of a dead Foster and girl (his lost Riviera love), Stewart remakes Judy in Anna Massey. Madeleine 's image (clothes, hair, no, not that way; ph oto : Universal please stand over there ). Pic tures Novak 's woodenness as an actress is for once an asset; Stewart and his scheming friend variously ence's sense of Our Jimmy 's affecting shyness. His create her, just as Hollywood (Harry Cohn in partic- infatuation with a glamorous but cold image (they ular) tried to make poor Kim Novak into Rita have not yet spoken) is an emblem of the one-way Hayworth . The mental sets formed by screen eroti- circuit of screen eroticism , however electric ; it is cism are rigid enough , for Stewart prefers coolly no accident that Stewart, a dangerous somnambu- contained Madeleine to Judy's beguiling , braless list, continually drives on the wrong side of a two- state, a telling touch predicated on our having lane highway. When he follows Madeleine to a perceived the earlier fetishistic details (breasts as cemetery, Hitchcock's fog filter creates an ex plicitly things , an American tale familiar to all adolescents dreamlike ambience, analogous to the filmviewing disguised as men). Stewart's transformation of experience itself. Judy's common but sensual vitality into a vision of his dead love (a glamorous but illusory being) tele- Kim Novak is literally a performer within the film : scopes and comments upon the psychology of au- Madeleine is only pretending to be the wife , and dience fantasizing , the process through which her neurosis and \" suicide\" midway through the women become \" Kim Novak \" (or whatever) by virtue movie are staged in behalf of a plot to murder the of cosmetics and / or their partners' cranial cinema, real wife , with Stewart as the gulled witness . After producing a dead love indeed . Stewart overcomes Stewart rescues Madeleine from a \" suicide attempt\" his acrophobia but loses the girl , in a meaningfully in the bay , he takes her home, undresses the un- terrifying scene: Madeleinel Judy plunges from the conscious woman , and puts her to bed. He doesn 't bell-tower in a lethal re-enactment of her mock-sui- call her \" husband \" immediately; like an audience cide; illusions are reality in their ability to destroy (or an onanist), he wants the image for himself. But us , as Humbert proves. Hitchcock denies the audience any view or sugges- tion of Stewart's deportment in that crucial scene ; \" What do you want of me?\" is a question asked her underwear, however , is prominently displayed by any popular entertainer. Of late, audiences have (after what fact?) , and the audience 's frustration is enjoyed Technicolored orgies of gore, as Ada 's equal to Stewart's furtive needs, underscored by his \" canny\" film director Victor Vitry demonstrates by coy first conversation with Madeleine after she re- retaining the pleasing footage of the accidental gains consciousness , all perversely managed by decapitation in his movie version of Veen 's Letters Hitchcock. Barbara Bel Geddes , who pines for from Terra (page 581). Hitchcock's FRENZY is struc- Stewart, designs brassieres; and empty brassieres, tured with such needs in mind . In the opening scene rather than breasts, are featured in the first half of an attentive London crowd (an audience) , dapper VERTIGO-a psychological mis-en-scene and a director Hitchcock among them , swiftly abandons booby-trap at the expense of viewers who had a pompous , knighted government propagandist in expected to see more of Kim Novak. order to peer down at a naked female corpse afloat in the Thames. A graphic and grisly on-screen Some time after her seemingly successful suicide, rape-murder whets appetites further, but when the Stewart meets Madeleine's ghostly image, reincar- most important and sympathetic victim is lured to nated as Judy, a common red-haired working girl the killer's apartment, Hitchcock literally closes the (Novak, of course, whose garish crimson lipstick door in the audience 's face . With an excruciating clashes with her cheaply dyed hair). Their new slowness, the camera tracks silently away from the relationship is stranger yet , and REAR WINDOW 'S door, down the staircase, through the building 's \" What do you want of me? \" resounds. Voyeurism front door, and into the street. is replaced by fetishism and , as Hitchcock told Truffaut , \" a form of necrophilia.\"\" Performance is The effect here on the frustrated viewer-voyeur once again the operative word: Judy must pretend is truly stunning : the killer 's teasingly inscrutable not to know Stewart, who pretends she is Madeleine window and the prosaic , disquieting far,:ade of the and literally directs her performance in that role . building mask-and reveal-far mpre than the vi- ciousness of one psychopath , Because FRENZY is \" Francois Truffaut , Hic hcock (New York , 1967), page 186. not LETTERS FROM TERRA or STRAW DOGS, Hitchcock's screen is a tabula rasa for the nonce, onto which 24 MAY 1973 the audience must project its vision of violence, if that is its pleasure . \" The Master of Suspense \" (a dreadful, misleading cliche) formulates the audi- ence's moral suspension . Anthony Perkins' motel peephole in PSYCHO is a signal image: the absence of erotic on-screen violence after the famous shower murder of Janet Leigh (in itself a deceptive, teasing tour de force of film cutting , analogous to the \" sex \" exhibited early in Lolita) , manipulates the audience

in unexpected ways . One hopes they experience FRENZY. Barry arriere-pensee; critics always do. Foster and Anna Massey. Where PSY CHO ends with a psychiatric explana- tion , FRENZY stops short with an impersonal image p hoto : Universa l of the crime itself, rather than a dramatization of Pictures the expected violent confrontation between be- trayed friend and cornered criminal , thus denying \" suspense\" and \" mystery\" genre, and ends vio- a frenzied audience its \"catharsis\" (to employ the lently, with the principal question left unanswered. controversial , muddy lin e of the apologists for \" Actually , I've seen very little Hitchcock,\" says Na- screen violence). Reversing the previous tracking bokov, \" but I admire his craftsmanship. I fondly movement away from the door, the final shot is a recall at least one film of his, about someone named close-up of the empty steamer trunk (intended for Harry. \" Why did Hitchcock think to ask him for a the latest corpse), a tabula rasa of another sort-an scenario, ten years after Nabokov's sole screen empty anti-ending , a refusal to explain human be- effort for Kubrick? \" Oh , his humour noir is akin to havior definitively. This suggests that Hitchcock has my humour noir, if that's what it should be called, \" learned from his disciple Chabrol 's LANDRU , in which answered Nabokov. \"Perhaps there are other rea- the wife- murderer 's motives remain mysterious , in sons, too. I don't know. Do you?\" film -fiction as well as life ; from novelist-theorizer- filmmaker Robbe-Grillet; or from Nabokov, whose A \" hole \" early in the narrative line of Robbe- Eye (1930 , in Russian , literally The Spy) , Despair Grillet's Le Voyeur, published the same year as (1936) , The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) , Lolita (1955) , anticipates FRENZY (and , in a way , Lolita (1955), and Pale Fire (1962) parody the classic VERTIGO) by also omitting the crucial scene in which detective tale, the rational genre which supposes a young girl has been tortured and murdered by, that \" clues \" will lead one to the truth (in the fullest it would seem , a strange, itinerant traveler named sense) and that, once the criminal is identified , the Mathias . The vexing ellipsis is psychologically con- closed little world of the story will be rid of malevo- sistent with a psychopath 's mental erasures or eva- lence and mystery. Those latter two words describe sions , but since a sadistic killer is by definition no the universe of the thriller (in literature and film) , longer a voyeur, Robbe-Grillet's title may well allude as well as G. K. Chesterton 's \" The Absence of Mr. to those readers who feel cheated by that \" hole.\" Glass \" (1912), the important Father Brown shaggy- No such complaints may be made about Robbe- dog detective story that prefigures the techniques Grillet's most cinematic performance, Projet pour which reverse the Conan Doyle / Agatha Christie une revolution dans New York (1970). Revolting in formulas . many ways, a vertiginous projection of very private needs in public places , Robbe-Grillet's scenario Witness Robbe-Grillet's novel-length upending of extends the idea of audience manipulation by Oedipus Rex : the first detective tale in Les Gommes monstrously developing the keyhole perspective of (The Erasers, 1953). Or the way the hapless detec- the bon netted midget in FOOTLIGHT PARADE 'S \" Hon- tives , at the end of John Hawkes 's The Lime Twig eymoon Hotel \" number, leaving THE KISS , and SUS- (1961) , set out through the rainy gloom to discover PENSE , and even PSYCHO far behind . \" the particulars of this crime \" -which is impossible, since the literal murderer is a horse (hoof prints?) , \" The first scene goes very fast, \" writes Robbe- and the truly killing factor, sexual reverie, cannot Grillet in the opening paragraph. \" Evidently it has be outlawed. Or the disappearance of the cornered already been rehearsed several times: everyone title c riminal at the anti-ending of THE FRENCH CON- knows his pa~t by heart \" -everyone , that is, except NECTION (POINT BLANK revisitea--and simplified) , who the reader, Whose part can be played in a number escapes , however illogically, because he is finally of ways. The other parts are drawn from the stock an evil force rather than an individual man . Or Lolita, footage of detective thrillers and the greasy pages whose magically resilient incarnation of evil , Detec- of pulp fiction and what paperback blurb-writers call tive Trapp (Quilty), also resists bullets, refusing to \" Modern Erotic Classic \" ( mad medicos , mysteriOUS surrender to the reader his (or killer Humbert's) implementa, dames in chains) . Foreign film distribu- ultimate raison d 'etre or literary \" meaning .\" tion rights are sold , the narrator 's house is outfitted with concealed movie cameras, and violent political , Not by chance alone did Hitchcock telephone criminal , and sex ual fantasies are activated before Nabokov from London during the winter of 1970, our eyes. A range of shifting masks-or serial selves- before he signed Anthony Shaffer to turn Arthur reveals, qualifies, and withdraws forbidden fields La Bern's Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square into FRENZY . \" Yes , of course I know who you are, and I admire your work ,\" Nabokov told Hitchcock, whose modest self-introduction was predicated on the assumption that a \" high-brow\" artist (another active child of 1899) would be igno- rant of his existence. Hitchcock wanted Nabokov to do an original screenplay , but Nabokov declined because he was committed to his Transparent Things (1972) , a ghost story and an eschatological thriller that employs many of the devices of the FILM COMMENT 25

of vision and terrible, definitive self-knowledge. The lighting the throat of Jane Russell , scrupulously \" go-between \" (as he is called) in all these under- ground activities is ubiquitous Ben-Said ; at one focusing on that milk-white patch barely hollowed point he literally enlists the narrator in criminal activity. A protean , Quilty-like presence and a po- by a shadow, whose mere presence had the frus- tential camerman at the Duk Duk Ranch , Ben-Sa'id also appears masked as the reader's agent: a near- trated spectators dithering with resentment\" 12- sighted and bald little locksmith-voyeur, kit in hand , to whom all keyho les are \" orifices,\" the central link which also describes the disappOintment of those in an unholy alliance between author, characters , and readers . Private eyes all , they are ill-equipped readers (learned and otherwise) who put down Loli- to perceive what they think they have seen, but, as in Lolita and FRENZY, perhaps shocked into self- ta because of Humbert's willful reticence. knowledge by their sense of what they had hoped to see . Like Hitchcock, Robbe-Grillet, Rohmer, and Cha- Chabrol dramatized this process in his A DOUBLE brol at their best (Howard Hughes is not yet an TOUR (freely translated as LEDA for its American release) . In one intimate scene , the audience auteur), Nabokov carefully sets up his audience for watches the bikini-clad maid walk langourously around her bedroom . The pleasure is ours as well such severe letdowns, drawing too on its previous as hers; she is the grand-daughter, as it were, of one of Sennett's nubile Bathing Beauties. When the training , its indiscriminate immersion in trash , a camera moves back to frame her in the keyhole and then cuts to outside the door, where she is also helpless condition inasmuch as trash and poshlost13 being viewed by the family 's son (who is among other things a murderer) , one may feel uncom- are everywhere-a subliminal presence, an invisible fortably crowded, trapped, and compromised-aca- demic evidence that critic-director Chabrol, unlike virus. Supremely self-conscious literary artists have Truffaut, has truly appropriated auteur Hitchcock's course. nevertheless been done in by base materials; By structuring CLAIRE 'S KNEE as an anti-thriller, Robbe-Grillet's pulpy La Maison de Rendez-Vous Eric Rohmer (Chabrol 's co-author .of Hitchcock) suggests that Hitchcockian suspense techniques (1965) reads like Sax Rohmer revisited . And our best are not divorced from content. Rohmer's erotic comedy is composed of public parts: talk , narcissis- popular artists have unconsciously succumbed to tic posturing , unrealized promises of sex and vio- lence (Claire's sullen , jealous boy friend) , spurious poshlost' (Hitchcock 's \" Freudian \" SPELLBOUND) . suspense (When will our hero grab the knee, and what will happen then?), more talk, inaction , anti- But mandarin Nabokov has been able to exercise climax . That's all? That's what we 've waited for this long? complained several red-blooded trapped con- tight control , injecting his doses of trash sparingly , sumers, unwilling to recognize or accept eroticism as a state of mind (its principal reality , alas). CLAIRE 'S a preventative medicine employed to the advantage KNEE is of course a summary title , but , like Dr. John Ray 's foreword to \" Lolita, or the Confession of a of the work and the thoughtful reader who has been White Widowed Male\" (taken seriously by many readers) , the title is also a mock come-on , a morally caught up in , but not defeated by, Nabokov's game . resonant parody of \" sexy\" movie titles and randy publicity campaigns. \" This is only [sic] a game,\" says Humbert (page In a witty 1948 essay on THE OUTLAW (which 22) . acolytes Chabrol and Rohmer surely read), Andre Bazin views its \" technique of provocation \" as an \" We' re all playing games,\" says the mad narra- \" outrageous trick \" on the audience as well as on the censor who had long delayed the film 's release. tor of The Players and the Game, a perfect example \" Finally, at last ... You can see ,\" proclaims a famous OUTLAW poster, as though a miracle were of the way popular genres (crime thrillers , sci-fi) in the offing . Bazin points to the disparity between its posters (Jane Russell with lifted skirts and gener- have self-consciously expropriated \" high-brow \" ous decollete) and the film itself: breasts alone, but not even at their best, a decorous handkerchief modes. \" Do you know who I am? \" asks Symons ' placed wherever too much cleavage might show (Le Voyeur 's narrative gap , Hitchcock's tabula rasa , narrator, \"' I'm Bela Lugosi. '\" No , says his compan- Claire's isolated knee). \" It was the censorship that turned [THE OUTLAW] into an erotic film ,\" states ion ( \" Bonnie Parker\" ), he is Dracula. \" She was Bazin. \" Gregg Toland must have had great fun absolutely right ... Dracula's played a different game, a sex game, with other people, but here sex just does not come into it,\"\" This is as acute a description as any of Lolita 's tantalizing \" sex game \" with \" other people\" (its readers). It involves foreplay but no coitus . It is a game that allows Nabokov to highlight his major themes: the limitations of lan- guage, the nature of love and loss, the deathly cul-de-sac of nostalgia-a theme espeCially relevant to our present condition. Recent magazine articles on \" nostalgia\" collec- tors have featured several unintentionally terrifying photographs. One pictured a Lana Turner devotee seated in a windowless room , a Gothic playpen whose walls and ceilings were completely papered with Lana images. Another photo exhibited the premier Mickey Mouse collector in his attic retreat, surrounded by every Mickey icon and toy known to man or boy . Here we can see nostalgists snug in the regressive womb or morgue of popular cul- ture- \" drunk ,\" as Humbert has said , \" on the impos- sible past. \" 11111111 \" Andre Bazin , in What is Cinema ? Hugh Gray , ed . and trans . (Berke- ley and Los Angeles , 1971), Vol. II , page 167. \" Posh/ost' is a wonderful , almost untranslatable Russian word , meaning \"pretentious trash ,\" something more subtle and insidious than kitsch because it is often taken seriously as Art or Thought , and is not always recognized as-posh/os t'. The term should enter film criticism . DIRTY HARR Y is poshlost' ; the same director's MADIGAN is not. A touch of it infects SUMMER OF '4 2, but not THE LAST PICTURE SHO W. MCCABE AND MRS MILLER is poshl ost' ; RIDE THE HIGH COUNTR Y is not. \" Symons, op. c it., pages 3-4 . 26 MAY 1973

Jack Lemmon in SAVE THE TIGER. photo : Paramount Pictures JACKLEMMON interviewed by Steven Greenberg Steve Shagan's SAVE THE TIGER has the strengths more inventively, with the more sympathetic Harry and weaknesses of a writer's movie. It is an ambi- tious, even aggressive film that sometimes \"wears Stoner. SAVE THE TIGER doesn 't ask us to admire its art on its sleeve.\" It covers much the same terrain as early Arthur Miller - combining the defective- Harry, only to look at him as closely as Lemmon merchandise plot of All My Sons with the careerist malaise of Death of a Salesman - and aspires to has, and to draw from his character as much as the same tragic American vision . In its use of the classical twenty-four-hours-of-a-man 's-death struc- Lemmon brought to it. You can feel the \" ootz \" ture, it dares to risk comparison and contrast with such works as Long Day's Journey into Night and flowing through Lemmon as he tackles his role- WILD STRAWBERRIES. If SAVE THE TIGER doesn 't quite succeed by any of these lofty standards, it nonethe- a process of professional rejuvenation which he less achieves something almost as difficult: the describes in the following interview with UCLA's definition of a vital, claustrophobic milieu. Harry Stoner's retail clothier comes alive for us partly Steven Greenberg . -Richard Corliss because Shagan & Co . found his day-to-day frustra- tions and compromises interesting enough to build STEVEN GREENBERG : After a decade of starring a film around ; and their involvement makes it inter- in light comedies, SAVE THE TIGER is your most esting for viewers bored to tears with other movie's dramatic performance since DAYS OF WINE AND bare buttocks and Mafia chic. ROSES. How do you feel about the change of pace in your career? But there's another reason why SAVE THE TIGER stays in the mind : Jack Lemmon's performance as JACK LEMMON : It shouldn 't be that way , but it Harry Stoner. Lemmon has always been a \" busy\" is-partly because about 90 per cent of the scripts actor, a non-stop technician who works so hard he that I get offered are comedies, but also because can exhaust you . In AVANTI , Lemmon has grafted I just haven 't been able to find one that excited me his entire repertoire of vocal tricks and body lan- as much. I loved WINE AND ROSES . Other scripts came guage onto one of the most unpleasant romantic along, some of them quite good , but I just wasn 't leads in the history of movies. What was remarkable goosed myself. I don 't know what it is finally ; you about Lemmon in AVANTI was his refusal to stand can sit and think you know your craft or that you above and away from the character. He implicated can talk lucidly about scripts and what you look for himself in that role - and he does the same, even in them , but above and beyond anything else-your experience, your taste , anything-there is some in- definable \" ootz\" that kicks you personally off about a part, or a script to direct, that you cannot explain. It's just an emotional reaction , and I hadn 't found one until TIGER. When I said before that it shouldn 't be that way, it's just that I wished we weren 't pi- geonholed quite as much as we are in this country . FILM COMMENT 27

But with this damned \" star system \" we 've got, it You can throw anything at me now, and I know what makes it very difficult. he would do. \" The other way is to create a shell and crawl into it. Somehow there is a surface kind What was the \" ootz \" that attracted you to SAVE of thing-the way they look, they walk, they dress- that can suddenly tell you reams about the charac- THE TIGER ? ters compared to just the words they use, or the readings and inflections. Somehow the makeup , the In the final analysis , who knows? I was very costume , the outer behavior , is the clue to it for attracted by the whole piece itself and what it was you . trying to say . . . that it laid out in the open and took the layers off what we sort of accept in our Olivier has done this very often , and he has a ordinary , everyday behavior as the norm , and made marvelous story about spending weeks in rehearsal us really look at it starkly , just as the character Harry when he could not get a problem till a lunch break Stoner was forced to suddenly look at himself stark- one day. It looked like it was going to rain , and he ly. And that it really dealt with the human situation had brought his umbrella. The moment he started in America today more than any film has in recent to walk out the stage door and down the street, the years, I think, and more honestly. So that appealed umbrella gave it to him-the way he was handling to me intellectually, but also the part did dramatically it, the way he walked with it and tapped it, used because I thought it was a ripper. It really was very it like a cane-somehow everything else fell into well written . I think that Steve Shagan [the writer- place. It seems silly that one little thing would do producer] has a very innate sense of where the it, but I can understand it. drama lies in a scene, of where the dramatic values really are, and that he is able to conjure up marvel- With Harry Stoner I didn 't even think of the outer ous dramatic things. The scene between Harry, who behavior. I just wanted to get inside him more , as is in his late forties , and the young girl who is to what motivated him . The interesting th ing is that probably twenty playing a word game in which he doesn 't know himself, because he's in shock at neither of them can relate in their two different times-present or future shock-and I don 't think worlds-that's a marvelous dramatic device that's he realizes at times that he is close to breaking rare and exciting . down . Even when he does, he won 't admit it, and just chalks it up to pressure. Once I realized that What was your approach in bringing the written Harry's behavior is all predicated on that, I didn 't character to life ? have to worry about why he's drifting back all the time, why he suddenly starts trying to put a baseball If I'm attracted to a part and it's really worthwhile , team together. It's terribly simple : it was his escape I don 't know how to play it while I'm reading the valve. He would have cracked if he wasn 't able to script. If you know how to play it immediately, then fantasize, if he wasn 't able to go back to the good either you 've done it before or else it's rather shal- old days in his mind . low. The deeper and the more there is, then the more you have to dig in a part, and it seems like Having directed your first film, KOTCH , previous there 's an acre between each line. What it really to SAVE THE TIGER , would you say that the experience boils down to is selectivity , because there may be has influenced your acting? twenty or thirty different ways you can playa char- acter at any given moment in a scene , but one or Well , I really think only on one level. I think that two of those will be much more exciting and legiti- the reason an actor might want to direct is because mate. he's beginning to think more and more like a director anyway. When you ' re younger at acting , you ' re So that's the \" delicious hell \" as I call it-digging dreaming up the goddamndest things you can do in a character to figure out who he is and why. It to really kill 'em in th is scene, and you lose sight really isn 't what he says or does, but why does he of the one reason why you ' re in the scene to begin say this in that particular way, and why does he with-that is to carry out the author's intent as best behave that way? Once you know that, then you you can . What is the intent of the scene, not what know the character . And in knowing him. there is can you do in it? no one way he ' ll walk , no one way he 'll do any- thing-ali of that is just surface ; you can make him That's how a director must think; he has to put behave the way you want to once you understand the scene on and hopefully get everyone to carry the mind , how he thinks and why he thinks that way, out that intent. As you act more and more, and what has conditioned him , what is his background , hopefully get simpler in your work, you begin to think everything . It's more or less drudgery, it really is more that way, more like a director anyhow, so it's hell , research ing in your own mind , going back and sort of a natural evolution . Having once directed, digging , figuring the character out. Very often you you ' re even more aware of it. So it's less selfish ; have to make things up for yourself, just to feel you beg in to think more of the scene and less of complete . yourself and your own participation in it. Directing just accentuates that, I think. Did you rely on an y particular means in achieving this characterization? How was your working relationship with the rela- tively young director John Avildsen, and writer-pro- No, not really. I find that there are two things ducer Steve Shagan on TIGER ? you can do in general , and I use both . The first is getting inside a character till suddenly it clicks . One It was very , very good , thank God, or the film day in rehearsal , boom, -a light bulb goes on , and might not have been as good as it should be. It's you say , \" Son of a bitch , I've got him! I know him! 28 MAY 1973

vitally important for producer, writer, director, and It was much worse with this part than with any players to not have problems . This was a good family, a tight family, because everybody was willing other because it's an absorbing thing; the more you to bend and try other things . I don 't believe in the autocracy of a producer or director. The director got into it, the more fascinating it became. It isn 't makes the whole film once you start the physical production of actual shooting-it must be him in the Hamlet or a period piece-it's right now and all final analysis to make the decisions-but he should not be an autocrat to the extent that he precludes around you . I could understand everything about creative ideas that can come from anybody from a grip on up . I've seen Billy Wilder take suggestions Harry, even if I couldn 't necessarily relate to it from a prop man , and I don 't know a stronger director than Billy as far as being very definite about personally. I had the fortunes that Harry didn't have, what he wants, especially since he's also the author. But he ' ll listen and let you try . That 's the important I didn 't have to fight that hard or give that much , thing , to at least let others try their ideas , and then say no or yes. and rationalize so much of my life-but I could notice Since you ' ve mentioned Wilder, would you com- aspects of Harry in everybody else. Look at what ment about your long-running association with him and your recent reunion in AVANTI? we condone: the Watergate incident. Nobody really Oh , I love it. That's a whole special part of my gave a damn . It's almost at a point where , if you life, professionally and personally , because we 're very, very close friends . He's probably the most can get away with it, anything is legal. singularly exciting guy I've ever met. In all the years I've known Billy-what, 1958 to now, and we 've been I'll tell you why I think the film is important. No close from the first-I 've never knl)wn what it's like to spend sixty seconds with him that weren 't really solutions are offered, just as no solutions were interesting. There is no way it's dull with him , be- cause he's got antennae out to everything: sports, offered , for instance, by Miller in DEATH OF A SALES- politics, daisies, pollution . He has that marvelous capacity for excitement, which is the most important MAN . There is a parallel because in a way, this is thing in the world , and which is a rare commodity today . We are becoming less and less a thinking a contemporary DEATH OF A SALESMAN . The econom- people . America is becoming an unthinking popu- lace that just sits in front of a tube and looks at ic brackets have changed , but the pressures it. Fred Allen may be right-in the future, the way nature changes us, we may have no legs and eyes haven 't. If by purely exposing Harry the film makes the size of oranges. Anyway , as for AVANTI , I loved it. I hope it's a big hit for Billy, that it gives him people who will see themselves in it aware of how an \" ootz \" and gets him charged up to do another one-and maybe I'll get in it. their values have changed , of how they behave and How do you feel overall about the role in SAVE rationalize their lives-if it can only do that, then THE TIGER, and where does it stand in your career? it's good. And if it exposes very dangerous trends I can't say how good or how bad it is, but I do know it's the most important one to me . It has also in our so ci'ety , if it makes them aware that maybe been the most satisfying . In my mind , I feel that I did just about as well as I could do at this point the younger generation is. quite right in criticizing in my life with that part. It was a difficult part. Acting in general is not an easy process for me. I love it; these values, then it has done a hell of a thing. as I said before , it's a delicious hell. Probably I overcomplicate it. Most of the time , if there is any I think it can do that-I know it already has with substance at all in a scene , I beat it to death with a stick. I just cannot stop thinking about it, working some people. It's astounding, some of the reactions. on it, can 't close the door to the office at six at night and leave it there until the next morning. It's Two or three different kids, a couple of whom were possible that psychologically or unconsciously I may be afraid of losing it or forgetting it unless I stay crying when we ran the film at a preview in New right with it and on top of it . . . . I remember being in the middle of a conversation and drifting off like York , said , \" That's the first time I ever understood Harry because I was thinking about a scene or the character, and literally did not hear people talking my father. I hated what he was doing, but at least to me. If I wasn 't married to an actress, I'd probably be divorced. I can understand it now.\" And others were very frightened and saying , \" Jesus, is that going to be me? Not if I can help it. \" So if there is a greater awareness . .. because we just go along each day like ostriches with our heads in the sand , worrying about day to day prob- lems. We have enormous pressures, and so we lose sight of very basic things because we're concerned about the two cars, about money, about interest and mortgage payments , television sets, and so forth, instead of about really important things. And at the end of it all , when you 've been hit by a truck and you ' re lying there in the gutter, you wonder, \"What was I doing? What was that all for?\" It almost always comes down to the buck, but I don't think we ever want to stop to think about that. Hopefully, SAVE THE TIGER will make some of us stop and think , make us take a serious look at where we're going, and maybe change things for the better. And what of your immediate plans for the future? Where do you go from here? I don 't know ... it's funny, after you finish a film you think you ' re going to need three months just to recuperate. Then about a week later you begin to say to yourself, \"I 'm sick of golf, what's next?\" I loved the parts in AVANTI! and SAVE THE TIGER so much that I've found I can 't get excited about anything to either act in or direct among the scripts coming in . But I will soon , I'm sure-whenever the next \" ootz\" comes along. rum~ FILM COMMENT 29

I have written at some length on Howard Hawks's TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT elsewhere (in my Hawks book published by Cinema One). Surprisingly-for, though I seldon want to reverse my judgments over the years , I often want to modify them-I find , on re-reading what I wrote seven years ago , little to retract. However, I was writing then at the height of my excited discovery of the principle of director- authorship in the American cinema. Retrospectively , it cannot but strike one as curious that , in dealing with a Hollywood genre movie (species: \" adventures in exotic location \" ) clearly conceived (by the studio at least) as a starring vehicle for Bogart, adapted from a novel by Hemingway, scripted by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman , and specifically in- debted to at least two previous movies (MOROCCO and CASABLANCA) and perhaps a th ird ( ACROSS THE PACIFIC), I found it necessary to make only the most cursory mention of anyone except Hawks. At the time, it never occurred to me that this was odd , and it is arguable that , in the context of a book on Hawks and of a particular phase of critical exploration , I was right not to blur the lines. The reader may reflect that, under the circumstances, a retraction would now be appropriate; yet I consider what I wish to add as complementing rather than contradicting what I wrote previously . To HAVE AND HAVE NOT is in fact a particularly rich test case for the auteur theory: on the one hand , it reveals such a multiplicity of sources and raw materials; on the other, it is so consistently and intensely one of the central expressions of Hawks's personal view of life-the view embodied in the total oeuvre. What I want to do here is attempt to sort out the various contributory strands and suggest how each has been assimilated or modified. The contributions of the two distinguished literary figures are , in their different ways , the easiest to deal with and perhaps the least important in deter- mining the film 's total effect. Hawks's own version of how he came to use the Hemingway novel partly explains its unimportance: praising Hemingway's books for their cinematic adaptability , he told the author he could make a good film of even his worst; when Hemingway asked which that was, Hawks 30 MAY 1973

replied , To Have and Have Not . In fact , Hawks cheat- undertook the work responsibly but not very ed : his movie is in no real sense a version of the seriously, putting himself at the disposal of his novel. Only the first ten minutes-the scenes involv- friend , finding out what Hawks wanted and giving ing Mr. Johnson the would-be big-game fisher- it to him . The guess is partly confirmed by the one man-have anything much to do with the original. scene we do know Faulkner wrote (from Hawks's Hawks 's explanation , that he decided to show how own testimony), though uncredited : the death of the Harry Morgan met his wife , scarcely helps: the capta in in AIR FORCE . It' s a magnificent scene , but resemblance between the Lauren Bacall character it suggests Faulkner neither in theme nor style , its and Hemingway's Marie is , to say the most, tenuous . beauty arising primarily from its context in the whole One could say , I think , that Hawks takes over defini- film-it is one of the climactic statements of the tively from Hemingway at the moment when Harry unifying theme of group togetherness . Fu rther , it Morgan and Marie Browning become (at least to clearly grows out of a scene from an earlier Hawks each other) Steve and Slim . It's not just a matter movie in which Faulkner (as far as one knows) had of a change of names. Hawks's adventure films , in no hand-the death of Kid in ONLY ANGELS HAVE spirit, tone , ethos, characterization , values , have WINGS , of which the AIR FORCE scene is part elabora- much in common with folk song and ballads; he tion , part reversal , developing the metaphor of death is much more a genuine primitive than Hemingway, as take-off but affirming the power of group mem- his simple directness having nothing in common bership against the earlier scene's desolate alone- with the affected simplicity of, for example, The Old ness. Pend ing further research , I think it can be Man and the Sea. His characters come from no- tentatively suggested that Faulkner's contribution to where and are going nowhere, they exist outside Hawks's films is that of an able and intelligent any social context in a world where the supreme executant rather than of an independent creative value is spontaneous natural impulse, and accord- force. ingly they tend to lack surnames (which would link Jules Furthman is another matter. His is the most them with past and present and with social roles) , and to be identified by casually earned nicknames. difficult contribution to assess , but its importance The culmination of th is (as of most other things in can hardly be doubted. Within Hawks's work , three Hawks) is RIO BRAVO , where the leading characters films (and they are among his best) reveal particu- are called Chance, Feathers , Dude , Stumpy, and larly close interconnections: ONLY ANGELS HAVE Colorado , and only the villains have surnames . WINGS , TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, and RIO BRAVO . I drew (\" Chance \" is strictly the hero 's surname, but one attention to this in my book, but neglected to men- scarcely thinks of it as such .) In TO HAVE AND HAVE tion (I 'm ashamed to say) that all three were scripted NOT the characters to whom Hawks's sympathies or co-scripted by Furthman . Mr. Richard Koszarski are clearly extended are called (besides Steve and very properly described this omission (FILM Slim) Eddie , Frenchy, and Cricket; those known by COMMENT, Volume 6, number 4 Winter 1970-71) their surnames are either the villains , or corrupted as \" certainly narrow-minded at best, and possibly \" social \" men like Johnson , or, at best, people com- downright destructive and dishonest. \" Briefly, it is mitted to generalized causes or ideals-in terms of not just a matter of that recurrence of theme and the Hawks \" world,\" trammeled Establishment fig- attitude that can be traced throughout Hawks's ures, however admirable or necessary the cause . work. The films are linked by the whole structure of their scenarios, by the pattern of the character Faulkner's contribution is much harder to local- relationships , and by passages of closely similar (at ize. One would like to see his work on Hawks's moments near-identical) dialogue. We find in all scripts investigated by a Faulkner scholar . As one three the seemingly independent and invulnerable whose reading of Faulkner has been somewhat hero (Grant, Bogart. Wayne)-the independence a perfunctory, I find it difficult to detect Faulkner's necessary condition of the invulnerability, both \" voice \" with any confidence , or distinguish it from proving partly illusory-and the equally independent that of his collaborators (for all his Hawks scripts heroine who has just stepped off (respectively) a were written collaboratively) . My guess is that he banana-boat, a plane , and a stagecoach. In both FILM COMMENT 31

ONLY ANGELS and RIO BRAVO there is the fallen hero relationships and stretches of dialogue in films as who needs to redeem himself (Barthelmess , Dean diverse as I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE , RED RIVER and Martin) and the physically handicapped who needs THE THING (to name but three) , in none of which to assert his continuing usefulness (Thomas Mit- Furthman seems to have had a hand . It is at about chell , Walter Brennan) ; in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT this point that the problems of authorship become the two are combined in Eddie (Brennan again), who so involved that one is inclined to give up in despair. is both crippled like Stumpy and alcoholic like Dude. Also common to all three films is the semicomic (At least equally bewildering is the case of COME foreign hotel keeper (Dutchy, Frenchy, Carlos). The AND GET IT-co-scripted by Furthman from a novel more one sees the films the more important and by Edna Ferber, and alleged by Hawks to be about expressive become the variations, but the continuity his grandfather-which Hawks virtually remade , in is undeniable. terms of scenario structure, as RED RIVER twelve years later, scripted by Borden Chase and Charles However, though the common factor of Furth- Schnee from the former's story. Would anyone like man 's presence can scarcely be regarded as coin- to sort that one out?) cidence , restitution of credit is not the simple issue it might at first appear. First, it is well known that One can , however, draw certain conclusions with Hawks (producer as well as director of most of his reasonable confidence: 1) Furthman was immensely films , hence in a position of reasonably total control) important to Hawks, but 2) the ONLY ANGELS charac- collaborates on the planning and writing of his ter-pattern (which does not as far as I know recur scripts and alters them during shooting-the alter- in Furthman 's non-Hawks scripts) recurs in Hawks ations often arising out of the particular gifts of his because Hawks liked it and made it very much his actors; in ONLY ANGELS he even gets a credit: \" Story own , drawing on it to varying degrees whether by Howard Hawks\" (which doesn 't necessarily mean Furthman was involved in the writing or not; it was he planned the whole structure). Second , Furth- also, presumably, partly Hawks's in the first place. man's scripts for other directors, though sometimes 3) More generally, one must conclude that , however intermittently resembling his Hawks scripts in certain frustrating it may be for the scholar to find his particulars (I shall return to MOROCCO later) , are in attempts at sorting out specific details of authorship general quite distinct from them , to the extent that defeated by the sheer complexity of the intercon- it is not easy to define a coherent Furthman person- nections, this dense cross-fertilization is one of the ality (as one can, for instance, trace consistent greatest strengths of the American cinema; and that thematic patterns in the scripts of Ben Hecht) . Third , Hawks's work has certainly been enriched , though the same pattern of character relationships recurs the actual process may be impossible to define in HATARI!, which Furthman didn 't write : the structure accurately, by the way in which motifs, values and is much looser and the tensions both within and attitudes are varied , modified or redefined as they between the characters much weaker, but there is pass backwards and forwards between Furthman , again the ambiguously independent hero (Wayne), Hecht, Charles Lederer, Leigh Brackett and others, and initiative-taking heroine (Elsa Martinelli), the initially rejected new member who has to redeem with Hawks's own personality as constant determi- or justify himself (Gerard Blain), and the handi- nant. More specifically, 4) one must acknowledge capped member (in this case ,·by a fear of animals) (somewhat tentatively) the crucial contribution of with the need to prove himself (Red Buttons) . HA- Furthman to ONLY ANGELS , TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, TARI! is credited to Leigh Brackett, who co-scripted and RIO BRAVO, and (more confidently) that of Hecht RIO BRAVO with Furthman , so the recurrence of the to SCARFACE, HIS GIRL FRIDAY, and MONKEY BUSINESS; pattern can easily be explained as carried over from but it is by confronting the Furtman movies with the previous film , though the most obvious specific th.e Hecht movies that one really begins to under- borrowings (the piano-playing bit and the \" burnt stand Hawks. fingers \" dialogue) are from ONLY ANGELS . Further, although the overall pattern doesn't recur elsewhere At least as important as the contributions of in Hawks , there are strikingly similar man-woman individual writers to TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, and even more complex and intangible, is its Hollywood back- ground : an intricate web in which genre , studio , stars, and past successes interact with topical (if 32 MAY 1973

not exactly advanced) thematic and narrative mate- Warners films with Bogart, and fairly close prede- rial. Again , the chief lesson to be learned is the cessors . John Anderson has drawn my attention to impossibility of distinguishing between what is the possible importance of Huston 's ACROSS THE Hawks and what isn 't. The lighting , for example , is PACIFIC (1942) , another movie establishing itself su- easily identifiable as Warners-style , but it is also the perficially in the Americans-in-exotic-Iocale genre perfect visual expression of the essential Hawksian (Panama , in this case) and concerned with Ameri- view-the small circle of light surrounded by threat- ca's need to commit herself to the war against ening darkness-which is embodied equally in the Fascism . But the important precedent here is the action and settings of so many of his films: Dutchy 's treatment of the man-woman relationship and the hotel in ONLY ANGELS surrounded by fogs , storms , Bogart/ Mary Asto r dialogue. This , in its turn , has and seemingly impenetrable mountain ranges; the an obvious antecedent in THE MALTESE FALCON , but interior of the bomber in AIR FORCE juxtaposed with there is a significant difference: the FALCON dialogue, the devastated airfields and enemy-infested jungles both in itself and as delivered , impeccably polished outside ; the Nissen huts in the Arctic wastes of THE and succinct, always sounds \" written \"; that in THING , cut off even from radio contact by blizzards ; ACROSS THE PACIFic-especially through the first, the isolated town of RIO BRAVO, with the only precari- more interesting, part of the film-has the inconse- ous security represented by the interiors of jail and quentiality of spontaneous improvisation, precisely hotel. the quality that strikes people in the Bogart/ Bacall duologues of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. Two pOints The genre determinant of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT here: I have no evidence that any of the dialogue is itself complex . The opening track-in on a map of either film was in fact improvised-I am speaking of the world to pinpoint a particular exotic location merely of effect. And I should make clear what I is a familiar convention for establishing a familiar mean by improvisation: not that the cameras were type of movie (usually, a movie whose title is the set and the actors told to say anything that came exotic place-name) . In fact , this is partly misleading . into their heads, but that many of the exchanges Hawks is no more interested in place than he is in have the air of having been worked out between time; or, more accurately, the sort of place that actors and director on the set during rehearsals and interests him isn 't geographical , or romantic-e xot- shooting rather than scripted in advance. This is ic-it is anywhere that is bare and isolated , a conte xt a quality one naturally associates with Hawks, but for his characters ' stoicism: in TO HAVE AND HAVE it seems far more pronounced in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, minimally furnished hotel rooms or the sea on NOT than in any of his previous films ; and it is a foggy night. More importantly, in its paranoid absolutely in character for Hawks (the least innova- sense of diffused menace, its emphasis on shadows tory of all major directors) to need the stimulus of and surrounding darkness, its skepticism (only part- someone else's original contribution and then do ly contradicted by the movement of the scenario) it better: the Bogart/ Astor dialogue in ACROSS THE about ideals, the film relates to (without ever be- PACIFIC , although the best thing in the film , comes coming an example of) the film nair-a relationship across as amusing decoration , doodling almost, confirmed by THE BIG SLEEP a year later . But no where the Bogart/Bacall scenes and the quality of Hawks film could be truly nair, a point one can spontaneity are absolutely central to the ethos and enforce by comparing THE BIG SLEEP with Tourneur's attitudes of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT. archetypally noir OUT OF THE PAST. The Mitchum character of the latter allows himself to succumb The more obvious debt to CASABLANCA (also 1942) to the engulfing amorality of the nair world to an is of a very different nature , which can be suggested extent impossible for a Hawks protagonist; however by saying that, given the complex workings of the bleak and bare his universe, the end effect of a studio-and-star system , Hawks himself need not Hawks movie is inevitably optimistic , the self-suffi- necessarily have seen the earlier film. Again , the ciency and self-respect by which his characters exist subject is America 's need to commit herself to the ultimately reaffirmed and uncompromised . war ; again the theme is centered on Bogart. As in TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, the plot concerns attempts In particular , TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT seems to owe to help a famous French freedom-fighter escape debts to three specific films . Two of them are FILM COMMENT 33 ~ ~J ~_ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ __________

from the forces of Fascism . The de Bursacs of in itself; I have space for only a few pointers , whose Hawks's film are quite blatantly modeled on the aim is the definition of all that makes the latter film Bergman / Henreid couple of CASABLANCA ; de Bursae quintessentially Hawksian. The treatment of the even looks rather like Paul Henreid. Marcel Dalio \" commitment \" theme-solemn and idealistic in is in both films , in similar roles , and Dan Seymour, CASABLANCA, casual and personalized in Hawks- Hawks's unforgettable Captain Renard , has a bit makes an obvious starting point, the force of which part in CASABLANCA. could be conveyed most vividly by cutting mentally between the films' endings: the noble, romantic To restore the main plot-line of TO HAVE AND HAVE renunciation of the airport farewell set against NOT to that of CASABLANCA , all that is necessary is Lauren Bacall 's extraordinary hip-waggling exit to eliminate the Lauren Bacall character and have from Frenchy's hotel. Only superficially has Bogart Bogart in love with Madame de Bursac. The pres- made the same choice in both films: in TO HAVE AND ence of the unattached Bacall as heroine and the HAVE NOT his real commitment is not to a cause but reduction of the Bogart/ Madame de Bursac rela- to the individuals the Fascists have kicked around . tionship to at most a mild flirtation simplifies the Closely connected with this is the treatment of the issues by removing CASABLANCA 'S major love / duty past in the two films . The center-piece of CASABLAN - conflict; but the latter clearly didn 't interest Hawks, CA is its long nostalgic flashback . That Hawks has whose most characteristic works are singularly de- never used a flashback in any of his films has been void of \" issues.\" Or rather, the moral issues either often noted ; what matters is less the fact than its have been settled before the movie begins or are implications . CASABLANCA is drenched in a senti- taken for granted , and the remaining issues are mental-romantic sense of the past, which deter- practical : not should he? but can he? This is another mines all the relationships and the main characters' aspect of Hawks's primitivism , that again connects actions. In TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (and in all the his art with the spirit of folk song . We don 't question great Hawks movies except RED RIVER) the past whether Geordie should have killed the king's deer exists only as something to be got over. And if there to feed his family , or even whether Matty Groves is no sense of the past there is equally no sense and Lady Arlen should have gone to bed together. of the future : the characters live spontaneously in Similarly, the Hawksian allegiance to natural impulse the present, from moment to moment. \" Spontane- is in one sense not so much immoral as pre-moral , ity\" must always be the key word in discussing in another sense the primitive basis of all realistic Hawks . Everything that is of value in his films , and morality. The Hawks films that treat moral issues the sense of values they embody, comes back to centrally tend to be more or less failures (more, in his allegiance to spontaneous sympathetic impulse. the case of SERGEANT YORK ; less, in that of RED RIVER , Cons ider, as profoundly typical , the way the Lauren one of those imperfect and partly atypical works Bacall / Hoagy Carmichael relationship not so much which it is permissible nevertheless to rate very develops as spontaneously happens , mostly high). The moral issue of TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT through exchanged looks and singing together. -should Harry Morgan commit himself to the anti- That is why his characters can commit themselves Fascist cause?-is treated very revealingly. Genre only to other individuals, not to causes or abstrac- expectations at the time (1944) dictate that he tions. Both the strengths and limitations of his work should , the general drift of the film suggests that are centrally dependent on this fact. he shouldn 't, and the dilemma is resolved by restat- ing the general abstract issue in \" primitive,\" particu- Many-perhaps most-will disagree with me, but larized terms: when Frenchy asks him why he's my preference for TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT over its joining in , Bogart replies , \" Because I like you and forerunner is strong , and confirmed by each repeat- I don 't like them .\" ed viewing of the two films . One can accept Andrew Sarris 's description of CASABLANCA as \" the most Comparison of CASABLANCA with TO HAVE AND HAVE decisive exception to the auteur theory\" without NOT could furnish material for a further long essay 34 MAY 1973

disputing the possibility of tracing likenesses be- movement of the whole film ) is as essential to von tween it and other Michael Curtiz films ; nor need one exactly endorse his valuation of it as a \" master- Sternberg as it is alien to Hawks . Von Sternberg 's piece\" -for which one would have to sense the presence of a master. The emotions the film ex- characters are enmeshed in the intricate visual presses and provokes are comparatively generalized and conventional-the kind of feelings most of us patterns of light and shadows, Hawks's have a would like to think we have, rather than the feelings we really do have. If one readily accepts the de- freedom of movement within his uncluttered com- scription of both CASABLANCA and TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT as \" Hollywood \" movies (in more than a geo- pOSitions that expresses their inner freedom. graphical sense) , one must add that this seems a far more adequate description of Curtiz's film than One has the sense that Hawks's achievement, of Hawks's: its excellence seems primarily explain- able , as Sarris suggests , in terms of a happy con- the richness of his art, depends on the complex junction of talents at the right time and place, and one misses that sense of a particular, personal cross-fertilizations of Hollywood genre cinema. The \" voice \" that is surely one of the prerequisites of great art. collapse of that cinema helps to explain the impov- Such a judgment can be strengthened-and some erishment of his late work , the tendency (from of the loose ends of what may seem a very digressive article tied together-by invoking MOROCCO as a third HATARII on ) to fall back on increasingly mechanical element in the comparison ; for in von Sternberg 's film as surely as in Hawks 's we cannot miss hearing repetition. Hawks has of course never been afraid just such a personal \" voice.\" The comparison this time is prompted by Hawks himself, who has sug- of repeating himself: with a characteristic lack of gested that the Bacall character in his film is related to the Dietrich character in von Sternberg 's. artistic self-consciousness he appears to make his MOROCCO was also scripted by Jules Furthman , and one can certainly see a connection not only between movies for people who see them once and forget the leading female characters but between their relationships with their respective men , the relation- them quickly, and won 't therefore be likely to recog- ship taking in each case the form of a prolonged sparring match between two people determined to nize the same scenes in a superficially different assert and maintain their independence. context a decade later. More importantly, the relative Interestingly, with regard to the auteur theory, the essential difference between the two films can lack of development in his work ( beside that of, say , be pinpointed in a line of dialogue. Immediately after the introduction of Dietrich on the ship near the Ford or Hitchcock) is clearly connected with his beginning of MOROCCO , Adolphe Menjou questions the captain about her. The captain tells him: \" We stoical philosophy of life-in-the-present, with little call them our suicide passengers-they never come back.\" Hawks's heroines are usually coming from sense of past or future . But the elements of repeti- nowhere and go ing nowhere, but it is impossible to imagine one of them being introduced like that. tion in the films up to and including RIO BRAVO (which The note of pessim istic fatality (which initiates the still seems to me beyond dispute his masterpiece, and as close to a total summation of his achievement as a single work could possibly be) show consis- tently a process of improvement and refinement, the effects becoming more precise and more complex; after RIO BRAVO , the repetitions are usually inferior- cruder, and lacking the context that gave the effects their definition. Arthur Penn said of THE CHASE that what emerged wasn 't a Penn film but a Hollywood film . One can sympathize with the artistic position the remark implies but remain aware that the opposition it offers is far from having universal validity . To HAVE AND HAVE NOT is both a Hawks film and a Hollywood film : not intermittently, in some kind of dislocated alter- nation in which the director's personality can be seen struggling to express itself against the odds , but both at the same time, indissolubly, every aspect of the film traceable to some outside source or background influence, yet every aspect pervaded and transmuted by the director's presence. Totally Hollywood, and totally Hawks. 11111111 FILM COMMENT 35

T.ti~ IJ~BWC\"'CU .. an Interview and introduction by Jonathan Rosenbaum Like all of the very great comics, before making confidence in the intelligence and activity of the us laugh, Tati creates a universe. A world arranges spectator: the challenge was too great to find a itself around his character, crystallizes like a super- commensurate response.\" Quite simply, the richness of PLAYTIME is not available to anyone on saturated solution around a grain of salt. Certainly a single viewing . At best, one can discover that this richness is present; at worst, the viewer can become the character created by Tati is funny, but almost so bored by what he doesn 't see that he fails to accessorily, and in any case always relative to the notice that a radical change in the language of universe. He can be personally absent from the most cinema is being proposed. (Something comparable comical gags , for M. Hulot is only the metaphysical happened to many critics when 2001: A SPACE ODYS- incarnation of a disorder that is perpetuated long SEY opened in the U.S. less than four months later.) In any event, the film can seem funny or unfunny, after his passing. empty or full , lively or dull, beautiful or ugly in one viewing ; but it cannot come across in its entirety. It is regrettable that Andre Bazin 's seminal essay As Noel Burch observes in Praxis du cinema ~Galli­ on Jacques Tati (\"M. Hulot et Ie temps, \" 1953, in mard , 1969), \"Tatl's film [is] the first in the history Qu 'est-ce que Ie cinema?, vol. I) has been omitted of cinema that must be seen not only several from both volumes of his criticism in English ; regret- different times, but from several different distances. table , too , that Bazin didn 't live to see Tati 's master- It is probably the first really 'open' film . Will it remain piece. To some degree , PLAYTIME can be regarded the only one?\" as an embodiment and extension of Bazin's most cherished ideas about deep focus , long takes, and A group of female American tourists wander the \" democratic\" freedoms that these techniques through a studio-built Paris of interchangeable steel offer to the spectator. and glass buildings ; one girl, the youngest member of the group, searches for the \"real\" Paris. Mean- It can be argued , of course, that Tati has offered while, M. Hulot wanders through the same buildings, his audience too much freedom , and overestimated mainly in search of a M. Giffard , occasionally cross- the capacities of several spectators-one reason , Ing the paths of the Americans and various other perhaps , why five years after its Paris opening , groups . Midway through the film, Hulot finds Giffard , PLAYTIME has yet to receive an American release . re-encounters an old army friend, and joins all the \" An absolute masterpiece of a confounding and other characters at the premature opening of an vertiginous beauty,\" Jean-Andre Fieschi reported in Cahiers du cinema shortly after it premiered . \"Never, perhaps, has a film placed so much 36 MAY 1973

expensive restaurant; as the awkwardly designed discover is Orly); and all the various movements of establishment gradually falls to pieces, everyone the tourists being led around are equally rigid and gets acquainted . In the morning , Hulot buys a unswerving. going-away present for the American girl, which she opens on the bus ride back to Orly airport: a plastic Perhaps the first beautiful movement in PLAYTIME bouquet of lilies of the valley that closely resemble occurs when Hulot does an involuntary dance turn the streetlamps on the autoroute. ' on the slippery floor of a waiting room , while the tip of his umbrella momentarily serves to anchor him . Jacques Rivette has remarked that \" PLAYTIME is This little slide , which lasts only a second or two , a revolutionary film, despite Tati ; the film has com- is virtually the only instance of physical grace that pletely effaced the creator \" ' -an idea echoed by Tati Tati allows himself as an actor in the entire film : himself in the following interView, when he asserts the whole legacy of his music hall experience is that \"PLAYTIME is nobody. \" But how, exactly, is it alluded to and dispensed with in a single fleeting revolutionary? gesture. (The extraordinary contrast between Tati 's directorial ambitions and his modesty as an actor, In conventional film narrative , there is always a wh ich crops up frequently in the interview, is basic clearly defined separation between \"subject\" and to his ideas about comedy ; in this respect , the larger \"background.\" A character moves through a set- role played by Hulot in TRAFFIC is a conscious ting , and our attention is focused on the \"action\"-;- regression, undoubtedly dictated by commercial what the character does; when this setting figures necessities .) in the action , it becomes a part of the subject. But in PlAYTIMEO, where every character has the status Later in the film , at a gadget exhibition , the of an extra, every scene is filmed in long shot, and American girl turns around-shifting her gaze in an the surrounding decor is continually relevant to the arc away from the architecture's linear dictates-to action, the subject of a typical shot is everything notice a \" gag \" (Hulot and some small mishap he that appears on the screen . Many shots, particularly has engendered) that makes her laugh . And in the in the restaurant sequence, become open forums restaurant, which theoretically collapses and comes where several potential points of interest compete to life because of the architect's failure to take independently for our attention. Whatever we precise measurements, the regimented lines of choose to ignore automatically becomes \"back- movement increasingly turn into a whirlpool of ground ,\" but this arranging of priorities is often no dance curves . At the same time , in order to maintain more than a reflection of our own preferences, i.e., any \"global\" sense of the entire action as we search which movie we want to see this time around. If out various detailS, it is virtually essential that we we sit tight and wait for gags to come, we won 't curve the trajectory of our gaze: if our eyes attempt find very many. But if we let our eyes roam, wander to traverse the screen in straight lines , we simply and gambol about the screen , scanning the totality miss too much . (Significantly , a neon arrow that is of the action , we ' ll discover multiple relationships straight at one end , curved at the other , flashes over between people, people and objects, live moments the restaurant's entrance, and is the basis for sever- and dead moments , real gags and potential gags al gags .) Pursuing the action in straight lines, we that are hysterically funny: a geometric vaudeville. become victimized , imprisoned by the architecture, Viewed individually, details might be dull or interest- much in the way that Giffard , rushing directly ing ; seen together , they become cosmically funny- towards one of the characters resembling Hulot (the comic in a philosophical sense. film has several) in an early sequence, runs smack into a glass door. An alternative method of looking This vision is not merely revealed in the film, but is Tati 's \" message .\" formulated as a philosophical-aesthetic proposition . Indirectly, through a series of minor events, Hulot In the restaurant , the apparent conflicts between proposes this concept to the American girl. As Tati separate points of interest become resolved when indicates in the interview, this lesson has a lot to we realize that all the wandering strands are bound do with human , accidental curves breaking the up in the same fabric , and every detail on the screen monotony of regimented straight lines. is privileged in relation to the whole , which gradually assumes the shape of a turning circle. This concept The opening of the film is oppressively linear in terms of the actions displayed. The initial gag , delin- aculminates in climactic \" circus \" vision of city eated in the second and third shots, is the sharp left turn taken by two nuns in the passageway of traffic as an endlessly turning carousel, with all the an anonymous building (which we subsequently surrounding action serving to complete, rather than deviate from , the commanding image: the raiSing 'For a much fuller account of PLAYTIME, as well as TRAFFIC , cf. my and lowering of cars in an adjacent garage suggest- Paris Journals in the Fall 1971 and Winter 1971-72 issues of Film ing the vertical movements of merry-go-round horses, and the horizontal procession of pedestri- Comment. ans serving to \" frame\" the carousel. 'Other directors who have expressed admiration for PLAYTIME in- Getting to Tati 's office from the center of Paris clude Susan Sontag and Fran«ois Truffaut .When I asked the former takes a little less than an hour. Arriving in a suburban in an interview (in New York , 1969) what films she 'd seen in the neighborhood, one finds oneself in a disconcerting past year that she found the most Interesting, PLAYTIME was the architectural mixture of new and old that inevitably first title that she cited ; she went on to describe it as a great film , suggests the landscape of MON ONClE (1958). Tati and when I remarked that I'd already seen it about seven times resides in one of the newer structures, a trim office myself, she replied that she had too . Truffaut's feelings for the building with glass doors and a cafe-bistro down- film are clearly evident from an extended homage he pays to it In BED AND BOARD, where he alludes to specific shots (Antoine waiting to see a prospective American employer) and characters (the employer himself turns out to be Bill Kearns, the free-spending American at the restaurant In PLAYTIME); and a \" false \" Hulot turns up later at a metro stop. FILM COMMENT 37

PLAYTIME . stairs , where he often has lunch . Around the period of MON ONClE , Tati 's film company occupied all of the second floor . Today, after the various expenses of PLAYTIME have caused his company to go bankrupt, his operations have been limited to two rooms on the same floor . If Tati 's films tend to defy verbal transcription , some of the same problem exists with his conversa- tion . While he talks , a remarkable flurry of explana- tory gestures and ex pressions accompany his words like a continual subtext-the habitual motions of a skilled pantomimist accustomed to showing what he means more than saying it. Throughout our inter- view, his body and voice would continually slide from explanation into demonstration , illustrating a point by becoming a character or even an object in one of his films , and reproducing part of the dialogue or sound effects with uncanny precision . I had no sense of Tati clowning to amuse me: when he converted a letter opener into a screwdriver to represent the efforts of a modest mechanic, or imitated a car going into second gear with his voice, it always seemed less like a performance than an automatic expedient for explaining something . Although we spoke for nearly two hours , I reg ret that we never got around to any detailed discussion of his first three features , and that Tati tended to resist giving more technical information about the composition of his soundtracks . On the latter sub- ject, however, his assistant , Marie-France Siegler, was particularly helpful. She spoke to me about his prolonged efforts to get the prec ise sound he want- ed for the splitting of a waiter's trousers in PLAYTIME , tearing every kind of conceivable material in the recording studio until the right noise emerged; oc- casionally using his voice to achieve certain other sound effects; and in general , highlighting parts of the sound to direct the audience-visually and con- ceptually-in various subtle, almost subliminal ways . Our interview took place in late November, two weeks before TRAFFIC began its commercial run in New York .3 Tati had just returned from an extensive tour of the United States, and I began by asking him for some of his reactions . JACQUES TATI: It's very difficult to explain . When you live in another country , like I do , it 's so pretentious to give advice about what people must or mustn 't do , to say \" That is right \" or \" That is wrong .\" My reactions to New York , for instance: of course it's a little bit tough , of course it's a little bit difficult; but it's also very true. I mean , in all other big cities , the reality is a little bit hidden , they try to show more of what is good than what is bad . In New York , with all this competition , with every- thing going on there , it 's open , you see it. There 's every situation , and I like in a way this absolutely important life (I don 't say creation , maybe that is too much) . It's real , and when you come to another city afterwards , it 's as if you ' re going on a holiday. TRAFFIC . Jacques Tati , center. pho to : Col umbia Pictures ' From Marie-France Siegler, I have learned that between the Pari s premiere of TR AFFIC (A pril 1971) and its Am eri can release, an additional seq uence was shot an d added to the film-an ep is ode at a filling station where bus ts are given away to the customers. 38 MAY 1973

The states are different: San Francisco is another to live in this same international decor. That's why life, and so is New Orleans . Dallas is a lot of money , I shot it in 70mm. In 70mm , you have the right so the people there show that they have a lot-be- dimension on the New York airport, Orly, the ex- cause they have it. But most of the time , I've been pressways. Of course , you can do it now even in in touch with students at the universities, and what 35mm . impressed me was how much they're learning about film : they know what a picture is , they know old I've been fighting all my life for my sound tracks . pictures , they discover old talent . I think it's a very They 're obliged to be magnetic one day; it's a joke important move, and that Mr. Langlois was right to for distributors to make them optical. With optical , say to the major companies , \"Don 't throw those old beyond a certain point you get distortion ; with mag- pictures out , because one day you may find that netic you get all the range you want. It's so silly artistically they are sometimes im portant. \" that distributors today don't imagine that magnetic will be the next step in sound. Each time we had JONATHAN ROSENBAUM : At the universities a sound on magnetic and had to transfer it to optical , you visited, did you generally show PLAYTIME as well it became so hazy, with no dimension to it. Even as TRAFFIC? in 35mm today , if you have stereo-when a car comes on the right of a screen , you're obliged to Not always. In San Francisco , they devoted two hear it on the right ; when it's in the middle, you days to all my features. I showed PLAYTIME last-I have to hear it there; and when it leaves on the always show PLAYTIME after TRAFFIC . On the basis left, you have to hear it on the left. But nobody wants of my intentions , TRAFFIC could have been shot to fight, because it's too much work for the projec- before PLAYTIME. PLAYTIME will always be my last tionists and distributors. So what are they doing for picture because of the dimension on the decor, cinema today? Nothing . They just sell it like they regarding the people. There's no star, no one per- sell spaghetti or Danish beer. They don't care about son is important, everybody is; you are as important what we're trying to do, or respect artistic control. as I can be . It's a democracy of gags and comics- the personality of people regarding an architecture Could you describe some of the methods you that people have decided for us to live in , without use in composing your soundtracks? asking us whether we agree or not. In the end , we all win in the sense that we still talk to each other ; Well , first, I can do it because my dialogue isn't if anything goes wrong , we ' re still partners , and important; the visual situation is for me number one. some small people are still allowed to be important. The dialogue is background sound as you hear it when you're in the street, in Paris or New York-a The construction is very strong. When people say brouhaha of voices. [Tati demonstrates by appear- that there 's no construction in PLAYTIME it makes ing to mumble several things at once.] People say, me laugh , because the moment you take two shots \"Where are we going?\" and you don't exactly know out of the picture ... It's a little bit like a ballet. At where they ' re going . I also like to push my visual the beginning , the people's movements always fol- effect a little on the sound track. In MR . HULOT'S low the architecture, they never make a curve [with HOLIDAY , the sound of the car is as important as his hands, Tati traces an elaborate series of straight the shape of the car, because even when the car lines and right angles], they go from one line to isn't visible, the sound of the motor shows that it's another. The more the picture continues, the more coming-it's the personality of that car by sound the people dance, and start to make curves , and effect. In PLAYTIME , when Hulot sits in the modern turn around , and start to be absolutely round-be- chair, it is a visual effect, but the sound 's as interest- cause we have decided that we ' re still there . That's ing as the shape of the chair : whoooosh .. .. The what I like. Some people may not understand be- time will come when a young director will use sound cause they're always putting a mark on somebody; creatively ; you ' ll have a very simple image with very they say, \" Oh , that's Mr. So-and-so and he is going little movement, and the sound will add a new to be funny for the whole evening .\" dimension , like putting sound in a painting- whoooosh . The images are designed so that after you see the picture two or three times , it's no longer my Your films are always shot silently, and the sound film , it starts to be your film . You recognize the composed separately? people , you know them , and you don 't even know who directed the picture . It's not a film you sign Yes , I'm obliged to do that, because when you 're like FELLlNI 'S ROMA . PLAYTIME is nobody. I don't say composing something visually , you have to talk all that it's easy to do. The dimension of the camera the time. If you have a professional actor, that's is the dimension of what your eyes see ; I don't come different, because you give him a line and he has close up or make tracking shots to show you what to say it as well as he can. Now in my case , I play a good director I am . I want your eyes to put you very much with objects-chairs, dogs-you 're ob- in such a situation where you come to the opening liged to talk to a dog: \" Come here-sit.\" Now you of the restaurant , as though you were there that can 't keep that sound (\"Attention! Restez-Ia. Don't night. move . Please: stop! \" ), and I talk very often with my actors to make them feel more at home. It's more A lot of people don 't like PLAYTIME ; they don 't like life if you play with them and joke with them . even stay to the end. But some who please me, particularly very important directors , like it very I've heard that PLAYTIME was cut by fifteen min- much .... The star is the decor. We are all-French , utes after its Paris premiere. . .. English, American , Canadian , everywhere-starting That was for the distributor. There was so much money involved in the picture, they thought that if FILM COMMENT 39

it was shorter it would do better. Of course it didn 't when you arrive there , the food isn 't all that good , help any . Either you accept it or you don 't ; if it's and the girls aren 't as nice-looking as you expected . not your visual idea of yourself, you leave the cinema It's all that way . The lights always change the di- after a quarter of an hour. If you like it, understand mension on reality at night. it, it 's like impressionist painting , you find more in it to interest you-sound , movement, people-when In TRAFFIC , the camping car seems to function you go back to it. I'm like you : I like it. I'm proud much like the restaurant in PLAYTIME-something of PLAYTIME ; it 's exactly the picture I wanted to make. that stands between people, so that they 're not able With all my other films , I could make changes , shoot to get together until it breaks down . If this isn 't too things differently if I was dOing it now. Not w ith presumptuous a question, what is your attitude PLAYTIME-I did it and it's done. I've suffered a lot towards cars? because of it, physically and financially , but it's really the film I wanted to do. And the original version , Well , first of all , they change the personality of the long version , is the only one that I believe in . people. Take a very nice gentleman whom you ' ll In Los Angeles , I showed it to the members of the meet in a bar: as soon as he gets in his car , he Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in changes absolutely ; he has to be very strong not a cinema seating seven or eight hundred people, to change. Secondly, the more the engineers work although only two hundred were there. The reaction for us, the less we have to do when we drive a car was amazing ; everybody came and kissed me after- . .. before, people participated in the driving ; they wards, it was such a warm situation . It wasn't just knew by the sound of the motor how to change politeness. Something did happen . gears-rmrmrm , into second , and so forth . You participated , and you had to be a good driver. Now, How did you create the restaurant sequence? It with the new American car, it doesn 't make any looks like it must have been ex traordinarily difficult. difference whether you ' re a bad or good driver. What they call comfort and new techniques have I had to work out each part and direct each become so exaggerated that I tried to create a car character separately. It took me seven weeks to that was absolutely ridiculous , where you can take shoot it. First I'd set up all the different movements a shower, make coffee, shave-but it's not practical in the background , then I'd set up each action in at all , it's the worst possible car to take on a holiday, the foreground , looking through the lens while com- because it brings you so many problems. And when posing each shot so I could see everything at once. you become so remote from what 's designed for I had to shoot it all in sequence ; there was no other you , the human connections between people start way. A lot of people th ink that the camera doesn 't to go-like with the police in the film . I' m always-in move at all ; actually it does move, but always to each shot, each moment-trying to defend the show what your eye would naturally follow , so you simple man , who tries to fi x someth ing with his don 't notice it. hands. How did the decor of PLAYTIME-the city set con- I was wondering about the references to Apollo structed on the outskirts of Paris-come to be built? \" in TRAFFIC , which the characters watch on televi- sion . . . . For my construction , we couldn 't go to the Drug- store and Orly and stop work there , it would 've been To copy and make a joke about what they see impossible. And I wanted this uniformity: all the on television , the people start to work more slowly. chairs , for instance, in the restaurant , in the bank- For them , the moon flight isn 't a great achievement; they're all the same. The floor 's the same, the paint 's in relation to their private lives , it's a flop . the same. It cost a lot of money, of course , but it 's there-and it's not more expensive than Sophia Do you go to films often? Loren . Yes. I always go to learn-I'm not a professor, I' m more a student, even at my age. There 's so much How do you feel about the buildings in the film? in c inema now-it's a big garden. Of course , I' m touched more by comedy, but that 's a big garden You make a lot of jokes about them, yet in the night too . How do you feel about the comedies of, say, Jerry sequences they often look quite beautiful. Lewis? Or Woody Allen? It depends. In New York sometimes , when you ' re I liked BANANAS very much . I laughed , and it's difficult for a film to make me laugh . I recognize very high up and look out the window, you have it 's good , but it's not the way I want to express a marvelous vista of lights-it's very impressive. But myself. I work more by observation : you see , when if you go down the elevator at say , si x in the morning , a president or a prime minister does a little some- what you see isn 't so impressive. It looks like you 're thing that 's funny , that makes me laugh much more not allowed to laugh or whistle or be yourself: you than a comic does. I can make Hulot do all the jokes, have to push the button where it says \" push ,\" because I come from the music hall and I can do there's not much way of expressing yourself. But it quite well , but it 's not my way . I'd rather show when you see all those lights at night, you want an important man doing something funny , because to create music , paint, express yourself, because then people will look around and say , \" Why is he it's another dimension on the reality , it 's like a speaking so loud? He isn 't really that important. \" dream . You don 't see who 's living in the buildings I mean , comedy can put a lot of people down . Now or what's happening there . When you arrive on the the other day , when President Nix on came on , after plane at night in New York , and see all those he won the election-with a very small detail he marvelous lights and shapes, you think that it must be a dream to live there: you're sure that the food must be wonderful , the girls must be lovely. But then 40 MAY 1973

could have been very , very funny , not serious at argue a little bit like you , but there has to be more all . He came on [Tati imitates Nixon 's demeanor] with this big smile, and it wasn 't natural at all-and and more. Because they 'll never be more clever than if he'd slipped on one of the steps , it would 've been hilarious. The same thing happened with De Gaulle the people in charge-the ones in charge will satu- once when he did something on television : it was so funny , because it was the General who did it. rate us , they 'll do more and more each time . The A small detail , it wouldn 't have been as good for Laurel and Hardy, but it was good for De Gaulle. more they speak on television , the more ridiculous . . . In comedy , even if people still laugh when a comic comes on and does a lot of clowning, I they are . Pompidou is worse now than he was at don 't believe it too much now. I mean , it wouldn 't be very important fifteen or twenty years from now. the beginning . You hear him on television , he says The pictures that are still really great today are Keaton's , because he didn 't exaggerate at all : he everything and nothing-he doesn't say anything . had a face, no smile-a very modern adaptation. I saw the other day the real people who played in He says , \" Okay, it'll be good ,\" but you know it won 't the restaurant in PLAYTIME , and I' m sure that ten years from now, a waiter will be the same ; he'll argue be good . the same way, make the same gestures. I think PLAYTIME will be better a few years from now, when We ' re always having to accept-that's why the more and more people have received that new decor in their lives . People don 't change as much as other new generation has said no . They want the truth ; people imagine. They change by publicity, commer- cials, but not inside. A great doctor once told me, you can 't lie to them . They 're against war because \" Tati ,\" he said , \" you ' re 100 per cent right to defend the people, because the moment you enter a hospi- they find it silly that so much money is spent on tal , whether you ' re badly sick or not, your personal- ity comes out, whether you ' re strong or afraid . destruction when most of the people need food , and Advertisements , a Frigidaire, a new car , that's all art . . . . Each personality becomes clear to anyone there they have such an important argument. But who 's visiting a hospital. Every human comes back to being human when he realizes that it's something they have to be very strong . I give you my opinion , important. \" which isn't more important than any other. But if The behavior that you show in your films is always public behavior-you nearly always show people in people take drugs and then don 't see the reality, crowds, rarely in a private situation . Have you ever thought of making a psychological film? or forget about it, it's no help. They ' re making a Maybe I' m strong enough to do it. Maybe , if I little bit of a ghetto for themselves. could help , if somebody will .. . . Chaplin didn't do anything in making THE GREAT DICTATOR : he had a Maybe a lot of these problems are the problem joke on Hitler, so what? To educate the people-I don 't educate them , I try to place them in a situation with democracy, which in another way may not be where they laugh for a reason. I always have to respect the public; I figure if it makes me laugh , the problem that PLAYTIME has had-because come- maybe it will also make you laugh. But to go on and do something more-of course we could , but dy has conventionally meant everybody laughing at it's not just one man who must do it, it's a group. We have to talk to other generations-people from the same things at the same time; whereas in PLAY- my generation , those behind me, and even the generation behind you : then maybe we could create TIME , for an audience really to respond to it, different something . people have to laugh at different things at different Coming back to Paris last week, I noticed all the construction along the Seine. The superhighway times. that's going to be built next to Notre Dame and the skyscraper going up in Montparnasse both seem That's how I felt. And I feel it very strongly. If to come out of PLAYTIME . The funny thing is, I don 't know anybody who wants that autoroute there. we accept a new stiaving cream without realizing No , nobody. Yes, it'll be faster and very practical it isn 't a good one, and we accept a comic picture -that's all the planners care about. But the people who 've got the money make the decision. I don 't to be constructed a certain way because that's the know what the next move will be in the elections , but there isn 't one party strong enough today to way people will laugh , and if we accept everything , really change policy. An independent group can we're going to be part of a regiment. Because the people who have a lot of money have very strong arguments. When you see people on American television, the way they speak and move and wear their clothes , their wigs-they all have wigs, you can see them-nothing is real. That's why what they create isn 't warm , or natural. When you see all that cream they put in the commercials-I watched from 9 A.M . to 11 :30 and I saw only cream , everywhere : cream on the bread , cream on the shoes, cream on the face , cream on the potatoes, cream to be dirty-chocolate cream , that looks like I don 't know what. At 12:30 I had an appointment for lunch and I said , \" Really , I'm not joking , I can 't eat. \" If one wants to protest, say, the highway going up next to Notre Dame, what does one do? Yeah , we tried-we went , my assistant went to make a demonstration , nobody cared for it. Making an autoroute there is the silliest thing you can imagine. In thirty or forty-five years they 'll find it was so wrong , because it's so well-built and arranged now. Boys play guitars there and the girls go and have little love affairs with them . That's Paris. That's why I did PLAYTIME . 11111111 JACQUES TATI FILMOGRAPHY (1908- ) KEY: CON Contemporary Films; WRS Walter Reade 16. 1949 Jour de fete; 1954 Les vacances de Mon- sieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holiday) WRS ; 1958 Mon oncle (My Uncle) CON ; 1967 Playtime; 1971 Traffic . FILM COMMENT 41

Grander and Gaudier previous work , especially the biographies ':', Russell is genuinely fond of the characters portrayed in by Robert Phillip Kolker SAVAGE MESSIAH , and he treats them , frenzied as they are, gently, quietly, and considerately. Melodrama Robert Phillip Kolker teaches film at the University is suppressed , there is a great deal of Simple come- of Maryland and has contributed to Sight and Sound dy, and the much criticized Russell \" excess \" is and The Journal of Popular Film . He wishes to thank absorbed into the material rather than exploding out United Artists, Warner Brothers, MGM, Time-Life of it. Films, and the BBC for their help in the preparation of the article. This \" excess \" and an unrelentingly ironic point of view have probably been the qualities most SAVAGE MESSIAH marks a return and a change for responsible for the critical hatred of Russell 's past Ken Russell . He told me, during a mixing session work . His almost obsessive desire to destroy pre- last summer , that it would be much like his BBG tense and smash romantic icons seems to guarantee Delius biography. He is right , in that , unlike his later an adverse reaction . And an adverse reaction is BBG films and recent features, it is linear in form, bound to come each time he realizes this desire depending on composition and internal montage with vitality and an approach to cinema that does rather than shock cuts for effect. In its evocation not admit of subtlety or moderation. But the reaction of pre-World War I society it has a look and feel is quite unfounded. To be offended by a style without similar to WOMEN IN LOVE . But unlike any of his analyzing the reason for the style suggests critical self-satisfaction and cowardice, two qualities Rus- sell is always attacking in his films. Russell sees the artist as a man or woman of heightened sensibilities who is beleaguered both by his own neuroses or sense of mission and by an environment that is strained into madness as the artist tries to live out his life in it. Russell 's inquiry (he says he approaches biography as a detective story) is into the ways his character might have dealt with his life, basing the material on existing facts , as Russell interprets them, but playing the \" facts \" against the romanticized myth that has grown up around the artist. Thus , the typical Russell subject is composed of three personae: the historical figure , the myth the figure has created , and Russell's own vision of the subject, which exaggerates the histori- cal figure in order to play it off against the myth . The result is, obviously, conflict. And it is a conflict in which no one wins : not the subject, not his contemporary world , not the popular myth , and certainly not the audience who come to a biograph- ical film with certain expectations. Ultimately the biographical figure is turned into an actor in history and is destroyed by his act and the historical mo- ment that cannot contain him . After his death he is further destroyed by his mythic persona , that version of himself created by the admirers of his art. An example of the interaction of mutually de- structive personae is perhaps most evident in Rus- sell 's last television film, Dance of the Seven Veils: A Comic Strip in Seven Episodes on the Life of Richard Strauss. Russell has Strauss literally act out the fantasies that are part of his music and his position in Germany . Strauss as Zarathustra is a caveman mauled by a pack of crazed nuns (a preview of THE DEVILS). For \" The Domestic Sym- phony \" Mr. and Mrs . Strauss take a tumble in front of the orchestra, Richard shouting \"Now! \" to the * 1consider the bas ic Russell canon to be made up of the biographies , those done for the BBG and the features, including THE DEVILS. BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN and WOMEN IN LOVE were both more in the nature of assignments and are th erefore less representative of his personal vision . THE BOY FRIEND , while it contains many of the elements I speak abo ut here, Russell refers to as a hol iday . To w hi ch he adds that it would have been a better holiday if he had gone away . 42 MAY 1973

conductor each time climax is reached. For \" The SAVAGE MESSIAH. Scott Antony in the Luxembourg Gardens. Alpine Symphony \" he imagines himself in the midst of war , looking on as his wife is raped . With the SAVAGE MESSIAH. Scott Antony and Dorothy Tutin . photos : MGM rise of the Nazis, Zarathustra becomes Hitler, the opening of \" Also Sprach \" is played by Storm DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS . Ken Russell 's personal impression of (from Troopers and Strauss acts out his collaborative role left) Richard Strauss, Goebbels, Hitler, Goering , Eva Braun and Pauline by passing out records with swastika labels to the Strauss. photo: BBC high command . An opera becomes a movie for which Strauss conducts the orchestra. While a Jew in the audience is tortured and killed , Strauss calls on the orchestra to play louder and drown out the screams. When he falls out of favor, Strauss writes a letter of apology to the government. His political confusion , the impossible strain of separating art from politics, ages him, and to the music of \" Meta- morphosen \" his wife places the mask of an old man over his face, a mask that remains until he rejuve- nates himself by conducting \" Zarathustra \" once more before he dies. This whole series of performances is outrageous, which is precisely what Russell intended. After all , this is a comic strip which strips the pretentions from a pompous composer and makes him comic . Russell gives Strauss only a little more than Strauss asked for . He was the Nazi 's pet composer. He did write a piece of music about himself and call it \" A Hero 's Life .\" \" One cannot be a superman all the time.\" says Russell 's Strauss . \" Sometimes it's a relief, a relaxation , as it were , to be a mere hero. \" The role Stra)uss chose for himself was that of an extreme self-server. Russell merely strips away all mitigating factors and exaggerates the actor, casting Strauss in all the parts he wanted to play. The fact that cries of protest from everyone, including the Strauss family, forced the SSC to place an embargo on the film is indicative of the reaction most Russell films receive . The joke is not only on Strauss , but on anyone who took the film more seriously than in- tended . Russell is dead serious about having his joke. Somewhere along the line, he insists, his subject must become comic (Russell has said that Grandier in THE DEVILS is a tragic comedian), the milieu foolish , and the whole film something other than high serious. With this in mind , the notion of hero as actor becomes even more complex; it becomes a matter of manipulation . The hero manipulates his life in an attempt to perform in the world and , as mentioned before, Russell manipulates the per- former and his world together. In every sense of the word , Russell is the \" director,\" and in the end the hero , be he poet, musician , dancer or priest, is acting out the role Russell sets for him . Consider THE MUSIC LOVERS, basically a film about a bunch of neurotics imposing their fantasies on one another. On their mockery of a honeymoon , Tchaikovsky and Nina visit a camera obscura show. The camera picks up a pair of lovers in the grass outside the pavillion and reflects them to the voyeurs inside. Everyone is delighted , except Tchaikovsky , and the performance of the unexpecting lovers is roundly applauded . A parody of this scene will occur in the horrendous railroad car episode when FILM COMMENT 43

Nina and Tchaikovsky return from their holiday. In number. The exteriors of Loudon and the interiors this case we are the sole onlookers to this grotesque of the convent and Richelieu 's library look like attempt by a homosexual and a nymphomaniac to contemporary stage sets. The interplay of modern consummate their marriage. We are no longer sets and period \" realism \" sets up a counterpoint watching the voyeurs watching a candid camera. of medieval and modern prejudice, greed , and self- We are the voyeurs to a scene in which Tchaikovsky serving essential to the film 's theme. Grandier is forced into one of his many degrading perform- moves about with an almost pompous self assur- ances . The clima x of his act is the \" 1812 Overture \" ance, playing out the role of liberal Catholic and sequence . His patron gone, his life in ruins , Tchai- protector of his domain against political pressure. kovsky is talked into conducting for a living. A He falls , of course, and falls because other people- fantasy sequence occurs that once again joins au- the nuns whipped into hysteria-are made to act dience and \" hero \" into a curious bond , sealed by roles by his enemies . After a courtier has calmed Russel l' s irony . Tchaikovsky is confronted by all his the hysterical nuns with an empty relic box , he is friends and lovers. The famous 1812 cannon is used asked , \" What sort of trick have you played on us? \" to blow their heads off. The absurdity of the situa- He responds : \" What sort of trick are you playing tion , the absurdity of this piece of music-a favorite on us?\" of the \" semi-classical\" music lovers-is capped when a line of can-can dancers high step in time Games create stress. Acting roles to suit one's while Modeste counts all the money Tchaikovsky self-conceptions or to counter the games and tricks is making . The sequence ends with Tchaikovsky in others are playing does violence to the self. Russell a c'onductor 's pose , which dissolves to a statue of extrapolates stress and violence from the given Tchaikovsky in the same pose , stand ing in the situation ; they satu rate his mise-en-scene . Russell middle of a snowy, deserted square. The reality is nothing if not a showman . He loves his medium follows out of the fantasy. and is aware of its potential for violent action . But the violent action he loves to show is not laid over In a following sequence the performance that is his subject. He is not \" self-indulgent \"; he only Tchaikovsky 's life is defined . His wife is in an insane indulges the cinematic potentials of his subject for asylum , everyone but Modeste has deserted him . all they are worth . The \" excess \" of the exorc ism Alone in a resort, he is finishing his last symphony scenes in THE DEVILS is historically accurate . Huxley and looking for a grand title, a summary of his life. describes them in detail. They look horrible because \" I'll call it the 'Tragic ',\" he says . \" That sums up my they are visualized in their fullness . In fact Russell life.\" Modeste, always cool , cynical and realistic, underplays some things : had he shown all the details laughs and suggests that \" Pathetic\" would be a of Grandier's torture as they are described by Hu x- much more accurate summary. Tchaikovsky agrees ley, they would really have been unbearable. There and goes on to drink the tainted water that will give is nothing \" excessive \" in the railroad car sequence him cholera. With the final overpowering images of of THE MUSIC LOVERS , or even its madhouse episodes. Nina in the madhouse , and Tchaikovsky boiled like The violence here is necessary to indicate fully the a lobster to cure his cholera, we are left with some- horror that Tchaikovsky had permitted himself and thing other than a benign idea of the composer of those around him to endure . And when , in THE beautiful melodies. The melodies remain ; Russell DEVILS, Louis turns to the camera after shooting has no intentions of debasing the art. He merely down Protestants dressed up like crows and says, wants to dramatically de-romanticize the artist. \" Bye-bye , blackbird ,\" this is not self-indulgence. It is a joke. A simple bit of hilarious anachronism . One He wants to destroy simple emotions and wrong more warning from Russell not to take the conclusions . He wants to undercut posturing and seriousness too seriously. cure excessive sentiment. In Karel Reisz 's Isadora Duncan film , the dancer is asked by someone , \" Why Which brings us back to SAVAGE MESSIAH , a trag- do you always make a fool of yourself?\" In Russell's icomedy whose characters Russell takes more BBC film of Duncan , The Biggest Dancer in the seriously than any before. I think the reason for this World, she is portrayed a fool , simple and self- is two-fold . For one, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska is not indulgent. In a scene showing her riding across the as well known as Strauss or Isadora Duncan or Russian wastes , her love letters scattering in the Rossetti or Tchaikovsky, and certainly his life and wind, we perce ive the pathetic individual beneath death were not as spectacular as Grandier's. There the facade of the myth . Rossetti , in Dante 's Inferno , is little popular myth surrounding him that might is left sitting by a blasted tree overlooking a lake . need puncturing. Secondly, Gaudier and Sophie A lovely image , fractured by his woman yelling at Brzeska are rather unassuming characters as they him : \" You rotten bastard! \" As the closing credits are presented in H. S. Ede 's biography, which pro- come up, an anachronistic \" I Want to Be Happy \" vides the title and the minimal data for the film . is heard on the track . In THE DEVILS , Grandier, who Gaudier is a hyper-active, excitable , very young attempts to be a figure of dignity and responsibility , sculptor, who died at 23 in the trenches of the Great is reduced by the insanity around him , first to an War . Sophie is a middle-aged would-be writer who ugly, shaven penitent, finally to a charred bone. died in a madhouse. They lived together in a strained , strange platonic relationship. THE DEVILS may be Russell 's finest example of history as stage and hero as actor. It starts out as Russell exaggerates Gaudier's frenetic character a stage spectacular. It opens , after an ironically in a way that makes it charming and attractive. He pompous written statement of its historical accura- plays down Sophie 's madness. Gaudier 's death is cy, on a stage set where Louis does his drag not shown . His friends , sitting in an unspeakably 44 MAY 1973

trendy nightclub ,':' joke over a vaunting letter he has doesn 't find the shock cuts that seem to be one sent them from the trenches. One says, \" Whoever of Russell 's trademarks: the embrace of Gudrun wrote that should be shot. \" Another answers , \" He and Gerald and the embrace of the drowned lovers was, last Thursday.\" Out briefly to Sophie' s tear- in WOMEN IN LOVE; Rubenstein playing \" Romeo and stained face , a photo of Gaudier in the trenches, Juliet \" for Madame von Meck in her lu xurious home, and a lyrical sequence of a posthumous exhibit of and Nina in her squalid flat , having been raped by his work . A cut then to Gaudier's studio, filled with the postman in THE MUSIC LOVERS ; the exorcism of a huge, unfinished work. Above is a grill looking the nuns and Grandier praying for himself in a calm out onto the street , a victory parade going by, the pastoral setting . These are just a very few examples participants oblivious to the events that have oc- of the ways Russell ju xtaposes madness and sanity, curred . By the unfinished work stands Sophie , who violence and calm , attitudes and events cross cut, quietly, in long shot, walks out. The camera zooms but eventually dove-tailing in a way that will undo to a close-up of the unfinished work , over which the subject of the film . SAVAGE MESSIAH moves in flash the closing credits. an orderly progression from sequence to sequence , and the few ironic juxtapositions it does contain This is the most understated , unmelodramatic occur within the sequence. Gaudier carries on at close that Russell ever filmed , and it is in tone with the Louvre: he and Sophie are thrown out as (with the work as a whole . There is no violent action. a bit of dramatic irony) a funeral procession goes Russell told me he had filmed an incredible fight by. Gaudier picks up Gosh Boyle, an aristocratic between Gaudier and Sophie, decided it didn 't fit, suffragette (she asks him for a light which ignites and dropped it . He had to re-dub the following the fuse of a bomb , which she hurls at a mail-box); sequence in order to remove reference to the cut they go to Shaw's mod night club . Full screen we footage . Sophie and Gaudier do have a go at each see a painting of a lady whose lips begin to move other, rolling around on a floor full of food ; but this and sing an anti-feminist song . Gaudier and Gosh is played for comedy , as are many of the events wind up doing their own song and dance on stage. in the film . The comedy throughout is direct and Gaudier brings Gosh home: as they proceed to make genuine , not grotesque as in the Strauss film , or love, Sophie proceeds to plug her ears, scrub the cute and campy as in THE BOY FRIEND . Henri Gau- floor and sing. In another sequence , Gaudier sculpts , dier-Brzeska postures and pontificates-in fact acts rationalizing his reasons for not going to war, spat- out a persona as do all Russell 's subjects (in the tering stone chips like bird droppings on Gosh's all night sculpting episode described below he car- uniform (he is sculpting a figure of birds), while a ries on about how much he needs an audience), war parade goes on in the street behind them . This but there is a feeling he is aware of his posturing , choice of setting for Gaudier's studio serves Russell and we can share in his vitality directly, without the well throughout the film. Its squalor, its basement discomfiting feeling that the joke is on him and on location , its grated opening to the street juxtaposes us. the artist and his world (through the grating Gaudier gets a newspaper with a report of the invasion of With the comedy is some very fine acting (Russell Paris which will convince him to join up). Gaudier is an excellent director of actors , though this talent succumbs to the world's demands, as do all of is sometimes buried in the visual style of his work). Russell 's artists. But he does it with a grace and There is a virtuoso sequence evolving from the fact vitality and sanity that Russell heretofore has never that an influential art dealer, Lionel Shaw, promises permitted his subjects. to come early in the morning to see a work by Gaudier. Gaudier has not sculpted the piece. After Are we to conclude from SAVAGE MESSIAH that searching a graveyard for a proper stone , we see Russell has succumbed to restraint? Will the legion Gaudier at work . He sculpts and talks , non-stop. of critics , especially in England , who have chosen Sophie falls asleep. His friend Corky dozes. Gaudier to hate him now say he has come to his senses? hammers and tells stories, hammers and makes Probably not. Doubtless they will criticize him be- speeches on art, hammers and talks the whole night. cause he invents episodes in Gaudier'S life that Ede Of course Shaw never shows up and , to his and never mentions, as if Russell 's imagination had to our great satisfaction , Gaudier brings his sculpture be tied to an essentially dull book . And his ebullience in a wheelbarrow and hurls it through Shaw 's win- and anger and sense of fun are not to be restrained . dow. Scott Antony's acting in this sequence is As he was mixing SAVAGE MESSIAH he told me about matched earlier by Dorothy Tutin 's. Sophie tells Gau- his next film . It will be called THE ANGELS and will dier about her life and her loneliness. Done in concern God , as seen through the fantasies of a simple , single-source lighting and in a long close- dying director of television commercials. One scene up take, occasionally intercut with shots of her will be made up of a confrontation of history's major cutting vegetables for dinner and a few reaction institutions: the Catholic Church , Communism , shots of Gaudier, it is a concentrated, well-played Capitalism . In his briefcase Russell was carrying emotional expression of a kind hard to find in around books by Eldridge Cleaver and George Russell's earlier work. Jackson, Lenin on religion , pamphlets on Esperan- to , an article on Ronald Reagan. \" This film is going In both these sequences the emphasis is on the to take care of everybody,\" he said . I suggested shot, rather than montage. In SAVAGE MESSIAH one the opening title might simply read , \" Ken Russell's Film on God .\" He didn 't deny the possibility. \" The night c lub is ca lled \" Vo rt ex ,\" I don ' t know if such a p la ce existed . If it didn 't, Russell has played another joke on us, since 11111111 the Vortex was a pompous theory of art that Ezra Pound connected to Gaudier-Brzeska 's work. FILM COMMENT 45

Structuralism t The Engtish Cine-Structuralists by Charles W. Eckert Charles W. Eckert is an Associate Professor in of the method they have developed . But before the English Department at Indiana University. He assessing it, we must define the major forms of teaches film and literature and has recently pub- criticism which are today called structuralist and lished Focus on Shakespearean Films (Prentice- with which their work is easily confused. Although Hall, Inc.). structural insights have always underpinned con- ceptual thinking in philosophy and the sciences In the late 1960s, just when the politique des (Aristotle, Hegel, Marx, Jung), their wide modern auteurs began to look shopworn and foxed at the vogue derives from the structural linguists. The edges, a group of English critics gave it a hard basic insights of De Saussure, Jacobson , and others inspection , stripped it to its framework , and refur- have been ramified into three forms of structural bished it with a bright new critical material called criticism of special interest to film critics: the study structuralism . In its new habit, and viewed from a of linguistic structures in narrative, mainly by To- distance, auteurism might pass as the creation of dorov and Barthes; the semiological study of the Claude Levi-Strauss, or Roland Barthes, or Christian \" language\" of cinema by Metz, Pasolini , Eco and Metz-or even such un-structuralists as Freud and others (really an attempt to determine how cinema Jung-though certainly it bears little resemblance signifies and whether it can be analyzed like a to Truffaut and Sarris. But seen close up it quickly language); and Levi-Strauss's study of the underly- proves to have few distinctive features, to pertain, ing the structures of thought and of the codes in fact, to all its fathers-or to none of them-like employed in the dialectical systems which operate a ragamuffin promiscuously conceived in the streets in mythic thought. and dropped on the nearest doorstep. The last form of structural study most closely The English critics in question are Geoffrey approximates that used by the English critics, and Nowell-Smith , Peter Wollen, Jim Kitses , Alan Lovell , is the one I shall concentrate upon . The study of and Ben Brewster. An assessment of their work narrative structure in film employing purely linguistic would seem in order before discussing the future 46 MAY 1973

analogues does not look promising ; in fact , Barthes Signs and Meaning in the Cinema must be , after has said as much and , more importantly , has pro- Film Form and What is Cinema?, the most widely fessed to find little that is intellectually interesting read work on film theory among present-day film in the cinema (certainly a comment on his method students . Its faults are many, but they have proven rather than the cinema). Metz, the most thorough to be seminal faults , spawning as many ideas and of the semiologists, seems satisfied that the study thoughtful reactions as the Bazin-Eisenstein con- of film as a language is limited in scope and in the troversies. The centrality of this work makes its views applicability of the insights it achieves . But we have on auteur-structuralism especially important. Wollen not as yet seen any thorough attempt to apply begins with quotations from Nowell-Smith 's study, Levi-Strauss's study of mythic thought and codes then chooses the films of Howard Hawks as a test to film . I emphasize the word thorough because case for the \" structural approach .\" He first dichoto- Levi-Strauss's name and his method are frequently mizes Hawks's films into two categories: the adven- alluded to by the English auteur-structuralists. ture drama and the crazy comedy (he here follows Robin Wood , who also has structuralist affinities). Perhaps the best way to elaborate these complex These types \" express inverse views of the world , matters is , first, to assess the work of this group the positive and negative poles of the Hawksian of critics and to com pare their methods with those vision .\" 3 An awareness of \" differences and opposi- formulated by Levi-Strauss, and then to define both tions, \" he continues , must be cultivated along with the achievements and the promise of auteur-struc- the awareness of \" resemblances and repetitions\" turalism , and of structuralism in general. From this usually found in thematic or motif-seeking criticism . point on , any reference I make to structuralism He then cites main sets of antinomies in Hawks's should be considered a reference to Levi-Strauss 's work and notes how they break down into lesser method. ( For those interested in the recent Cahiers sets-any of which may overlap or be \" foregrounded disparagement of structural study as opposed to a in different movies .\" Marxist-ideological analysis I have appended a brief note. ') The fi rst influential work-indeed , the gener- But Wollen 's most intensive criticism is saved for ative locus for the auteur-structuralist criticism we John Ford , in whose work he finds the \" master are considering-was Geoffrey Nowell-Smith 's Lu- antinomy\" of wilderness and garden (the terms are chino Visconti (1967). This work influenced Peter derived by Wollen from Henry Nash Smith 's The Wollen , whose Signs and Meaning in the Cinema Virgin Land) . The entire analysis of Ford reaches (1969) in turn gave rise to a series of articles con- its principal conclusion in this statement: \" Ford 's cerned with structuralism in Screen. Nowell-Smith work is much richer than that of Hawks and ... this moved from the assertions that authorship is a is revealed by a structural analysis ; it is the richness necessary dimension for the study of films, and that of the shifting relations between antinomies in \" the defining characteristics of an author 's work are Ford 's work that makes him a great artist, beyond not those that are most readily apparent,\" to his being simply an undoubted auteur\" (page 102) . This main thesis: \" the purpose of criticism becomes statement captures the essence of Wollen 's species therefore to uncover behind the superficial con- of structuralism , just as the search for a \" hard core trasts of subject and treatment a structural hard core of basic and often recondite motifs\" defines Nowell- of basic and often recondite motifs .' '2 The principal Smith 's. drawbacks to this approach , he found , were a radi- cal narrowing of the field of inquiry, the \" possibility Both of these definitions were harmonious with of an author's work changing over time and of the the intentions of a work appearing in the same year structures being variable and not constant,\" (page as Wollen 's-Jim Kitses 's Horizons West. Kitses 12) and the temptation to neglect the myriad aspects began , \" But I should make clear what I mean by of a film 's production and aesthetic effect that a auteur theory . In my view the term describes a basic study of motifs does not impinge upon . In Visconti 's principle and a method: the idea of personal author- films Nowell-Smith did not find a \" single and com- ship in the cinema and-of key importance-the prehensive structure,\" largely because Visconti has concomitant responsibility to honour all of a direc- developed with the years and has adopted many tor's works by a systematic examination in order styles of filmmaking . to trace characteristic themes, structures and formal qualities .'\" Kitses also draws upon Smith 's The As a structuralist approach this is tentative and Virgin Land for the insight that the image of the West qualified indeed. And Nowell-Smith's entire study has a dialectical form : \" Thus central to the form of Visconti brings under analysis many aspects of we have a philosophical dialectic, an ambiguous production , history, and stylistic influence that have cluster of meanings and attitudes that provide the no bearing upon structure, yet are considered indis- traditional thematic structure of the genre. \" Kitses pensable for understanding the films. Yet the domi- provides a chart listing the principal antinomies, and nant impression one receives from this thoughtful, notes that polar terms may be transposed in the independent analysis is that structured themes are course of an auteur's development. His study of indeed at the heart of Visconti 's enterprise and individual auteurs is very subtle , yet, as I will show Nowell-Smith 's critical interest. In the later discus- later, not as close in spirit to Levi-Strauss as Wol- sion of Levi-Strauss I will attempt to position and len 's. to assess Nowell-Smith's method . For the moment let us consider Peter Wollen 's use of his concep- The works of Nowell-Smith , Wollen and Kitses, tions. all produced in the late Sixties, might have repre- sented a mere eddy in the current of auteur criticism FILM COMMENT 47

had their methods and their cause not been taken study be lim ited to directors, or has it promise for up by other English critics. In the March / Apri l 1969 genres of film , the output of individual studios , or issue of Screen Alan Lovell published a strongly more specialized aspects of films such as visuals dissenting criticism of the work of Robin Wood , and sound tracks? Or is film too syncretic and finding it deficient in analytic method and concerned complex an art form to yield anything of value to with gaining assent rather than giving proof as it such an approach? measured films and directors against an established system of beliefs and values . As an antidote , Lovell We should beg in with a definition of Levi- proposed an auteur-structuralist method strongly Strauss's object (myth ) and the analytic method he resembling those already discussed: \" . .. any devised to comprehend it. Levi-Strauss 's object is director creates his films on the basis of a central relatively simple and uniform: a body of myth (usual- structure and . . . all of his films can be seen as ly short narratives) collected by ethnographers and variations or developments of it .'\" To illustrate his anthropologists in a given region of the world . It method he analyzed a pattern found in Arthur is immaterial whether one has all the available ver- Penn 's work consisting of a polarity between social sions of a myth or is able to assess the \" reliability \" groups and heroes, and a father-figure who medi- of one's sources: myths are interminable and have ates between the two (both the groups and heroes no definitive or \" ur\" form . All versions of a given are prone to vio lence; the fathers mediate the violent myth constitute the myth ; and one can begin the camps much as the Prince does in Romeo and task of analysis with any of the versions. The myths JUliet). Lovell 's article began a chain-reaction of are analyzed sequentially, each \" gross unit\" of the response including an attack on Lovell's structur- analysis consisting of a term and a relation which alism by Robin Wood , a reply by Lovell , an indepen- are one half of an anti nomic pair: Oedipus kills his dent defense of Wood by John C. Murray, and a father-the Sphin x's death gives life to Thebes. A well-informed discussion of the structural contribu- given term may enter into many relations: the sun , tions of Barths, Metz and others by Ben Brewster 6 for instance, may figure in the first relation in the pairs. It gives light-darkens; burns-freezes; causes Although much of the discussion is contentious , growth-causes death . Or it may be ambivalent and when one pares away the ad hominem forensics represent both relations: causes drought-gives and the quite pOintless debates over the \" value\" new life . Its value at any moment in a myth must, of totally divergent critical methods, one finds both therefore , be determined through careful assess- the intentions and the lim itations of auteur-structur- ment of its function in (usually) a number of po- alist criticism clarified . Both Wood and Murray note larized relations . It is the next analytic step , however, that Kitses , Wollen , and Lovell are making judg- that is most unique in Levi-Strauss ' method: \" The ments of the worth of directors on such bases as true constituent units of a myth are not the isolated the clarity of the antinom ic structures or the com- relations but bundles of su ch relation s , and it is only plexity of their interrelations (Wollen on Ford ; Lovell as bundles that these relations can be put to use on Penn). Structuralism , Wood and Murray contend , and combined so as to produce a meaning .'\" Levi- is not used as a mere analytic tool , but as a measure Strauss 's brilliance resides in his ability to discern of a director's maturity or artistic stature. And they central \" bundles \" of relations in myths and to sug- find its discoveries-the pairs of opposites , the pat- gest why they are meaningful-a task that requires terns of interchange-banal, of no great signifi- more intelligence and discernment than analytic cance, mere critical jargon that cannot help us rigor. One cannot , without extended quotation from distinguish between a great film and a highly po- Levi-Strauss 's work , show how the analysis pro- larized and structured cartoon by Tex Avery or ceeds . I can only refer the reader to specific pas- Chuck Jones (Murray). sages and to commentaries on the method by inter- preters ' OThe entire task is additionally complicated There is so much oversimplification , obtuseness , by the possibilities for permutation among the rela- and downright unfairness running through the tions one is analyzing: \" . . . two opposite terms with whole debate that one must resist the temptation no intermediary always tend to be replaced by two to leap in . But what one principally feels is the need equivalent te rms which admit of a third one as for a re-truing of terms , for a fresh look at the notion mediator; then one of the polar terms and the of structuralism , and at the suitability of a structural mediator becomes replaced by a new triad , and so study of a director's body of work-or of films in on .\" 11 These \" transformations \" of the myth usually general. We must begin with the writings of the ex press the same opposition (s) by working through doyen of structuralism , Claude Levi-Strauss . There a variety of similarly structured taxonomies-in are two indispensable essays, both of them attempts primitive societies, ta xonomies of plants, animals, to formulate and delimit the uses of structuralism , stones, heavenly bodies, and so forth . The opposi- \" The Structural Study of Myth \" (1958),' and the tion sun-moon may carry the same meaning as the \" Overture \" to The Raw and the Cooked (1964) .8The opposition eagle-bear, even though the terms are essays are so broad-rang ing , especially the latter, drawn from separate taxonomies. that we would do best to define our interests before approaching them . We might express these interests Again and again, Levi-Strauss emphasizes the as a series of questions directly bearing upon film : importance of polarized thought (\" myth works from Has a truly Levi-Straussian study of a director been an awareness of oppositions to their progressive made? In what would it consist? Should structural mediation \") and the dynamic, fluctuating nature of 48 MAY 1973