And Now, the Unkindest 'Cut' ofAll We now know the inside story of the Kris Kristofferson skates with Isabelle Huppert in Heaven's Gate. Heaven's Gate debacle, because Steven Bach was urged by screenwriter William ''The promise of independence was less tion decision:' he says, due to Albeck's Goldman to keep a journal of his UA expe- a relinquishing of power or control:' Bach urge to have input from every department riences, and did so from 1978 to 1981 . writes, \"than it was an inspired stratagem Bach's Final Cut belongs in the company to attract expertise in a period - more than before making up his mind. of Lillian Ross' Picture, Goldman's Adven- 30 years ago now - before anyone had ever This called up several key concerns in tures in the Screen Trade, and John Gre- heard of the auteur theory, before agents gory Dunne's The Studio in its clear- and lawyers had replaced producers, and the company's delicate new position. The sighted depiction of the ins and outs of the before poetic license had become the first were its long-term bonds with filmma- movie industry. intellectual justification for all manner of kers Woody Allen and Blake Edwards creative licentiousness:' (with his Peter Sellers-starred Pink Pan- Bach is remarkably frank in looking ther series), and producers Cubby Broc- back on the series of wrong-headed Heav- Of course, the company could control a coli (with the 007 movies) and Chartoff- en's Gate decisions UA made, but he also production by saying ' yes or no to the Winkler, who were preparing Rocky II. stacks the deck in his own favor in a subtle project, or by building into its contracts UA also had to attract new high-profile and revealing way. What Bach doesn't approvals of script, director, cast, produc- projects and talents as well as establ.ish quite face in Final Cut is that the company tion manager, budget, locations , raw credibility and build strength. Albeck, really was as weak as its critics claimed- stock, and so on. But, Bach adds, the says Bach, was \"unabashedly determined and that this weakness was directly approvals were subject to trust and negoti- to prove to Transamerica and Hollywood responsible for U~s troubles with Michael ation and \"were sometimes reduced to a that the 'new' UA could deliver pictures as Cimino's runaway mentality. UA's produc- minimum of budget, script, and leading major as anybody else:' tion staff simply wasn't equal to a man cast:' According to Bach, UA believed in a who , even at his best, seems to require policy of \"benign neglect:' which did not Bach vividly describes the production bull-whip handling. (Dino DeLaurentiis entail long hours spent watching daily team's yearning to be taken seriously, to Productions and MGM/UA apparently rushes or prowling sets. Before the advent look strong. They placed a $2 million bid wrangled with Cimino on his flfst \"come- of a special challenge like Cimino, Bach on a book they didn't want (and didn't get); back\" picture, the relatively modest lear suggests, the company was more or less of the Dragon. Cimino is still, according able to trust its producers and directors, they spent $2.5 million for Gay Talese's to one participant in that film, \"demanding and operated with a system of checks and then-unpublished Thy Neighbor's Wife (a and a perfectionist:' although he brought balances that worked. The question is: movie still unmade in 1985); and they the movie in ahead of schedule and under Exactly when and how did this system persuaded Chartoff-Winkler to bring them budget.) stop working? Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. Michael Cimino was one of the hot new properties Bach's structuring of his book is more Bach doesn't overtly admit this, but the they determined to snag. He had been than informative; it's argumentative. He decline began on the day the UA manage- scouted pre-Deer Hunter by Danton layers his points to explain how the Heav- ment team, led by Arthur Krim, expressed Rissner who signed him to a long-term en 's Gate imbroglio could have ever its dissatisfaction with the financial con- development deal before leaving UA for occurred. He takes the reader through a trols placed on them by Transamerica, and triple bypass surgery. Albeck also filled the walked out to form Orion Pictures. Tran- management void left by Rissner by pro- detailed history of United Artists. In 195 1, samerica responded by choosing Albeck, moting from within, creating an unprece- a man without Hollywood savvy, to head dented dual production presidency: David when Ropert Benjamin and Arthur Krim the new management regime. Although Field to head the West Coast office and took over and revitalized UA, its West by and large loyal in this account to Bach to run production in New York. Coast offices were housed on the MGM Albeck, Bach describes one Albeck Cimino became their shared responsibil- lot, and its only piece of prime real estate change with some resentment: the sales ity-a point Bach frequentl y reiterates. was a New York office building at 729 and distribution arms of the company had Seventh Avenue. As a result, UA lacked an \"obstructive influence on every produc- Though Universal's The Deer Hunter the overhead and liabilities of a studio or was creating a major buzz on both the production company, and acted as an inde- boxoffice and Oscar fronts, Bach managed pendent distributor, collecting a fee for to scuttle Cimono's proposal to ftlm Ayn releasing pictures produced by others. Krim and Benjamin introduced the con- cept of helping producers arrange financ- ing, including UA money, and would then share picture profits with the producers. Originally, UA charged no studio overhead to a production, which was attractive to independent producers, and so garnered a reputation for being, as Bach puts it, \"the only creatively enlightened ftlm company:' allowing \"... independent production in an atmosphere of autonomy and creative freedom :' 49
Rand's The Fountainhead. Writer Tom $11,588,771. The deal memo was finally brass . Horrified , they persuade him that Buckley was perhaps the first to establish pushed through, over cautious business cuts are necessary, and he cuts the movie an alter ego relationship between Cimino affairs executive Dean Stoiber's protests, down to three hours, 39 minutes. Bach and his leading characters . Buckley wrote just after The Deer Hunter won five Acad- brushes off Cimino's refusal to allow pre- in Harper s : \"The Deer Hunter doesn't emy Awards , including Best Picture and views, to screen the final cut for the execu- hold a mirror up to nature. It holds it up to Best Director. tives, or to consider postponing the open- Cimino:' Buckley goes on to call Cimino a ing. The movie's New York premiere is liar, narcissist, and megalomaniac. Seeing UA had argued long and hard over the November 18, 1980: the East Coast press, Mickey Rourke's pig-headed cop in ~ar of deal, with the production start date loom- stars, and industry movers and shakers, all the Dragon , it may be easier to under- ing. Several points rankled: billing- heavily influenced by well-orchestrated stand why Bach saw a warning sign in ''Michael Cimino's Heaven s Gate\" was publicity hype, will be there. 'We couldn't Cimino's affinity for the protagonist of The hard for UA to swallow ; advertising demand to see it;' claims Bach, \"without Fountainhead and his vaulting quest for approvals; personal expenses; \"nd finally, endangering our heavily advertised New artistic purity. length. They had not, however, contested York opening.... I took a fateful leap of the paragraph that mandated Cimino meet faith; the picture would open as sched- Eventually, Cimino proposed an old the December delivery date anq uled:' He obviously wanted the damn script he had written called The Johnson exempted him from penalties and cost thing to be over. And it soon was. County War. Stan Kamen, Cimino's ag~nt, overruns. pushing the project as a discreet p,!ckage, I attended that new York screening. a pay-or-play deal (once the deal is made, Cimino agreed to inform UA no later Anticipation couldn't have been higher. the company either makes the movie or than July 1, 1979, whether a Christmas The movie played like a dead fish on the pays the director not to make it) that UA 1979 release was possible. Bach writes: Cinema I screen. The intermission was a either had to clinch or Kamen would take \"What no one asked was: 'How do we wake, and everyone who was there, it elsewhere. With Cimino so hot, and UA differentiate between cost overruns including The New York Times' Vincent so nervous about its image, Bach claims it designed to meet the Christmas release Canby, knew it. I'm fascinated by subse- was a deal they couldn't refuse. He points and cost overruns stemming from other quent revisionists who claim that the to additional pressure from the sales peo- causes?' \" movie, rather than the studio, survives. ple, who wanted an epic-scale, western- Neither does. action adventure starring Kris Kristbffer- The production began on April 16, son: it would be UA's Christmas 1979, and by the second week Cimino Heaven s Gate swiftly became a symbol \"locomotive.\" \"We were both betting;\" he had spent half his approved budget and for Hollywood excess. With earned rentals writes , \"that Cimino would deliver a fallen one day behind for each day he shot. (between the long and short versions) of blockbuster with ~t' written all over 'it, a He was shooting 10,000 feet of film at a just $2 million, and a final cost of $36 return to epic filmmaking and epic rate of $200,000 a day for 90 seconds of million, the press took every opportunity returns :' usable screen material. The production to point out U~s-and Cimino's-short- was on permanent overtime. comings in this affair. The regime topples, So with Albeck's approval, according to and Bach is eventually flfed. Final Cut, Field and Bach's \"first official When UA protested, Cimino threat- act, a fairly routine one at that, had been to ened to take the film elsewhere. When UA By book's end, I had sympathy for Bach: make the deal that would destroy the com- sought ~ financial partner to cushion the I felt for his good intentions, integrity, and pany:' But Bach wants to cover his ass. He mounting risk, nobody would have them. hard work. The man who wrote this book expresses regret that he never read the When Bach talked to a prominent film tells a good story and clearly loved working script for The Deer Hunter to compare it director about firing Cimino, he realized with scripts, writers, and , directors\" with the movie. He cries that Field never no reputable director would agree to fashioning good movie material. Bach suggested that he read Buckley's Harper's obviously remains loyal to his superior, piece until months later, when Bach ques- replace him. When Field visited the set, Andy Albeck; neither seems really typical tioned Cimino's age. Repeatedly, Bach Cimino wouldn't talk to him. When UA of the movie business. Most tough indus- points a finger at Field, who, strictly sent an accountant to the set, Cimino's try executives pay strict attention to the speaking, was responsible for Heaven s colleagues wouldn't cooperate. Cimino's bottom line: their asses. Bach worked and Gate. By his own account, Bach kept a low sweated, he says, for no ultimate reward profile, acting passively until the key point producer, Joanne Carelli, couldn't handle and, along with Albeck, received most of in the narrative at which he figures out, Cimino, and worse, she ran interference the slings and arrows. One of the book's way too late, how to control Michael so no one else could get to him. Cimino, bitterest moments comes when Field, Cimino. as Bach describes it, was too busy \"getting long absent from the company, finally sees it right:' the short version of Heavens Gate and B y then, Bach and Field had lost their comments, ''You guys should be ashamed first argument over casting; then Even Kamen tells Bach: \"the only thing of yourselves:' unknown French movie star Isabelle Hup- he understands is force. Be forceful: ' Bach pert was signed as Kris Kristofferson's listens. He takes matters into his own Perhaps Bach makes a better revisionist leading lady (no eyebrows were raised hands while Field is on his honeymoon. Hollywood historian than he did a produc- when a number of major American tion executive. But after all, as Bach points actresses refused to play opposite Kristof- Bach and Dean Stoiber go to the location, out, none of the production heads of three ferson). The budget had started to climb take over the production, and threaten to and a half years ago are in the same jobs with UA capitulation to Cimino's rising sue Cimino if he doesn't bring the rest of today. Maybe you can take it - your type- projected costs-from $7.5 million to $9 the movie in for $9 million (he has already writer and integrity-with you. Cimino, million to the startingdate figure of spend $16 million). It works: Cimino however, is still working in Hollywood. speeds up the pace and brings the movie Watch for his production of The Foun- in. He starts editing and demands more tainhead. He'll get to make it one day. ~ shooting for a prologue and epilogue. UA, relieved that the worst is over, gives in. Cimino edits a five-hour, 25-minute ver- sion of the movie and shows it to the UA 50
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by Jack Barth and Mike Wilkins A utumn is late in coming, and the air is anywhere: The plot revolves around ask the George Miller who directed Road still and humid in the City of Lions. Venice High after the town elders have Warrior but called me instead:' Time moves slowly on the Grand Canal, declared that eating is prohibited. Mr. like a gondola powered by a sleepy Vene- Geldof plays a new kid from out-of-town Though some fringe participants are tian. These days the boatmen have good who rebels against this rule. Aside from taking the trip to Italy as a chance to hawk reason to be tired. Their aquatic cabs are this basic premise, writers and directors a new project, bare breasts for eager helping an international array of movie were given a free hand in developing the paparrazi, or simply to gawk, the many stars from the U.S. and Britain make early story, according to their own feelings principals are to a person approaching the morning stage calls. about the hunger crisis:' project with a professional seriousness. A veritable army of fitness instructors has Reel Help , Bob Geldofs $40-million Miller, for example, directs an exciting been flown in to tone the actors' bodies attempt to parlay the income from his gondola chase scene in which Geldof, with into the shape needed to portray realisti- Band Aid and Live Aid projects into \"some a cargo of precious food, is pursued by a cally the starving townspeople. ''We were real money, enough to help not just the gang of punk weirdos led by the evil town thrilled to have Bob DeNiro donate his starving but the hungry as well;' has been mayor, played by John Candy with a services;' said Geldof. \"He actually lost shooting here for several months and shaved head. \"It's a fantasy sequence;' 100 pounds for his role as a sympathetic there's no end in sight. New scenes are explains Miller, who was asked to direct teacher:' In his scene, DeNiro informs being added every day to incorporate the the segment by mistake. ''They meant to Geldof that Mayor Candy is himself wave of stars that have made Venice the place to be this October. ''We had to scrap our original concept;' said Geldof over an Evian in his makeshift screening room, \"which in a way is quite gratifying. It means more of the global community of artists than we ever dreamed is ready to help the helpless:' For those readers who have been in a coma for the past three months, Geldofs original concept was to have 100 of Holly- wood's top screenwriters each donate a page of original material, then use 50 outstanding directors to shoot segments of one or two minutes each. But the response from Tinseltown was so great (Alitalia even began running charter LAX-to- Venice flights as the exodus to Italy increased over the summer) that the new estimate is for a three-hour extravaganza to premiere in the spring of 1986. \"Everyone is here, it seems;' smiled Geldof. Even the usually uncooperative Prince has donated a still photograph. \"The film will be an allegory about hunger, based loosely on last year's suc- cessful Paramount Pictures release Foot- loose;' explains Australian George Miller, director of The Man From Snowy River. \"It's set in Venice, California, but we're shooting in Venice, Italy, to symbolize the need for worldwide concern about hunger. Mr. Geldof says, 'It could be Venice, 52
violating the no-eat rule. \"It's a role John school cafeteria. Mayor Candy, who cargo. It is also of concern that his sched- really wanted to try;' said Joe Dante, who is helming an imaginative animated suffers from food paranoia and plots to get uled two-minute sequence will likely run sequence called \"The Grumblies;' about the creatures that make noises in a hungry all the groceries in town for himself, uses four or five minutes. stomach. \"Usually, the audience can't help but love John, but in this role he gets to the fight as an excuse for banning all On the other hand, the project has not play a corrupt fat person instead of a lovable one:' eating. Candy contributes many classic ad been without numerous bright spots. The Other scenes already in the can feature Iibs to the scene, including, \"Know how to highlight of the filming for everybody was Michael j. Fox, who plays a likable hustler trying to earn money to go to a make a Venetian blind?\" His question to undoubtedly a visit from the Pontiff. Pope Boomtown Rats concert by selling food to his classmates. Director Robert Zemeckis student Michael Fox is followed by a poke John Paul II stopped by the set to bless the contributes \"Back to Africa;' in which Fox plans a time-travel trip to stock up on in the eye! undertaking and joke around with the cast. plentiful Fifties goodies, then return and sell them. Instead, he returns to present- Farceur Blake Edwards directs Candy, '~ctors and popes are very similar;' he day Africa where nobody can afford it. Rather than letting the food spoil, Fox Julie Andrews, and tough-talking gondola said. 'We both have audiences and read gives it away and learns that money is not man's only reward. driver Danny DeVito in a slapstick dream lines written by somebody else:' After George Romero's ','Gandhi of the Living sequence, in which Candy's immense much laughter, someone asked what the Dead\" stars Ben Kingsley as an English teacher who goes on a hunger strike to girth causes the boat to capsize. Miss differences were between actors and protest starvation. He dies, then returns as a zombie who refuses to eat human flesh. Andrews' silk blouse becomes transpar- Popes. \"There are more Jewish actors;' he Jerry Lewis directs and stars in \"Catcher in the Rye Bread;' as Holden Caulfield, a ent, eliciting hoots and cackles from deadpanned. disaffected teen. Lewis trades his Rolex to a prostitute and sleeps on a park bench in DeVito, whom the cranky Candy dubs As the cameras continue to roll, it seems his tuxedo to show the unimportance of material wealth. Lewis had always wanted \"the little man in the boat:' only Mussolini could control the deucedly to fUm the Salinger novel, had been refused permission, and figured this was When asked about the project's seeming expanded production schedule, and one hjs only chance. \"That pussycat wouldn't dare sue me under these conditions;' he lack of continuity, Geldof maintained that must wonder if funds are beginning to dry reasons. \"It would be like U.S. Steel suing the United States for infringing on their \"the film is generating its own continuity. If up. There have been rumors around the name:' the story takes away from the message that set that Geldof is trying to convince his Geldof courted the cream of motion picture talent, aware that many would have people are starving, then what damn use is rock 'n' roll buddies to do another benefit tight, almost impossible schedules. Heavy-hitter Sylvester Stallone was com- continuity? We don't want the gain to be concert to help keep Reel Help afloat. mitted to F.1. S. T. II, but agreed to appear in Reel Help for a fraction of his usual gloss. We want people to ask themselves, Rumors aside, one cannot help but feel percentage, getting only 5 percent of the gross. Geldof quickly reminds us of What am I doing watching this movie?' that tremendous enthusiasm and dedica- Stallone's great drawing power and prom- ises that \"Sly will bring in far more than Which of course is answered by, 'I am tion are still there, and that one and all are he's costing us. I want to make it clear that no other actors are being paid to partici- helping the world situation: Caring people pulling for a successful completion. Said pate. Anybody who asks for money is a bleeding wanker unless they're the top box will be able to follow the story, I'm sure:' Miller, \"If Mr. Geldof pulls this off, he office attraction in the world:' Caring people will certainly appreciate should become the first person ever to win Stallone and Chuck Norris appear in a crowd-pleasing scene as varsity athletes \"No Dinner With Andre;' to be directed a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Nobel in the from Geldofs old high school who are called in to rescue the hungry teens, by Louis Malle. At this dinner, Wallace same year:' ® SWAT-style, killing many of the stubborn Shawn and Andre Gregory, playing town I~~;;;=;;;;;;;r~~~-~ town elders in the process. In another type of fighting, John Landis directs a flashback elders bullied by Candy, have nothing to segment in which a food fight erupts in the eat, and witty bon mots give way to ugly sniping as both develop hunger head- aches. At the Cathedral San Marco, which has been converted to a high school chern lab, John Hughes directs Anthony Michael Hall and Emilio Estavez. They play two super-smart high schoolers who use their scientific knowledge to create the perfect roast turkey. Says director-writer-hyphen- ate Hughes in a syndicated press release, 'When maladjusted teens start fantasizing about food rather than sex, you know there is something up with this hunger problem:' This moviegoer's dream is proving a logistical nightmare, however. Motel rooms are booked for miles around, and More of the country's premier collec- temporary housing is nonexistent. Some tion of authentic film posters--rare, vintage, actors are being lodged as far away as and contemporary-such as \"Gone with Britain and are flown in for their scenes. the Wind,\" the original \" King Kong\" Making the City of Canals look like a and \"Napoleon\"- Comprehensive California beach town is no simple matter, 8W' x 11\" catalog with more than 250 either. Director Michael Cimino is insist- highly collectible graphics , many in color! ing on a surfing sequence for his contribu- Your opportunity now to own previously tion, and much of the budget is being unavailable original movie posters. expended to satisfy the persnickety per- To receive your copy, send $6.00 to: fectionist. Only California sand will do, and tugboats have been arriving hourly Cinemonde 1916-F Hyde Street, with tons and tons of the fine-grained San Francisco. CA 94109.
Fellowships FILm FORum I ;~~ available I -\\ to study ATWIN CINEMA NEXT DOOR TO SOHO film at New York Presenting NYC premieres of Independent films & retrospectives of foreign & American classics University's Nov. 13·26: CHOOSING CHILDREN by Debra Chasnoff & Kim Klausner Tisch School and BREAKING SILENCE by Theresa Tollini of the Arts Nov. 27-Dec. 10: Mikio Naruse's LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS Dec. 11-17: SANCTUARY by James Becket Each year the Willard T. C. and KIM PHUC by Manus van de Kamp lohnson Foundation awards two $10,000 fellowships to emerging Dec. 18-31: Claude Chabrol's THE HORSE OF PRIDE filmmakers for study at New York University's Tisch School Open 7 days a week. call or write for calendar & member discount Information. of the Arts. One is available to 57 watts Street, NYC 10013 Box Office: (212)431-1590 undergraduate students, the other to graduate students. The Partially supported by the NYS Council on the Arts & the National Endowment for the Arts fellowships cover the full cost of tuition and include a stipend for WRITE living expenses. PENNSYLVANIA We are now conducting a You need information. If it's about Pennsylvania let us national search for filmmaking help. We work closely with writers and directors - students of exceptional talent supplementing their research, putting them in contact with and promise. Candidates will be historians and industry experts and arranging meetings with judged on the basis of creative local people so filmmakers can learn about life in work, academic standing, and Pennsylvania. Share our wealth of information. Call us at leadership potential. (717) 787-5333 or write: For more information and an ~DI Pennsylvania Film Bureau application, contact Dean Elena Pinto Simon, Tisch School of ----~- Department of Commerce the Arts, New York University, 461 Forum Building 725 Broadway, 7th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10003; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 17120 (212) 598-2816. (Be sure to indicate undergradu- ate or graduate level.) Applications must be received no later than January 15 , 1986. tiWORK 11'NIVuRSI1Y ........., A rRI VATE UNIVERSITY '''' TIlE r UBliC SERVICE New York University is an aflirmativc action /e4ual opportunity institution_ 54
Hillbilly Heaven - ~for\\Right Now' ADU ~~~~BinfjJ ~~h!:lX y ~. / GJ \\.)!.I • • • Itt [J rnan wants When onean's wo rnan - another rn , only 15- even if she s . kill or . code IS the cal,·m be killed \\ .' HE,,1 RE \\ '\" 1 CARSON'S LANDING AS OVE.RHE.ARD IN \"Any girl that good- . looking just gotta. '; rERUN HUSKY In be itching for actIon. '·G'RL'~G\" ·:· ·CHA'~\",;0~m.'''owo\"\", •.•. '',;w\"W/.~, _ the li1m tnat uncovers Jimmy McDonough and Bill Landis SWAMP H illbilly music's goin' round / Good 01' mountain music's comin' down / You fWIRL~ hear a guitar a fiddle boy you'reshakin' around / Hillbilly fever's goin' round:' So sings Jerry Lee Lewis in the song Hillbilly Music, and you could write a similar credo for the making of a hillbilly film. Round up a couple of country singers, a buxom woman in cut-offs or a halter top, some film, a small crew-an' hee haw! you're in business. Most popular in the mid-Sixties, the hillbilly-film genre encompasses a lot of overlapping ground: straight-on exploi- tation, country music fLlms , R-rated drive- in fare, even softcore pornography. Made mostly by small local outfits that often disappeared after one or two films, hillbilly movies themselves are pretty much for- gotten today. \"We make redneck romper-stompers:' says Beverly Sebastian. Beverly and Ferd Sebastian have made profitable, entertain- ing drive-in movies with southern themes, most notably Gatorbait (1974), a swamp actioner with Claudia Jennings. ''Mechan- ics, beer drinkers, all these kind of people 55
across the world. Say you got a mechanic Trash. It was an enormous use of radio, obstacle - a hefty Cajun blockhead named in Italy, and you got a mechanic in one of the flfst examples of what you call Ulysses (the inexplicable Timothy Carey Bogalusa, Louisiana. Now the guy in saturation. Ripps would buy time across in his flfst role) . The only things the Bogalusa likes his pictures the same way as the board, spots on every station in a town, original movie has to offer are the long the guy in Italy. A guy is a guy. The workin' so when I heard that ad in Las Vegas , so stretches of indecipherable Cajun folk man, that's who we aim our pictures at. did everybody else with a radio on. It was jibber-jabbering at each other and the And we shoot with a rifle, not a shotgun, at genius:' strange gyrating dance Tim Carey per- this particular market-that's the drive-in forms near the end of the film. market.\" The ad campaign was genius, too. Mom and Dad (1944), created a campaign that Ripps shot some suggestive inserts to The granddaddy of the genre is Child all exploitation movies followed after- spice up Bayou when he rereleased it as Bride (also known as Child Bride of the wards. Weeks before the movie opened Poor White Tr.ash. Since no one from the Ozarks) , made in Kentucky in 1937 and small ads started to appear in the back of original cast was available or affordable, dealing with the taboo theme of back- the inserts were done with poorly dis- wood~ marriage; the glimpses of prepu- local papers. The ads featured only a small guised doubles ftlmed either in extreme bescent nudity are still shocking today. line drawing of a window shade with some The film was directed by Harry Revier and sort of cryptic statement or question long shot or in disembodied close-ups to distributed by Sonney Amusements , a running across it that vaguely promoted prevent anyone from catching on too fast. landmark exploitation outfit that distrib- the movie. 'Who are . ..Poor White There are crude, poorly matched shots of uted many VD and birth-of-a-baby films . Trash?\" \"It exists today... Poor White arms flailing in the mud, strange eyes How many other low-budget films with Trash!\" \"Poor White Trash ... See how they staring at crosses, and obscure people rural themes were made in the Forties and live!\" After these \"teasers;' larger and more running through the woods. The rest of Fifties: titles like Swamp Country, suggestive ads were used. One featured a the film is so static and blah that, when the Okeefenokee, and Louisiana Hussy. But woman in a torn dress holding the inserts are used, it's as if you've veered off it took a southern producer naf11ed Mike pullstring of the windowshade, the tat- into a bad hallucination. In one scene, Ripps to make exploitation-film history. ter~d shade hiding her face. The other ad Graves and Milan are hiding from a The year was 1961. Four years earlier, featured Ripps himself in a director's chair tropical storm and start to embrace. Cut to United Artists had distributed a low- with his back to us, cigar in hand. Both ads an insert that represents the culmination budget melodrama called Bayou . It had featured huge warnings above the Poor of the affair. There are two people in vague flopped, and producer Ripps bought his White Trash title. \"Due to the ABNORMAL shadowy close-ups who, if you look picture back. Forming a new company subject matter of this motion picture no closely, bear no resemblance to Graves or named Cinema Distributors of America in children will be allowed with or without Milan. We see arms on bare backs, lips Mobile, A!abama, Ripps gave Bayou a their parents! Special UNIFORM POLICE meeting and parting, a superimposed sea new campaign and a new title: Poor White will supervise admission - Mike Ripps, that pulsates intermittently. A pseudo- Trash . producer, Poor White Trash:' Finally, the Mexicali horn bleats in the background. opening-day a9: the silhouette of a naked No doubt audiences in 1961 thought they Born broke, never had no cash, every- girl behind the tattered shade taking off a were seeing something. body calls me POOR WHITE TRASH!\" pair of panties, and the usual warning screamed the lurid campaign, a campaign concerning restrictions and \"uniform\" The last insert is actually a gore effect, a that would live long in the minds of others. police. With the ingenious ads, the radio brief close-up of a bloody axe in Tim \"It was over twenty years ago, and I spots, and the audio-only theatrical trail- Carey's back. But aside from the $1.98 remember it like yesterday;' says Mort ers, Ripps must have worked entire surrealism of the inserts and a new title Goodman with a chuckle. \"I was driving communities into a frenzy by opening day. sequence featuring a man wi~h a banjo in along one night in Las Vegas. It was early Poor White Trash grossed an estimated overalls singing the rather jaunty Poor evening, about seven o'clock. A distraught $10 million. (Bayou 's budget was White Trash theme, there's really nothing voice suddenly came on the radio. 'If $200,000. It cost another $50,000 to re- to see. Poor White Trash is the kind of you're on your way to the Starlite Drive-In release it as Poor White Trash.) movie you'd turn off after ten minutes on to see the 7:30 showing of Poor White the late show if you haven't fallen asleep Trash , turn around and GO HOME! The So, you ask, what about Poor White already. But it was the campaign people crowds are HUGE, the POLICE are EVERY- Trash the movie? Does it live up to the remembered, not the movie, and as late as WHERE, it's BEDLAM! All tonight's shows colossal campaign? The answer to that 1971 this black-and-white bomb was are SOLD OUT!. . .But if you come back was the biggest joke of all. As Mort playing New York City grind houses. TOMORROW NIGHT for the 7:30, 9:00, or Goodman puts it: \"Poor White Trash was 10:30 show, there will be plenty of room just that-trash!\" (You can see for yourself, In fact, the campaign proved so notori- for you! See you TOMORROW NIGHT!' Of since Continental Video has released Poor ous that a \"sequel\" was released in 1976. It course, it wouldn't have made a difference White Trash for home video.) It's the tired used the same campaign, with this if there wasn't anybody at the Starlite story of an architect named Martin (Peter additional tag: \"In the tradition of Walking Drive-In. The radio spots would've ran:' Graves) who tries to win the love of a Tall II and Godfather II comes ...Poor young Cajun girl (brunette bombshell Lita White Trash I/!\" The actual movie was a Goodman has spent 50 years in the Milan). Along the way he runs into an film released earlier in the year by motion picture business designing thou- Dimension Pictures under the title Scum sands of advertising campaigns, including of the Earth. It was directed by S.F. the campaigns for such exploitation clas- Brownrigg, a Texan responsible for such sics as The Corpse Grinders and Party other blown-up-from-16mm obscurities as Girl. \"I ended up buying radio time in all Don't Look in the Basement and Keep My the western markets for Poor White Grave Open. Scum is a vicious no-budget tale a~out a deranged 'Nam vet who knocks off members of an incestuous 56
backwoods family. Although it becomes Nobody was supposed to know the title went on to distribute such exploitation too mumbiy with all its maw 'n' paw during production, so we called it Bayou groundswellers as the soft-X Inga , amy yakkety-yak, Scum possesses some sort of in tribute to Mike Ripps. Unfortunately, blaxploitation like Sweet Sweetback's dime-store Faulkner authenticity. As Ripps got wind of this and had his lawyers Badass Song , and the X-rated animated Brownrigg drawls, \"T,hese people ... who send us a cease-and-desist letter. Anyway, hit Fritz the Cat. marry their own daughters an' live like we shot the movie for $32,000. I spent the trash ... they do exist.- They are out there:' rest ofthe money-$lO ,OaO-on a bigger- What goes on behind closed doors? than-life campaign:' Look into the dusty closet of hillbilly Poor White Trash II did have a couple of sexploitation and find out. Between the shocking scenes. Most disturbing of these And what a campaign it was: a terrified nudie films of the early Sixties and the is when a young hillbilly girl is strangled girl, knocked to her feet, an angry sheriff hardcore pornography of the Seventies with a strand of barbed wire after she asks lording over her. \"Poor White Trash! Stay there were hundreds of low-budget fums her attacker, \"Got a dollar?\" Ripps' involve- Clear or This Town Got Ways of Teaching made whose stories centered around ment with PWT II consisted of selling the You a Lesson!\" Clever campaign devices endless simulated sex scenes. The fore- campaign to a distributor in Ohio. were included, some lifted from Poor runner of hillbilly sexploitation was the White Trash and others from a recent 1963 Shotgun Wedding, with an ad Ripps did, however, strike out again in Audubon Film release called I SPit on campaign obviously inspired by Child 1963 with another shocker, Common Law Your Grave (a title Jerry Gross would later Bride. \"Child brides of the Ozarks! See Wife. Once again the teaser ads, this time steal wholesale for a gross-out exploitation how they live! See how they love! See featuring a motel key: \"OVERNIGHT may movie). them as they really are!\" Shotgun wed- make it TILL DEATH DO US PART... Who ding's story is the usual torrid tale of a are Common Law Wiv~s?\" Later, the Girl on a Chain Gang was a hit and shotgun totin' pappy, a minister, and a 15- larger ads showed a faceless couple played drive-ins for years . Demetroules year-old redhead out to sow her oats. standing hesitantly outside the ~tateline and Gross used the profits to buy the Little is known about the picture except Motel. The ad copy got more insistent. tights to God 's Litrie Acre, an almost ten- that it ended up second billed to Girl on a \"You don't have to say I 00 to be year-old black-and-white Hollywood ver- Chain Gang three years later. \"It was a MARRIED .. .Are you a COMMON LAW sion of the Erskine Caldwell tale with good picture;' remembers Nick Deme- WIFE? Do you kriow THE LAW in YOUR Robert Ryan and Tina Louise. \"It was troules, \"better than ours. It was in color STATE?\" And finally the opening-day ad. 1967;' Demetroules goes on. \"I paid and cost at least a couple of hundred We see a tattered venetian blind of a motel $15,000 up front for 40 old prints of God's grand:' room window. Behind it stands a woman Little Acre and the right to show it for a with her back to us in a slinky nightgown. year and a half; then they were going to sell No doubt Shotgun wedding was tame \"Common Law Wife! This picture was not it to TV. It was the same title, same black- compared to the avalanche of raunchy made for everyone to see! If you are old and-white movie. All I did was create a sexploitation films that followed in its enough to be married you must see it! If wake-obscure fUms with great cam- you ate not old enough to be married you new campaign with some new copy: paigns and titles like Raw Love (1965), can't see it!\" Wisely, Ripps' campaign '2rothers and sisters LIVING Orgy in the Ozarks (1970) , Forbidden books never featured plot synopses, only TOGETHER-under the SAME ROOF!' Flesh (1968), Young Man's Bride (1968), the regiment of ads and detailed instruc- Which was a laugh riot, right? I mean, and Country Girl (1968) . Two of our tions practically demanding exhibitors buy most brothers and sisters live together favorites are Sex Family Robinson on the . up radio time. under the same roof But the connotation, Farm (directed, starring, and narrated by one Linda Yair in 1969) and Moonshiner's Grabbing on the coattails of Poor White tire »Omen, a tale of gangsters, bookies, Trash was another notorious exploita- moonshine, and LSD made in 1968 for a tion company, Cinemation Industries. \"I •• . .O O R budget of $1500 by director D.E. David- was working at 20th Century-Fox in 1___WHI,.. son (who also starred under the pseudo- advertising and publicity;' states Cinema- ____ _ nym Alan Davis). In the early Seventies, tion co-founder and producer, Nick .:r_~~~': Bethel Buckalew directed a bunch of Demetroules. ''My partner, Jerry Gross, down-home porncones for Harry Novak's was working for his uncle's trucking firm. especially in the radio spots, made it Boxoffice International. Mostly shot When Cinemation was formed, ironically sound real.. .incestuous. We ended up around L.A. using well-known softcore on April Fools' Day 1965, we got the making $350,000 on God's Little Acre:' stars like Rene Bond, Sharon Kelly, and investors' money, $42,000. All we had was John Tull, these fake hillbilly films featured a twelve-page treatment I had written Strangely enough, it was around this titles like Tobacco Roody, The based on a title a southern distributor had time Mike Ripps became an adviser to Pigkeeper 's Daughter, and Midnight given us: Girl on a Chain Gang. A pulp Cinemation. \"When Mike had business in writer friend of mine, Don Olsen, wrote New York City, we'd meet him at a fancy Plowboy. There have been more than a the script in two weeks. We shot it in two hotel room, like at the Drake;' Deme- few hardcore movies with hillbilly themes weeks and a couple of weekends on some troules remembers. \"He'd charge a consul- as well. Some early-Seventies examples: property an investor had on Long Beach, tation fee of a hundred dollars a night. Any Sex in the Ozarks, Bad Beulah, Big Long Island. There was an old jail house, questions we had about the exploitation Abner. very gritty, southern-looking, and we business, Mike knew the answer. He was wanted that southern feel. Basically the always dangling a mysterious package that There is one filmmaker whose movies movie was about a young girl who runs included a list of all the distributors we relate somewhat to hillbilly sex films , if afoul of the law in a small southern town should approach and all the secrets we only in a tangential way. \"I work in and gets shackled to 17 black men. needed to be successful. I doubt the 'secrets' really existed, but I was impressed exaggerated cartoons, archetypes if you anyway. He was a southern guy, gigantic will;' says Russ Meyer. \"Cuckolded hus- cigars, three-piece suits:' Cinemation bands, insatiable women with big bosoms, 57
strong men with square jaws who are the Caravan (1964), and Country J#stem music spectaculars, including shooting willing tools. I make morality plays of good Hoedown (1967). These were all made by and editing From Nashville With Music, and evil, black and white. There is no small independent companies and fea- directed in 1969 by Eddie Crandall. The gray:' Meyer has made some of the most tured crude campaigns advertising big movie featured great performances by, exciting and complex features ever to play country stars like Webb Pierce and Pee among others, a buzz-headed, blue coun- any movie theater, let alone the drive-ins Wee King. Producers must have realized try-leisure-suited George Jones, and a where they were most popular. Meyer not that it was too much to ask audiences to sit young, wild Tammy Wynette, not to only directed, wrote, shot, and edited his through 30 or 40 musical numbers own movies, but distributed them, too, uninterrupted, so they started weaving mention a lot more dumb comedy. As creating bombastic campaigns that drew cornpone story lines around the music Zens remembers, 'The producer was a thousands to the drive-ins. Now Meyer's with country comedians like Doodles manufacturer from Montgomery, Ala- incredible pictures are attracting a new Weaver. Typical is Howco's Country Boy bama. He had a lot of money and he had a audience via the home video distribution (1966, aka Here Comes That Nashville lot of fun making the picture. In fact, he end of his company, RM Films. Beat). Singer Sheb Wooley convinces his said, 'I'm gonna take a part in this film; and bus mechanic, Abraham Lincoln Byrd, Jr., son of a gun if he didn't sing just as well as Two of his pictures deal somewhat with any 0' those country boys. Unfortunately, southern themes, although it should be POOR stressed that every Meyer picture is a he was having such a good time that world of its own and his satirical viewpoint WHITE nobody was minding the store back home. extends way beyond the farm. The TRASH\" The company went broke, and the movie dreamy Lorna (1964) deals with a bored wound up on the auction block:' backwoods wife, her inadequate husband, _S~_e_p_O_Vf lh_elliY~.!!~ and the rough prison escapee that turns The man who wound up buying From her on. Mudhoney (1966) is one of to play guitar in his band. Success is too Nashville With Music was George Crad- Meyer's most intricate \"morality plays;' much for Abe, and he has a breakdown dock, whose Atlanta-based company, featuring voluptuous town harlots and singing a song onstage in Nashville. Back Craddock Films, was famous for picking corrupt preachers in an intense study of a home a cheap agent finds him and in true depression town's twisted sexual under- exploitation fashion dresses Abe up in his up distressed films cheaply and making belly. Both films star every hillbilly's namesake's stovepipe beard and hat to lots of money from them. Craddock favorite wet dream, the amply endowed form a rock band. Washington, D.C., is distributed a host of obscurities, even a Lorna Maitland. outraged, and Abe's dad humiliates him on 16mm hillbilly horror film called Legend national TV. Abe saves the day by singing Even Herschel Gordon Lewis, best a patriotic song. Somewhere along the line ofBlood Mountain (1965). The crudest of known for directing shockers like the Lonzo and Oscar sing \"15C Worth of Pinto the Craddock pictures has to be The Gold hillbilly gore movie 2000 Maniacs (1964), Beans:' had a hand in a few moonshine epics. Guitar, directed by J. Hunter Todd in \"Thunder Road, a '58 B-movie that starred Quite a few of these steel guitar soap Robert Mitchum as a daredevil driver from operas were made: Cottonpickin' Chick- 1966. We haven't been able to see the the Kentucky hills, had played to death in enpickers (1967, with Del Reeves, film - which is about New York record the Carolinas;' relates Lewis, \"so my Tommy Noonan, and Siapsie Maxie moguls who try to steal the Nashville distributor in Charlotte, a man by the Rosenbloom), Hillbillies in a Haunted Sound and wind up heisting a pizza name of Harry Kerr, wanted me to make a House (1967, Basil Rathbone, Lon Cha- instead - but the theatrical trailer for The hillbilly-type film. So in 1964 I made ney, Jr., and Merle Haggard), Second Gold Guitar surely conveys the meaning Fiddle to a Steel Guitar (1965, Lefty of cheap. \"Steal.. .the Nashville Sound?!\" Moonshine Mountain, a tale of moon- Frizzell, Kitty Wells), What Am I Bid? barely emotes a balding man behind an shine 'n' country music. In fact, the picture (1967, Leroy Van Dyke). A perfect office desk. Hugh X. Lewis, resplendent had a bit of gore in it, a retarded girl axing a example of this kind of film is Road to in shiny blue coat, serenades a lady with a sheriff. When I saw the type of audience at Nashville, directed by Will Zens in 1966 bouffant hairdo sitting on soine sort of and recently released on tape by United Greco-Roman love seat. There are poorly the Charlotte premiere-this was a family Entertainment. If you ignore the vague lip-synched songs, more tired comedy kind of theater - I decided I didn't want to story line that basically thrives on ding- be lynched, so I went in before the first dong cutaways of Doodles Weaver react- routines. The entire trailer is static shots show and quietly cut the gore scene. It ing to the music, there is an entertaining with no cutaways. The Gold Guitar affected the picture's logic somewhat, but document of some fine country music must've been a real ordeal to sit through. there was plenty of music to cover it. performances. There are some 60 stars, The blocked heads of cheap country Nobody asked for their money back:' In and particularly moving are turns by movie icons Hugh X. Lewis and Del 1971, Lewis made another moonshine hardcore country singers Lefty Frizzell Reeves on either side of a crude guitar epic called This Stuffll Kill :fu (starring and Webb Pierce. Vilmos Zsigmond is congeal into a one-sheet of terrible beauty: credited for cinematography under the 'There's fun for everyone- Bring the The Treasure of the Sierra Madre's Tim anglicized first name of \"William:' Holt) and in 1972 lear of the :fuhoo, parson - He'll love it!\" Producer Bill featuring Claude (\"Wolverton Mountain') Director Will Zens is a man with a long Packham also brought us 40 Acre Feud, a King as a country singer who runs for list of strange credits that start back with somewhat more accomplished country political office. the no-budget espionage pic Capture That jamboree made by June and Ron Ormond. Capsule! made in 1961 for $12,500. Zens Country music spectaculars were also The Ormonds, who were involved in all popular in the Sixties. The first group had a hand in quite a few of these country aspects of show business, from vaudeville were the roadshow type of attractions, to producing westerns with Lash LaRue, pictures like Tennessee Jamboree (1964), also made some of the strangest looking Music City USA (1966), Country Music exploitation movies known to civilization. Forty Acre Feud (1965) was a \"feudin' and fightin' \" picture that featured an impres- sive line-up of stars, among them George Jones and Loretta Lynn. The 1966 Girl 58
From Tobacco Row (\"a preacher's daugh- features some unnerving violent scenes. from Paragon Video. They belong to that ter but wilder than a peach orchard hog!') low-budget tedium family so common in was a tale of gangsters and preachers \"and sOmni Pictures' God Bloody Acre (1975) the Seventies, where everything is told in some homespun gospel\" that features Tex long shots, and jump cutting is non- Ritter in his last role. The 1967 White starred 2000 Maniacs' leading man Tho- existent. The trailers said it all: fat men Lightnin'Road (''Ruby wanted a bang-up mas Wood and was directed by his brother, guffawing over cold beers, women with wedding-so her pappy used his shot- Harry Kerwin . This no-budgeter is so bouffant do's swaying to the jukebox, gun') is a moonshine-car racing epic obscure that the only people we know junky car crashes, cardboard credits. The starring Earl \"Snake\" Richards and Arline who have seen the movie have no memory last word belongs to Preacherman's presi- Hunter. Last but not least is The Exotic of it at all. There are many other related Ones, a horror shocker made in 1968. It's films, like the slew of low-budget Earl dent, Robert W McClure: \"Hell, I know about a monster that murders New Owensby drive-in pictures. An ultra- my pictures aren't art. But I don't think Orleans strippers after smoking some pot. conservative who made millions manufac- they're offending anybody, either. You The monster was played by rockabilly turing tools before his career as a cheap gotta have some sex and enough pretty singer Sleepy LaBeef, who, June informs movie mogul, Owensby is one of the few girls, you know, Daisy Mae-type charac- us, \"does a great monster, very fine: ' still cranking them out. He not only ters. Then, of course, there's the car produces pictures at his mammoth EO chases and the moonshining and some Ron Ormond directed, wrote, and studio complex in Shelby, N.C, he stars in good country music, and maybe some edited the pictures. His wife, June, did 'em, too. Some late-Seventies/early- square-dance clogging:' everything from makeup to writing songs, Eighties titles include Death Driver and, most importantly, distributed the (Owensby as 'rodeo motor champion), N owadays things are different. The product. Their son Tim helped out in a Woij1nan (Owensby as Wolfman), and the major studios dictate and the exhibi- variety of ways, even starring in a couple of unforgettable 3-D attack-dog epic, Rot- tors pay close attention. Independents their movies. \"The three of us, we were a twieller. But perhaps the biggest success motion picture company combined;' June story of the Seventies were the Preacher- have been squeezed out by skyrocketing says wistfully today. man films out of Charlotte, N.C. costs and the smothering volume of big- June Ormond is full of arcane tales of life Made in 1971 for $65,000 and shot in 16 as an independent moviemaker. 'When days, Preacherman was the usual torrid budget product made by conglomerates you got exploitation pictures, ya gotta stuff about the farmer's daughter, the exploit 'em;' she says with gusto. \"I'll tell phony preacher, and the county sheriff. that maybe learned a thing or two about you one thing, though. If we could've The difference this time was the bang- gotten the admission prices those people zoom direction of one Albert T. Viola, an marketing from Poor White Trash. Drive- are getting today, I wouldn't have a care in obscure Texan who was also responsible the world. When we were doing our for the no-budget Mondo Balordo, narra- in owners are finding that their land is pictures we were getting 75 cents, maybe ted by Boris Karloff. Preacherman's a dollar admission at the drive-ins. With adaptation of the jackhammer Russ Meyer more valuable as real estate. The few some of the big circuits you'd pay 25 approach makes the movie plenty enter- percent off the top for advertising; with taining, and Viola's role as the Preacher- remaining ozoners play the same eight or independents, 50 percent off the top. man (under the pseudonym Amos Hux- You've got to do a lot of business at a dollar ley) is amusing in a hambone sort of way. ten movies shown in the thousands of an admission:' Ron Ormond sadly passed Viola knew just what an audience wanted away a few years back, but June is from a hillbilly film and poured it on with a twelveplex mall theaters·. shopping the old pictures to the home video and television markets. For years we •• The past of the hillbilly film, like that of have been staring at the beautiful cam- paigns and the odd stills of the Ormond thick sense of humor. The movie also so many others, is confined to vague pictures. Finally the movies themselves boasts a raucous bluegrass score by W. will be unleashed on the world. Henry Smith, a one-legged, one-armed memories of long-ago nights at the local drive-in owner who also had a hand in a In the Seventies, with the popularity of couple of scripts for the other Preacher- drive-in. \"Common Law Wife;' you may the Billy Jack, Walking Tall, and Burt man films, not to mention a few cameos. Reynolds Smokey series, hillbilly and Preacherman managed to gross $5 million be asking yourself right now. \"I think I saw \"good 01' boy\" pictures started coming out without ever really playing Los Angeles or of the woodwork. Dixie Dynamite (1976, New York City. Viola directed a sequel, that. .. or was it Shotgun Wedding?\" It used directed by Lee Frost) was a meandering Preacherman Meets Widderwoman, moonshiner from Dimension Pictures which promptly disappeared. to be that an enterprising guy or gal could starring Warren Oates. The same com- pany brought us Carol Lynley in Bad In 1974, two other Preacherman films, take a crappy little picture and make a few Georgia Road a year later. Attractively the moonshirie Hot Summer in Barefoot shot by Tak Fujimoto, this inert but County and the actioner Truckin' Man bucks with it, even, as in the case of Poor unusual moonshiner was produced, (aka Trucker's Woman), were released. directed, and co-written by John Bro- Both were directed by Will Zens on White Trash, when the picture being derick. Nightmare County (1977), the shoestring budgets and are now available brainchild of do-it-all mogul Sean Mac- advertised didn't really exist at all. The Gregor, is an incoherent jumble about a hippie commune battling rednecks that only artifacts left today are a few scattered pressbooks, some yellowing posters, and a trickle of video releases; Somewhere someone is watching a cheap cassette of Hot Summer in Barefoot County. Nothing much is happening on the small TV screen. There's been a big dinner at Stella Hokum's. We see pine trees silhouetted in the moonlight. \"Sure was a mighty fine supper;' drawls a man- named J~ff, his back leaning against a porch post. Mammy Hokum slowly rocks her chair in agreement. A daughter sits at her feet, all involved in a cat's cradle. \"Say what you might I Say what you may I But just like life I It goes on anyway;' the man with the banjo sings. And out in that ozone swamp of lost exploitation movies sits the lone jug of forgotten hillbilly films. The jug is labeled, no doubt, xxx. ® ' 59
The23rdNew .. Tatsuy Nakadai as Hidetora in Ran. Noh ghost. Sabu and Deborah Kerr in ~ by Elliott Stein seriously suffer from catharsis interruptus: by Stephen Harvey Hidetora's crazed ramblings in the com- T (* * *)here are set pieces in Akira Kurosawa's pany of his Fool (Shinnosuke Ikehata, aka \"Q>r all the lame japes that greeted the Ran that deserve a place in Peter, a transvestite pop singer who the history of classic cinema: the haunting resembles Michael Jackson) are a gro- r announcement of the movies chosen massacre and buming of the Third Castle, tesque descent from the epic grandeur of the irresistible scene during which Lady the earlier passages . to open and close the 23rd New York Film Kaede (the superb Mieko Harada) reveals Festival, chaos was not, after all, the noun her true colors. It is one of the best- Ran's most memorable moment occurs which best described the tone of this year's looking films of the last decade, a greater when the Lady Kaede is putting the make festivities. From a bureaucratic point of work than Kagemusha, and manifestly the on her brother-in-law, scheming to have view, the Film Society presided over all work of a great director. It is not a great his wife murdered-and she pauses with its accustomed unflappable sang- film. abruptly to squash an insect. The gesture froid. Moreover, with their coolheaded is so clean and elegant, and Harada such a mastery and melancholy poetry, Kurosa- Ran is a free adaptation of King Lear, fine actress, that the business looks wa's Ran (chaos in Japanese) and Paolo set during Japan's 16th-century civil wars, improvised, as if the little buzzer had and Vittorio Taviani's Kaos triumphantly with Lear's daughters changed to sons. flown down accidentally into the set. Its belied their titles in any language. Unfortu- Lear is one of the supreme roles in world apparent spontaneity may be so telling nately, decorum of a less exalted order dramatic literature. Kurosawa's Lear (Hi- since nearly everything else in the film prevailed during the two weeks of screen- detora) is portrayed by Tatsuya Nakadai, seems preplanned and storyboarded down ings between these twin premieres. an accomplished actor who lacks the inner to the square inch. resources of a great tragedian. His hubris is The only signs of anarchy in the vicinity one-dimensional; it knows no nuance. His I look forward to seeing Ran again when took place on the pavement outside Alice gait is too young for the role. And even it is released. The low spots may dis- Tully Hall, perpetrated by an irate band of when Nakadai is visually most impres- appoint; the high spots are high indeed. I'd Marians who had heard fourth-hand from sive-made up as a sort of ranting Noh also like to check out Charles Tesson's the Pope that Hail Mary sought to tarnish ghost during the mad scenes - his passion intriguing assertion in the September the sanctity of the Holy Mother. Little did appears more inflated than real. Through- Cahiers du Cinema that Kurosawa has they know that compared to, say, Preston out the film it was hard not to think of what patterned his film not only on Shakes- Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, a difference Toshiro Mifune would have peare but also on the Three Little Pigs. Godard's film was hagiography of the most made in this role. The last few reels The three castles, according to Tesson, reverent order, and a lot duller, too. Sadly, correspond to the three houses of Disney's festival virgins who never once entered Tully Hall's hallowed precincts may have (Continued on page 68) 60
Festival Kerr in Black Narcissus. Hail Mary. been the only ones whose passions were by Harlan Jacobson not a sweet little homily on what a miracle truly stirred by this year's proceedings. of faith looks and feels like in the context Among the faithful throngs inside, the pre- Beats me how the Pope's designating of one's own time and place. vailing mood was of a lukewarm quies- Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary cence, as befits these annual Holy Days of (Je Vous Salue Marie) as \"blasphemous\" Godard's translation of the virgin birth . Obligation. can be construed as anything but a papist into contemporary Switzerland - not the plot to sell tickets. This is no dope pope- first time this country produced some- After all these years, the enduring eclat we're talking about a former member of thing out of a vault that nobody knows of the New York Film Festival is its own the Polish literati, here-who penned how it got there-is less interesting for jusification. With genius in short supply plays and poems before succumbing to the what it says about Godard, or about what and true revelations ditto, the majority of vicissitudes of the trade (the random Godard has concluded is the bankruptcy the festival's slots must perforce be filled violence of editors) and seeking out a of Western rationalism to produce a with the gleanings from the Croisette or more honorable and secure line of work. I civilized, moral world, than it is for giving the Zeitgeist. The inevitable result is a decided against the Pope-Got-Bad-Infor- contour and shape to the original story. It lineup whose entries gain luster by their mation theory, which is truly a product of would be wrong to get caught up in the inclusion, rather than the other way bigoted thinking, and for the following 20th-century trappings of Godard's adap- around. A festival's vitality relies not on the scenano: tation-Mary pumps gas, Joseph drives a waves made by that rare masterpiece that cab, Mary's a bit of a gamine, etC.-than comes along, but from signs of life dis- The Vatican marketing boys see Hail to see Hail Mary for its intent. played by the lesser craft scheduled in its Mary and take a meeting. ''We got the wake. believers awready;' says the cardinal in At its best, Hail Mary rises above charge of European, U.S., and Canadian adaptation to achieve analogy. Godard's In fact, there were a few small satisfac- exploitation. \"Let's go for the infidels:' intent is to give power to miracle-less to tions to be found this year. But they were jazz up our sense of quotidian life than to counterbalanced by too many adherents of How else explain the Church's reading state just how wild a notion it was to accept that horrific genre, the tony but inert Inter- of the film but as a sheer calculation that the whopper of Mary and Joseph in the national Artifact. You know the type. Its the folks who have decided they'll sleep first place. By making explicit how difficult sole reason for existence is to make the Sunday mornings and take their chances it is to apprehend the unfolding mystery circuit from Berlin to Filmaex to Telluride could be lured into a theater (declining now, Godard underlines just how unac- to Gotham before decorously expiring on attendance is one more aspect the Church ceptable it must have been then - and FR3/RAIZ/Westdeutschen Rundfunz, shares with show business) and slipped a thereby invests the early followers, and which had proved its commitment to cul- sermon? Because Hail Mary is nothing if (obviously myopically) their descendants, with tacit respect for getting there first. (Continued on page 64) 61
How ironic his pickets, for Godard is The whole downstroke of the film has The shouts of \"Shame!\" aimed at that paying them something of homage for Joseph reduced to the impotent despot bathos house, Alice Tully Hall, more being the seed of moral pioneers, visiona- most fathers become (see Arthur Miller on rightly sounded like confessions than this), and the kid portrayed as something accusations. ries, dreamers, and idealists in a corrupt world, and all that. That this is the stuff of of a normal wise-ass. But Godard is It brought to mind a scene in Rabbit Godard's oeuvre goes without saying. sketching out a proposition here of some Test (made by Joan Rivers, more tourist interest: If the full force of evil cannot be than auteurist) in which the pope has a Hail Mary seems less like an embrace appreciated until one accepts its banality pope-puppet that he sticks out a win- of faith, however, than a flirtation. You (per Hannah Arendt), so too with good- dow - matched to stock footage of Pope wonder if Godard is yet another iconoclast ness, and light, and miracles. Rather Paul VI waving from the basilica to a with the wits scared out of him by the elegant that, marred only by Godard Vatican Square throng that roars on cue. approach of the abyss (not an unreason- stupidly winking at the audience in a The Pope's marketing department may able response, mind you), and so is dialogue exchange indicating that the have forgotten that giving permission to making a midnight sprint for shelter, or kid-who has jumped out of the family the mob to find blasphemy down the whether he hasn't simply made the case BMW and run off into the woods-will block has resulted in two millennia of for something he wants to think about return around Easter. It's a wonder Godard some rather un-Christian activities. This later. The danger of being brave when didn't show him biting his nails. for a film by Godard, who may this time young seems to be weak knees in middle truly be accused of having made an apse of age. But Hail Mary does not appear to be The low comedy of Hail Mary lends judgment. the product of frightened thinking so weight to the suspicion that adaptation is much as of rational: It approaches the the last refuge of scoundrels unable to A good salesman? question of faith at the brink of the hard create new stuff. This may be Godard's and soft sciences' exhaustion. Godard cross to bear. The gambit of \"There are M y notes on Private Conversations postures Western intellectual disciplines only half-a-dozen plots out there\" is not are gone. After viewing Christian as bankrupt at best, corrupt at worst, in much of a fig leaf to hide behind, but it's Blackwood's on-set documentary about the squalid affair between professor and not as if Godard is sensationalizing a good the making of Death of A Salesman for student who give voice to all the rational plot. \"Immature poets imitate:' T.S. Eliot CBS, I have decided that Dustin Hoffman dogmas that have failed, and whose once wrote. \"Mature poets steal:' Time took them. coupling parallels and underscores the will permit Godard's intent-to describe desexed teaming of Joseph and the chaste and revivify ultimate mysteries-to sur- Dusty was everywhere, a full court Mary. face, though time will perhaps do the press, all over his director, Volker Schlon- filmmaking in Hail Mary no great honor.' dorff, and every doxie in sight. Feinting Protests that Godard pictured Mary as a here on a set-up, weaving there on whore (\"It could've been worse:' cracked Speaking of no ,great honor, one can somebody else's scene, bobbing up to spill writer Marcia Pally, \"he could've portrayed only wonder about the fire breathers who his guts about his father, the furniture her as a Jew\") are as wrong-headed about tried to shut the film down. The protest salesman, in silhouette sequences from her characterization as they are about the outside Alice Tully Hall-legitimate the bench. And when he'd get in over his film's sacrilege. Hail Mary begins where though bizarre-was only the fleeting head, he'd call for support from under the both Darwin and Einstein knew their culmination of weeks of harassment that boards, and lanky number one, Arthur limits. They stopped at the mechanical included telephone harangues many of Miller, would apply the heat where and didn't presume the motivational- which at base were anti-Semitic, and needed. which is the pomt where all agnostics bomb threats. No caller had seen the film, depart and all believers, including Godard needless to say, not least the gentleman Now, Dusty is an amusing guy. He does if that's what he has become, enter. Who who said he represented the \"Catholic a wonderful riff about the cheapskate knows, perhaps Godard is destined to end young element\" and had planted a bomb mentality of the moneybag producers who up like Dylan - throwing firebolts as a kid to go off at WPM (and if true, wouldn't the will \"rationalize themselves into a com:;t\" and later running out of gods. But in Hail good folks who would have died watching to avoid doing a retake. He can charm the Mary he has simply sent a note to the Raul Ruiz' City ofPirates had a devil of a pants off a browser, and in the several Pope that reads reverence, not rape. time the last few seconds of consciousness sequences from the play that have made it figuring out if this is what happens when a into Blackwood's documentary, he can Much of Hail Mary plays like the hard film bombs in Portugal) , nor the endless work went into the adaptation. The result children callers, whose mommies and make you forget about Lee J. Cobb for is a lot of hip-hoppity semiotics: The daddies told them \"They're insulting your women munch apples; God, sigh, is a God at Lincoln Center:' God, it seems, about two seconds. cloud; and with the Great One's use of her takes worse abuse from the righteous. And time moves on. Cobb is no more, completed, Mary returns to slightly tacky, middle-class carnality-the meaning of There was finally something glorious Fredric March is no more, and after the controversial hot, red, phallic lipstick about showing Hail Mary, perhaps only months of Broadway performances and TV sequence that forms the coda to the film. because so many who pay lip service to rehearsals, Dusty brought Schlondorff in. The rhythm builds to a crescendo of Mary freedom simply cannot stand its exercise. Oy, poor Schlondorff. He looks like Kukla typically cavorting up and down a local The cheap thrill of comparison to the days with a problem he can't take to Ollie. A basketball court, converting Joseph's (and of Synge, Yeats, and O'Casey at the Abbey the ob-gyn's) disbelief into acceptance, Theater wore off quickly on the Film and then writhing in bed in what appears Society, which Like every other institution divine labor; but there are moments when sits on its own heap of assumptions about Hail Mary feels like it's taking nine what gets shown, and was replaced by the months to deliver. nubby insistence that Hail Mary be seen. 62
producer who shvitzes over money a borrowing from the oral history staple of Cinema director can hondle with. But a producer- present-tense interviews with the petit Studies: star, as Dusty was on SaleslrUln, who tears power brokers, journalists, relatives , and up scenes for Art's sake is like the shmuck common men whom Long left trailing in An education on an elephant: If you rub it the wrong his whirlwind wake. Robert Penn Warren for our tbne way, you'll get packed off in a trunk. intimates the darkness of Huey's soul, Arthur Schlesinger disparages his Film is the art fonn that defines our Granted these are pretty spiffy private motives, Betty Carter remembers fearing time. Films by Eisenstein, Bergman, conversations going on here. But when him but being incapable of staying home and Fassbinder, for instance, offer pen- nobody once jumps up and says, \"I'm when he stumped, I.F. Stone confesses he etrating insights into human behavior, going to squash your head like a bug;' ve felt relief when he was shot. And the cultural change, life as we live it and can assume dot der fix vas in, yah? A ordinary folks at least those in Burns' film, perceive it. At New York University's minor qvibble. But. ... loved him. Tisch School of the Arts , we believe the study of film develops analytic Didn't they used to make documenta- What Long's assassin deprived America skills , hones critical thinking, and ries about the Battle of the Bulge, polio, of in September 1935 was an answer to the broadens perspectives. It offers under- Eskimoes and Irishmen wrestling God to a question of whether the center could have graduates superb preparation for many draw? Where does this cycle of movies held Huey Long in check. Burns' portrait of life's callings. about movies stop? Already, Private broaches a question it does not attempt to Conversations is a documentary on .the answer, the Mussolini question. When Our program in cinema studies making of the TV adaptation of the hit does it become rational for the middle- allows undergraduates to study film Broadway revival of the play which class, the stable center, and neither the with the same distinguished scholars spawned the original movie. Did someone fringe nor the entrenched, to will an who teach our graduate students. The shoot footage for a short about the making assassination? Long's killer, Carl Weiss , department's film archives, variety of of the documentary... ?This is well on the was a 29-year old surgeon. (Long was 42.) courses, and viewing facilities are way to achieving infinity in a box - the way excertional. And, students have access the Quaker Oat man is holding up a box of Why did Weiss act? to al the film screenings that make Quaker Oats with a Quaker Oat man on it Burns sidesteps much discussion of the New York City the richest film center holding up a box of Quaker Oats .... in the world. assassination, though he does record Okay, Dusty, I'm a salesman's kid, ,too. Betty Carter's ob~ervation that as soon as Because film is a truly interdisciplin- And I say that when the camera was rolling the news flashed over the radio, everyone ary art fonn, the program includes the for Private Conversations, you ate like a in muckamuck circles called to acertain study of related subjects: art, history, customer. psychology, and even film production. the whereabouts of their wives, or As a result, our students get a broadly H uey Long was a.riddle spinner. He's husbands, or sons-to see if they'd shot based education as they undertake a become something of a metaphor in him. When was the last time anyone you serious study of cinema. the American political spectrum for the know was worth that? ambiguity surrounding power, and in the For more infonnation, return the education system for the inevitability of a Would that all documentaries be as coupon below or call (212) 598-7777. fall when means come to outweight ends. endlessly fascinating as Michael This was no Nixon, no Wallace, no Joe Apted's two installments in the life of Tisch School of the Arts . McCarthy scapegoating the defenseless and building a career. Huey Long just postwar Britain, 7 Up and 28 Up. This is New York University I wasn't that simple. 721 Broadway, 7th Floor a voyeur's paradise, better than Queen for New York, N. Y. 10003 I Ken Burns' documentary, Huey Long, A Day (the dramatic model for A Chorus adroitly blows life into Huey, giving him Line), and almost like going to the track. Attn.: Roberta Cooper I the context and the character analysis that Fourteen kids pulled from all rungs of Robert Caro gave Robert Moses in his British social strata in 1963 are grilled at Please send information on the cinema studies I tome, Powerbroker. Of course, nobody age seven for Granada TV about the grit of program . ever mistook Moses for a buffoon, but life- money, love, class, dreams, jobs. I while he came to have the operating power Then Apted returns 21 years later in 1984, o undergraduate 0 graduate over New York state that Long had over and we get to see how they're running, and I Louisiana, it was Long who could have what they think, at the far turn. ~Nam-e ---------------_II made a serious run at the presidency in I7~~&e-s-s -------------------------- '36, and perhaps owned it by '40. Imagine Actually, I liked this movie, though I Huey at Yalta - if there would've been one. couldn't help but think that running a ICity/StatelZip parimutuel screening of it might have In Louisiana, he ran against Standard addressed and somewhat helped alleviate ~~ y~)fk IUniversity is an affinnative actionlequaJ opportunity Oil and the RockefeUers, and went on to the ossification of the British film industry. L lf_lStltu_UOr_t _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ I2.C~8~0:;; build the state and deliver services at the But then the very problem that forms the expense of legal process. He was likely subtext of this film - the class system has a disingenuous about his other scapegoats, stranglehold around Britain's neck that is choking off the oxygen of innovation, the Mellons, Carnegies, and J.P Morgan, energy, and enthusiasm - probably would torpedo the idea. True, a place-your-bets but he knew how to use them. He named screening could only be staged once, and them when he whipped them for standing that on a national scale, since the bookies' in the way of his plans to share the wealth. prospects for making hay from running old newsreels of Sea Biscuit rounding the first Burns charts Huey's political and moral post have been correctly analyzed as dim. arcs, using newsreel footage and cleverly 63
At some level, seeing 7 Up in tandem HARVEY (continued from page 61) though, Boy Meets Girl is embalmed in a with 28 Up is something of a Greek ture by financing it in the first place. Such sludge of paralyzing self-consciousness. tragedy. The kids in the first chapter, movies are chock-full of idiosyncrasies- Alex, Carax's protagonist, with whom the updated by Apted with material culled almost always the same ones. The lan- director identifies far too closely, finds ste- from later visits at ages 14 and 21, struggle guage on the soundtrack and the flora in rility wherever he goes, and fits right in. against what seems in hindsight their fate. During an interminable picaresque trip The Jesuit dictum that undergirds the the background may vary, but wherever through Paris de nuit, pasty Alex pursues entire enterprise (\"Give me a child until he the filmmaker takes us, the whole world is dour Mireille, until their arid souls meet is seven, and I'll give you the man'), as well Switzerland. The central characters are over a kitchen table. These kids are made as most child psychology theory, makes perforce a mopey lot because, guess what, for each other. Both have been dumped by inevitable a kind of balance sheet tallying the society they inhabit is bereft of moral their weary lovers, and they're plugged that is, at once, valuable and false. foundation with all the exists blocked, and into the same psychic wave length. When on a personal level the screwing they get she murmurs, \"I've tried suicide more Valuable, because in 'crude terms , isn't worth the screwing they're getting. often since I came to Paris;' he whimpers , Apted does measure and chronicle the Framed by the requisite camera pyrotech- \"Under your impulse, our melancholy will sideways drift of most of his subjects, and nics, the performers emit metaphors and die away:' No such luck, of course. Within thereby render a rather unmistakable plow through yet another round of coitus a mise en scene of stupefying artifice, she f1accidus before inching toward the dies by her own hand, her face a Pierrot judgment as to what has reduced Britain to epiphany which proves that the anemic mask. Boy Meets Girl fitfully displays a respirator patient. Perhaps more than endure or maybe they don't, or maybe it some wit around the periphery of Carax's any other films , 7 Up /28 Up give the lie to doesn't make any different. frame, but its core is pure rigor artis. That Tory theories about the social welfare state destroying initiative. Class still is king in T he most happily torgettable of this Carax was a mere 22 when he confected Britain, always has been and always will year's Zombies of All Nations was this loose autobiopsy explains a great deal be. It is responsible for the impermeable Fina Torres' Oriane (*), a co-production but excuses nothing. boundaries that present Britains with the of FranceIVenezuela/Lost Continent of unpalatable choices: you can tread water, Atlantis. This aristocratic item features a There's one really breathtaking image move down , or move out. The result is a heroine who resembles a refugee from toward the beginning of the Australian country in .a coma. Elle magazine. Despite her ravishing Bliss (*). A dying man Lies like a limp wardrobe and franco-phone husband, swastika on a suburban lawn while the The case of John bears witness. At Marie never smiles. That's because she's camera slowly ascends hundreds of feet seven, he applauds tuition at private lost touch with her roots and therefore her into the heavens until he is a distant white school to keep the poor from rushing in. true self. Opportunity comes when she speck obscured by rain clouds. Over the As a baby barrister at 21 , he observes, inherits Aunt Oriana's ramshackle next 100. minutes director Ray Lawrence \"Not everyone can be at the top ;' and hacienda, where she spent what seems to sweats hard to top this stroke of virtuosity, decries subversives for fostering invidious have been an excruciatingly tedious vaca- an effort which inspires him to ever-esca- class attitudes based on envy. And at 28, tion in her girlhood. While poring through lating heights of vulgar phantasmagoria. he decides to stand by his earlier state- the wreckage of this manse, she relives her Waterbugs sprint out of surgical sutures, ments and not participate in 28 UP. Why own torpid memories , accompanied by adulterers cavort bare-assed in a swank excruciatingly pretty shots of dappled for- restaurant during the luncheon rush, a bother? est and moonlight sands; since Marie is coke-snorting teen gives head to her One can't resist the human faces of 7 apparently endowed with telepathic pow- brother, who is attired for the occasion in a ers, she likewise conjures the past of the Hitler Youth uniform. All of which serves Up/28 Up, the people here who prove one sphinxlike Oriana. She, it seems, had a to illutrate the saga of a (literally) born- of drama's most bedrock foundations, and teen fling with her mestizo half-brother, again adman who , upon his regeneration, cinema's most ba~ic capabilities: Everyone inconveniently interrupted in mid-orgasm makes the startling discovery that the civi- captured on his own terms makes sense. when irate papa bashed his head in. This lized world around us is an inferno of greed And, there is something heartbreaking in doesn't seem to have fazed Oriana, who seeing a child grow up , period. So much is retains the same expression of petulant and sin. invested in the notion of childhood mystery no matter what, but Marie is Lawrence is himself a whiz in the com- innocence that the adult is inevitably a somehow roused to action as a result of all history of compromises . That some here these somnolent flashbacks. With a shy mercial realm, having won two Clios for have adapted, and a few achingly have grin, she informs the last grizzled peon on his achievements, according to the press not - all documented by Apted's the estate that she isn't going to sell the notes. Bliss is apparently his penance for immensely more sophisticated camera place after all, while resisting the urge to having served Mammon so long and so and intelligence in 1984-brushes up confront that dark stranger who may be ... well. Either Lawrence is a little slow on the against some sad, shared truth. her illegitimate cousin! Fin, thank God. uptake, or else he's been storing up nug- gets of insight since his faroff counter- The underlying assumption in 7 Up is Leos Carax's Boy Meets Girl, (*) culture days. For Bliss solemnly informs that kids tell the truth that their parents represents a more aggressive brand of iner- us that city life invariably kills the soul and want to hear. In 28 Up , the truth tia. The festival program opines that it just as surely causes cancer; that grasping sometimes seems to exist in its elisions, in \"suggests the first films of the French New what's not being said. Perhaps Jackie- Wave;' an assertion whose accuracy is lim- for gold always unmans people (especially married at 19 and now contentedly ited to these facts: Boy Meets Girl (a) if they're female); that only whores have working away for an insurance company - sports a youthful, randy hero who (b) the candor to be real women; and that says it clearest: \"We don't think about it;' speaks mumbly French in (c) black-and- Society erects loony bins solely for the she says, articulating Britain's epitaph. \"It white. Quite unlike its alleged forebears , purpose of incarcerating the truly sane. only comes up every seven years when Our one recourse is to retreat to the prime- you come around;' she adds , giving Apted val wilderness, where we can once more his best review. ~ 64
get in touch with our animal instincts. another, sadder story. In films like Jonah From time to time she consults the tarot to Lawrence doubtless intended Bliss to be a Who Will Be 25 in the ~ar 2000 and The cheer he rself up , and naturally, her favorite brave and undaunted cri de coeur, but his Middle of the World, Tanner made the card is Death : \"She brought me luck;' sub-Ken Russell palette is me rely pitching anomie he saw beneath the placid surface Mail asserts. Barkeep Madeleine is blue a different brand of dog food . of Swiss life seem complex and tragic. In because she's stuck in a provincial disco whe n she's rather be ravishing Ie tout Paris sAlain Tanner's No Man Land (* liz) is sNo Man Land, the wan laments of Tan- with her soulful rendition of such lyrics as \"If love is hell , if pleasure has a bitter taste, the most dispiriting of the 1985 Festival's ner's quartet of small-time drug smug- what can I do?\" Aspiring pilot Paul's one Notes from Limbo , because Tanner is desire is to emigrate to the second most indisputably the most talented of this sod- glers- shuffling back and forth across the boring country in the world , Canada. Jean, den lot. Stylistically, No Man 's Land is Franco-Swiss border, destination Obliv- by contrast, wants noth ing from life but to endowed with the austere beauty that has ion - sound like vacant attitudinizing, with be left alone to commune with his cows - long been Tanner's trade mark: ominously Sy mb ols. cities and people give him the jitters. To chill landscapes accompanied by the pro- unde rscore their plight, Tanner makes pulsive rumblings of Terry Riley's jazz \"I'm tired of affairs, tired of everything;' piano score. The substance of this film is mutters Mali , a N orth African immigrant who is wont to bang her head against the nearest window sill whe n depressed. PROFESSIONAL FILM BOOKS! by Film Professionals FILM DIRECTORS FILM SCHEDULING/FILM BUDGETING WORKBOOK A Complete Guide '85 Ralph S. Singleton Michael Singer, Ed. THIRD ANNUAL Comp8n io n to \"Film Schedu li ng\". ~'*oU\\.~ INTERNATIONAL EDITION Co ntains th e ent ire scree n play to Fra ncis Coppola's Academy Award no min ated I iWORKBOOK V' 1400 DIRECTO RS- DOMEST IC T HE CONV ERSATION as we ll as D£ l ,H S S\".GUfOl<I & FOREIG N sa mple prod uc ti o n and b udge t fo rms to be com pleted by th e reader. V' Birthd ate, Pl ace, Yea r, Addresses , A ge nts ALL SHEETS PERFORATED. V' Full length fea tures, telefilm s ISBN 0-943728-07-X 296pp. $ 15.95 V' A lphab eti cal cross- reference of MOVIE PRODUCTION & 14,000 film s V' Ind ex of Directo rs $34.95 BUDGET FORMS . .. INSTANTLY! V' Interviews & Pho tos of Jo hn Ralph S. Singleton Badh am, Arthur H iller, Randa H aines, etc. ISBN 0-943728-15-0 8Ve \" x II\" Clot h 436 pp. FILM SCHEDULING This boo k plus o ne photocopier equ als ........, \"'..\".' ''hit ... ..- - . Or, How Long Willlt Take every productio n and budget fo rm ...... w, ~ needed to make a fu ll length feature To Shoot Your Movie? o r teleplay. Completely redesigned a nd integrated fo rms th ai are 81/2 \"x II \" Ralph S. Singleton fo rm at- easy to tear o ut a nd use again a nd aga in . The complete step-by-step guid e to professio nal motio n picture sc hedul ing, A LL SHEETS PERFORATED detailing how to create a produ cti o n board , shot-by-sho t, da y-by-d ay. ISBN 0-943728-14-2 136 pp. $ 15.95 Complete produ cti o n boa rd of THE C O NVERSATIO N in colo r. YES' Please send me FC :85 ISBN 0-943728-1 1-8 224pp. $ 16.95 • the following books: CALIF. UPS TAX SHIPPING Reco mmended for college co urses. QTY. BOOK PRICE FILM DIRECTORS '85 2 .27 5 .00 FILM SCHEDULING $34.95 1.10 $ FILM SCHEDULING/BUDGETING WKBK. 16.95 1.04 2 .50 $ MOVIE PRODUCTION & BUDGET 15 .95 $ FORMS ... INSTANTLY! 1.04 2 .50 15 .95 2.50 $ _ - - - SHIP BOOKS TO: TOTAL ENCLOSED $_________ : Name LONE EAGLE PUBLISHING 9903 Santa Monica Blvd. 9903 Santa Monica Blvd. : Company Beverly Hills, CA 90212 Beverly Hills, CA 90212 213/471-8066 213/471-8066 : Address ,: City State Zip --~------------~~~------~~----- 65
sure to leave no metaphor unliteralized. of individualism crushed by a sc,:lerotic Bitter Harvest is like Strindberg ElI-rly on, we're told (frequently) that the society, and as such it's quite e ngrossi ng. gang's password is \"The gray hen is deaf In reconstructing the notorious affair of stripped of misogyny, a deliberately claus- and blind :' And damned if the very fowl in this H aps burg-e mpire officer, purportedly trop hob ic kammerspiel in which the question doesn't make a cameo appear- blackmailed into espio nage to cover his antagonists' shifts of dependency and rage ance, picking her way across jean's barn- homosexual proclivities, Szabo deliber- are as plausible as they are constantly yard, oblivious to the tragedy which has ate ly stresses the historical forces that surprising. During the German occupa- befallen her biped betters. On the whole, I shaped Redl , rather than hi s psychological tion of Western Poland , a shrewd peasa nt was inclined to side with the chicken. makeup. 'His fate is thu s presented less as farm er (Armin Mi.iller-Stahl), whose Cath- a human tragedy than the emblem of a olic piety battles his carnal instincts, T his distinctly lesser Tanner qualified culture doomed by its own internal harbors a chic j ewish refugee (Elisabeth for inclusion by its embrace of the co ntrad ictions . Trissenaar) from Nazi annihilation. H oI- swanky nihilism which set the prevailing land dissects their strange symbiosis with tone this year. The selection of joseph The screenplay, by Szabo and Peter a clinical objectivity, which spares neither Losey's Steaming (*), however, seems Dobai , is a persuasive history lesson, member of this mutually wounding cou- to have been prompted by sheer senti- revealing a nation deeply distrustful of the ple. If Rosa relies on her host's goodw ill for ment for its late director, an impulse that polyglot minorities and castes co ntained her very survival, her hold over him is just should have been squelched by those who within its borders, and whose inbred code as pote nt, if more intangible. In the e nd , profess to admire his former achieve- of honor is the relic of a fast-receding age. they are both unfulfilled , and both ments. Losey was one of the most uneven Szabo's Red l has sq ue lched all personal trapped. Within its self-imposed limita- of the major postwar filmmakers, but even loyalties to find a niche in this fossilized tions, Angry Harvest is a movie of his failures usually bore a distinctive per- order, but as a provincial peasant of remarkable resourcefulness. H olland's sonal stamp. Not so Steaming , which is dubious ethnicity, he is forever con- camera makes a virtue of the confined merely a startlingly inept transcription of demned to rhe role of susp icious outsider. spaces dictated by her story, and she's an irredeemably dreadful play. The all- In the title role, Klaus Maria Brandauer drawn superlative performances from her serves Szabo's conceptio n onl y too well ; cast , as Trissenaar's careworn astringency female dramatis personae, a caste-ridden his Redl is an opaque mask of rectitude, collides against the petulance and aggres- lot thrown together vintage-MGM-foxhole sio n of Mi.iller-Stahl's lovelorn rube. Mi.il- style in a ladies' bathhouse threatened sLosey Steaming ler-Stahl's versatility is pretty astonish- with redevelopment, volubly drop their ing - when la st seen, he was the class barriers along with their duds. Their revealing nothing until hi s final implosion forbiddingly gimlet-eyed Crown Prince consciousness gets raised too, until each is who consigned Colonel Redl to oblivion. a model of pluck and self-confidence, con- at the film's co nvul sive denouement. veyed by indulging in a gigglesome group Whe~e Angry Harvest is sparked by its skinny dip in the establishment's wading Unfortunately, Colonel Redfs most evi- director's lucidity, The ~ar of the Quiet pool. Most of Losey's cast was recruited Sun is illuminated by Zanussi's melan- specifically for the celluloid version of this dent virtue is also its greatest limitation: choly te nderness . This time , the ill- property, but wi th the exception of starred lovers are a wistful G.1. (Scott Vanessa Redgrave (who is merely, and Szabo is so intent on presenting Redl as a Wilson) and a war-buffeted widow (the unprecedentedly, boring) , they all oversell radiant Maja Komorowska), who timidly the obvious as if to the nether reaches of hapless, impass ive pawn that the inherent merge in the ruins of Warsaw in 1946. the upper circle of Comedy Theatre. Theirs is a romance that transcends Steaming's one t11umph is its set, a dilapi- drama of this story is nullified. As a words, and for good reason: neither dated Edwardian pile of tile and marble, speaks a word of the other's language. and even this is ill-served in Christopher companion-piece to his previous collabo- (The soldier's command of his own lingo is Challis' grainy, overlit cinematography. pretty tongue-tied in the best of circum- Losey's memory would have been far bet- ration with Brandauer, the similar-themed stances.) The tentative bond betwee n ter served with a retrospective screening these t,vo people is all the more moving of Accident. Mephisto , Colonel Redl sacrifices emo- because of its devastating context; this couple is forever overwhelmed by the As it happens, the Film Festival sched- tio nal engageme nt for the sake of its cool, weight of their own pai nful memories, and uled a second British paean to female the inescapable devastation of the urban bonding in cloistered circumstances, lofty design. landscape that Zanussi splendidly vivifies . which redundantly showed up Steaming for the wan object it is. This was Powell The Festival's two e ntries by Polish It may be Zanussi's very success in and Pressburger's 1947 Black Narcissus making this story so poignant that has directors, Agn ieska H olland's Bitter prompted criticism in some quarters over (* * * *),in a restored color print cour- * *)Harvest (* QuidSun's pessimistic ending; after being and Krzysztof Zanus- touched so deeply, many viewers felt tesy the British Film Institute. The movie cheated that the film doesn't conclude the is as irrestistible as ever, with its blend of (* * *si's The Year of the Quiet Sun way Samuel Goldwyn might have con- heartfelt melodrama, florid Freudianisms, liz ) each supplied a full meas ure trived, c. 1948. For me, all such quibbles and sheer cinematic gusto. Thanks to this of th at human urgency so co nspicuou sly are rebutted by Zanussi's daring, transcen- new print, Art Director Alfred junge's dent last image: a frenetic last jitte rbug in backlot Himalayas and jack Cardiffs vel- lacki ng in the rest of this year's lineup. The the Monument Valley our heroine will vety tracking shots and dense, vibrant never get to see. The ~ar ofthe Quiet Sun two films coincidentally pivot on the same is Zanussi's least cerebral effort , and the hues emerged in all their glory. dramatic situation: an ill-fated liaison *stva n Szabo's Colonel Redl (* I/Z), between mismated lovers thrown together I by contrast, means to be a chilling study in the chaos (there's that word again) of World War II. That each film is such a distinctive achi eveme nt is a testament the tale nt and insight of its respective c reato r. 66
triumph of his career thus far. Get The Superstar of Video C talogs. his year's unrivalled crowd-pleaser was T the Yugoslav When Father Was (* *Away on Business' I/Z), which revealed its young director Emir Kusturica as a potential successor to the chuckle- some side of Fran}:ois Truffaut. The latest example of that genre beloved to arthouse audiences everywhere-the wacky but warm-hearted. family chronicle - this movie has undeniable verve and an irresistible central character: a pudgy six- year-old somnambulist who gets in more trouble while asleep than all the Bellini and Donizetti heroines put together. Sur- rounding this imp is the usual assortment of roguish gallants and stoic if compliant females, and in the course of a rather protacted 135 minutes , they comport themselves in the manner of the best Gallic farce. The fact that it's in Serbo- Croatian constituted this movie's principal novelty; its briskness was tonic enough for those audiences surfeited with the languid kvetchery of most of the competition. It was up to Percy Adlon's Sugar Baby (* * *), the Festival's other intentional comedy, to provide the year's one grace note of authentic surprise. This deliriously deadpan movie was the last thing you'd expect from the man who directed the exceedingly somber Celeste a few years back. Adlon's script has a daffy logic which defies all expectations. The heroine, a mortician's assistant and a shoo-in as West German runner-up in the Shirley Stoler lookalike contest, develops an obsessive yen for a lithe blond subway attendant, and leaves no subway timetable unfurled - until she snares him. The shock is that, after a moment of astonishment, the boy is simply delighted to be the recipient of such ardor, since the trim , grim Yuppie he's Order with confidence from Movies Unlimited. wedded to merely glowers at him , and he's What a hunk! Big ... beautftul . _. smart, too passive a sort to find fulfillment on his too! No wonder the Movies Unlimited Video We're one of the world's oidia and most Catalog always plays the leading role in access own. to great video entertainment. Order today. And $5.95reliable home video services. discover how exciting it is to live with a legend! Sugarbaby's eerie mindset is perfectly Only matched by its extraterrestrial visuals: all 1000's & 1000's of titles on VHS, Beta those Munich lunar-modular people-mov- & Laserdisc-Nobody has More! ers, bathed in a sickly wash of pastel neon The Classics (and Not-So-Classics) • Incredible (Catalog fees refunded with 1st order) provided by the camerawork of Johanna Rarities • Current Releases • Foreign Films • like adult movies? Enclose an additional Family Fare. How-To's • Documentaries • $3.50 for our spicy Adult Video Catalog! Heer. The movie does de-accelerate fast ..Nostalgic TV Shows • Concerts • etc. once Marianne and Eisi consecrate their We're The Moviest!® -,---------------------------- union; and it concludes with a too- predictable descent to Rainer Fassbinder- D Enclosed is 55.95 cash, check or money platz, its heroine flailing impotently on the order (510. outside USA). Send me your MOVIES UNLIMITED newest video catalog, plus periodic updates ground, while a crowd of nasty' krauts of new releases and sales Items. 6736 Castor Avenue watches with dour glee. Even so, Sugar D Enclosed is 53.50 additional (59.45 total, Baby's authentic bizarrerie showed up the 513.50 outside USA). Please include your Philadelphia, PA 19149 likes of Bliss and Boy Meets Girl as the adult video catalog. I am over 18 years old . 2151722-8298 living dead they were. It also offered us the Name _____________________________________________________ welcome reminder that, much of this Address ____________________________________ year's festival notwithstanding, there's a City _____________________ State _________ Zip _ _ _ _ _ __ reason they call them moving pictures. ~ Phone ( IFe I © 1985 Movies Unlimited Inc. 67
STEIN (continuedfrompage 60) find out from Raul Ruiz's City of Pirates Stravinsky. cochons. (* * *), but the wild trip from here to I've no quarrel with this entertaining (* * * *),Mitsuo Yanagimachi's Himatsuril wherever is worth the detours. portrait, as far as it goes. Some day we may Fire Festival made outside The left-wing avant-gardist director, get one more complete that will be franker the studio system, financed by the Seibu born in Chile in 1941, gained celebrity as a playwright in the Sixties, shot films for the and deal with: Cocteau's homosexuality; department store, was the best new Allende government, then fled to Europe when Allende was overthrown, settling in his talented covey of lovers; his permanent feature film I saw at Lincoln Center this Paris. With a bit of help from French TV, he has made some 30 features during the waves, hair dyeings, and face Liftings; his year. It is the director's fourth film ; at 41 , last decade, which should earn him a Mr. Prolific crown. life during the Occupation; his dealings he is the most interesting new japanese The first reel of Pirates is a cascade of with Hitler's ambassador, Otto Abetz; his superb imagery, mostly featuring a typical talent to come down the road since Shohei pet Ruiz shot: deep-focus frames with an \"protection\" by Bernard Radermacher, enormous object piled in the foreground , a Imamura. sort of Welles-Toland setup, but stretched, Goebbels' personal representative in pulled out like bubble gum to ludicrous Himatsuri has its origin in a 1980 police lengths. One particularly hilarious view is Paris; and his long friendship with Arno from the inside of a character's mouth , case-a mass murder-that took place in with the border of the frame formed by Breker, Hitler's favorite sculptor. Is there giant teeth and gums. Isidore's valise, the Kumano area in southern japan, an when opened, reveals an impressive any footage of Rene Clair's embarrassed composition: cabbages, chicken parts, important center of Shintoism, a sacred and a prophet's head. We are in Bunuel- reading of Cocteau's funeral oration after Cocteau-Daliland, and it is good to be region , the setting for many folk legends. back there. Breker's bust of Cocteau was unveiled in The film was shot there . The heroine's name is a nod to Isidore the chapel? Ducasse (1846-1870), the so-called Its protagonist, Tatsuo (Kinya Kitaoji), is Comte de Lautn!amont, precursor of The Renoir film, made for French TV Surrealism and author of the sublime a mountain man, a lumberjack, a hunter Chants de Maldoror. The monologues of in 1967, is concerned largely with his Ruiz's Isidore, long lava flows of purple and trapper who trains dogs to kill wild prose, are parodic variations on Lautf(!a- masterpiece, The Rules of the Game, mont's high-flown style. boars. Its crux is a paradox: Although which is analyzed in detail and viewed in a Pirates is not as successful as the Tatsuo is a despoiler, he is the only man director's The Three Crowns ofthe Sailor, few clips. Renoir talks of the work with which the festival gave us last year. In a around who is still on intimate terms with film of little discernible content, actors great good humor, Lucid modesty, and and imagery must do double dury, and the the deities who inhabit the land. The performers in this one are not all that tremendous charm. Without gushing, he interesting. After the first reel, this mad movie is charged with erotic pantheism: machine grinds to a halt at times and communicates the joy he experienced in clunks to the ground in the interstices When a friend cuts a sacred laurel, Tatsuo between the wonderful shots. But, oh making films. There is a particularly those cabbages! Oh , those chicken parts! obliges him to exhibit his cock to the moving sequence in which the director mountain goddess to appease her. Later, and Marcel Dalio, who played the Mar- realizing he is about to defile a bay by quis in Rules, are recorded sitting down on swimming in it, Tatsuo shows his own the terrace of the chateau where the film penis to the goddess of the waters . After was shot 28 years earlier. They proceed to all, she's a woman . discuss the famous shot-shown, and From a brutal womanizing lout, the then sensibly shown again after their lumberjack is gradually transformed into a dialogue-of Dalio exhibiting the Limon- zealous surrogate for the traditional aire (mechanical organ) to his guests, and voices, and when developers from Tokyo how he was directed for it. Renoir reveals attempt to acquire his land in order to that he has always considered it the best transform the property into a tourist single shot in any of his films. Renoir, the attraction , he becomes a vessel for the Boss is one of the very best movies ever earth deities' ca~ for blood . Yanagimachi's made about a film director. concerns are not ecological. This fascinat- The most uneven double bill was ing film is about the destruction of the composed of Pierre Beuchot's Le Temps symbiotic relationship between man and (* * *).Detruit (e) and Slavko Nowytski's Har- nature, which was one of the supports of vest of Despair Beuchot his country's culture. revealed at a press conference that the idea Of note to devotees of japanese cinema: for his movie came from seeing Cozarin- The role of Tatsuo's wife is played by sky's One Man s War, a film which he junko Miyashita, the \"Roman Porno T he best double bill was composed of respected, but which treated an important Edgardo Cozarinsky's Jean Coc- Queen\" of the Nikkatsu studio during the period of modern French history \"in a early 1970s. teau: Self-Portrait of a Man subjective fashion:' He decided to do (***)Unknown and jacques Rivette something different himself, with the I sidore lives with her parents near the (****).and Andre S. Labarthe's Renoir, the same period. He has-and made a sea. The family holds a seance to contact her missing brother. She discovers Boss Like Ruiz , Cozarinsky perfectly dreadful movie. a runaway boy in her closet and is later saved from suicide by a sea sprite. The boy is a South American who has become an The conceit (or what the French would cuts her father's throat, then castrates a cyclist who shoots himself. The cyclist's honorary Parisian intellectual in recent call unefausse bonne idee-a phony good dispersed brains form a map of Pirate Island. She goes there. Or does she? A few years. The Argentinian director's One idea) of his picture is the offscreen reading hundred adventures later, the rotting corpses of Isidore and her mother are Man s Uilr was a highlight of the 1982 of letters to three wives from three French about to begin another cycle. festival. His Cocteau is expertly assem- soldiers killed during the early days of Cycle of what? you might ask. You won't bled. Its most piquant moments are those World War II, accompanied by shots of in which the poet-novelist-painter- said war. The letters are of paltry interest, cineaste retails incisive anecdotes and the newsreel clips of substandard quality. charming bits of gossip , largely about the My only reward for my time destroyed Ballets Russes period, that concern sitting through the 73 minutes of Beu- Nijinsky, Diaghilev, Picasso, and chot's padding and diddling is the useless 68
knowledge that one of the soldiers wrote By 1986, most network affiliate stations will broadcast stereo. vous to his wife and the other two wrote tu. Unfortunately, most VCRs aren't wired to handle it. .. . Harvest of Despair was produced by But Toshiba's new M-5800 VHS is. It has stereo capability In the Ukrainian Famine Research Commit- tee and the National Film Board of both record and play. Plus 4 heads, 4-eventl7-day programming starved to death in the Ukraine during 1932-33 in the course of a famine and full-function wireless remote. T O S H I BAIn Touch with Tomorrow deliberately created by Stalin. All of the If you think it sounds good now, region's grain was sent abroad in order to obtain foreign currency, to show that you should hear it next year. Tcnn;b.Am.dca, ln, ., 82Totow.Ro.d , W.yn', NJ07470 communism was working and thriving, ' and , above all , to decimate the population ------------------------------------------------------- and destroy Ukrainian nationalism. Survi- vors who had not fled and who opposed AOOMPLETE REl'ROSPECTIVE OF SUCH A the absorption of the region by the U.S .S.R. were sent to slave labor camps. FRANCOIS TRUFFAUTS FILMS GORGEOUS People ate dogs, resorted to cannibalism, and dined on their neighbors' children. PUJS ASELECTION OF H1S PERSONAL FAVORITES Most of this is recounted by a group of POSTER sensible-sounding survivors who are now scattered around the world. They are UKETmS ... joined by other \"witnesses\": a few diplo- mats and journalists who had lived in can be yours Russia during the Thirties. Malcolm Muggeridge accuses Walter Duranty, The for only $lO! New York Times' Moscow correspondent at the time, of monstrous lying. In dis- patches to the paper he denied the existence of the famine, while admitting in private conversations that he knew 10,000,000 had died. It is suggested that Duranty was being blackmailed by the Russians and that he was an agent for them. It would take more expert eyes than mine to tell if the footage presented as historical documentation was even shot in the Ukraine. Some of it was accumulated by the Germans during the war. My gut reaction is to buy most of what the film says, if not all that it shows. Whatever the case, Nowytski has shaped the mass of material with skill. There's not an uninter- esting moment in this movie. Paul Claudel, author of a five-part AUGUST 9-251985 I enclose S _ for the Truffaut Plus Poster Catholic play set in the 16th century, The Satin Slipper, exercised his writing ALlCE TULlX HALL Name: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ skills during the Occupation by writing LINOOLN CENTER odes to Marshal Petain. 6.5TH srR.ESr ANDBRQillWAY Address, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ The world premiere of The Satin PR~N'l'ED BY THE ~'I LM OOCI£J'Y OF LINCOLN CEN'I'ER City/SIAt.lZip' _ _ _ _ _ __ Slipper was held at the Comedie Fran- ANDLINCOLN CENTER I'I)RTH E PEHFORMINGARTS c;:aise on November 27, 1943. The author Daytime Phone : _ _ _ _ _ __ was alone in his box. Cocteau's friend, _-_--. - ___--....TICKET INFORMATIc\\~, :l62- r.JlI Otto Abetz, entered with an entourage of Mail coupon with check or money Nazi bigwig culture vultures. Before ..............-.....-.... .... .. ...- order payable to: The Film Society sitting down, they stopped in front of of Lincoln Center, 140 West 65th Claudel's box. The poet rose and bowed Street, New York, New York 10023. deferentially while the Germans gave him ~ Allow six weeks for delivery. You a military salute and clicked their heels. ~ may use the postage paid envelope The show could start. When it was over, the French audience left and the Germans 5 in this magazine. stayed on a bit to applaud the play. \\!! ~ 22 x 33 112 inches ~ 8 69
Whatever the merits of Claudel and his span. The best sequence seemed to me to written by Fina Torres, who with those monumental play, it has now been filmed by Manoel de Oliveira, one of the most be The Jar, a jolly conventional tale. three strings to her harp might consider estimable of living directors, and has taken on a new existence. The Satin Slipper The Museum of Modern Art's Depart- taking up the piano. has been shown at three different lengths: at Cannes, two hours and 40 minutes; at Tment of Film has restored a Technicolor o some ticket-holders entering Alice Venice, where it was awarded a Golden Tully Hall on October 7 to view Jean- Lion, the complete seven-hour version; in print of Nothing Sacred (**), made New York it lasted two hours and ten in 1937. It was presented as a tribute to the Luc Godard's Hail Mary (e) it looked as minutes. According to reports, the Cannes version was an abridgment that made department's 50th anniversary. William if Fellini had finally decided to shoot a some sense: it began and ended in a theater, with the curtain opening at the Wellman's film, from a script by Ben movie here. Long lines of intense women start and closing at the end, underlining Oliveira's decision not to detheatricalize Hecht, is one of the lesser screwball and a few men were marching in circles at the play. It included an invocation to the comedies of the Thirties. It is cynical on the side of the theater, holding lit candles, Virgin from Part I and two period sermons in Portuguese which placed the action in the surface and a bit mushy underneath. chanting Ave Marias, and brandishing its historic context, followed by a section of Part III and all of Part IV. The New York Not much chemistry develops from the signs that expressed outrage in various . version opens without any credits. The first thing to appear onscreen is a title: teaming of Carole Lombard and Fredric degrees of decipherability. Some \" Ten years latd' (This would be fine in a Buouel film; it isn't here.) All of Part IV March, although Lombard is a pleasure to . seminarists from Connecticut had trans- was shown. And that was it. This New York version made no sense whatsoever watch under any circumstances. The ported a statue of the Virgin and set up a and emptied most of the theater before it had been onscreen an hour. funniest moments all come fairly early and shrine near the picket line. These were The festival's ad in The New York Times involve the sour reception accorded to city not movie extras but real people, \"seg- on September 8, and subsequent listings elsewhere, announced the sale of tickets slicker March on his arrival in Vermont. ments\" of the Catholic church, demon- for The Satin Slipper- not a third of the film , the film. Those who were prudent strating against a film they considered enough to retain their stubs on October 10 and 12 should be hardy enough to demand blasphemous, a film unseen by most. refunds. The demonstrators included members I stvan Szabo's Colonel Redl (e) is hack work deluxe. Dozens of set decorator's of the Police Department's Holy Name elves have nailed tons of period bric-a-brac into place. There are waltzes, mists, and Society and the Knights of Lithuania. One horses clopping by in the snow, but all the emperor's horses, carpenters, and dry ice of the organizers, John P. Puthenveeitl, could never turn the academic Szabo into a Hungarian Visconti. The furniture is up opined: \"Your rights end where somebody there on the screen; no life inhabits it. The unrelieved verbiage is accentuated by else's nose begins:' Is there a Holy Nose faulty post-synchronization for all the voices. In the leading role, Klaus Maria Society? Brandauer, performing in German, seems dubbed into German. An abundance of literature was handed Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Kaos (*) out to passersby. A brochure published by is adapted from four Pirandello stories set in Sicily. It runs over three hours. The the American Society for the Defense of sketch film is always a risky affair, and in spite of a connecting device involving a Tradition, Family and Property noted the raven, the structure of this one is hardly seamless. Most of it is fairly engrossing. 'Jubilation\" of the French Communist The stories are not resolved; they con- clude on bittersweet anti- or semi- Party when Godard's film was released. I climaxes -life just goes on and on. Given the length of the film, this absence of was given a copy of Roses , a newsletter put catharsis does take its toll on the attention out by the Our Lady of Roses Shrine in Bayside, Queens, where Veronica Leuken, \"the seer of Bayside;' claims to have been visited by the real Virgin Mary ever since April 7, 1970. (\"Don't get involved with other apparitions!\" Roses warns.) There was nothing about Godard and his movie in the copy I had been given Zanussi's A Year of Quiet Sun by a protester. It was headlined \"I shall not allow a cure- AIDS plague from God:' A The color is used to best effect for the conversation between Jesus and the seer New York exteriors and the scene of a of Bayside is then reported in detail, in shamelessly sleazy nightclub show, \"Toot- which Jesus states: ''My children, I shall sies of AU Nations:' not allow the scientific world to find a cure You've seen Oriane (e) , a Venezuelan- for AIDS, because of the horrible nature of French coproduction, even if you haven't. what brings on this disease:' It's the one about the mysterious A leaflet from the Morality Action hacienda, the young woman with an Committee of Jackson Heights recom- enigmatic aunt who has a secret. You've mended the immediate cessation of the seen it as a Bosnian-Belize coproduction, consumption of Coca-Cola by every and from more countries than you can Catholic in the country as a protest against recall. Now you've had a chance to see it Godard's film. (Columbia, owned by again at Lincoln Center, more anesthetiz- Coke, was originally to distribute the ing than ever, with klutzy flashbacks and movie. It backed out.) forward to and from an incestuous past Inside, the spectacle offered on the that dares not say its name, reeking of screen was pale indeed compared to that tenth-rate literature and lulled along on the street. A woman's body is labyrinthine ways to the canned strains of prominently displayed, but not much FaunS, Bach, and Beethoven. This moldy more than frequent cloud formations and bonbon was directed , produced, and monotonously recurrent shots of the 70
moon, accompanied by snippets of Cho- named Joseph, but will not put out for seismograph is in a serious state of pin and Mahler. The sound man seemed him. One day, Uncle Gabriel comes in on disrepair these days. Hail Mary is foolish to be a disturbed monkey who was turning ajet plane.... and self-indulgent. I'm no judge of WQXR off and on obsessively. Yes , blasphemy, but it is also unrelievedly dull , Veronica, the story does seem to be about In the old days, 20 years ago, when which in my book is a greater sin. On a a girl in Switzerland who plays basketball Godard was at his creative peak, his work and is keeping company with a cabdriver was like a seismograph recording the scale of one to ten , I'd give it a zero and reverberations of an uneasy society. The The Song ofBernadette eleven. ® Summer '86: June 30 - August 22 MOVIE STAR Do you want to make films PHOTOS or sit in a classroom? One of the world's largest collections of film If you want to make films. our intensive, personality phorographs, with emphasis on interdisciplinary 8-week su mmer rare candids and European material. Send a program is for you. S.A.S.E. with want-list ro: Refine your cra ft whileearningan M.F.A. Milron T. Moore, Jr. in Filmmaking. A working filmmaker will be your advisor, while all the other Dept. Fe P.O. Box 140280 artists-photographers. sculptors, Dallas, Texas 75214-0280 composers, writers, and painters will FILMS IN REVIEW be your responsi ve audience. If you like movies, you 'll love Films in J!-. Review. $16.00 a year. Sample copy $1.00. Dept. B, Box 589, New York al PARDGraduate School of the Arts 10021 1860-1985: 125th Anniversary Year For a descriptive brochure and application write: Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College. Box FA Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504 Or call: (914) 758-4105 or 758-6822, x-133 TIIEBEST ONE GOOD TAPE DESERVES ANOTHER, AND ANOTHER, FILMS YOU NEVER SAW. AND ANOTHER, AND ANOTHER, AND ANOTHER, AND ANOTHER, Now you can rent videocassettes by AND ANOTHER, AND ANOTHER... mail of over 350 hard-to-find quality films, including El Norte, B erlin A lex- Only the best films on videotape-over 900 to choose from. anderplatz, Entre Nous, The Return of Our unique collection ranges from Amadeus to Zelig, Martin Guerre, Liquid Sky, Fitzcarraldo, and includes many tapes not generally found in video stores, Lianna, Seven Samurai, Fanny and Alex- i.e. documentaries, pre-60s B&W, foreign and independent films, ander, Woman in the Dunes, Pixote, as well as out-of-print tapes. Carmen,8112, and The Tin Drum. Members can exchange tapes for other tapes at any time . Our ever-expanding library includes Even if they were bought elsewhere! foreign and independent films, limited release features, HoUywood classics, cult Write for free membership information and get a copy of favorites and documentaries. our Index and Newsletter as well as a $5.00 credit on your first order. Members simply order toU-free, and Evergreen Vi deo Sociely ~-------------------------- receive cassettes promptly by mail or 213 West 35 Sireet UPS. It's simple and inexpensive. Phone New York, NY 10001 Evergreen Video SOCiety, Dept. Fe 12 or write for free information and a list (2121 714-9860 of films. 1-8 00-225-7783 213 West 35 St. New York, NY 10001 (212) 714-9860 1-800-225-7783 1-800-258-FILM o Please send me free membership information (in PA, 1-800-633- FILM) Name: ________________________________________ HomeO Address :_____________________________________ Film Festiwl City:_________________ State :_ _ Zip :____________ Videocassette rentals by mail Signature :____________________________________ 305 Linden Street, Scranton, PA 18503 71
Margret Langrick and John Wildman in My American COllsin. by Harlan Kennedy unlikely bedfellows together much as G's (Luc Besson's Subway, a program of movies do (e.g., his latest, Detective, scratch videos). A las! The hoped-for sight of Jean-Luc scrambling film noir, Mafia romp, bed- Godard in a-presentation kilt did not room comedy, and love story). Or much as Jim Hickey took over Edinburgh six materialize. Fever in a Paris hospital struck G's compatriot Henri Langlois used to do years ago when the acclaimed Lynda down the festival's intended star guest, and at the Paris Cinematheque. There, you Myles, his predecessor, hopped it to the all Edinburgh was left to sigh at being recall, you might stumble one evening Pacific Film Archive. (She's since hopped deprived of the sight of J.-L.G. tucking in upon, say, a double bill of Citizen Kane back to England to become an indepen- his sporran while tucking into haggis, and and a Shirley Temple pic-twinned for no dent producer.) Myles created a film answering the questions of Scotland's better reason than that Henri had just festival so lively and out of such a tiny chewiest semioticians. found them both under a pile of old budget (it's still only £65,000) that she tomatoes in the cellar. Whereupon Cine- won lifetime devotion from her admirers. The festival still went ahead and matheque-goers would cry, \"Mon Dieu, They kissed the hem of her sporran, they screened all Jean-Luc's movies made since queUe inspiration!\" and detect aesthetic went to all the seminars she told them to. he graduated from his video-and-Dziga- resonances between Welles' picture of a What's more, Myles sweetened the doses Vertov-for-the-very-few period: Sauve Qui monomaniac barnstorming into second of Calvinist self-denial essential at a Peut (La Vie); Passion; Prenom Carmen; childhood and Temple's picture of a mini- Scottish festival-feminist pies, ftlms Je JiJus Salue, Marie; and Detective. And maniac trilling and dancing out of first about abortion or alienation, movies about they proved that Godard's special form of childhood. one-legged Trotskyites protesting against stylistically omnivorous wizardry - \"I sing food preservatives-with walloping help- the bobine eclectic\"-fits Edinburgh bet- So at the 39th Edinburgh Film Festival ings of simple pleasure. To wit, Corman ter than any other festival. we had Prenom Carmen cheek by jowl pulp movies, seasons of Sirk, Fuller, or Tourneur, early works by De Palma and The Scottish film spree, like the French swith Brewster Millions, a group of Scorsese. film seer, thrives on the knitting together of incongruous elements. Unlike Cannes, awful-warning nuclear docus gazing as if Hickey has inherited Myles' charisma Berlin, or Venice, Edinburgh does not they hadn't been properly introduced at and enterprise. He knows that variety is daintily segregate events - here a Compe- the erotic goings-on in Derek Jarman's good for you, and that parochialism is tition, there a Counter-Competition, death to a festival. This year's main event somewhere else a Retrospective: it pitches films, and the cinematically very old and was a Far East roundup, the large_st and classy (Dreyer's Passion ofJoan ofArc in a print newly found in an Oslo psychiatric (Continued on page 75) hospital) meeting the very new and trendy 72
The Yellow Earth. Maoism exhibiting afew grace notes by Dave Kehr the city's flashy tabloid, the Sun (an official golden-haired, James Dean-ish hunk from festival sponsor), the Toronto event gets a the fabled land of California. I t takes more than films to make a film grip on the city unlike any other I've seen. festival. You've got to find a way of show- Any festival can sell out a screening of Kiss Wilson's recollections of adolescent stir- ing them, too, that creates a sense of of the Spider Woman , but to turn people rings make for appealing if somewhat excitement, of community, of involve- away for a 10 A.M. Monday morning familiar comedy. Yet the film finds its real ment. Toronto's Festival of Festivals, screening of Raul Ruiz's The Territory flavor in its ironic apprehension of '?\\meri- which celebrated its tenth anniversary this takes something special. Toronto is a town canness;' symbolized by the flashy red September, seems to have found the per- that genuinely loves movies. convertible in which the preening cousin fect formula. A series of nightly \"gala\" arrives; it sits in the driveway, the flagrant premieres of brand-name films, designed Toronto's opening-night gala was, inevi- phallic dash of its styling a constant threat to keep black-tie donors, corporate spon- tably, the one high-profile feature among to the stolid practicality of the Canadian sors, and stargazing members of the gen- this year's Canadian output, Ted Kotcheffs family's station wagon. Though Wilson eral public happy with a ten-day parade of Joshua Then and Now. A flat misstep on occasionally overplays her hand - when star flesh, is balanced by all-day programs the part of this talented filmmaker, Joshua the boy's parents finally show up, these of more esoteric items - gleanings from will no doubt have found its place on the \"typical Americans\" look like rhinestone- the European festivals, extensive retro- dusty shelves of Canada's tax-shelter clas- studded fugitives from a John Waters spective sections, a series devoted to sics by the time these words see print. But film - most of the movie is hilariously recent Canadian production - aimed at just down the street, the festival's \"Per- accurate in its portrayal of American swag- Toronto's vast army of local film folk, visit- spective Canada\" series was opening with ger in the face of Canadian insecurity. ing professionals, and idle-handed gradu- heartening evidence, in the form of Sandy Dazzled by the mountain landscape that ate students. Wilson's My American Cousin, that the surrounds their Canadian relatives' home, English Canadian cinema is at last ready to the American couple gush over the maj- Promoted from every shop window in abandon its vain imitations of Hollywood esty of the view; the Canadians respond the fashionable Uptown district where the filmmaking and establish an identity of its with muttered politeness and an embar- festival takes place (one of the festival pub- own. Set in British Columbia in the late rassed look that implies they'd trade the licists' more inspired ideas was an annual fifties, My American Cousin is an autobio- whole range for Paul Anka. Photographed contest for the gaudiest store display) and graphical tale of a twelve-year-old girl in breathtakingly crisp colors by Canada's plugged every morning in the headlines of shaken from her profound sense of life's great cinematographer Richard Leiterman ennui by the arrival of a dashing relative, a (you can taste the Canadian wind that 73
rustles through his compositions), My psycho-killer on the writer's trail. The fan- played by Anton Walbrook, who reappears American Cousin is a first feature that tasy violence suddenly turns too literal and at each stage of his life). Yet Blimp remains displays a veteran's control of narrative too oppressive. untouched, a strangely marginal, isolated flow and comic timing; Wilson will cer- tainly be heard from. figure in his own life. Late in the fum, there A few nights later, \"Perspective Canada\" I t says a lot about the quality of interna- is a shot in which Kerr, in her final incarna- unveiled 90 Days, a feature-length com- tional production in 1985 that Toronto tion as Blimp's World War II driver, stops edy produced by (to the audible astonish- ment of the audience) the staid National found ·room for three different retrospec- for a traffic light in a blacked-out London Film Board of Canada. Director Giles Walker had apparently spent years grind- tive series. The most ambitious of them street. As the changing colors of the signal ing out Eskimo documentaries before cut- ting loose with The Masculine Mystique, was \"Ten to Watch;' a tenth-anniversary wash across her face-red, yellow, and a comedy about a men's encounter group that surfaced (to mixed response) at last special that highlighted the work of ten green, one for each of her three lives- year's festival. 90-Days is an amplification of that effort, a wry sitcom that cuts filmmakers for whom the festival confi- Powell achieves one of the cinema's most betw·een the story of a shy young Montreal man who has written away for a Korean dently predicted great things - a safe bet radiant moments of transcendence. The mail-order bride and the tale of his more aggressively macho buddy, who gets his since the list included the likes of Chantal fates have smiled on Blimp: his mediocrity comeuppance at the hands of a lady lawyer checking him out as a potential sperm Ackerman, Lino Brocka, Raul Ruiz, has brought him nobility. donor. Though technically undistinguished, the film settles pleasantly and profession- Andrei Tarkovsky, and Bertrand Tavernier. The Danish Film Museum took the ally into a kind of gentle character comedy that the American cinema no longer The most pointless series was \"Looking opportunity offered by Toronto to unveil seems able to produce. Walker's genuine affection for and interest in the people he Back;' for which ten critics were each their definitive version of Carl Dreyer's has created suggests some of the spirit of Leo McCarey. asked to choose a personal favorite from Passion ofJoan ofArc. The story behind The series' most startling revelation was festivals past; the less-than-imaginative this dazzling new print could sustain a John Paizs' Crime Wave, an audacious experiment in new-wave humor from the choices included The Marriage of Maria compelling feature of its own. It seems wilds of Winnipeg. Shot in a seamless, deadpan imitation of the television shows Braun and Aguirre, the Wrath of God. that the original negative of Joan was de- and educational films of the fifties-flashy graphics, goopy mood music, deliberately But the most satisfying grouping appeared stroyed in a fire at Berlin's Ufa studios in lumpy compositions and cutting pat- terns - Crime Uizve is centered on a mute under the rubric 'The Open Vault:' Nine i 928, a few months after the film's young loner (played by Paizs) who lives above a family garage in a spiffy-clean sub- of the world's leading film archives were Copenhagen premiere. Dreyer was able to urb and turns out knuckle-headed scenar- ios for what he terms \"color crime movies:' asked to submit their most spectacular construct another negative by using alter- We see excerpts from three of his scripts, and each tells the same story: of a charac- finds for screening in the 1,SOO-seat Uni- nate takes (he had shot over 250,000 feet ter who rides aget-rich-quick scheme to versity Theater, thus providing a kind of of film for his 77-minute final cut), while the pinnacle of success (as an Elvis imper- competition that few other films on the also seizing the occasion to make several sonator, Amway salesman, or author of self-help books) and then meets a violent, festival's program were able to withstand. changes demanded by the censorship arbitrary end. The simultaneous fierce embrace and angry rejection of the suc- With some 45 minutes of missing foot- board of Paris, where the film was due to cess ethic embodied in these tales is not only funny but convincingly psychotic-a age restored, the British Film Institute's open shortly. Both versions were consid- queasy effect compounded by the fact that the film is narrated by the author's \"best reconstruction of the original cut of ered lost until 1952, when a copy of the friend;' the smilingly innocent ten-year- old girl who is his landlord's daughter. With Michael Powell's The Life and Death of second negative surfaced in France. But this agonizing conjunction of the sweetly naive and the dangerously unbalanced, Colonel Blimp allows an already excellent the lucky finder, the critic Lo Duca, Paizs has put his finger on a fascinating cultural paradox. Unfortunately, the film film to flower into masterpiece status. decided to mangle the fum even further, collapses somewhere around the midway point with the introduction of a genuine (Five minutes of the original 163 are still rearranging the order of some shots and missing, but this is no time to complain.) If overdubbing a banal classical score. It is Powell's peculiar genius has always been this version, duped and reduped once the his ability to forge the most disparate dra- film fell into the public domain, that has matic elements into emotionally coherent become Joan ofArc as we know it. wholes, Colonel Blimp must stand as his Then, late last year, a nearly perfect supreme achievement. This wild melange print of Joan (marred by only one splice) of blunt propaganda (the film was meant to turned up in the storage closet of a mental convince the British public of 1943 to asylum outside Oslo. Apparently, the abandon their gentlemanly ideals and fight chief of staff of 1928, a psychiatrist inter- dirty in the then-present war), twit satire ested in the psychopathology of saint- (Emeric Pressburger's script was ostensi- hood, had requested a look at Dreyer's bly based on the popular cartoon adven- film and forgotten, thankfully for film his- tures of a bumbling upper-class officer), tory, to return it. Writing in Sight and and delirious romanticism (the three . Sound, Dreyer scholar Mark Nash has women whom Blimp loves and loses are all identified it as Dreyer's pre-fire, pre-cen- played by one actress, the young Deborah sorship cut; another Dreyer expert, David Kerr) ultimately coalesces into a deeply Bordwell, believes the new print is identi- moving evocation of an individual's move- cal to the existing archive copies. The ment through time. question probably won't be answered until Blimp (Roger Livesey) is a decent, slow- someone sits down and compares both witted soldier who does not so much rise versions frame by frame at an editing table, to the occasion as he continually finds the yet the restoration of Joan's visual quality occasion, almost mystically, rising to him. is thrilling enough. His life crosses three wars, and each The famous skin textures now emerge explosion of history gives him another with a startling clarity: every pore of opportunity to enlarge his soul through Falconetti's face seems visible as Dreyer heroism, romance, or friendship (his c1os- conducts his minute examination of this est acquaintance is a Pruss ian officer, flesh on the point of mortification. And 74
the walls of the prison house, a wavering son. An Antonioni-ish anomie grips the The truck driver is as much an actor (Koji gray in the old copies, now shine with a big-city heroine and her vacillating lover as Sano) as his screeching neighbor (Asao celestial whiteness, an image of the con- they negotiate such un-Maoist matters as Kobayashi). And so, come to that, is Riju crete shading into the ethereal that pro- sexual desire, jealousy, despair, unemploy- himself: he took a furlough from directing vides a profound counterpoint to the ment, violence, and finally murder. Direc- recently to play the young Mishima in Paul highly carnal drama that occupies the fore- tor Edward Yang has fallen hopelessly in Schrader's film. ground of the frame . Accompanied by the love with that great Antonioni trope, the original score performed by a small double image in a window reflection. Other new Japanese films are playing orchestra and chorus, this Joan found Thus clouds or tears of rain or city traffic similar games with fiction and nonfiction. renewed power, leaving a large part of the or winking lights crawl across characters' Shunichi Nagasaki's Betrayed by Momoe Toronto audience in tears. With all of the faces, creating a mosaic of changing Yamaguchi and London Calling both recent interest in Dreyer as a key precur- moods . sor of modernism, we have perhaps forgot- pursue the ghosts of memory (real or ten that his fums don't exist solely as form. T he top movie from Japan was Go imagined) through a fractured quest plot. The Toronto screening proved that Riju's Blind Alley. This seems to be a And Shuji Terayama's last film, Farewell to Dreyer can still engage an audience, and documentary: as director Riju buzzes the Ark, comes on like an ethnohistoric that alone is sufficient reason for a fUm around his none too cooperative subject, a documentary that's going surreal at the festival to exist. ~ young truck driver, bombarding him with edges. questions about his job and life. The Edinburgh minutiae unerringly build up. The picture Orientalism was still in the air at of the boy's loneliness; his surly refusal to Edinburgh even when we moved West. (Is (Continuedfrompage 72) discuss \"contemporary social issues\" with the director (\"I just want to get some the 40th anniversary of Hiroshima flashing most up-to-date of any movie festival this sleep\"); the student in a neighboring flat mutely and repeatedly in our heads like a year. Edinburgh has scoured China, who keeps unaccountably screeching. subliminal advert?) Chris Marker's A.K. Taiwan, and Japan to fmd films that are in 'and Paul Schrader's Mishima both show at the birth, or rebirth, of a film industry. Ah, yes! we respond, this is life as she is Occidental directors gazing bedazzled lived: the noncommunication, the dull into the rising sun. ')\\.K:' is Akira Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth , from Main- throb of loneliness , the distant warning Kurosawa, starring in a 71-minute docu- land China, eagerly touted before the hints of madness. But five minutes from mentary by the French helmer about the festival, gives Maoist agitprop a helpful curtain time we find that it's all been acted. making of Ran, Kurosawa's new version of kick along the road toward high art. Time: King Lear. Clambering shakily about the 1939. In landscapes worthy of Parad- slopes of Mount Fuji, Marker never quite janov - huge pockmarked hills where bare gets his subject in focus. trees point fingers at the sky and skinny cattle scratch for life-a young Commu- :'I;~\" T-SHIRTS nist from the South comes to collect folk songs and spread the word of Mao among ',t:-;s~~ A limited amount of 100% cotton T-shirts cele- farmers in the feudal North who are still i YO o,,(''''c /1rating the 23rd New York Film Festival are under the sway of Chiang-Kai-Shek. An adoring girl wants to escape from her ! ~-t.,(: o~~~ available. Slate grey with black lettering. arranged marriage and follow him when he Sizes small, medium and large. $13 . returns. A battle of ideas and loyalties i ~STt~~'\"'s,: I(L t'lp~s\" unfolds in the mud-and-rock landscape- r the \"yellow earth\" is that of the Hwang Ho I .\"'.,(: (Yellow) River-that looks as improbably farmable as the terrain in John Ford's The / Searchers. (I never have discovered what the characters are supposed to be farming I I1',\"dO~$ __for__T-Shirtsat$13eaCh' out there in Monument Valley. Cacti?) Small Medium __ Large _ _ The fUm's triumph is its use of song to Daytime Phone: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ nudge forward theme and characteriza- tion. Folk songs suddenly burst from Please mail coupon with check or money order (payable to The Film Society of Lincoln Center) to: people's lips in deafening melody. They The Film Society of Linco ln Center, 140 West 65th Street, New York, New York 10023 . You may sing the beauty of the land and the use postage-paid envelope in the magazine. Allow 6 weeks for delivery. changing seasons, or even (the girl's younger brother with Mohawk haircut and look of doleful daftness) of the joys of bed wetting. \"Let's wet the bed thoroughly:' he keens. \"Let's flood the Dragon's Palace:' Yellow Earth is still in the propagandist vein of most People's Republic movies, but the megatonic Maoism is at last beginning to exhibit a few human grace notes. Taiwan's Taipei Story seems positively European - even decadent - by compari- 75
Nor, with respect, does Paul Schrader in but is it more than a high-voltage erotic Julia hanging on William Hurt's spider-web Mishima , where the famous Japanese doodler's art? yarns in a South American slammer and Robert the Bruce watching that famous writer, prophet, and suicide salesman falls The problem is that Jarman, dazzling arachnid at work in his exiled Scottish victim to an oddly arts-magazine style of when decorative, can be pretty dull when hideout (before he came back to clobber biopic. One feels Schrader should have tackling important \"themes:' Witness his the Sassernachs). gone either for fictionalization pure and Imagining October, an Anglo-Soviet co- Krzystof Zanussi's ~ar of the Quiet simple-a sort of apres-Minnelli Lustfor production wherein some glibly satirical Sun, which copped the Golden Lion at Death - or for a collage of drama and agitprop captions about how life in last year's Venice fest, is also a DIY lesson in how to sing through your shackles: a documentary much more radical and Thatcher's Britain doesn't seem all that subtly scripted romance between Polishwoman Maja Komorowska and US. · electrifying. different from life in Bolshevik Russia co- ex-POW Scott Wilson, set in Europe during the post-WW II tidy-up. For once Instead we putter through an ever so exist with some platitudinous let's-make- the language snags of a co-production (Poland-USA-West Germany) are used to painstaking account of M's life, and love-not-war scenes in which we watch an advantage. Love is signaled through mime and broken phrases and the stammered through enacted chunks of his prose artist painting a group of chastely clinching Esperanto of glance and gesture. A death- fiction placed in Eiko Ishioka's under- soldiers. One prefers Jarman running of-hope landscape contains a birth-of- hope human semaphore. weening sets designed in shop-window amuck in the empire of the senses to Japanese. Schrader showed in Cat People perching on a political soapbox; but in Spare a small ovation, too, for Luc Besson's Subway , a gleamingly batty yarn that he had, when needed , a light-the- both instances he badly needs a stronger from France of Christopher (Tarzan) Lambert pursuing Isabelle Adjani through blue-touch-paper-and-run-like-crazy vis- underpinning of structure if he's going to sci-fi mazes in the Paris Metro. And for Ian Potts' fascinating Stranger Than Fiction ual imagination. What happened to it throw out (and why not) conventional from Britain, which documents the group of vox-pop spies and opinion researchers here? He lights the blue torch paper and narrative. who comprised the Mass Observation project in Britain before and during the the firework curls up and purrs to sleep war. With notebooks furtively palmed, and ears on stalks, they set out to discover Olike a kitten. ther new films at Edinburgh found a what the British thought about everything Say what you like about Godard - and at better balance between style and from sex to sliced bread to Hitler. Edinburgh many did - his films never run substance. My Beautiful Launderette, There was no doubt what the British thought about the US. biggies getting out of energy and invention. An off-form directed by Stephen Frears, rotates us in a their UK. premieres in Edinburgh this year. With the possible exception of Godard doesn't slide into orthodoxy, he tail-chasing plot about a young Pakistani Brewster's Millions, they went down a treat: Back to the Future, Cocoon, slides into greater eccentricity and even immigrant (Gordon Warnecke) and a Fletch, and Crimes ofPassion . more buttons fly off the clothing of young white Punk (Daniel Day Lewis) Around the feature films whirled the usual Saturn's ring of shorts, seminars, and conventional narrative. Detective is an off- coming together to buy and revamp a special events. And special guest stars. Ed Asner flew in for Edinburgh's Television form Godard (compared to Passion or London launderette. The story goes Festival-a weekend's talk-in on subjects like censorship and soap opera - and he Prenom Carmen) not because there are round in delicious circles, for every set of stayed to genially harangue the film festival too few ideas but too many. This Grand characters is stepping on the toes of (or on every subject from Charlton Heston to Charlton Heston, via EI Salvador, Mary Hotel with French superstars (Nathalie being stepped on by) the next-depicting Tyler Moore, and actors' rights. Paul Schrader escorted Mishima into town. Baye, Johnny Hallyday, Claude Brasseur, a Britain hilariously riddled with competi- Ken Russell and John Schlesinger, repre- senting diametric flavors of British cin- Jean-Pierre Leaud) is abuzz with crime, tiveness, suspicion, or outright bigotry, ema, flew in and out. love, blackmail, comedy, nudity, in-jokes, where aggro and distrust make the world In short, the only slated luminary quotations (from books and other films) , go round. missing from Auld Reekie was Jean-Luc Godard, struck down by that mysterious aand stop-start string quartet music la There are rich Pakistanis hugging their fever. All contributions to the Send Godard a Get Well Haggis fund will be Carmen. It has no discernible idea where little local business empires (Saeed Jaffrey gratefully received - perhaps the French mage will make it to the 1986 festival. I it is going, although it has a fairly good time fatly splendid as Warnecke's Mr. Big cetainly shall, thermometer in hand. going there. - patron); there are demurely intermixing f The crisis in movie modernism today is mistresses (Shirley Anne Field still dis- that filmmakers have too little new to say pensing dim-nymph charm IS years after and too many new ways in which to say it. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning); Form overruns content; and style and there are the skinheads aghast at their visual razzmatazz whir away with nothing erstwhile leader's paling up with a Pakki; inside them. Britain's Derek Jarman is a and there is the bizarre friendship at the sumptuous fellow with a movie palette- tale's center which blossoms from a dottily and/or a video palette, since his two new inspired business partnership (Hokusai half-hour films, The Dream Machine and wave murals and piped Puccini in the Imagining October, use Super-8 and launderette) into a full-blown gay video and blow them both up to 16mm. romance. The first film is a four-movement sym- Hanif Kureishi wrote the script, and phony to homo-eroticism, moving from though the film was funded by TVs foreplay jokes on cock-teasing Classicism Channel 4, it's a British movie about (statuesque nudes and stop-motion mono- modern British life that has a color, chrome like a silent film) to an all-color craziness, and wit worthy of the big scherzo of consummation (fireworks, screen. double exposures, flaming bodies) to a Hector Babenco's equally exotic Kiss of lyrical postcoital largo (drifting feathers, the Spider Woman went down a treat in winged boy suspended like a falling Icarus) Scotland. Bells always ring up there at to a finale that wraps up all four tales of political oppression (England is the movements . designated bully of the kilt-wearers), and a It's terrific, but is it art? Or rather it's art, rhyme was quickly spotted between Raul 76
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Invasion o/the Movie Snatchers DOCHERTY: That would be true if there were an accelerated decline in by Harlan Kennedy vice and maintenance. It also allows users filmgoing since 1980, when home video to swap one machine for another if they first became a factor. But what we find is Where are the movie queues of yester- want to change size, sophistication, or for- that the downward trend of the fifties, year? Are the hearts and minds of mat. They can exchange the Betamax sixties, and seventies continues steadily film fans being taken over by alien VCR, with its shrinking share of the mar- into the eighties at least up until this year. machines? Is it true that strange black ket, for the more popular VHS. And we've also found that VCR owners are monoliths called VCRs are spreading their not less frequent ftlmgoers than other sec- spores across the world? Pundits with a tendency to put two and tions of the population. The main video two together and assume, overtrustingly, owners are in the 25-35 age range, who as Panic time is never a good reason for that they equal four argue that the British a group are more frequent cinemagoers rational thinking. And since the movie video boom must be a major reason for the than the 45-plus age group. Among the world has been panicking ever since the 45-and-overs there is less interest in both fifties, when the graph of filmgoing took a continuing slump at the British box office. cinema and video, and a higher satisfac- dip that has continued ever since, it's no It's a tempting conclusion, as one plum- tion with network TV. Among film enthu- wonder that good sense has been in short meting graph line (cinema attendance) siasts we've also found-with a movie like supply for over 30 years. Back then every- coincides with another soaring one (video ET, for instance-that viewing the movie one thought that television was the villain, usage) . But David Docherty ofthe Broad- on video first, in a pirated version, doesn't and Hollywood's boldest brains countered casting Research Unit; who is currently stop them going to see it in a cinema. the small-screen threat with a bounty of compiling a statistical survey, ''The Enter- ever wider screens and ever more Brob- tainment Film in British Life;' thinks it's a KENNEDY: Nonetheless, as of 1985, dingnagian showmanship: Cinemascope, shaky half-truth at best-like the half-truth the video market is on the up and up and Cinerama, Circlorama, 3D & Co. that it was television that first sent cinema the cinema has plummeted . audiences nosediving back in the 1950s. But this going-for-broke giantism didn't DOCHERTY: Well, in fact, it's likely check the slide. Three decades later we DOCHERTY: The high point of filmgo- that film audiences will rise from 53 mil- can reflect that maybe TV wasn't the main ing in Britain was in 1946, when 1.63 lion to just over 60 million. That's mainly culprit after all. And today's newly nomi- billion tickets were bought at the cinema. thanks to U.S. blockbusters like Grem- nated enemies of cinema-cable, video, After that, just as in the United States, lins, Ghostbusters, and Beverly Hills satellite-may not be the main reason for attendance started to fall . And it fell stead- Cop. But there's a good chance that the emptying movie houses in the eighties. ily for ten years before TV even came onto cinemas could now hold at 60 million or the scene as a mass-circulation competi- over and that we're already past the worst. Britain is the most interesting test coun- tor. In fact, the decline slowed temporarily There's also evidence that the VCR market try in the worla today, since it's here that when commercial television was intro- is approaching saturation point. In 1984 videocassette recorders have invaded duced. So it's quite false to link the declin- sales of VCRs in Britain, for instance, were homes to a greater degree than in any ing habit of filmgoing with the rise of TV. 1.5 million, which is down from 2.2 mil- other Western industrialized country. In Britain it has had much more to do with lion in 1983, and 1985 has slowed still There are 8 to 9 million VCRs in circulation population movement. After the war, cine- further. So both markets, video and cin- in the U.K., representing 38 percent ofthe mas stayed in decaying town centers when ema, may now be leveling off. The most TV-owning population. (Compare the the C2 unskilled working class, who were bullish video market in fact is the United States, whose 20 million VCRs in use rep- always the biggest audience, moved out. States, where the prediction is that by resent 20 percent of TV-owning homes.) The cinemas didn't follow them into the 1990 the 20 million VCR owners will have Britain has been video-mad for years now, suburbs, as they did in America. And even risen to 68 million- 75 percent of the TV- and there are probably two main reasons. most new towns were built without cine- owning population. mas. So it's clear that, with or without 1. British TV with its high program-qual- television, ftlmgoing would have peaked in T here are signs, too, that the video the mid-forties. Indeed, we find there's a software boom is leveling off in Brit- ity spread across four channels (as more or less smooth statistical rise and fall ain. The revenue from prerecorded tapes opposed to the U.S.A:s absymal program on either side of 1946-with 907 million in 1984 was £270 million (£235 million quality spread across dozens) encourages attendances in 1935, eleven years before, rented, £35 million sold), a 35 percent \"time-switching;' the habit of recording a and 915 million in 1957, eleven years later. increase over 1983's £200 million (£190 program you want to see that's on when million rented, £10 million sold). But pre- you're out or when you're watching KENNEDY: But last year movie atten- dictions for 1985 suggest £300 million rev- dance hit an all-time low of 53 million, enue, merely an II-percent upswing with another channel. 2. The rental-VCR busi- which means that since the high point of the \"sold\" figure static at £35 million. 1946 attendances have fallen by 97 per- ness that has grown up in Britain (and cent. Television may not be the main fac- In the fight to keep a slice of the market, hasn't in the States) means users don't have tor, but it's surely an important one. In this shops and rental companies offering pre- to layout a walloping three-figure sum to decade hasn't video helped the slump? recorded tapes in Britain wage a furious buy the machinery; they can pay about price war, and in the last year or two they £20 a month. This guarantees provision have cut their profit margins to the bone, not just of the machinery but also of ser- with rentals as low as £ 1 for a night or £2 for a weekend. The cost-cutting seems the only way for a night tape market to com- pete with the habit in many households of copying feature films straight off the networks. But it still hasn't stopped the num- 78
s tration among major industrial countries The effect ofthe VCR: 'It is ridiculous to judge showed Britairl in the lead, five percentage points ahead of its nearest rival, Japan, and enthusiasm for movies in Britain today merely 13 points ahead of the third most video- by those who troop out to the cinemas to see oriented country, Norway. Paul Dezelsky, market analyst for Thorn-EMI , has no feature films....' doubt that Britain's uniquely extensive rental business is partly responsible: \"If you consider that there are 21 million ber of specialist homevid dealers in Brit- often, 44 percent went never. By 1985 households in Britain, virtually all TV- ain sliding from 8,000 in 1983 to 4,500. cine-zeal had dwindled still further: 34 equipped, then the 8 million rented TV percent once a year or more, 18 percent sets in use today constitute about 38 per- Also offering a form of competition not less often, 49 percent never. cent of the market. Of those 8 million welcomed by specialist dealers is the rack- households renting TVs, 2.6 million also ing industry. Racking companies sell 50- Between 1978 and 1983, the number of rent VCRs. So rentals are a big slice of the title \"racks\" of prerecorded videos (mostly cinema seats in the country declined from market. They're even more influential feature films) to non-specialist outlets like 738,000 (spread over 985 sites and 1,519 than these figures suggest, because many gas stations, drugstores, and newspaper screens) to 505,000 (707 sites and 1,293 people begin by renting and then buy. Of shops. The Video Trade Association has screens). And even 1978's figures seem course, there's no real financial logic to condemned the practice but, in a free mar- sickly when viewed in the context of Brit- renting. But the rental habit has become ket, is powerless to do more. ish moviegoing history as a whole. In ingrained in Britain, and its appeal is un- 1935, when the Department of Trade \"doubtedly that it allows the customer that All this suggests that today's popular began recording the number of cinemas painless introduction to VCR viewing. In image of film as a dying art is misleading. operating in the country each year, there the process it lubricates the sales market:' The viewing habit has merely diversified were 4,448. This increased to 4,703 in into new outlets and delivery systems, with the VCR-equipped den taking over 1945 and was still steady in 1950 at 4,660. I n every country, video, cable, and TV all from cinema as today's main venue for To find a historical parallel for today's have the advantage over cinema that you movie-goggling. The indelible popcorn or don't have to put on your hat and coat or ice-cream stains are more likely to be on meager tally of cinemas-around 1,200- order a babysitter or get the car out or risk your own carpet, and you can neck in the you have to go all the way back to the being mugged outside the viewing venu~ beginning of the century. And even in of your choice. But there's an advantage to back row of your living room. David 1910, when we have the first unofficial video that isn't shared by cable or network Docherty again: 'We calculate that, in cinema count in Britain, there were 1,600 TV or satellite: the \"flexible response\" Britain, .8 percent of a prerecorded video movie theaters in the country-23 percent is rented each week by each VCR owner, more than today. facility. A video is like a book. You can which adds up to 345 million rentals per choose not only when you read it but how annum. Multiply that by three-our esti- The effect of all these emptying you read it. You can view it in bits or all at mate of the average number of people Odeons, ABCs, and Alhambras has been one go; you can linger over it or skim,view watching each video-and you have a fig- to starve film production itself. Between ure of 1.035 billion, which is virtually the 1974 and 1984, the number of feature it; you can go back or shoot forward; you films registered as British-made each year same as the number of moviegoers at the fell from 99 to 31. No wonder many indus- can freeze shots; you can even fall asleep . height of the cinema's popularity 39 years try lobbyists today are desperate to intro- over it, as you can over your bedtime ago. Add to that the number of people duce legislation or levy systems that will Robert Ludlum or Jane Austen, and when who watch feature films on network TV- require the goose that lays the golden you wake up go back to where you tapped and many record them and watch them eggs-the video market-not to keep out and start again. You have final cut. more than once-and you're well up to 3 them all to herself but to roll a few in the At video's birth the Jeremiahs prophe- billion. By then you realize how ridiculous direction of the film studios, the distribu- sied that its appeal was so down-market it it is to judge enthusiasm for movies in tion chains, and production companies. would never outlive the initial joys it Britain today merely by the figure-less How you reeducate people out of a new offered to porno or sphitter fanciers. But than 2 percent of that total-who troop habit back into an old one is a vexed ques- video has long since shaken off its For out to the cinemas to see feature films :' tion. A Broadcasting Research Unit survey Creeps Only reputation. You can now on ''The Best Way to Watch a Feature watch opera, ballet, Masterpiece Theatre, A gainst this background of domestic Film\" found that 31 percent said in the Wimbledon tennis, gardening cassettes, cinema and 64 percent said on VCRs or yoga cassettes, how-to-Iook-after-your- ~ovie bliss, what chance does British Film Year have? BFY is a frantic flag-waving TV. (Five percent were \"Don't knows ;' dog and how-to-solve-the-Rubik's-Cube effort to get people out of their homes and those perplexing people who presumably cassettes. Dynasty and Miami Vice, too . into cinemas, thereby pouring fresh spend all day on their front doormats , keys You can even watch feature films. But if money into the ailing British exhibition in hand, wondering whether to stay in or cinema wants to grab its customers back circuits and even into British filmmaking. go out.) Divided into age groups, these from this super-versatile gewgaw, it must \"Cinema: the best place to see a film;' statistics break down into a predictably come up with a whole new bag of tricks cries the BFY slogan, in the teeth of clear higher cinegoing ratio among the young.} itself-or capitalize with renewed vigor on evidence that most people think the oppo- But even in the 16-29 age group , home the old ones. ~ site. In 1978, when a cross section of the viewing\"gets the vote over going out to the British population were quizzed by the local cinema, 57 percent to 39. • An independe nt body hou sed ip [he Bri[ish Film research group MINTEL on cinemagoing Why has video caught on so much more Ins[itu[e and fund ed by [he BBe, [he IBA (Indepen- frequency, 43 percent said they went once in Britain than in other developed coun- dent Broadcas[ing Au[h ori[y), and [he Markle a year or more often, 11 percent went less tries? A 1984 survey comparing VCR pene- Founda[ion. \" 79
Quiz #16: Don't UiJrry, We'll Think ofa Title Sure, you've seen the picture a dozen times, but exactly why is it called Gone All This and Heaven Too (1941) Morituri (1965) With the Wind? Well, the title comes from Baby, the Rain Must Fall (1965) North by Northwest (1959) Beat the Devil (1955) Penny Serenade (1941) Ernest Dowson's poem \"non sum qualis Before the Revolution (1964) Plenty (1985) The Big Knife (1955) The Plough and the Stars (1936) eram bonae sub regno Cynarae\" (itself the Chimes at Midnight (1966) Purple Noon (1959) A Clockwork Orange (1971) Random Harvest (1942) inspiration for the 1932 King Vidor film Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966) The Sand Pebbles (1966) East ofEden (1955) The Shining (1980) Cynara), and it memorializes old pas- Fat City (1972) Shoah (1985) Fear Eats the Soul (1974) Some Came Running (1959) sions: \"I have forgot much, Cynara! Gone Fist in His Pocket (1965) Some Like It Hot (1959) Five Fingers (195 2) Straw Dogs (1971) with the wind ....\" All you need to get a The 400 Blows (1959) Streamers (1983) Hatari! (196 2) Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971) perfect score on this quiz is to provide Heaven's Gate (1980) Sweet Smell ofSuccess (1957) History Is Made at Night (1937) A Taste ofHoney (1961) similar explanations for the 50 film titles Hour ofthe Wolf(1968) The Thin Man (1934) Hurry Sundown (1967) The Third Man (1949) listed below. Some titles refer to a line of It's Always Fair Weather (1955) Trading Places (1983) The Little Foxes (1941) The Voice ofthe Turtle (1947) dialogue in the film; some offer specific Lord Love a Duck (1966) White Heat (1949) The Manchurian Candidate (1962) Wild Is the Wind (1957) metaphors for the characters or theme; The Milky Way (1969) Written on the Wind (1956) Mon Oncle d' Amerique (1980) Z (1969) some allude to lines of poetry; and some... but you'll have more fun if we don't give you too many hints. Send your list to FILM COMMENT Quiz #16, 140 West 65th Street, New York, N.Y. 10023, and make sure we receive it by December 16. The contestant with the most correct answers (and, in case of a tie, we pick one at random) wins a free year of the magazine. Thanks to David Meeker, Clyde Jeavons, Stephen Harvey, David Thomson, and Richard Roud for their suggestions, and happy researching to all. On Quiz # 15 you were asked to provide a very long list of one-word titles ending in IT'S RTS FOR Pin-Ups • Portraits • Posters • Physique the letter \"0 .\" Our faithful listmakers SOUNDTRACKS & VIDEO MOVIES! Poses • Pressbooks • Western • Horror • Science Fiction • Musicals • Color Photos • responded in force, with hundreds of 1,000,000 inventory. Rare/limited edition soundtracks, 80 Years of Scenes From Motion Pictures and largest selection in video (from \"G\" to \"X\", and at entries and 27 with lists of more than 100 lowest prices!) . Soundtrack catalog: $1 OR Video cat- Rush $1.00 FOR OU R ILL USTRATIiD BROCHURE alog--$1 . RlS, Dept. 23A, Box 1829, Novato, CA titles. The winner, with a fabulo submis- 94948. Phone : (415) 883-2179. Soundtrack Value- 134 WEST 18th STREET, DEPT. Fe NEW YORK, N.Y. 10011 sion of 373 titles , is Natalie Osaki of Paci- guide: $5.50. (212) 620-8160-61 fica, Calif. - R .C. CONTRIBUTORS Sleazoid Express. Daphne Merkin is PHaro CREDITS: Jack Barth is a bachelor millionaire, film critic for The New Leader. Her first Embassy Pictures: p . 47. By Marion David Bianculli writes for The Phila- novel, Enchantment, will be published by Ettlinger: p. 46. Festival of Festivals: p. delphia Inquirer. David Chute writes Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich next Septem- 72, 73. The Film Society of Lincoln Cen- on film for The Los Angeles Herald ber. John Powers is film critic for L.A. ter: p. 49, 60 (1) (2), 61, 62, 66, 70. Examiner. Jay Cocks writes on music Weekly. Stephen Schaeffer's ftrst book, Harvard University Press: p. 37. B.D. and glad rags for Time magazine. Mar- Marla's Truth, was published this Fall. Hyman: p. 38. By Richard H. Koch: p . laine Glicksman is a filmmaker living in Richard Schickel is a film critic at Time, 61. By Jill Krementz: p. 41. Museum of New York. Stephen Harvey writes fre- and author, and a filmmaker. Elliot Stein Modern Art/Film Stills Archive: p. 4, 21, quently on film and lives in New York. J. writes on film from New York. David 34. The Schecter Company: p. 43. Twefl- Hoberman is a film critic at The Village Thomson's novel Suspects was tieth Century Fox: p. 26, 27, 28. Univer- Voice. Dave Kehr is film critic for The published last Spring. Mike Wilkins is a sal: p . 8, 42. Warner Bros. (some courtesy Reader and Chicago magazine. Bill Lan- San Francisco businessman. Dan Yakir Sam Cocks Collection): p. 2, 11, 12, 13, dis and Jimmy McDonough edit lives in New York and writes on film. 14. Mary Corliss: p. 17, 19. 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