VOLUME 24 - NUMBER 06 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1988

Feature Films from Direct Cinema Limited Anne of Green Gables THE MOST HONORED the world for over half a cen- Starring : Megan Follows as Anne FILM FOR CHILDREN tury in Lucy Maud Montgom- Shirley. Also featuring Colleen Based on the novels of ery's classic novel , Anne of Dewhurst, Richard Farnsworth & Lucy Maud Montgomery Emmy Award 1986 Green Gables. Anne of Jonathan Crombie Outstanding Children's Green Gables and Anne of Program Green Gables-the Sequel Produced by Sullivan Films, Inc. Peabody Award 1986 recreate the story's fairy-tale Directed by Kevin Sullivan Best Film charm and capture the es- American Film Festival 1986 sence of life at the turn of the Anne of Green Gables century with exquisite detail. 192 minutes Color 1986 Delightful , unpredictable Anne It is a delicate epic full of wit , Anne of Green Gables- Shirley has been charming adventure and emotional the Sequel readers of all ages throughout 235 minutes Color 1987 power. IICannibal Tours\" Opening Film 1988 Got You Babe ' over Radio scension are linked , and how little the Margaret Mead Film Festival Moscow, the Papua New Western tribe of tourists understand Legacy of the Selected for screening at Guineans try to hold onto their their own culture . 'Cannibal Tours' Hollywood Blacklist The U.S. Film Festival world . 'We sit here confused ,' succeeds in being both devastating The San Francisco one laments, 'while they take and charming-an amazing combina- International Film Festival pictures of everything'-while tion .\" O'Rourke's camera shoots the \"Dennis O'Rourke's 'Canni- whole of a social relation that is -Tom Gitlin, author ofThe Whole bal Tours' is simply (to be taking over the world , the World is Watching, Inside Prime more precise, complexly) relation between seeing and Time & The Sixties , stunning. While the camera's being seen . This double Professor, U.C., Berkeley snap, the tourists bargain , anthropology subtly shows how A film by Dennis O'Rourke and Sonny and Cher sing, 'I connoisseurship and conde- 70 minutes Color 1987 Emmy Award Nomination Committee (HUAC) . This \"A searing but sensitive investiga- tion of the times .\" Legacy of the Hollywood documentary details the The Christian Science Monitor Blacklist examines the long- term effects of one of emotional and psychological Produced and Directed by America's most infamous Judy Chaikin events-the investigation of impact that the Committee's Narrated by Burt Lancaster alleged Communist activities 60 minutes Color 1987 in Hollywood by the House investigation had on the lives UnAmerican Activities of five women, wives of suc- cessful film figures who were blacklisted in the 1940s and 1950s. The Ten- Year Lunch: Academy Award members of the Round Table illuminates both the work of this 1987 Best Documentary The Wit and Legend of included the inimitable Dor- extraordinary clique and the the Algonquin Round Table From 1919 to 1929 in New York City's Algonquin Hotel, othy Parker, Robert Benchley, range of American culture in the a group of poets, novelists, playwrights, critics , humorists Edna Ferber, Harpo Marx, 1920s. and editors met each day for lunch to exchange opinions, Alexander Woollcott, George \"An inspired salute to the glory gossip and the most cutting S. Kaufman , Franklin Pierce days of bon mots and barbed wit. \" wit of the day. The core Adams , Harold Ross (founder of The New Yorker Maga- Vogue zine), Robert Sherwood, Marc Produced and Directed by Connelly and Heywood Aviva Siesin Broun . The Ten-Year Lunch 60 minutes Color 1987 Drawing by AI Hirschfeld Courtesy of the Margo Feiden Galleries, New York Thomas Hart Benton During his lifetime, Thomas ways and his dream of Hart Benton became the best- instituting a distinctly Ameri- known American artist of his can art form enraged the es- Florentine Films generation. With the detail of tablished art world . This fas- A film by Ken Burns a social historian, Benton cinating documentary juxta- Produced by Ken Burns and recorded the vitality and poses interviews with Benton Julie Dunfey variety of American life and and his contemporaries to tell 86 minutes Color 1988 strove to make his paintings the story of this distinctly and murals accessible to the American artist. photo by Scott Dine general public. His outspoken For information contact: ~'icinema @ Direct Cinema Limited limited Post Office Box 69799 Los Angeles, CA 90069-9976 Phone (213) 652-8000

by Marlaine Glicksman T!stimony is British director Tony ( Palmer's film account of the life of Dmitri Shostakovich, as wit- Ben Kingsley as Shostakovich. Torn between the voice of the spirit and the arm of the State. nessed through the eyes of the com- poser and heard through his memoirs experience of incomprehensible and music. With a screenplay by play- wright David Rudkin and a chameleon- events, rather than merely creating con- like performance by actor Ben Kingsley (in an eerily convincing portrayal of the text. In this way, Testimony surpasses artist from young man to old), the film inhabits Shostakovich rather than biography and is akin to self-portrait. merely illustrating him. Shostakovich's work for film began Born in 1906 in St. Petersburg, Shos- takovich was a product of the Russian in the Twenties when he played (for Revolution, lived through Stalin, the 900 days of Leningrad under Nazi bread and butter) as a movie house siege, and the slaughter of the Jews at Babi Yar, and died a giant under piano accompanist. New Babylon Brezhnev in 1975. Shostakovich was considered a dramatic composer, and (1929), directed by Grigori Kozintsev like his contemporary, poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, his music was a lyrical and Leonid Trauberg, marked his first human response to his time, daring to express irony, criticism, and musical film score composition for live perfor- dissonance, as opposed to the approved agitprop of the State. Shostakovich mance. In Sovietsky Ekran (March 12, completed 147 works by his death; included in the film is Symphony No. 1929), he described his approach of not 13, considered his most critical work, based on texts by Yevgeny Yev- illustrating each scene of the film: \"For tushenko, a modern poet in the vein of example, at the end of reel two, the Shostakovich's denunciation at the Union of Soviet Lon10o.sers.' Mayakovsky and the most outspoken against anti-Semitism and Babi Yar. important moment is the German cav- New Babylon was followed by Also included are the composer's Mic- helangelo Sonnet and two concertos alry's advance on Paris, but the reel Kozintsev and Trauberg's Alone (1930), (curiously, Symphonies No.2 , \"To October,\" and No.5, \"Leningrad,\" ends in a deserted restaurant. Silence. their first sound film, and gained an were not used). But the music, in spite of the fact that international audience largely because Shostakovich, through his music, continued to speak while the voices of the German cavalry is no longer seen on of Shostakovich's exciting score. The other artist contemporaries were sup- pressed-writer Boris Pasternak, poets the screen, continues to remind the composer's theme song for the film Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandel- stam, Mayakovsky (politically con- audience of the approach of that fierce Counterplan (1932, directed by Sergei demned, he committed suicide in 1930, only to be resurrected by Stalin), power.\" It is a similar approach that Yutkevich and Friedrich Ermler and a and theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold, who worked with the com- Palmer employed in describing the precursor to social realism) was adopted poser and directed theater pieces by Aleksandr Pushkin and Nikolai Gogol, composer's life. 12 years later as the United Nations two of the most outspoken and crit- icized Russian writers of the 19th cen- tury. (Shostakovich himself composed an opera based on Gogol's The Nose.) In their tradition of asserting the individual human spirit above the col- lective \"we, \" Shostakovich questioned the philosophical nature of war, the self, and creativity. Throughout, Pal- mer's camera supposes Shostakovich's 50

hymn. Shostakovich composed several industrialized American animation, and poser: Shostakovich's wife remains in other film scores and in the Thirties, the suspicion of \"formalism\" (as the background (theirs was a troubled began work with Soviet animator opposed to social realism) raised marriage) and is later relegated to a sole Mikhail Tseckhanovsky on a full- against his and Shostakovich's work, photo that rests on the composer's desk; length animated cartoon comic prevented completion of the project (a his daughter appears often and in the charge for which it is said Meyerhold foreground, but his son, if in the same opera based on the satirical poem by had been executed in 1940.) frame, is behind her (as a young musi- Pushkin, The Tale of the Priest and His cian, he was forced to renounce his Servant, Blockhead. Unfortunately, Cinematographer Nic Knowland's father); and Stalin is given increasing Tseckhanovsky's opposition to switch- camera visually interprets this aural his- presence , finally as a massive statue ing from his paper method to the more tory and borrows from Sergei Eisen- implanted outside the composer's win- stein's October in its use of diagonal dow. Palmer often places a film camera shot composition. Filmed primarily in in the shot, homage to the action and sharp and striking blacks and whites, times , as well as recorder of it. Testimony is punctuated with splashes of red-the blood-wash of the revolu- Like October, Testimony relies on tion, the warm glow of molten metal, theatrical as opposed to naturalistic set- the Mars-like glint of machinery, and tings (under the art direction of Paul the impervious vermilion of Stalin's uni- Templeman and Chris Bradley) and uti- form-and is laced with full-color per- lizes the juxtaposed geometries of the formances of Shostakovich's sympho- Constructivist art movement of the era nies and operas by the London Philhar- (at one poi nt, Shostakovich plays on a monic (conducted by Rudolf Barshai) Constructivist piano). The film also and The Golden Age Singers. incorporates newsreel footage, as well as clips from October, recalling the lat- The camera delegates priority to the ter in its graphically repetitious shots of people most important to the com- machinery and musical instruments. In fact , the first sound version of October, shown in France in 1967, was accom- panied by two of Shostakovich's symphonies. Testimony opens just after Shos- takovich's death , as the Citizen Artist (as he was lionized)-the most deco- rated Soviet citizen ever-lies in state in the midst of a grandiose but austere funeral ceremony. He testifies from beyond, as his memoirs and music do today, on the pomp and circumstance before him, as well as the hypocrisy of the officials in black: \" Look, the ravens are here, even claiming our corpses.\" Shot entirely in northern England (mostly Liverpool and Wigan) and without Soviet cooperation, Testimony , which Palmer also produced , designed , co-wrote, and edited, is a moving por- trayal of an artist's struggle between his loyalty to the Soviet state, to the peo- ple, and to his artistic vision. It fixes Shostakovich between awe and hatred of Stalin: \"Our leader is like God ,\" the composer declares , \"We do not know his face.\" But we know his deeds , as did Shostakovich, who was himself denounced by the Union of Soviet Composers and forced to denounce others at the International Peace Con- ference in New York. Testimony is never more moving than when it depicts Shostakovich's attempts to make (musi- cal) sense of Stalin's purges and pogroms, to reconcile revolutions In music with those in politics. ® 51

Ken Russell's Best Laid Planaria e ormomama by Karen Jaehne Nothing Russell has done for the last \"Stoker was something of an ama- 15 years prepares us for his spelunking teur sleuth of the occult and what nor- ~ en the ballad \"The expedition into the folk ballad and mal people called mysteries,\" says Lampton Worm\" lured Ken primitive music of The Lair ofthe White Russell. \"Local mosaics and coins Russell into the lair of folk Worm. Just as Tommy surprised us with found in the area of ancient Mercia music, we expected the 'folk' to come Russell's witty endorsement of the provided the images, and the folklore out as deformed as Franz Liszt in Liszt- mystical powers of pop culture through contains the themes of the worship of omania. Rather, it came out folksy. Not rock'n'roll (when we had thought he serpents in England at that time, some even the worm is outrageous-just big, would devote his art and life to classical 1,600 years ago. I wrote the script in long, white, and unmistakably phal- longhairs), so Lair spins out a web about three weeks and decided to bring lically witty. The story most resembles drawn from a folktale developed by it up to date and make the characters a very good episode of Dr. Who. Bram Stoker in his final novel. contemporary, which didn't at all dam- age the legend. After all, people are far more superstitious now than they were in 1911, when Stoker wrote it. \"And I was just sick and tired of things Victorian,\" continues Russell. \"I've done so many costume dramas, I thought Hell with this! Apart from Altered States and Crimes ofPassion, I just haven't done modern times. And that's odd, because I really do prefer the times we live in to other eras, musically and in every other way. You know, even fantasy can get in a rut.\" To wrap our minds with the music that inspired and shaped Lair, Russell wove in a performance by a thigh-slap- ping group resembling the Irish folk- punk band The Pogues, who bellow ballads to compete with rock groups but continue the tradition of Irish bal- ladeers. Russell mines this vein of popular culture in as enthusiastically speculative a way as his adaptations of high culture. But the folk music is great counterpoint to the baroque of flaming effects, and simplicity for its own sake is a virtue Russell has finally grasped like the Holy Grail. When he's not derailed by the demon worm. Russell's script for Lair owes as much to the folk song \"The Lampton Worm\" as to Stoker. \"For years,\" he says, \"I've known that folk song, and I'm fairly sure Bram Stoker would have known it, for it's obviously based on something that happened in this region 500 years ago. If our hero , Lord James, had done battle with a local monster, it would have been celebrated in song and car- ried on still today. There are strange local celebrations all the time, some very weird things that pop up in provin- cial music-what we would call folk

music. George and the Dragon, kin- becomes progressively toothsome, as it ble-a truly comic scene as they sway dred myths, and then the Lampton were, until she wears little more than around the sundial in Lady Sylvia's Worm, no less , but remember that the fangs, blue paint, and an enormous sac- courtyard. (She'll nibble the Scottish worm is not some species of fish bait.\" rificial ivory and silver dildo to tickle knee before it's over.) In another hilar- Nor could the still-living Lord the farm girls' ... uh, fancy for her ious triumph , Amanda Donohoe pulls Lampton, whose ancestors had slain beloved deity, Dionin . If he's the together the world weariness of Mae the worm's ancestors, be involved with- worm, she's the lair, and sensuous West as she brings home a Boy Scout for out a new nom de guerre. Amanda Donohoe brings both her Old tea and crumpets and a game of Snakes Vic training and her drop-dead-gor- and Ladders. When the swain pulls out The script has Hugh Grant (as the geous body to bear on the subject of his mouth organ and starts to pipe up, unflappable, rational-but-versed-in- pagans vs. Christians. (Pagans win.) Lady Sylvia undulates unwillingly but irrational-traditions Lord James manages to quell him with, \"Stoppit! D'Ampton) bless us with a bit of ety- Lady Sylvia is surrounded by sax- That kind of music freaks me out.\" mology. \"Don't take the word 'worm' ophone music and, once, is lured out of Then she emasculates him. too literally,\" says he. \"It's an adapta- a straw basket by Lord D'Ampton play- tion of the Anglo-Saxon 'wyrm' mean- ing Turkish belly dancing music on his \"Well, of course, music played on ing dragon and snake; from the Gothic outdoor loudspeaker system. The req- simple instruments reinforces the idea 'waurms,' a serpent; or the German uisite butler (Central Casting outdid that good is guileless, unsophisticated, 'Vurm' ... the common worm was not itself with Stratford Johns) reminds the and unadorned ,\" argues Russell. \" But always the lowly creature it is today.\" young lord of \"one of the belly dancers don't forget that the score includes your father encountered in Istanbul. I \"I took upon myself the task of recall his Lordship's very words: 'That bringing the good ethnic folksong up to would charm the D'Ampton Worm date,\" explains Russell, \"and I gave the itself from its home.. .. I remember it ballad to two musicians, Emilio Perez Machado and Stephen Powys. One Every time Lady Sylvia finds that sort of music by scouring [London's] Cecil Sharp House-where bares her teeth at the all British folk music is collected-and the guys set about giving it a proper Trent wenches or at a rhythm and ring for the barn-dance number. I rather liked what they dished crucifix in their up. .. suited the knees-up we'd planned.... \" farmhouse, she inspires Knees what?! Shades of rollicking delirious visions of nymphomaniacs imbue Russell's calm and well-modulated British voice. Roman soldiers He laughs roguishly at the expecta- ravishing bare- tions he has raised over a 25-year career of feverish essays on the creative juices breasted nuns. of famous composers. Russell explains, \"A 'knees-up' is a local dance... what worked extremely well with a king Americans know as a square dance you cobra. \", The cobra has little on this know, like the people perform at the serpentine sex bomb , whose first manor house in the celebration hosted appearance in the night fog assures us by Lord D'Ampton .\" Included in that that vamp derives from vampire. scene is a mock slaying of the dragon, where several revelers dress UP. Chi- A stylish sang froid unites Lady Syl- nese New Year-style, sporting about in via and Lord D'Ampton. He is the a huge white worm costume, which keeper of the legend; she is the keeper young Lord D'Ampton slices in two of the power. Every time Lady Sylvia before serving up pickled worms In bares her teeth at the Trent wenches, or aspic on the groaning boards. once at a crucifix in their farmhouse, she inspires delirious visions of Roman N oblesse oblige among the worm soldiers ravishing bare-breasted nuns or exterminators is only one of the a supple white worm tangled around a jibes Russell takes at class distinctions crucified Lord D'Ampton. maintained so loyally on this hearth. Here two orphaned maidens, Eva (Cath- With mad departures from terra erine Oxenberg) and Mary (Sammi firma, it's significant that the power of Davis) Trent, keep a farmhouse/inn simple ethnic music can control mon- where once a convent stood (that, itself, strous forces: A young Scottish archae- replaced a pagan village). ologist who is digging up the Trent girls' farm once gets himself up in full kilt to Russell's most delightful creature is blow his bagpipes at a vampire consta- Lady Sylvia March, who tromps around her Temple House mansion in slinky bas couture and spike heels and 53

some organ music and the usual range. I Derek Malcom [of The Guardian]. If of D. H. Lawrence's novel preceding was quite pleased with Stanislas Syr- ewicz's uniting all this material, Mel Brooks or Fellini had done what I Women in Love] wi th a retu rn to rhapso- because I can't remember having har- monicas or bagpipes to deal with do, they'd like it, but one of their own is dic realism. It takes place in the before. But I think they give a certain propriety to the Christian side of the expected to respond to their very favor- English countryside and is dialogue- struggle against paganism. Perhaps because pagan forces are traditionally ite word-restraint. If I were American, oriented. Glenda Jackson is playing her under the sway of ritualistic music? I don't know, but it felt right, and it also who would want restraint? But it's not own mother, Anna Branwin, from her has the feeling that it's based on fact. If I believe there is a factual basis for for that reason that I tamed The Worm , role in Women in Love. It is a film about something, I can enter into the spirit more readily and embroider what but for the contrast in the humor. her and her child, a 16-year-old dying to would otherwise remain dreary data. \" \"Now having stretched my fingers, spread her wings, and people who T he Derbyshire countryside holds enormous fascination for Russell, I'm doing The Rainbow [an adaptation won't let her.\" who has happily returned to make films in England after 15 yea rs and an Russell is extremely critical of the arduous bout with Hollywood, where his work had mixed reception. \"Work- films that constitute the British Renais- ing in culture this rich is an enormous challenge,\" he says. \"For example, part sance. Their spasmodic nihilism of the decision to make The White Worm was that it was set right in the heart of strikes him as too downbeat. He says, foggy, sloggy England, not on some Transylvanian ridge. England made it \"Even fine directors like Stephen potentially more alarming-and, of course, absurdly comical. Frears are responsible for more harm \"It was also for that reason that we than good. When you reflect on what decided to play it absolutely straight. Look at these lines! We looked at each goes on beyond London, you realize other and quickly knew we could camp it up, but if the characters lived right that people outside don't recognize his down the road, it gave us more power to invent a psychic monster, as well. England. My neighbors here in the Stoker drew on things everyone in Eng- land knows. Local witchcraft abounds. Lake District find his films totally fan- \"Oh, did you know that Dick Bush, a tastic and ostentatiously anti-English. I cinematographer on White Worm, has seen the Loch Ness monster? Shortly see it as a destructive element in British after shooting something in Scotland, he and his crew were driving over a hill , cinema. Mike Leigh is very astute and and there it was, steaming up. Five bumps and a big wake-10 to 15 knots, perceptive, but he's mean spirited. but by the time they loaded the mag to photograph it, it had immersed itself. \"What they lack is eroticism. They There's still the odd monster swimming around England.\" want to deny the spirit and the flesh, Not the least of them, London and I think our job is to unite them. critics. Russell seems to have become relatively philosophical about the way I've shown that through music written critics deride his work, while forgetting that this eccentric Englishman has by people who experienced that union. arguably paved the way stylistically for the Coen Bros., Tim Burton, John And music is the most visually inspiring Waters, David Cronenberg, and the Pythons, not necessarily by direct way to portray that. My films are not inspiration, but by priming the pump for visual and thematic ou trage. Ken Russell behind the lens of Lair. bio-pics or social tracts. They' re about \"The critics, at least, are always out- the union of the spirit and flesh, body raged,\" admits Russell, \"except for \"The critics, at least, and soul.\" Will there always be an England? are always outraged. If \"Well, as long as people like John Boorman keep making Hope and Mel Brooks or Fellini Glory, \" says the repatriated Russell, had done what I do, \"England will always be somewhere... I don' t know where. On the screen.\" they'd like it, but one of And Russell has made his contribution. their own is expected to respond to theirfavorite word-'restraint.' \" 54

THEY'VE ADDED MORE MOVIES TO THE BIBLE! In the last four years, Roger Ebert's Mooie Home Companion has become the bible of VCR owners. For 1989, the addition of recent videocassette releases brings the total of entertaining, in-depth, full-length movie reviews to 825! In addition, the 1989 Companion also includes insider essays and inter- views featuring such Hollywood luminaries as Woody Allen, Kelly McGillis, Spike Lee, Tom Selleck, and Dennis Quaid, all written with the wit and style that earned Roger Ebert a Pulitzer Prize. This winter, end video store vacillation once-and for all; before you select that movie, look it up in the bible. In paperback, $11.95. ANDREWS and McMEEL A Universal Press Syndicate Company America's most surprising publisher is in Kansas City.

- by Stephen Harvey N o, this was not business as usual at the New York Film Festival this fall, although two weeks straight of meowing in the gutter tabloids (pardon me, The Village Voice) tried to drown out the most important issue for those civilians who actually pay for their seats. To wit, now that the five-person selection committee had four new faces, did the Festival's collec- tive mission and aggregate taste show any discernible change from years past? As far as I'm concerned, the answer was a firm, forceful, qualified maybe. Cer- tainly, the quotient of stinkers to revela- tions seemed as constant as the tides, separated by the usual glut of semi- intriguing klutzes in between. The difference was that up to now, matching the festival's attractions to one's own palate was duck soup, since any attentive maven had come to mem- orize the tics and fetishes of the key directorial players. A successful year meant that Pialat/Resnais/Meszarosl Wajda had transcended themselves; if they'd nodded, it was two weeks of Nightmare on 65th Street. But this au rumn all bets were off. Very few Tully by Elliott Stein me solitary major work at this year's festival was Marcel Ophuls' monumental Hotel Tenninus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (****). A dense and complex film, four-and-a-half-hours in length, it is less a chronicle of \"the butcher of Lyons\" and his crimes than a cosmogony of complicities, a mosaic of dozens of talking heads, a lineup of the network of people involved in the life of the Gestapo commander of the occu- pied French provincial city: those who knew him before he had made a name for himself by murdering Jewish orphans and capturing, torturing, and killing Resistance leader Jean Moulin; those American counterintelligence officers who arranged his escape to South America (in Reaganite terms, Barbie was a \"freedom fighter deemed useful in the Cold War against Commu- nism); and the neo-Nazis, bodyguards and shady colleagues who knew this \"idealist\" in his latter-day trade, as professor of torture whose students were the police of right-wing Bolivian dictator Hugo Suarez. Hotel Terminus is often a mad tea

alumni turned up this year, and most of New Films. In the end, the breadth of Ing translations from the Korean or the freshmen were household names this yea r's lineup was more impressive Romanian . only to those who annually pitch their than its depth, but at least it was tent outside Cannes' Quinzaine des unpredictable-there was no way of tell- Nostalgic festival ve terans , however, Realisateurs. The result made the 26th ing what fate awaited you until dark- will be comforted to know th at some New York Film Festival rather resemble ness descended in the hall and the traditions rem ain eternal. 'Even if Ri ch- a fall installment of New Directors/ subtitles started to beam their flicker- ard Pena eventually cedes his post to, say, Jeffrey Lyons , there will always be Botelho's Hard Times. one slot open for the pan-European Undead, You know this creature. His dreams are the quintessence of Esperanto chic, a collage of Vogue Italia fashion spreads and deconstructed High Lit. He shrinks from emotion and human verisimilitude like Dracula from The Host. You can't put an end to the horror by impaling the Undead's heart. For everyone who sinks back into deserved obscurity, three more hunch over moviolas in the dead of night, counting their grants from the cultural-channel Dr. Frankensteins who fund Art for local consumption as antidote to all that Yankee swill. There were a few tempting candi- dates for the 1988 Camera Dross award. Some would have voted for the waxen still-life beauties of La Maschera , but my favorite zombie was Joao Botelho's Hard Times (*), from the Dickens nove l of the same name. Typical of this Continued on next page Hardy's World War II novel.) When several of those interviewed describe \"the monastery route\" set up with the complicity of the Vatican to enable Nazis to flee Europe, Pope John Paul's recent cordial visit to Kurt Waldheim suddenly appears in enhanced perspective. Ophuls is not your cool and objective reporter. His dogged persi stence, aggressiveness, and sarcasm, inform the film with a dramatic core of black comedy. Hotel Terminus is capable of evoking contradictory responses: if it is elating to witness the discussion of cru- cial elements of the history of our cen- tury as they are dealt with onscreen for the first time , the near-universal moral vacuity revealed by the film is devastat- ing. One stumbles out at the end with serious doubts as to the redeemability of humankind. Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie. sial figure. Ex-resistance fighter and T wo of the better selections were rabid anti-Communist, Hardy was tried American, both 22 minutes in party of grotesquery. A man who for collaboration and acquitted, length: Brya n Gordon's Ray's Male helped Barbie escape complains that although it is widely believed in France Heterosexual Dance Hall (***), and the Jews are persecuting Nazis; an that he did betray Moulin. (A timely Warren Son bert's Honor and Obey American agent who worked to the candidate for revi va l would be Nicholas (***), the latter shown as part of a same effect notes that Barbie \"was not Ray's 1957 Bitter Victory, based on program devoted entirely to avant- pro-Semitic.\" The cast of characters includes Rene Hard y, still a controver- Continued on Page 61 57

species, the film is a surpassingly confi- Hou Hsiao-hsien's Daughter of the Nile. Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum. dent rendering of an utterly pointless idea. Botelho shows his understanding date both , but Daughter of the Nile is wine of the title. Since Zhang was an of his source by leaching all vitality out too confused even to try. Hou 's own acclaimed cameraman before making of the novel's people, to better expose natural style seems to lean toward a this directorial debut, you:d expect the maze-like symmetry of the plot. In languid , rambling detachment, which him to extract the maximum of vigorous dour, pearly tones of black and white, reiterates the obvious while glossing poetry from all those undulating fields he transplants Dickens' turbulent Vic- over the essential. Halfway through the of blood-red grain. Yet , he's also gifted toriana into contemporary Portugal, film, I stopped counting the slow-pan with a streamlined flair for storytelling, where its restive virginal wards, dis- establishing shots of the Shao family's which far more experienced film- tressed gentlewomen, and forelock- hillside shack, around the time I real- makers might envy; the problem is that tugging proles are sure to have no reso- ized Hou wasn' t going to bother clarify- Red Sorghum's plot turns out to be a nance whatever. His style synthesizes ing just who was related to whom. By post-Cultural Revolution version of the most rarefied bits copyrighted by the end, this movie's airless rh ythms High Concept. The opening third has his elders and betters; each vignette is a seemed dictated less by Hou's subject the pungent flavor of folk legend , in static aestheticized tableau in the man- than by his own flagging energies. which peasant heroine Nine is ravished ner of Manuel de Oliveira with perhaps Daughter of the Nile's opaqueness was by one of the lusty renegades bearing a touch of Straub thrown in for extra upstaged by a bombshell printed in the her litter to the decrepit wine merchant saltpeter. Botelho's actors resemble that festival program-namely, the revela- who has bought her in wedlock. But hapless troupe Werner Herzog hypno- tion that \"a recent worldwide critics once the plutocrat dies and his teenage tized for Heart ofGlass, drifting vacant- (sic) poll chose Hou as one of three widow is acclaimed Sweetheart of the eyed in slow motion like tranquilized dire~tors most crucial to the future of Commune, she turns out to be first guppies in an aquarium . The director cinema.\" Come on, guys, don't leave cousin to all those White-Haired girls obviously derived some private jollies us hanging. After sitting through this , who adorned the Chinese screen dur- by casting some of his players perver- I'm dying to know who the screen's ing the Gang of Four days-the modest sely against type-heroine Luisa's other two saviors are supposed to be. proletarian princess who toils not but suitor, described by the offscreen nar- inspires the stunned populace to new rator as a strapping looker, is a plump As the most widely praised export to heights of fellowship and idealism by pudding with doleful raisin eyes. At date from China's New Wave , Zhang her shining example. With Nine as pho- best this is a redundant joke, because Yimou's Red Sorghum (**) was like- togenic martyr, Red Sorghum's denoue- the whole thing unreels like a straight- wise dwarfed by its advance hyperbole. ment is a lip-smacking fresco of faced shaggy-dog story with no punch In many ways, it mirrors the current wartime Japanese atrocities filmed , line. Still, Botelho deserves a back- political line to a flaw, borrowing some ironically enough, in a manner Akira handed pat for proving that idiot virtu- high-yield savvy from those infidel cap- Kurosawa would recognize as his own. osity continues to win a place of honor italists abroad and grafting it onto the No matter how skillfully Zhang dishes on the festival circuit. same old ideology. Zhang is one neo- it out, Red Sorgum's high propaganda phyte director who has assimilated his content leaves a flat aftertaste. Halfway T he much-vaunted openness of this influences thoroughly; Red Sorghum's through the movie, Nine's spunky sec- year's committee to films from vistas of tough hombres in a harsh ter- ond husband improves the vintage by less-familiar climes had its unexpected rain recall the Westerns of three conti- pissing in the wine vat; it's a shame side effects. Movies like South Korea's nents while illustrating a yarn as Zhang's dose of vinegar couldn't do as The Man With Three Coffins and the indigenously Chinese as the sorghum Taiwanese Daughter of the Nile (* liz) proved that overweening Art is not exclusively endemic to the member nations of the EEC. Like Botelho, Nile's Hou Hsiao-hsien genuflects to a select pantheon of auteurs, but his is a much more eclectic bunch. Daughter of the Nile's plot scans like Asian neo-neoreal- ism-the slow disintegration of a root- less family on the fringe of the big city, as seen through the eyes of the teenage daughter who is its most passive pawn. The domestic scenes look a bit like Zou among the underclass; bereft of tatami, Hou shoots long, long takes from the vantage point of a vinyl-covered kitchen chair. By contrast, his excur- sions into the louche coffee bars where the heroine's brother plays at gangster and mah-jongg conjure up early God- ard, all lethal popguns and neon. Few movies could comfortably accommo- 58

much for Red Sorghum's second-hand SCHOOL OF THE ARTS recipe . Invites Prospective Filmmakers T wo of the festival's retrospective to Apply for a Unique Fellowship entries likewise showcased the conflict between socialist ideology and Each year the Tisch School of personal id iosyncracy; And rei the Arts in cooperation with Konchalovsky's Asya's Happiness the Willard T. C. Johnson (**) and the Andrei Smirnov/Larissa Foundation offers emerging Shepitko diptych The Onset of an filmmakers a limited number Unknown Age (**) were both made of full tuition fellowships. to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution and then For Undergraduate and squelched for their political impurities . Graduate Students In Asya's case, it would take a more dedicated Kremlinologist than I to fig- Candidates will be judged ure out what all the fuss was about. on the basis of creative True, Konchalovsky 's heroes never work, academic standing, achieve the dimensions of socialist-real- and leadership potential. ist recruitment posters-most of them Graduate deadline: are marred (or humanized) by physical January 15, 1989. imperfections of all manner and the Undergraduate deadline: emotional wounds left by the years March 15, 1989. spent resisting Hitler and submitting to Stalin. Certainly the love-triangle plot For more information and an pivoting on the hardworking but inde- application, call Dean Elena cisive Asya is innocuous enough , and Pinto Simon at (212) 998-1900 Konchalovsky's farmland panoramas or return the coupon below. sufficiently elegiac to soothe the most ardent Russian patriot. Moreover, for Tisch School of the Arts Please send me information and an every matter-of-fact monologue about New York University application for the W. T. C. Johnson Film past suffering endured , Konchalovsky 721 Broadway, 7th floor Fell owship . tosses out catnip to the bureaucrats New York, NY. 10003 with his cheery production numbers on o Undergraduate 0 Graduate the sheer bliss of collective farm work in Attn.: Dean Elena Pinto Simon Name _________________________ the progressive 1960s. Twenty years on in the decadent West, these thresher Address _______________________ rhapsodies in dance are awfully hard to take; in retrospect, if Konchalovsky City_________________________ erred, it was on the side of kitsch. State/Zip Code _________________ The Onset of an Unknown Age (**) is another matter entirely-in both NewYork University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity institution. Fe 11/88 its parts, this movie was clearly too Slavic in its gloom to be deemed suffi- ciently Soviet. Each featurette takes place during the early days of the Revo- lution and relies on a sternly optimistic off-camera narration to offset the despairing tone of the directors' own images. Smirnov's Angel is the grimmer equivalent of a Hollywood foxhole movie , in which a cross section of Bol- sheviks and civilians on a freight car to nowhere are captured by a counter-rev- olutionary band and confront their pri- vate fears and the fate of the nation. The bitterly titled Homeland of Elec- tricity likewise emphasizes struggle over triumph in the Sisyphean tale of an engineer who labors in vain to build a power generator in a drought-parched village. The monochromatic rigor of both is simultaneously their bravest fea- ture and most striking limitation. For 59

Shepitko, this early film is a poignant every scene like overworked taffy, their own aspirations . Somehow he footnote to a brief but remarkable while Lili waits petulantly for the other manages to make a really buoyant ca reer, which ended in a fatal auto acci- bra strap to drop. This hurdle apart, 36 movie out of this despairing fresco. dent seve ral yea rs ago. Fillette will most appeal to those Fran- Leigh has long been noted at home for cophobes seeking proof of what a dis- his television films; High Hopes and a For the sake of ideological fair play, dainful lot the French really are; if droll short called The Short and the the selection committee planned to nothing else, Breillat has trained her Curlies make you long to find out what complement these Soviet revi va ls with cast well in the Gallic art of snotty we've been missing all these years. a sowing of the American sc reen 's most remarks and contemptuous sneers. stirring anthem to proletarian solidarity, The festival's most ill-starred pre- Stanley Donen and George Abbott's T he selection committee's pursuit mier turned out to be Terence Davies' The Pajama Game (at least *** as I of the unfamiliar this year had one luminous Distant Voices, Still Lives remember, and I'm not makin g any of oddly ironic result-the proof that there (****)-first it was airily dismissed by this up). This movie has been arbi- will always be an English cinema, even the Newspaper of Record, then pre- traril y suppressed for man y yea rs , if its artists wouldn't give tuppence for sented to the public minus one reel. For ostensibly because of some wrangle the future of England itself. All three of reasons that baffle me, a lot of people over the \" music rights.\" Hah. Clearly, the British entries were defiantly mar- (including those who saw it intact) its ideological message is still too dis- ginal films whose achievements were in found it simply impenetrable; all I comfitting to some craven, name less inverse proportion to the scope of their know is, once the movie ended and I higher-ups ; not even the festival's ambitions. Derek Jarman 's The Last managed to stop crying, cold reason urgent pleas to honor the spirit of of England (* liz) is an abstract apoca- told me this was the one perfectly real- glasnost and perestroika managed to ly pse collage-Flaming Creatures ized work I'd seen in this year's lineup. liberate The Pajama Game from its bun- dancing in a fire storm of heavy portent. Davies has made a passionate, impres- ker in Burbank. Jarman mingles bits of his own pat- sionistic portrait of his working-class ented iconography (a sallow street kid mother and sisters as remembered from T he new selection committee's most humping a Caravaggio canvas in the his childhood in the Forties and Fifties. defiant act of lese-majeste was the rubble) with references to the New As he recreates it, their world may have snub of its former spiritual homeland , la American Cinema of 20-odd years ago. been colored austerity-drab, but at least France, w ith the so le inclusion of (One sign-of-the-times footnote: it was filled with song; for these debuting director Catherine Breillat's Although there were several self- women, the salve for pinched times and 36 Fillette (**). This choice prompted announced gay filmmakers represented brutish spouses was all the wonderful some intemperate words from Daniel this year, Jarman's was the only film American pop songs they learned at the Toscan du Plantier, the head of Uni- with even implicit homoerotic over- movies and belted out together in Sat- france Film, which promotes French tones.) His blown-up Super-8 images urday-night sing-alongs at the local cinema abroad; when it comes to mak- have a fitful spectral grandeur, but the pub. ing movies about rand y teenage girls, cumulative effect is deadening-at 87 apparently only Pialat and Rohmer are minutes , The Last of England becomes From what I heard, the film's detrac- worthy of bearing the tricolor. Tosca n an exasperatingly protracted showcase tors resented the very things that make du Plantier should have kept his mouth for Jarman's limited palette. it so original. Davies refuses to shove shut, but I'd hardl y challenge him to a these nuanced lives into a neat linear duel over the merits of Breillat's film. Mike Leigh's High Hopes (***) chronicle with a cathartic windup. Its author is a novelist who has, in fact, was the universal hit of the festival, and Instead he conjures up the quality of written scripts for Pialat, and on the with good reason . Where Jarman memory itself, in a succession of tiny basis of 36 Fillette she remains a gifted launches huge smoky metaphors vignettes linked by an emotional logic screenwriter with a lot to learn about against bloated , bankrupt Western stronger than mere chronology. Davies' directing a movie. Civ., High Hopes is a scalpel-specific rhythms are haunting once you submit diss~ction of upscale smugness in to them, and his astonishing gift for In the Pialat tradition , Breillat's her- Thatcherland and its obverse, the composition extracts unexpected feel- oine is a sullen, well-upholstered 14- downward apathy of the left. Leigh's ing from the most throwaway moments. year-old who's just gotta have it; on microcosm consists of a sad, wacky sep- His velvety track through a smoky Lon- claustrophobic holiday with her par- tet-a Marxist messenger poshly don cinema playing Love is a Many ents, she spends most of the movie in named Cyril and his go-with-the-flow Splendored Thing has a hilarious payoff; stubborn pursuit of a jaded roue nearly girlfriend, his nouveau-middle-class as Ella Fitzgerald croons \"Taking a three times her age before glumly set- sister Valerie, who is a suburban woman Chance on Love\" on the sound track, tling for the freckly nerd in the recre- on the verge of a nervous breakdown the sight of Davies' fictionalized ational vehicle next door. No wed to a vulgarian born-again Tory, mother washing a window is inexplica- sentimental moralist she, Breillat treats their decrepit mum, and the gentrify- bly heartbreaking, until the next scene this story as a lesson in human biology. ing twits next door who treat the neigh- explains why you've been sobbing all She's an acute observer of that ghastly boring rabble with a gracious along. Distant Voices, Still Lives isn't phase when pubescent hormones go condescension not seen since the death about anything but love, survival, and haywire, chasing a girl like Lili to of Queen Mary. His approach deftly talent, qualities that haven't managed switch from teary outrage to brittle balances wry hyper-realism with to make things much easier for this hauteur quicker than she can peel out Hogarthian lampoon, a pitiless eye for director to date. Davies' film is the kind of her jeans into something more com- caste ritual fused with real sympathy of elusive discovery that needs a show- fortable . Nevertheless, this is a for these people who are the victims of case like The New York Film Festival comatose movie; Breillat stretches out and honors it by being present. ~ 60

STEIN YOUR TICKET To (Continuedfrom page 56) GREAT CINEMA- garde films. Gordon's short is a fanciful FOR RENTAL: Over 900 outstanding films, including caprice: At an establishment which pro- vides a setting for lunchtime power \"Aguirre - The Wrath of God,\" \"Black Orpheus\" and \"Betty Blue\" dances, businessmen literally tango up -on VHS or Beta videocassette-delivered to your door. It's fast, and down the corporate ladder. The easy and inexpensive. Call or write for our free information package and \"tone\" is all here , and it is impeccably complete film list. Gift memberships available. maintained from start to finish. Of the \"Avant-Garde Voices, \" Sonbert's FOR KEEPS: Call toll-free for all videotape purchases. Our proved the only one worth listening to. Honor and Obey is a free-associative cinema-savvy staff is on hand to help locate hard-to-find river of shimmering images: marching titles. Ask for our gift catalogue -listing 1000 soldiers, cryptic disputes, fragmentary great movies all priced under $30. views of Paris, New York, Australia. After a single viewing I'd be hard put to list Price: Gift-pac: say who was being honored and who $19.98 each $59.98 reg. obeyed, but what was clear was Son- $39.98 Our Price bert's absolute mastery of the form. Our Price Programming an all avant-garde show (a $20 savings) seemed a worthy idea-on paper. In the $14.98 event, it was mainly a futile time- TO ORDER: waster, due to the tameness of the Bergman's best group of all-too-circumspect choices. Call toll-free with credit card information, or send Something'S awry when avant-garde in black and white. check or money order to: becomes a synonym of deja vu. Now Featuring: The Bergman Home Film Festival , P.O. Box 2032 ,Scranton , Pa. 18501. Gift-pac. Discover director Ingmar Indicate VHS or Beta. The Terence Davies 'Trilogy which Bergman's true colors with three of his Please add $3.50 per order for postage, insurance surfaced here a few years ago was finest black and white classics. This and handling. PA residents add 6% state tax. marked by one of the most dour views Bergman trio features THE SEVENTH Satisfaction guaranteed. of Catholicism, indeed of human life, SEAL, a stunning allegory of life and death; ever presented on the screen. It was VIRGIN SPRING, a powerful morality play, 1 (800) 258-3456 Z unforgettable, full of extraordinary and the sophisticated sex comedy/satire, things, and far more interesting than SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT. Order these PA I (800) 633-3456 the director's new film Distant Voices, three Bergman masterpieces today. Your Still Lives (**). Davies is dealing once video library shouldn't be without them. agai n wi th the cares of the worki ng class Liverpudlians, but here the characters Make better movie viewing choices! are barely fleshed out; they all seem remembered ghosts, fragments of some I want to know more about the films of 1987 so I can make better forlorn family album from the Forties viewing choices. and Fifties . They sing favorite songs, attend weddings and funerals. The Send me _ copy(ies) of The 1988 Motion Picture Annual at just vignettes are stylish , often blocked in $19.95 ($24.95 outside the US) plus 52.25 shipping and handling. I graceful crane shots. This is obviously a know that I can return the Annual for a full refund within 30 days if labor of love, fashioned by a director of not completely satisfied. talent, but it quickly wears thin and I departed with the impression that I had Name seen the outline of a film which had yet to be fully realized. Address State _ _ Zip _ _ _ _ __ City ____________ Mircea Daneliuc's Jacob (**) takes place in Transylvania during the Thir- Daytime Telephone ( __ ) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ ties, when Rumania was ruled by a corrupt monarchy and workers were Enclosed is my _ _ check _ _ money order for S :-:-:-_----,-,:-::::-:--__ treated as slaves. Nonetheless, the Ill. res. add 7% tax . details of time and place are unspecific Charge this to my VISA ___ MasterCard ___ AmEx card. enough so that its protagonist-Hthe embodiment of the life force,\" accord- - ,,Acct. # Exp _ _ __ ing to the festival program-may well be intended as an Everyman bearing 800-541-5701 or 312-475-8400 ___ fardels under Communism. Grim , -~~ CineBooks, Inc. occasionally tiresome, the film does PO Box 140 7, Dept. FCC1l8 rise to genuine dramatic interest in the excellently directed final sequence 990 Grove St. 1988 ~ Evanston , IL 60204 --~ - ~---- 19BB t 61

when Jacob, the miner, is trapped in a Sergei Paradjanov's Ashik Kerib. two films, he showed signs of annoy- malfunctioning cable car. Subtitles, ance, and then, in a sobbing voice, ideally a gateway to a foreign film, were a revelation, with passages of tumul- remarked that he was merely granting a solid brick wall in front of this Ruma- tuous lyricism, the like of which had the wish of an elderly mother to honor nian selection. Three of my favorites: not been seen in Soviet cinema since her dying son. (In the August 1988 \"Did you rummage there or ain't you?\" Dovzhenko. Paradjanov's Sayat Nova, Cahiers du Cinema Paradjanov is \"Make greet to the bairns.\" \"He just a made in 1969, which exalts the life and quoted in an interview as saying that he jellybone. \" work of an 18th century Armenian poet, asked Abashidze to work on Suram For- reached the West a few years after its tress. \"He is the co-auteur of Fortress,\" Daughter of the Nile (**), from the completion; it was clearly a master- he says.) When asked how this granting Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, is piece. In 1974, after his arrest on var- of a mother's wish could cOVer the co- concerned with a family losing its iden- ious charges, the director was directorial credits of two films over a tity as traditional ways crumble in condemned to a work camp. Since his three-year period, the director was visi- Americanized culture. Hou's camera release in 1978, two of his later films bly irked. He suggested that the dis- contemplates a good deal of the action have surfaced: The Legend of Suram cussion should limit itself to more framed through open doors in long Fortress (1985) and Ashik Kerib (**), serious topics and then returned to an shots from adjoining rooms. These finished earlier this year, which apparently pet subject, the superiority scenes, and other studied stylistic con- received its American premiere at the of the wardrobe of Nancy Reagan to ceits used throughout his film , do give Festival. The credits on both of these that of Raissa Gorbachev. He then its surface a distinct visual appeal. films state that they were co-directed remarked that a young woman seated in They do little to coax involvement in by Paradjanov and David Abashidze. the orchestra was breathtakingly beau- the story or interest in the destinies of On the print of Kerib, Paradjanov is tiful and requested her to rise and show the characters. listed second. The Festival program herself to the audience. she got up, gives Paradjanov as solo director; made a slow turn and presented her The campy comedies of Pedro Abasidze is not mentioned. These two ample figure for the crowd's admiration. Almodovar have gained their Spanish later films are filled with the marks of The dialogue with Sergei Paradjanov director an exuberant international cla- Paradjanov's luxuriant, yet static and was at an end. que. Most of the films of this enfant tableau-esque style , but are not on the terrible of liberated post-Franco cin- level of the earlier works. Kerib lacks I can't share what seems to be the ema have jolted and amused. Women their fervor; costumes and trappings are general enthusiasm for Mira Nair's on the Verge of a Nervous Break- sumptuous, but the film is marred by Salaam Bombay! (*), which was down (**), a runaway hit in Spain, was the wooden and amateurish perfor- given this year's Camera d'Or prize at given the opening night honors of this mance of Yuri Goyan in the title role. Cannes and is currently being com- year's Festival. There is no life at its center. pared to Los Olvidados and Pixote. This story of an abandoned boy who Sad to say, it is the least audacious During the dialogue with the public wises up quickly enough to survive in and amusing of the director's films. It which followed the showing of Ashik doesn't even work as a simple wind-up Kerib , when the director was queried isthe streets and alleyways of the red light toy farce-the clockwork is constipated; about Abashidze 's contribution to the it builds to the least successful car district of the big city surprisingly chase sequence of any movie within well acted by the non-profassional chil- ·memory. Much of the action consists of dren in the cast, and k:'ss so by its talky scenes set on an uninflectedly professional adults. Sandi Sissel's cine- ugly apartment terrace. Leading lady matography is first-rate and finely Carmen Maura, the luminous transsex- nuanced, the music by L. Sub- ual of Law ofDesire, seems miscast as a ramaniam excessive and third-rate. woman spurned, nearly driven out of The atmosphere seems authentic her mind after being jilted by a middle- enough, but I did not believe the tale as aged lover. Whatever the script is say- told. I felt manipulated. I'd expect that ing, Maura's plain-speaking body lan- the greatest fans of Salaam Bombay! guage tells us she would quickly get would be those for whom the relentless over the bastard and get on with her insights of Pixote would prove too life. Charismatic mini-hunk Antonio harrowing. Banderas is wasted in the role of a A Winter Tan was directed by a wimp. collective of five Canadian filmmakers. This said, Women has, few and far One of them, Jackie Burroughs, stars in this adaptation of Maryse Holder's between, its moments. Rossy de Palma book, Give Sorrow Words. In it, a New is startling in the relatively small part of York schoolteacher's quest for sex and Banderas' fiancee-she looks like a tou- freedom in Mexico becomes a 91-min- can on speed. And there is a spec- ute shtick, a raunchy postfeminist \"girl tacularly fine shot of Maria Barranco talk\" monologue, much of it aimed (Candela) in a junkyard. It nearly directly at the camera. Life on the edge redeems the laborious torpor of an with this leering, lowering and loony entire reel. lady is all on one note. A punishing experience. ~ I n 1964, Sergei Paradjanov's Shadows ofOur Forgotten Ancestors arrived as 62

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- Toronto,The Good by David Chute In its autumn cold-and-grays, cle for admirers who had to sneak off to Toronto seemed an ideal setting for the grind houses to catch his early pictures 11iS year's Toronto Festiv~l of measured malignancy. of David Cro- in the Seventies. It made his success Festivals, the 13th in recorded nenberg's masterpiece of infinite look like a triumph of the will as much history, wasn't as exhilarating as regression, Dead Ringers, which was as anything. He didn't always know last year's 12th. But then, it scarcely the Opening Night Gala presentation. how to make movies (as witness the could have been . 1987 was a proud rough-hewn They Came From Within landmark year-a year of years for the Ringers is an epistimological horror and Rabid), but he always knew what Festival of Festivals. The \"Eastern film, a nightmare of entrapment in an kind of movies he wanted to make, and Horizons\" program (especially the imperceivable situation, in surround- from one to the next you could see him Hong Kong entries), and the Pedro ings that can't be broken down into learning how, painstakingly assembling Almod6var \"Spotlight\" series opened standard mental categories. It's also a the necessary skills. up new universes, suggesting it might biological horror film, of course, since be safe to see movies again. It was an for Cronen berg just about everything Now, fresh from The Fly's indisputa- impossible act to follow. comes down to that. But this one ble boxoffice triumph, he's won the releases its subcutaneous pressures not best reviews of his career, all-stops-out This year, journalists scrambled explosively but oozingly, as pustulant art movie notices brimming with com- frantically to many more movies, fumes drift over the chic Italian parisons to David Lynch and Ingmar exhausting themselves, grasping at furnishings. Bergman. (His next project could be a diminishing satisfactions. A Soviet long-planned adaptation of William sidebar-the Glasnost Mini-Festival- This feeling of decay and half-frozen Burrough's novel Naked Lunch, a book was not widely praised by those quali- rigid control, his Toronto style, isn't he's mentioned often as the strongest fied to pass judgment (too many famil- Cronenberg's only mood. He's never single influence on his movies .) iar titles , apparently)-although Alexei filmed outside of Canada, but he has Gherman 's My Friend Ivan Lapshin gone as far afield as Montreal to shoot Which brings us to the sensitive (1984) was acclaimed. (It was also voted movies that needed a hotter, more question of awards. If Canadians The Best Soviet Film of All Time in a extroverted tone (They Came From wonder why outsiders remain skeptical recent poll of USSR film critics.) Within , Rabid, Scanners). But the of their cinematic output, they should repressed atmosphere of Anglo-Saxon ponder the pictures they choose to No matter how good its movies, Toronto fits his cooler, quieter, more honor. This is your best? wonder puz- though, Moscow just isn't Hong Kong. profoundly disturbing movies (The zled foreigners. Or Madrid. There were quite a few Brood and The Fly ) like a surgical rub- drizzl y grey days in Toronto this year, ber glove. Distressingly, the Festival of Festi- and it often seemed to be drizzling vals' \"Canadian Jury\" handed the inside the theaters, too. To see Dead Ringers , and Cronen- Toronto-City Award for Excellence in berg, in the context of an opening night Canadian Production to Allan E. Gold- black tie event was a gratifying specta- Jeremy Irons and Genevieve Bujold in Dead Ringers. 64

Guy Maddin's Tales from the Gimli Hospital. A product of the fabled Winnipeg of necrophilia. If you can't even sustain Film Group, whose previous efforts a 72-minute story, it may be time to stein's The Outside Chance of Maxi- include the \" prairie surrealism\" ofjohn reconsider your approach to narrati ve. millian Glick, by definition a worthy Paiz's Crime Wave , Maddin's 72-minute picture about a boy growing up with his first feature dispenses bogus folklore No scandale, perhaps, but certainly rabbi (Saul Rubinek) in the wilds of with a deadpan expression in taunting an oversight. This is exactly the kind of Manitoba. This prize is explicitly open sing-song tones. Gimli is an actual audacious movie making Canada needs to \"all Canadian films in the Festi- town, 100 miles north of Winnipeg, to encourage if it is ever to spruce up its val\"-including Dead Ringers. settled by Icelandic immigrants. dour, stiff, humanistic, National Film Around the turn of the century, Mad- Board image. The Festival's other prizes made the din 's Bizarro World Gimlites sleep Toronto-City award look pusillani- under blankets of dirt, wash their faces T his year's \"Spotlight\" se ries intro- mous. Even the John Labatt C lassic with handfuls of straw, and use fish oil duced Aki and Mika Kaurismaki, Film Award, a popularity prize voted (squeezed fresh from li ve fi sh) as a hair cinematic siblings from Finland , of all by the public, made a bolder splash preparation-Icelandic mousse. places. Their sensibility is deadpan with the delirious Women 011 the Verge sarcastic, blithel y mi x ing serious of a Nervous Breakdown. The Interna- As our story opens, a hideous themes with pastiche and parody. Their tional Critic's Prize selection was pre- pestilence is ravaging the land, produc- heroes (very few heroines) wear dark dictable-Distant Voices, Still Lives- ing revolting \"fissures\" in the flesh of glasses 24 hours a day, trudge through but at least defensible. the alread y morose and horny fisher- the Helsinki sludge in cowboy boots , man Einer the Lonely. The Gimli Hos- drink beer and smoke constantly, listen Dead Ringers was robbed in Toronto. pital is hastily established in a cow and misty-eyed to ancient American R&B If it doesn't win all the major North chicken filled barn. Voluptuous nurses recordings, and freeze their faces into American critic's awards this year, I will in slip s, wearing Pola Negri eye masks of postgraduate existential demand a recount. shadow, treat the disease by rubbing angst. \"They have a lot of attitude\" was dead seagulls ,over the open sores. the muttered di smissal I overheard. As the Festival of Festivals was wind- But at their best, the brothers transform ing down, an underground rumble All is free-floating angst and para- a cooler-than-thou pose into a coherent began to circulate: The best Canadian noia until Einer begins to suspect that satirical position. movie of the year had been rejected the lissome nurses prefer his fat and outright by the otherwise blameless smug friend Gunner, who amuses them Still in their early 30s, the staff of staffs. \"Scandale!\" whispered on cold nights , scissoring silly fish sil- Kaurismakis own movie theaters , a dis- an appalled Quebe<;ois film critic. houettes from pieces of birch bark. A tribution company, and a fully glowering rivalry begins to fester. equipped production facilit y in Cassettes of the wronged work were Helsinki , and they' re branching out furtively handed around. It was Guy This is irresistible stuff, even if into multi-lingual co-productions. Maddin's Tales From The Gimli Maddin 's flair for pre-Code pastiche is They are becoming full-fledged mem- Hospital. undercut by Gimli Hospital's wafer- bers of the intercontinental art-movie thin plot, which revolves around an act A snide melodrama whose rotting black-and-white images recall Eras- erhead, it was just about weird enough to qualify. 65

THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF hipoisie. Mika's most recent effort, the really is romantic. It misses the bitter- awkward Helsinki Napoli All Night ness that a rancid-souled artiste like \"THE MALTESE FALCON\" Long, was filmed in Berlin, in English, Rainer Fassbinder injected into similar with supporting turns by Eddie Con- material. Aki finds something conge- ~ stantine and Samuel Fuller, and with nial, even admirable, in the characters' The Ultimate Conversation Wim Wenders and Jim Jarmusch in defiant sullenness; it's a form of passive Piece. This collectors cameos . Their company, Villealpha resistance. They may have to swallow sculpture is 10\" H. cast in Filmproductions, was named for Jean- what society dishes out, but they don't glossy lead black Luc Godard, and Mika's next is The have to pretend to like it. hydrocal. $45.00 PPD or Return ofLemmy Caution. Collectors Edition Bronie The Kaurismakis have a playful $250.00 PPD. 2 to 4 Mika Kaurismaki has a fairly streak, but they're fundamentally Wk. Del. Satisfaction straight-faced , romantic approach to his serious moviemakers. Only Aki's reck- Guaranteed Ck., Mo. to. genre derivatives. Rosso and The less Calamari Union was lightheaded Worthless are \"road movie\" crime films enough to recall the giddy exhilaration CLIFTON J. SHEELY CO. about alienated killers on the run, spun of Toronto's Almodovar orgy in 1987, out languidly against the barren tun- the cleansing sense that frivolity can be PO 2569 Mercerville, NJ 08619 dras of Finland , with only occasional a font of art. glints of irony. His most successful pic- -lAw ture, The Clan-Tale ofthe Frogs , is also Calamari has 17 major characters, budget the most overtly parodic. Set in the many played by non-pros, members of features frozen Finnish sticks, it's a permafrost the rock band The Leningrad Cow- version of a hillbilly moonshine melo- boys . Every single male is named - Shorts drama. The Frog family is an inbred Frank. All these Franks are buddi~s , - Documentaries hoard of lice-ridden drunkards and living in the bad part of Helsinki , who petty thieves-but they have coughed get to drinking one night and decide to 3Smm , up a mutant, a c1eancut youngster who saunter over to the high-rent district for 16mm/ Super 16, falls in love and struggles to go straight. a look-see. The movie tracks their tipsy lighting The complacent, wheezing manginess odyssey; it's a loose series of drunken and of the Frog famil y, an alternate code brawls, practical jokes, petty crimes, sound that outsiders fail to appreciate , is a and hung-over breakfasts. In a sense, a packages corner-of-the-eye joke that gets funnier movie like Calamari Union is nothing and funnier. but attitude. It's an act of effrontery that competitive manages to spin something wonderful rates Aki Kaurismaki is the more interest- from wisps of improvised material. ing moviemaker of the two , substitut- 212/925-972J ing crisp, hard-edged craftsmanship for N o Toronto movie made me angrier Mika's romantic fluidity. Aki's first fea- than the masturbatory Talking to MOVIE ture, Crime and Punishment, with a Strangers, which was photographed, STAR bummed-out killer-hero, who looks written , produced, and directed (in PHOTOS and behaves uncannily like American case we' re wondering who's respons- comedian Steven Wright, is consis- ible) by Baltimore's Rob Tregenza. If I One of the world·s largest collecrions of film tently clever but not particularly grip- were more comfortable with the term, perso nality photographs, with emphasis on ping. The characteristic Kaurismaki I'd call this one \"decadent.\" It repre- rare candids and European m aterial. Send a poker face may not be tailor-made for sents some kind of perverse art-for- S.A.S.E. with want-list to : the eruptions of Dostoyevski. art's-sake triumph of film school nood- ling over moviemaking-and offers Mihon T . Moore, Jr. A modern-dress burlesque, Hamlet viewers a sense of film as an expressive Goes Business, is a lot more successful. narrative medium that can bring us Dept. Fe It's pure parody, casting the Indecisive closer than any other to a sense of Dane as the heir to a Helsinki-based firsthand sensuous contact with people, P.O. Box 140280 conglomerate that manufactures rubber societies, landscapes, city streets, Dallas, Texas 75214-0280 bathtub ducks. (Hamlet resembles clashes of personali ty. some of the elaborate satires cooked up by England's Comic Strip troupe.) Talking to Strangers consists entirely of unbroken ten-minute takes, nine Aki's best effort is probably Shadows single shots ordered randomly by a in Paradise, a sad sack proletarian computer. Tregenza saved up some romance about a glum garbage collector money doing TV commercials so that he with droopy lip-whiskers (droll Matti could shoot Strangers in 35mm and Pallonpaa , a Kaurismaki favorite) and a Dolby stereo, with fancy Louma cranes flat-faced supermarket checker (Saku and ·snorkle lenses . Which is all well Kuosmanen) who looks slumped over in defeat even when she's popping her and good. The important question is gum contemptuousl y. Shadows how all this hardware-and all those deflates paperback love conventions by structural preconceptions, which are applying them to hilariously depressed intellectual hardware-is actually used. lumpen stereotypes. But the movie The opening segment is an overhead 66

TWENTY-SIXTH NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL This year's New York Film Festival poster is a I enclose $ lor _ _ _ _ _ _ 26th New York bold graphic statement from the well-known Film Festival posters. . designer, Milton Glaser. Silkscreened in five SIGNED UNSIGNED colors, Glaser's design harks back to the Art Deco era. Name The poster measures 30\"x45\", and is silk- Address screened on high-quality stock. It is suitable for framing. The signed, limited edition is $75; City/StatelZip an unsigned limited edition poster $35. Price includes postage and handling. Daytime Phone Please allow 6 weeks for delivery. Offer good in US only. Mail check or money order payable to: Film Society of Lincoln Center, 140 West 65th St., New York , NY 10023 . You may use postage-paid envelope in this magazine .

shot of a well-dressed man wandering Samo Hung reprimands astudent in Alex Law's Painted Faces. around a Baltimore intersection, carry- ing a briefcase, trying to decide which get away from for a while.\") It's the Tale. Now she's produced his boisterous way to walk, and which bus to take. same old scam, only aimed at a differ- elegy to an evaporating art form. Set in The lowering distant angle makes the ent audience. the Sixties and early Seventies, Painted sequence feel clinical, as if the man's Faces is the fact-based story of three desperate aimlessness were being I......You Hsiao-hsien's Daughter of the students who grow up as \"brothers\" at a viewed like an insect skittering around draconian Peking Opera Academy in on a laboratory table. • .lNile relocated the director from Hong Kong, crew-cut acrobats in their his usual rural settings to the big bad matching uniforms, as painfully out of The remaining segments consist of city of Taipei. Some admirers felt it was step at the height of the Sixties as eight horrid little playlets in which a a comedown for him to be making pic- brush-cut military school cadets. For 12 budding \"artist\" (Ken Gruz) has his tures starring cute pop singers, about years, the lads endure the harsh disci- callowness neatly punctured in a series kids who go to discos, join gangs, and pline and training regimen imposed by of encounters with homeless people at a blend their comic-book fueled day- their Siju, but in the meantime the soup kitchen, a bum under a bridge, dreams with their shaky perceptions of staunchly traditional Peking Opera has some thugs on a bus, a priest in a real life. Quiet stories about the small- fallen our of favor with the public; only confessional, and so on. The heart and town working class are more orthodox old men turn up at their performances soul of this movie is anything but avant- art flick undertakings, but Daughter anymore. garde. The scenes resemble lame may be Hou's most technically accom- equity waiver one-acts or didactic plished movie, and the culture-shock In real life, the story had a happier \"Golden Age of TV\" problem plays, angle is one of the things that makes it ending: The school's three best stu- badly written, awkwardly acted, fussily special. Hou Hsiao-hsien in the city is dents applied their hard-won skills to filmed. Because the sequences are ran- an alien abroad, and he sees everything stunt work in martial arts movies, even- domly ordered , the incidents don't flow with wide-open fresh eyes. The disco tually evolving into' the Hong Kong together or build and the character sequences have epic breadth . The superstars Jackie Chan, Sarno Hung, never seems to learn anything from his underlying gangster-movie plot ele- and Yuen Biao. The young actors who run-ins with reality. Only the trim- ments are daringly elided so that they play the future stars are amazing look- mings are audacious. form an indistinct backdrop to the story of a teenage girl (Yang Lin, the pop alikes, and Sarno Hung himself plays The disjunction between form and star) and her strained relationship with Sifu Yu, the harsh taskmaster. Cheng content is as annoying in Talking to her older brother, an apprentice triad Pei-pei, a high-flying female swordplay Strangers as it would be in a $40 million thug. star of the Sixties (in Shaw Brother Hollywood boondoggle, and for much landmarks like King Hu's Come Drink the same reason-for its glib assump- Daughter of the Nile was the best With Me), is Sarno's love interest. tion that an application of technology, of movie I saw in Toronto after Dead \"craft,\" can redeem flyweight mate- Ringers. But I'm glad the last film I saw Painted Faces isn't gracefully con- rial. Bur this attempt at redemption there was Alex Law's Painted Faces, a structed; it shifts dramatic focus from comes complete with supporting proc- Hong Kong picture that digs into the the three students to their teacher half- lamations couched in the jargon of criti- root mythology of that prolific film way through. But it was wonderful to cal studies courses (\"the intentionality industry. Faces recaptured the spirit of see firsthand where some of the tradi- of the author is something we all have to pure exhilaration that marked our dis- tions of Hong Kong cinema come from- covery at the Festival last year of the the showmanship and the risk-anything CANYON CINEMA buoyant Hong Kong spirit in Tsui physicality. There is a lesson here (and Hark's Peking Opera Blues and John in Pedro Almodovar's films, and Guy Canyon Cinema announces the release of a Woo's A Better Tomorrow. It sent us Maddin's, and Aki Kaurismaki's) for major new catalog. This publication contains home smiling. North Americans: There are all kinds of descriptions for thousands of unique films ways to make movies-all kinds of good available for rental: Animation, Documentary, Alex Law was Mabel Cheung's pro- Experimental/Art Films, Erotic, Narrative, and ducer and co-writer on An Autumn's *ways, many more than Syd Field ever Classic Shorts by the Foremost Artists in Cinema. imagined. To obtain this 300 page fully illustrated catalog send name and address, along with a check for $13 to: CANYON CINEMA 2325 Third St. #338 San Francisco, CA 94107 (415) 626-2255 68

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AVAILABLE HACKMAN replacing me. It was naive of me to ON VIDEO propose such an idea, but I was serious. (Continuedfrom page 24) 87 min . And what happened? B&W great. I didn't know if it was acting.. .1 Billy said we'd talk about it later and didn' t know what it was but it was continued to shoot. Abou t the end of COLOR thrilling. And I didn't want to touch it, the.first week, something clicked in my to examine it too closely-just to do it. mind which brought the whole charac- Rick Schmidt is the Marley's Ghost of modern ter to life for me and ended the conflict. So it was finding that sense of brim- I'd seen Eddie Egan, the real-life movie makers. -Lowell Darling ming over with the life force that did it cop the character is based on, dipping a for you? cruller into a cup of coffee and then As with Rick Schmidt's earlier low·budget features (A pitching it over his head. There was MAN, A WOMAN, AND A K/LLER, 1988-THE RE· Yes. Actors tend to be shy people. something in his attitude that made MAKE, EMERALD CITIES), his fourth film, MORGAN'S There is perhaps a component of hostil- everything very clear: This guy doesn't CAKE, also engages the viewer by capturing real ity in that shyness, and to reach a point give a shit about anything except his moments of human emotion , reality as it intersects with where you don' t deal with others in a work; he is totally directed. the illusion of moviemaking. The film begins with hostile or angry way, you choose this During the last week of filming, we Morgan (played by Morgan Schmidt·Feng) explaining medium for yourself. re-shot the earlier scene except, we did that his mom named him after the famous British black it in an alley. By then I understood my comedy MORGAN, and muses that he wishes life was A surrogate personality. character and could do the action with a more like that movie, just \"unserious and funny.\" What Absolutely. Then you can express certain fullness. When you do it like follows is such an unending series of problems confron· yourself and get this wonderful that, you communicate something to ting Morgan that the full impact rings of comic absurdity. feedback. the other actor-Alan Weeks, a dancer- His problems include a love affair, his divorced parents, In previous interviews, you've indi- draft registration ,car payments, economics which force cated that you were headedfor the stage With Melvyn Douglas in I Never Sang. him to share a small office where his father must sleep rather than films or TV . Why ? which is that you' re acting and not on top of a desk. While not a remake of MORGAN, In the theater you can play characters really hurting him. It was like magic. MORGAN'SCAKE pays acertain homage to the earlier totally different from your persona with film with its ribald humor, most notably in atour·de·force the aid of make-up, costumes , and so And have you subsequently had prob- performance by Willie Boy Walker as Morgan'sdad, who on . In films , you're pretty much limited lems portraying violence ? describes in outrageous detail how he got out of the draft to your type. In recognizing what was by acting like a crazy man. Like many kids in America, exploitable about myself, what would Always. I always have to find a way to Morgan is basically cut adrift from any real and lasting get me a job, I chose theater. I was still do it. I listen to stunt guys, and I'm support system, and must quickly learn to fend for him· thinking in terms of conventional lead- very careful; I insist it be totally choreo- self. MORGAN'S CAKE, while a film about teenagers, ing men in films. Brando had made his graphed. Still, it's always hard for me, is not at all like its \"Breakfast Club\" .Hollywood counter· mark, so there was something of a perhaps because there's such a contra- parts. This film deals with the mysteries of growing up groundswell about men who didn't diction between fighting and the craft as told by the real teenagers themselves. have conventionally handsome faces, of acting. If you really fight somebody but it hadn't totally happened . in a scene, it negates your craft. And MORGAN'S CAKE is now available for 16mm screen· But it has by today, hasn' t it? since I'm only interested in my craft, it ings with director Rick Schmidt in person . Video copies Yes. Conventional handsomeness is has to be resolved anew each time. may be rented/purchased at the following stores: almost a deterrent now. How'd you get that hat you wear * * * * * * * FRONT ROW VIDEO (Berkeley) * * * * * * * T he French Connection was the real throughout The French Connection? * * * * * * * * PALMER'S VIDEO (Berkeley) * * * * * * * * springboard for your career. Did * * * * * * * * * * * VIDEOPHILE (Seattle) * * * * * * * * * * * you have any idea it would become such Oh, I saw it in wardrobe one day and * * * * * * * * * * VIDIOTS (Santa Monica) * * * * * * * * * * a hit? put it on . * * * * * * * * * * * CAPTAIN VIDEO (S.F.) * * * * * * * * * * * No , no one did , including 20th Cen- It was way too smallfor you . Or purchase your VHS/BETA cassettes (please specify) tury-Fox. Oh, yes. That was why I liked it. for $49.95 plus $3 per copy for shipping/ handling. I've read you were quite conflicted When you made I Never Sang For Please send LIGHT VIDEO during the filming because you found it My Father, was your personal money order difficult to play the violence. relationship with Melvyn Douglas payable to Fa Box 342 affected by your mutual fictional roles That's so. We shot in continuity, and PT. Richmond, on the second day I caught a black pusher in the alley and had to pop him (415) 235-7466 CA. 94801 in the face. The scene was originally shot in a squad car, with Roy Scheider and myself taking turns hitting him. I'd never had to do anything like that before. True, I'd done my share of fighting as a kid and I'd been in the Marine Corps, but as an actor I'd been taught that relaxation was of utmost importance , and I was not relaxing doing that scene. In fact, I felt terrible, and the scene was no good. That night, I told Billy Friedkin he should consider 70

- of warring father and son? How is this character like me? How is the neck and is dying. The opposite. I had admired he unlike me? In the difference bet- I love animal images, but I'm so ween those two, what is important? Melvyn so much as an actor, but he What choices can I make which will often cast as a working man , and when didn't like me. During the filming, I further the author's intent? I ask myself have we seen a working man who is, for inadvertently found out that he had where, when, why-real simple ques- example, a tiger? actually wanted someone else. This tions. I do an atmospheric kind of thing hurt me, but it certainly added to the by dealing with objects such as where How do you feel about actors who try tension in the film. We kep~ away from I' ve been when I come into a room, to physically inhabit a character? Like each other, rarely spoke. where I'm going when I leave it. Before De Niro putting on weight for Raging every scene, I still do the same relax- Bull ? The character I played was actually ation exercises George taught me 20- similar to my own father who, as odd years ago. First-year acting tasks. I love Bobby De Niro for taking opposed to Melvyn's character, was not These work for me. those kinds of chances. It's hard to a real strong guy. So it was strange. At a describe the pressure of being on a tribute last month in Las Vegas, I Of course, you can't do just that. You movie set with ten million dollars or avoided looking at a clip from the have to make good choices and do a lot more riding on your performance. It's picture. of technical things, too. It took ten terrible for an actor to have to deal with years for me to fill up as a person, but that, but it's a reality and you know it. What considerations go into your once I became mature all of that kicked For De Niro to take on that kind of a accepting or rejecting a given project? in in a simple, direct way. character problem is very exciting for most actors. I can' t imagine anyone The overall screenplay first, then the Arthur Penn has spoken of the sur- saying he was over the top or whatever. character proposed to me, and after that prises you bring as an actor. He men- It was brilliant. I'd love to be given a the director and other actors-almost tioned your death scene in Bonnie and role with that kind of challenge. always in that order. Of course , in the Clyde , when he had suggested an image Seventies I took a couple of pictures of a dying bull. How did you work with You' d be willing to do something like because of the locale.... that image, and have you worked with that? other images? Full Moon in Blue Water has some Yeah. [smiling] I don ' t have any extremelyfunny sequences. You and Teri I had seen some bullfights. In my problem gaining weight. Garr work well together. motel room , I worked on all fours , try- ing to emulate the movements of a bull Y ou've said in previous interviews It was worth doing the whole picture that has been wounded in the back of that The Conversation was an for Just one scene I have with Teri, a big importantfilmfor you, as was its direc- argument where I chase her around and tor, Francis Coppola . call her a \"whoor.\" I loved it! 1teturn this coupon TODAY! How do you manage to work at such a pitch, both in terms of quantity and I IIf you're a movie lover, film fan, enthusiast of the cinema, or just quality? I Iplain interested in motion pictures, then send for the FREE litera- I I have a terrible need to excel at this I ture about The Motion Picture Guide \"'. The Guide is the most I thing I've chosen to do, and I keep comprehensive encyclopedia of film information ever written, wanting further challenges. Unfor~ I covering more than 53,000 films from 1927 through 1987. You'll tunately, in film one i~ cast so close to I Ienjoy hundreds of hours of reading pleasure in each volume. In type, and I keep getting offered similar roles. But within that context I try to i I:~~i~!~~ Cavett said the Guide is \". . . more entertaining than most find a way to do something a little different. II ~~ State Zip I Address T ell me more about this influential II acting teacher, George Morrison. I City I I was introduced to him by Ulu 1 For quicker service, call TOLL FREE 800-541-5701. There's no I Grosbard , who directed me in my first • obligation to buy. I summer stock production, A View From the Bridge. They'd been at Yale I CineBooks, Inc., PO Box 1407, Dept. FC1l8 I together, and Morrison was already II 990 Grove St., Evanston, IL 60204 I teaching. He was very important for me. He was extremely sensitive and 800·541·5701 or 312-475-8400 saw in me... something. He never said anything like, \"Gene, you're a great .L----- -----J~I I talent,\" but I had a sense he cared. Of fI/#-.--- - - - - _ _ 90urse, he gave this caring to others as well, but for some reason I took it personally. His teaching was simple and understandable, something I could get my teeth into. Will you describe your technzque ! [Smiling indulgently, it seems] I do the same thing now as when I was just starting. I ask myself a few questions: 71

I'm always asked about Francis , and the editing room . Was the finished film to deal with a lot of politics about I always say it was one of the most very different from the script? whether or not I should go to a chair. I'd interesting working relationships I've much rather the guy say, \"It doesn't ever had. But in thinking back about it, No. I think what people talked work for us, can we try something I can't remember anything in particular about was moments. else?\" he ever said . He created an ambience which is very good for an actor, the most Are other actors important to you? You prefer to make the choice important thing. You never have a sense Very. It's almost everything, once yourself? he's dissatisfied or that what you' ve you're on the set. The people in a scene done is not enough , or is too together have to create an atmosphere Yes , then I can immediately see what much .. .He's just there. to make it work. Today the hardest the problem is and do something about thing for me is to be patient with youn- it, as opposed to having to deal with Did you ever have a sense there was ger aqors . I tend to forget I've been some kind of diplomacy which I don't an autobiographical component to the doing this for 30 years , and some of it is think has a place in art. I understand filmfor him? Maybe notfactual so much very easy for me. Being there , hitting the necessity of being courteous, but as spiritual and emotional. In The Con- marks. when your energy is real high and versation, the wiretapper lived his life Is it the technical part you're impa- you're trying to capture something, you \"voyeuristically, \" talks about being tient with? don't want someone dealing with you paralyzed by polio , left in the bath by I catch myself wanting to say- on another level. That's usually where I his mother, and nearly drowning . Cop- though I've never said it- \"Try it have most of my problems with pola may not have experienced all those another way... turn it upside down ... do directors. things, but he did have polio .. .. a 180 on it,\" or whatever it takes. I watch actors in a real funk because they It's difficult for a director to know There did seem to be something can't make something work. I know what words they can say to an actor, special about his relationship to the how to make it happen for them, but I especially if the scene's not working film, but I assumed it was just the way can't say anything because it's not my and he's a little defensive. You feel, he typically worked. And I've never place. It's a directorial prerogative, probably because of ego, that you want done a film with him since , though he which is what I'm going to go on to now. to fix it yourself. It's a very strange has asked me a couple of times and we How important is a director to you? atmosphere to work in, and [laughing couldn' t work it out. I've read that you like to direct yourself ruefully] I pity directors who work with Yes, I do. Since I didn't have a strong me. I do try very hard to get along, Coppola is a very mysterious man- father, I don't have any authority prob- however. extremel y sensitive and yet with a cer- lem and I cannot stand to have someone tain kind of bluntness, possessing a tell me how to modulate a scene. I'd They must know by now what to great joy of life, but there is a dark side, rather a director say, \"Can you find expect. too. another way to do this-louder or softer I guess the word is out, yes ... . I could tell the film was very impor- or funnier?\" If someone comes over to You've made three with Arthur Penn- tant to him. But when the shooting was me and says-especially if I think he's what makes the two of you such a good over he walked away from it like it was a conning me- ''I'm wondering if you combo ? piece of dead meat. He had to be in should go over there to that chair, or I think it's because we both came out New York to start Godfather II. not?\" it sets me off. Since I'm in a of theater, even though I haven't been performance state, I,don't want to have back in a long time. Our approach is At the time, I recall hearing that theatrical in terms of a concern for how major restructuring work was done in the overall piece works. And we both have a lot of energy. I like to come on the set when I'm not in the scene just to watch him work, to see the kind of energy and enthusiasm he puts into his side ofit. I made a list of your films that stick out in terms of having a lasting impact. Most are from the early phase of your career because we can already see their place: Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection , I Never Sang For My Father, The Conversation, Superman I and II, and possibly Under Fire and Night Moves. Twice in a Lifetime got significant new life in TV syndication and videocassettes and is increasingly written about. I tend to agree with you, but actors have moments in films less commer- cially successful which they love. I had a scene with Candice Bergen in Bite the Bullet which is one of my favorites. I was telling her about my ex-wife, while standing around a waterhole in the mid- 72

Victor Sjostrom: His Life and His International Film Guide 1989 The Screenwriter's Guide (Second Work Peter Cowie, ed. The 26th edition Edition). Joseph Gillis . For current Bengt Fors lund of the world 's most respected film and would- be sc reenwriters. he re is This thorough biog raphy chronicles annual features reports from 60 an up-to-date.guide to film and televi- the life and work of Victor Sjostrom countries. This treasure for every film sion sales wi th valu able ti ps on how whose influence on Ingmar Bergman buff and filmmaker includes over 300 to present. market , and protec t you r and the Swedish screen and stage is photographs. \" The International Film wo rk. With an annotated list of ove r unparalleled . It is a history of the actor, Guide is about the best annual world 2100 producers . agents, distributors . the di rector and the man revealed survey there is,\" writes Derek Malcolm in and industry contacts in NY. Hol- th rough interviews , analyses and The Guardian. Available December 15th. lYWOOd, Canada , and Europe . Fea- excerpts from Sjostrom's own letters . 496 pp. Paper. $15 .95 . tu res a new section listing sc reenwrit - 324 pp . Cloth . $24.95 . ing software plus an inte rview with a MOVIES prominent sc reenwriter. The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows 160 pp . Paper. $9 .95 . David Schwartz . Ste ve Ryan. Fred MADE FOR Wostbrock . Th is entertain ing and fact- Who's Who in American Film Now filled referen ce features over 550 rare TELEVISiOn [Updated Edition] photog raph s and cove rs more than 450 James Monaco . ed Who did what . and shows . Each listing includes a brief TELEFEATURE when . in recent Amer ican cinema This history. hosts . announcers . celebrities . updated and revised edit ion lists the show descriptions . chronology and lots ~~~MINI-SERIES key people who make movies today It of amusing anecdotes and trivia 1964-1986 features thousands of cast and c rew Introd uction by Mark Goodson members from the past decade in 13 600 pp Cloth $39 95 ALVIN HMARILL separate categories - eac h an al- phabet ical list of names with th e titl e Journey to a Legend and Back: and date of their film credits A runn ing The British Realistic Film commentary on today 's mOVi es , th is Eva Orbanz. Essays, biog raphies , gUide IS an Invaluable resource for filmog raphies and bibliog raphies on libraries , profeSSionals , film histo rians 45 selected filmmake rs. and fans alike Il lustrated c 600 pp 213 pp . Pape r. $9.95 Cloth $3995 Paper $19.95 Salt of the Earth : The Story of a Film Movies Made For Television : The Tele- Herbe rt Biberman. Blacklisted di rector feature and the Mini-Series, 1964-1986 Biberm an wrote this compell ing story [Updated Edition] Al vin H Marill Up- about the maki ng of SALT OFTHE dated to include entries from the '84- '85 EARTH . It is a g raphic record of th e and '85- '86 seasons . th is g iant volume ravag es of McCarthyism, but ultimately, lists ove r 2000 telefeatures and mini- it is a story of courage and trium ph . se ries Titles are listed In alphabetical Inc ludes screenp lay. and ch ronolog ical order. each includ ing 373 pp . Cloth . $5.95 cast. production credits . plot synopsis, release dates , and notes by the autho r The Laser Video Disc Companion: A A comprehensive companion to television Guide to the Best (and Worst) Laser viewing Video Discs Douglas Pratt. Illustrated . 500 pp . Features a complete listing of over 2000 Cloth.$39 .95 Paper $19.95 American discs and a selective listing of 1900 Japanese discs released in the Mar! than I~ OOO peopl, - 0,,, 7.000 mov\"s U.S. from 1979 to the present. Over 7. 1200 films , music videos, imports, and educational discs are reviewed for the ----------------- ------------~-------- quality of the fin ished transfer. Also included is a guide to forthcoming A special 20% discount for Film Comment readers! CD-Videos . 432 pp . Paper. $16.95. o Pl ease send the follo wi ng books. o Please send me your free catalogue. Louise Brooks: Portrait of Enclosed is the proper amount plus NAM E ______________________ an Anti-Star Roland Jaccard , ed . $1.50 for postage ($200 for cloth & AD DRE SS ___________________ Translated by Gideon Y. Schein . Louise orde rs of 3 o r more books) . Brooks - the legendary actress who Or call1-800 -CHAP LI N (in NY rebelled against the idolatry of Holly- wood to preserve her independence and 212-420-0590 ). Visa , MC , Amex individuality. Illustrated with over 90 photographs. accepted . 160 pp. Paper. $19.95. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery. _______________ ZIP________ NY res iden ts must add 8'/.% sales ta x. New York Zoetrope 838 Broadway Dept FC New York . NY 10003

dIe of the desert. I played it on have to do it again-maybe a close-up or Brando? horseback. a reverse angle?\" If so, you must keep He is our most sensitive actor and yourself contained. You find a little spot I think some of my best work was in for yourself while they're re-setting the uses more of the feminine side of him- The French Connection, Part II-the camera. Stay close. And you do it again. self than anyone. Yet, he has tremen- withdrawal scene. I saw a lot offilms on If it felt really right the first time, it dous masculinity. drug addiction and withdrawal, and I never feels as good the second. chose a specific pain for myself. Frank- Never have you been more warm, enheimer allowed me time to prepare How often do you feel your best take tender, sensuous, and maLe than in for that scene on the day it was shot, for makes it to the screen? Another. Woman. Every female 1 know which I'll always be grateful. It's one who has seen it is talking about that! thing to do that kind of work in a class, I don'~ bother myself with that. I when you're in a protected situation, decided long ago not to worry about I haven't seen it. I didn't read the and another on a set where you're other people's taste in post-production. script. Woody only sent me a few pages incredibly limited by time and other of dialogue. restraints-it's four in the morning and You've said an actor can become bet- the crew has been there since six the Did you like that? previous morning, and people think ter andfuller if he can give up a certain I did, surprisingly. There was no you're being difficult because you need great responsibility. He just told me I time to make the scene really come sense ofhis masculinity. was to playa writer from Santa Fe, and alive. The best actors can do it, though. Yes. One of the attractive things in this woman-Gena Rowlands-was my An actor has to have a terrible tough ~ ex-girlfriend. At the time, he didn't ness and sensitivity side by side. males is how much femininity they know I was living in Santa Fe. ~ have in them-if they can reach it and Do you have afavorite movie in terms deal with it. Filmography ofyour performance? Mad Dog Coli 1961 Has that part of yourseLf become Lilith 1964 Yes, Scarecrow. It's the only film more avaiLabLe to you in recent years? Hawaii 1966 I've ever made in absolute continuity, First to Fight 1967 and that allowed me to take all kinds of I think so , yes. I don't think I've A Covenant with Death 1967 chances and really build my character. become more sensitive , but I've Banning 1967 become more aware of what's impor- Bonnie and Clyde 1967 (Academy Award In the process ofjust living, most of Nomination, Supporting Actor) us scar over-we aLmost have to. But if \"[Brando] is our most The Split 1968 an actor allows that, it profoundLy Riot 1969 Limits his artistry. Have you consciousLy sensitive actor and uses Downhill Racer 1969 kept yourself sensitive and vuLnerabLe I Never Sang For My Father 1969 (Academy Award for the sake ofyour acting? more ofthe feminine Nomination, Supporting Actor) The Gypsy Moths 1969 Most definitely. It's one of the most side ofhimselfthan Marooned 1969 difficult things an actor has to do, to Doctor's Wives 1971 keep himself sensitive, to watch behav- anyone. Yet, he has The Hunting Party 1971 ior in others, to shut down the defense The French Connection 1971 (Academy Award, one has to have in the business end and tremendous Best Actor) shift immediately into the creative Cisco Pike 1972 process. masculinity.\" Prime Cut 1972 The Poseidon Adventure 1972 How do you do it? tanto It's really a matter of choice, as Scarecrow 1973 It's a matter of concentration. I've opposed to what's available to me [from Zandy 's Bride 1974 inside myself] . It's a mellowness, a let- Young Frankenstein 1974 developed it; most actors do. 1 can be ting down of a macho idea. The Conversation 1974 Bite the Bullet 1975 incredibly angry about some business There's been a change in you that is The French Connection 111975 aspect of filmmaking and within 30 reflected strongLy in your face-many Lucky Lady 1975 seconds be performing in a scene, hav- more Layers of awareness and feeLing Night Moves 1975 ing totally blocked it out. and states of being, that you are now The Domino Principle 1977 willing to reveaL. A Bridge Too Far 1977 The very process of acting is often March or Die 1977 one of regurgitating pain-how do you I think that's why actors like Jimmy Superman 1978 Dean and Laird Cregar were so amaz- All Night Long 1981 deaL with that? ing: They had all those layers, and yet Superman II 1981 That's the pleasure of the work. they were so young. [Note: Laird Reds 1981 Cregar was a physically imposing actor Eureka 1983 When you're operating at your fullest as who died at the age of 28, having made Misunderstood 1983 an actor, emotionally full-the scene is an indelible mark in This Gunfor Hire, Under Fire 1983 working, tears are flowing, and there's a Heaven Can Wait, and The Lodger.] Uncommon Valor 1983 certain kind of warmth that suffuses Target 1985 you-nothing feels better! I do feel I'm getting better as an Twice in a Lifetime 1985 actor, but the clock is also running... Power 1985 When a painfuL scene is over, what do Still, look at Ralph Richardson . In his Hoosiers 1986 last picture, Greystoke, he was so bril- No Way Out 1987 you do with yourseLf? liant. He was always a wonderful actor, Superman IV 1987 Well, there are a lot of practical con- but there's a difference between being Mississippi Burning 1988 wonderful and being great. Full Moon on Blue Water 1988 siderations which you immediately Another Woman 1988 have to think of. If you know that take MarLon Brando . What is it about Bat 21 1988 was the one, and it's over, you feel great. Split Decisions 1988 But there's a beat when you say, \"Do I 74



Bow and Bergman Clara Bow: vulgarity was her secret. the married woman who, later in life, Kirkpatrick's A Cast of Killers, the after discovering psychoanalysis, real- Mary Miles Minter whodunit, and Otto LOSING IT izes that she had been sexually abused Friedrich's City ofNets, a more austere by her father. She is Gorey to the bone, chronicle of the uses and abuses of the me life story of Clara Bow seems enduring the pain of seeing her mother film community in America. to have anticipated Edward committed to an asylum (as was her Gorey's The Hapless Child by a grandmother) and surviving innumer- Fans were mad about Clara; 40,000 few decades-the underprivileged kid letters in a single month should entitle from Brooklyn who survives the misfor- able scandals. Barely. her to a U.S. postage stamp. Louise tunes of life to become the toast of David Stenn's Clara Bow-Running Brooks was mad about Clara: \"She was Hollywood (on film and in the boudoir) the Twenties.\" Clarence Badger, the in the Twenties. Bow was Elinor Glyn's Wild (Doubleday, $18.95, 1988) is director of It, was mad about Clara, too: model for her \"It\" girl, an early retiree another worthy addition to the few bril- \"She would melt into the character she right after the advent of the talkies, and liant reappraisals of Hollywood in its was portraying so cleverly, just as golden age-On a par with Sydney D. though it was the story of her own life.\" Also mad about Clara were Gilbert Roland, Victor Fleming, Gary Cooper, Harry Richman, Rex Bell (whom she later married), boxers, football players, doctors, rodeo riders, you name it- because if she had It, they got It. Starting in the movies when she was a spritely 14, Bow, perhaps the greatest female Hollywood star ever, was too young to relish her stardom (her last film, Hoopla in 1933, was made when she was just 28). The purveyor of an exceptional intuition and raw sexual power, she became the prey of pre-Hays Code smut journalists. Inquiring minds were \"shocked\" to read that not only did she lay the entire usc football team in one night but also had her beloved Great Dane, Duke, as one of her bedfellows. Stenn's account turns from a pot- boiler to a comedy of mores and later into a Sirkian melodrama with a sup- porting cast of unfaithful husbands, treacherous secretaries, nurses, etc. This tale of the lonely girl who yearns to be loved is too painfully reminiscent of the more recent MM, who mayor may not have been more polite, but whose love life benefited from the pseudo- morality of the McCarthy era (Marilyn's stardom is arguably the only redeeming event of those dreadful years). Yet there are substantial differences in their behavior. As Stenn has it, Clara was beloved by her crew (Marilyn wasn't); Clara was the most underpaid star in Hollywood 76

(Marilyn wasn't); Clara tried to be a describe her rise to fame (after winning she portrayed the flapper like no one mother and housewife-her marriage a fanzine contest) through her first else, yet wished to be the girl next door. lasted for most of her retired life, even if talkie, Dorothy Arzner's The Wild She was no Pollyanna-but you her estranged husband died in the arms Party, in 1929. I was also sorry that her wouldn't fall for Pollyanna then, 6r now. of his lover (Marilyn's didn't). Compari- last years are so scantily described-I sons aside, Clara's story is also the would like to know more about the -FABIANO CANOSA heartbreaking exploitation of a schizo- recluse and omnivorous reader she phrenic girl with a pathetic depen- became, as well as more about her rela- THE GLASS EYE dence on others and an abysmal lack of tionship with her children after Rex self-confidence. She was so over- Bell left her. W y shouldn't Ingmar Berg- worked-in 1924, she made 14 feature man take himself as seriously films-that no wonder she became In spite of those flaws , Running Wild as everyone else does? Or, at Crisis-a-day-Clara a few years later. is a moving book. It will make you crave least, as everyone in film lit used to. more late-night showings of Clara Bow Once. My five-foot library of screen- Movie star biographies generally films on the tube (if you weren' t lucky plays groans with a dozen Bergman blow their juiciest stories out of propor- enough to catch the recent revival of scripts; my shelf of critical works on tion, mythologizing the slanders of the some of her best-known titles at New film directors holds 16 Bergman books. past. While Stenn is refreshingly fac- York's Film Forum). For a decade or so , critics considered tual and earnest, I wished he had con- him the Shakespeare of the cinema- centrated more on Clara's career; Clara Bow was the flip side of Louise someone, and maybe the only one, sometimes the descriptions of how Brooks, who was too highbrow for Hol- whose pictures were worth parsing as if hung her lovers were get in the way. lywood. Clara's vulgarity was her secret they were poetry. The English writer and the It of her popularity. Caught by Peter Cowie alone has published more The most absorbing chapters the double standard and cut down by it, Bergman: entertainment with anguish. 77

studies of the Swedish filmmaker (a better than anybody. But on the evi- dence of his autobiography, The Magic biography, a survey, and a monograph, Lantern (Viking, $19.95), there is more to a Bergman movie than artistry. plus significant parts of three other There is private pain made public, there are family secrets laid out on the books) than the rest of the world has editing table for surgeon Bergman to operate on. He can have his little joke, produced on, say, Michael Curtiz or too, on his most assiduous critics. Here we were parsing his plots when he was Mikio Naruse, Preston Sturges or transforming his demons into art. Here we thought he was just making great Pietro Germi. Both Robin Wood and films when he was really bleeding out loud. John Simon, who might agree on noth- Art and pain played house when ing else in the wide world, believed Ingmar was a kid. His first memory is of watching the patterns in a plate of gruel Bergman deserved their full-length until he vomited. (He vOfllits a lot in this book.) A childhood punishment r newest catalog is 48 attention. was being locked in a kitchen cupboard containing, as the family maid warned, pages (8V2\"x 11\"), illustrated I'm nostalgic for a time when any- \"a little creature which ate the toes of with over 300 photos & ac- thing was taken seriously, when good naughty children.\" To assuage his fear, companing text. 100 photos films were supposed to be intellectual Ingmar hid a flashlight in the cup- in full color, including front & challenges and critics faced movies that board, shot its red and green light at the back covers! Mailed with out- made them cram for their essays. 1wish far wall , and \"pretended 1 was at the side protective wrapper on there were new films that juiced up cinema.\" Nearly a half-century later, receipt of $7.00 U.S. funds writers' brains and not just their prose. 1 watching his mother die, Bergman for each copy. Our location, want there to be too many kinds of plays \"my habitual illusory game with a gallery at 1932-FC Polk St. eccentric films to write about , not just reality,\" thinking she is only asleep. He (near corner of Pacific Ave.), recalls sitting by her bed, for once not \"observing myself or playing a role- San Francisco, CA is open the same old same old, and 1 want to that professional disease which has fol- lowed me mercilessly throughout my Mondays through Saturdays find a next generation of movie life and so often robbed or diminished 11 AM to 6 PM Pacific time reviewers who can illuminate and my most profound experiences. \" ~ intimidate me the way Manny Farber Bergman anatomizes these experi- and Sarris and Kael and Wood and ences mercilessly, cataloging his par- ents' brutal lovelessness, his own chill 1932-FC POLK STREET Durgnat and Thomson were doing, or egotism, his inability to act on his feel- SAN FRANCISCO, started doing, in the Fifties and Sixties. ings, his early fascination with Nazism CA 94109 (his brother helped organize the Swed- Maybe it will take a next generation ish National Socialist Party), his cava- lier treatment of all those women-his of moviemakers to inspire those critics- mother and his wives, his actresses and mistresses. He is yet another man who to-be. Maybe it will take another Berg- reacts to the mystery of womanhood by abusing it or retreating from it. Berg- man. Or maybe it was his smart luck to man tells of his 16th summer, visiting Germany as an exchange student, ~~~~~!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!~~~~~~~~ arrive at a time when young writers when he listened to forbidden Brecht and jazz in the attic of his hosts' NOSTALGIC SCI-FI & were ready to bestow on films the grav- vicarage. His co-conspirator, a girl ity of literature. And now it is his bad named Clara, later wrote Ingmar a let- HORROR ON VIDEO! luck that both films and gravity are out ter of voluptuous misery: \"I react vio- of fashion. Bergman rode a wave of lently to sudden noises, intense light A BEAUTIFUL academic and analysand seriousness to (I'm blind in one eye), or unpleasant WOM.AN BY eminence; the wave broke and he was smells .... When 1 was 15 ... 1 had a child beached, at least as a fashion icon. Berg- who died, and 1went back to the school DAY ... man stopped making films four years in Switzerland. Now the dry twilight A LUSTINC rattles above the child's head. 1 can't go QUEEN WASP on. 1 cry now. My glass eye also BY NICHT! weeps. \" ago, but he slopped out of the Zeitgeist She ended this note with hints of ages back. Today a lot of things-films , yes, but also, as the late presidential campaign demonstrated, the fate of the iiniste.- ~inema ~8 U.S. and the plight any Americans not wealthy enough to be Dan Quayle's golf With over 600 shock filled titles available , partner-are seen as escapist entertain- Sinister Cinema is truly the leading source for ment, a Letterman-style joke at the your favorite sci fi and horror oldies on video. expense of some passe bit of wisdom Just send $2.00 for our eye popping catalogue, whose point no one can remember. or receive it free when you order any of the following films at the reduced price of Bergman always knew the ~alue ?f entertainment and not Just 10 $1 4.95 ~~RLE comedies like Smiles ofa Summer Night and The Magician. If Woody Allen and 1. Terror Is A Man (1959) Sam Shepard had assimilated Berg- 2. Beast From Haunted Cave (1959) man's severe showmanship as carefully 3. The Invisable Avenger (1958) as they imported his anguish, their 4. The Cat and The Canary (1927) chamber-piece family dramas Septem- 5. The Phantom (1931) ber and Far North might have worn a 6. Castle of the Living Dead (1964) little authenticity. Bergman did it first 7. The Quatermass Experiment (1955) and better; as he proved in his last film, the anecdotal After the Rehearsal, he Please add $2.05 per title for packaging , handling, and can still make Ingmar Bergman movies postage . Specify VHS or Beta. California residents please add 6 'h % sales tax . Sorry. not available in PAL. Make checks or money orders payable to : Sinister Cinema P.O. Box 777, dept. FC Pacifica. CA. 94044 Ouestions ??? Call us at 415-359-3292

suicide and a plea for response from he relates his tales in a genially biting WOMEN \"you, my youngest brother, I yearn for tone, as if he were confessing in the you!\" Ingmar never did. But Bergman third person, atoning with reservations . on the verge 'of used it virtually verbatim in his 1969 He might be the corpse in Norma Des- film The Rite. The boy was already mond 's swimming pool , narrating a NERVOUS hoarding raw material to be alchemized events leading to his demise. But he by the man he would become. Main ly, surely sees therapeutic value in BREAKDOWN though, he was avoiding the touch of describing these events , now stripped Clara's pain , so cocooned was he in his of the distortions of fiction . So he is also Even if you didn't make it to own. He was a sick man who cured all the men in Bergman films , adjusting New York for the Film himself through cannibalism: by din- their glasses to correct their emotional Festival this fall, you can be ing, in his art, on the burnt flesh of the myopia-and , like the old professor in part of it with a T-shirt from people he failed or who failed him. He Wild Strawberries, finding solace and the opening night film, is like the tortured writer in Dennis strength in the ache of memory. Potter's television film The Singing Women On The Verge OfA Detective and this book validates the D oes any memory give him plea- Nervous Breakdown. guess that Potter-in his bleak human- sure? One, sure ly. When he was a ism, in his bilocation in festering chi ld he was given a magic lantern for Silkscreened in 6 colors, the dreams and nightmare reality, in his Christmas. Well, actually his brother shirts are 100% pre-shrunk bold artistic ambitions and his capac- got the gift-though his parents knew it cotton. Available in sizes M, ious achievement-is Bergman's right- was Ingmar who craved it-and then L, X-L , the shirts cost $15 ful heir. traded a hundred toy soldiers for one including postage and toy picture show. Even now Bergman handling. The Magic Lantern is streaked with can recall every luminous moment of these reproaches: of others as a child, of that morning; even now he writes, \"It is riO himself as an old man. It is likely the impossible to describe this. I can't find · ;;t~·~· most rigorous and searching self-flagel- words to express my excitement.\" Into ...., ';'- lation since Dag Hammarskjold's Mark- the machine he loaded the film of a girl . ings, the nightbook of another eminent waking up and stretching. \" Then I on tIle Scandinavian. Bergman, of course, has turned the handle! ... She was moving!\" lived with himself for 70 years , as if Bergman here is done recollecting pas- (lNERVO locked in a marriage with someone he sion in tranquillity or trauma in irony. both despises and can't live without. So He is no longer the artist in his chair BREAKD days; he is the little boy discovering art a film by ALMODOVAR STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIp, MANAGEMENT, and sex in the same hand crank. I enclose $ __ for __ T-shirts at $15 each. AND CIRCULATION (Act of August 12, 1970: Sec· Bergman has said elsewhere that the theater is his wife, the cinema his mis- M_ _ _ _ L _ _ _ _ X-L _ _ __ tion 3685. Title 39 . United States Code) 1. title of tress. This book reveals the theater of cruelty in Bergman's life but also the Name _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ publication Film Comment 2. date of filing October 1, orgasmic innocence-and the voyeuris- tic control-of moviemaking and movie Address _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ 1988 3. frequency of issue bimonthly 4. location of watching. He is every little kid with his Tinkertoys (Steven Spielberg). And City/State/ Zip _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ known office of publication 140 West 65th St., New every adult who never outgrew the fear of being locked away (Alfred Hitch- Dayti me Phone _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ York, NY 10023 5. location of the headquarters or cock), and every boy in search of an emb lematic film fami ly (Yasujiro Ozu), Please mail coupon with check or money general business offices of the publishers 140 West 65th and every existential Christian in the order payable to The Film Society of thrall of a taciturn God (Robert Lincoln Center, 140 West 65th Street, NY st., New York, NY 10023 6. names and addresses of Bresson), and every man who wanted to NY 10023. You may use the postage-paid preserve every woman on film (Jean envelope in magazine. Allow 6 weeks for publisher, editor and business manager: publisher Renoir). delivery. Joanne Koch, 140 West 65th st., New York, NY 10023 The Magic Lantern shows Bergman sti ll as an artist-entertainer, a spell- editors Harlan Jacobson, Richard Corliss, 140 West binding kvetch. Now, cou ldn ' t he get behind a camera and crank up his 65th St., New York, NY 10023 business manager Doris obsessions one more time? There are stories left to tell , boils to pop, sli ghts to Fellerman, 140 West 65th st., New York, NY 10023 7. atone for, specters to summon, girls to revive in moving pictures as crystalline owner The Film Society of Lincoln Center, 140 West as a childhood memory. \"If I went on turning, she wou ld again lie there, then 65th st., New York, NY i0023 8. known bondholders, make exactly the same movement all over again.\" -RICHARD CORLISS mortgages, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities none 9. the purpose, function and non- profit status of this organization and the exempt status for Federal income tax purposes has not changed during the preceding U months.10. extent and nature of circulation: actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date IlVfrage number of copies each issue T during preceding 12 months T A. total number of copies printed (net press run) 42.815 40,230 B. ptlid circulation 1. SQfts through dealers and 10, 579 10, 167 CllrrlaS, s lrtd w ndors, and countu salts 20,739 20, 223 2. mIlil subscriptions 31,318 30, 390 C. total paid circulation D. free distribution l7y mail, Ci2rTier fJr other 500 500 meons-samples, complimentary and other 31,818 30,890 fretcopits E. total distribution (s um of C and OJ 2 , 4 15 2, 077 F. copies not distributed I . office use, Left-cver. 8,582 7, 263 unaccounted, spoiled aft\" printing 2. rtturns frum nnus agents 42 , 815 40, 230 G. total (sum of E and F) (shou ld equal net press run shown in A) U. 1certify that 1M statements made by me above are correct and complete. (signed) Doris Fe/lerman Business Manager

Quiz #34 Marksmanship Brennan : Tugboat Annie. 3. Nicole de Loiselle: Bluebeard's Eighth Wife. 4. Helene QUIZ #34 is five quizzes in one. gue nel Commune di Siculiana Fra Due Desvallees: Lafemme infidele. 5. Millie Dil- Uomini di Una Vedova si Sospetano Moventi Imont: Thoroughly Modern Millie. 6. Liza For each you are asked to submit one Potitici. Amore-Morte-Shimmy. Lugano Belle. Elliott: Lady in the Dark . 7. Charlotte Gir- film title with the highest number of Tarantelle. Tarrallucci e Vino (11,635 points), the appropriate punctuation mark. As which was released in the U.S. as Revenge (5 aud: A Married Woman . 8. Tess Harding: follows: points ). Our high-point man was Scott Woman of the Year. 9. Jean Harrington: The Evans of Atlanta, Ga., with all the above Lady Eve. 10. Rose Louise Hovick: Gypsy. a. asterisk (*) titles and 24,135 points . 11. Hild y Johnson: His Girl Friday. 12. Paula h. ellipsis (...) McFadden: The Goodbye Girl. 13. Julie c. exclamation point (!) In QUIZ #30/31, you were asked to Morrison: Je zebel. 14. Rusty Parker: Cover d. question mark (?) Girl. 15. Rhoda Penmark: The Bad Seed. 16. e. different punctuation. identify films in which male and female Diana Scott: Darling. 17. Catherine Sloper: OK? So you want one movie title with title characters appeared. (The answers are The Heiress. 18. Jo Stockton: Funny Face. 19. a lot of *'s, another with more than one below). Lots of responses showed the fruits ... , a third with a plethora of !!I's, a of lots of research, but not many contestants Dorothy Stratten: Star 80 . 20. Annie Sul- fourth with a cornucopia of ????'s, and got all 25 correct in either quiz. Our two livan : The Miracle Worker. 21. Maria Vargas: a fifth with as many different punctua- winners are, for Quiz #30 , Jody Nebktt of The Barefoot Contessa. 22. Christine Vole: tion marks as yo u can find Brooklyn, N.Y., and, for Quiz #31, Stephen Witness for the Prosecution. 23. Priscilla (!@#$%¢:;',?/,justtomention the ones Allanson of Liverpool, England (our first Williams: Wee Willie Winkie. 24, Sarah found on a standard American type- international champion!). Congratulations Woodruff: The French Lieutenant's Woman. writer keyboard ). The winner of a free to them and thanks to all who participated . year of the magazine is the contestant 25. Nina Ivanova Yakushova: Ninotchka. with the highest total count, with one 1. Manny Balestrero: The Wrong Man. 2. point awarded for each correct punctua- CONTRIBUTORS tion mark. Get your entries to us (FILM Travis Bickle: Taxi Driver. 3. Seth Brundle: Fabiano Canosa is director of film pro- COMMENT Quiz #34, 140 West 65th The Fly (1986). 4. Tony Camonte: Scarface gramming at New York's Public Theater. Street, New York, N.Y. 10023) b y (1932). 5. Freddie Clegg: The Collector. 6. David Chute holds the Asian newsdesk at December 19. Rodrigo Diaz: El Cid. 7. Michael Dorsey: the L.A . Weekly . Steve Harvey is an assis- Tootsie. 8. John Yerkes Iselin: The Man- tant curator of the Museu m of Modern Art's For QUIZ #33 , you we re asked to sub- churian Candidate. 9. Sanjuro Kawabataka: Department of Film. Karen Jaehne is a Yojimbo. 10. Midge Kell y: Champion. 11. New York-based freelance writer. Marcia mit film titles with the highest count in Pally lives in New York and writes on the Roman numerals. Many entries, for which Julius Ferris Kelp: The Nutty Professor. 12. artS. Vito Russo is the author of The Cellu- beaucoup thanx. But what a mother fi xation Frankie Machine: The Man With the Golden loid Closet , published by Harper and Row. our best contestants showed! Winning Ken Spence lives in New York. Elliott titles : one to three letters, Walerian Bor- Arm. 13. Mark Lewis: Peeping Tom. 14. Stein teaches film at Fairfield University. owczyk's Dom (1,500 points); four to six Lauren Lowenthal Swift is a producer letters , Mammy or Mommy (3,000 points) ; William (Bull) Meechum: The Great San- and writer and formerly worked in politics. seven to nine letters, Mamma Roma (4,000 tini. 15. Bill Miner: The Grey Fox. 16. Jerry Beverly Walker is a screenwriter and jour- points); ten to twelve letters , Femmes , Mulligan: An American in Paris. 17. Sol nalist based in L.A. Armond White writes Femmes (4,000 points, just edging out Nazerman: The Pawnbroker. 18. Painless for New York's Paper and City Sun. Mamma Dracula at 3,650); and, at 12-plus Peter Potter: The Paleface. 19. Tom Powers: letters, Lina Wertmuller;s Un Fatto di San- The Public Enemy. 20. Jakie Rabinowitz: The PHOTOCREDITS Jazz Singer (1927). 21. Lonesome Rhodes : A By Adrian Boot: p. 48 (2). Courtesy Fabiano Face in the Crowd. 22. Henry Spencer: Canosa: p. 76. Cinephile: p. 8. Cineplex Eraserhead. 23. Jim Stark: Rebel Without a Odeon: p. 34, 35 (2). Columbia Pictures: p. C~use. 24. Sean Thornton: The Quiet Man. 4, 70 . European Classics: p. 50 (1 ,2). Festi- val of Festivals: p. 68. Courtesy The Film 25. Clyde Miller Wynant: The Thin Man . Society of Lincoln Center: p. 10 (1, 2), 16 (2), 17 (1), 57 (1, 2), 62, 77. By Robin 1. Lale Anderson: Liti Marleen . 2. Annie Holland: p. 14. Museum of Modern Art: p. 2 (3). New Line: p. 35 (1). Orion : p. 23, 24, Pin·Ups • Portraits • Posters • Physique ORIGINAL AUTOGRAPHED 26, 27, 28, 30. Orion Classics: p. 16 (1), 17 Poses • Pressbooks • Western • Horror • CELEBRITY PHOTOS (2), 18. Courtesy D.A. Pennebaker: 44 (1, Science Fiction • Musicals • Color Photos • 2),48 (1). Paramount: p. 22 (1), 32, 36. RAI: 80 Years of Scenes From Motion Pictures Hollywood legends, superstars. p. 2. Courtesy Ken Spence: p. 31, 39 (1 , 2), Quality collection, authenticity guaranteed. 43 (1, 2). Transworld: p. 21 22 (2). Twen- Rush $1 .00 FOR OU R ILLUSTRATED 8ROCHURE Brochure: L&M Gross tieth Century-Fox: p. 64. Vestron: p. 52, 53 (1, 2). Winnipeg Film Group: p. 65. 134 WEST 18th STREET. DEPT Fe 2675 Hewlett Ave Dept F NEW YORK. N.Y. 100 '11 Merrick, New York 11566 AVAILABLE FOR GENERAL RESEARCH (212) 620-8160-61 Specializing in Film , Theatre, Television. STAR PHOTOS' MOVIE POSTERS' MAGAZINES Tenacious digger finding data on old Holly- wood, obscure films, stars of yester-year, - -- --1 FREE CATALOG theatre and television trivia. .'u,,·..:\\ .,,.;,,\"' ·11\"'.' .' ·(;1£11·..• Karen Alters - 212/595-5989 .\" ,\\Tlilll ,\\LSnll\":. ln'·' _lim-It ~ 242 W. 14th Sireet \\I'&~ > ~;nitfltfRlTrI New York. N.Y. 10011 \\. . , . (2121 989-0869 .,......, ... \" ....'...m BETWEEN 811'1 AND 7th AVENUE IND. SUBWAT W. 14th STRHT STOP 80