VOLUME 20 - NUMBER 01 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1984

by Marcia Pally For the Fading Image ofJews in Film Barbra Streisand's Yentl and its Amy Irving as Hadass and Barbra Streisand as Anshel in Yentl. source, Isaac Bashevis Singer's short story \"Yentl , the Yeshiva Boy,\" are sim- The nature of that most important shut out of what really mattered. How ply not about the same thing. Singer way, ironically, is decided by the cul- did they bear it, these women who examines the culture and philosophy of ture Singer hopes to surpass-a contra- were taught to be worldwise and clever Eastern European Jewry; Streisand is diction born of the need to start with (if not book-smart) and expected to be an advertisement for American Jewish the world he knows. In that little nook strong, aggressive managers? How did sensibilities. It is a narcotic for our anxi- of the planet, the East European shtetl. they swallow the incongruity? eties. It follows a long line of films scholarship was the big time: those with meant to mollify both Jewish paranoia money and power (or what passed for The contradiction has long been a and gentile anti-Semitism. Yet, in con- money and power in the pitifully poor, feature-and a crack-in Jewish cul- sidering Yentl , the film, one might also helpless ghettos) could go to yeshiva, ture, and Singer zeroes in on it. His consider what has been gained and lost and those who excelled earned prestige young heroine, Yentl, whose father on the way from shtetl to Scarsdale. and respect far beyond what gelt could trained her in Talmud and Gemara be- bring. Forget about fancy carriages, hind closed shutters, can see an oppor- In the main, Singer's work concerns well-appointed homes, silks and velvet tunity when it comes her way. When transcendence, trespassing past the and fur: the life of the mind was this her father dies, she cuts her hair, dons convenient boundaries which human society's plum. his clothing, and runs away from her beings, silly fools that we are , require home town to begin a new life as a for guidance and order in our lives. We Men went to yeshiva. While Jewish yeshiva student. Yentl becomes An- worry about animal, vegetable, and women may have played a far more shel, \"he\" does well at school , and mineral, animate and inanimate, black significant role in the shtetl than gentile things proceed nicely till \"he\" falls in and white, Jew and gentile , but women in the world outside-often love with \"his\" study partner, Avigdor. Singer's hunch is that beyond all these running the business, ruling the home, To complicate matters further, Avigdor distinctions-born-of-small-minds lies a and controlling the purse for both- is in love with Hadass. But upon learn- singleness of spirit, a universal soul they sat behind the mechitza (room di- ing that Avigdor's brother committed more of Him than of Earth, which is, of vider) in shul and could hardly daven suicide, her father-with superstitious- course, the point of His plan. After all, and ' drash all day with the cooking and ness appropriate to his time-calls off why would God waste seven perfectly kids waiting. Never mind that it may the match \"to bad blood.\" Avigdor, in good days worrying over the difference look to us that Jewish women had their despair, marries an ugly shrew and per- between a lizard and a rock? share of sway, in their eyes they were suades Anshel to marry Hadass, as he'd In \"Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, \" Singer's search for transcendence doesn't ex- actly take him directly to divine and lofty heights; it leads him, at least for a while, to the muddy turbulence of sex. Men and women are both human, but are they created equally in His image? And what about this rib business-as origins go, it's not what you'd call auspi- cious. How much could women be worth to Him? Any claim for parity or androgyny-even spiritual androgyny -is sure to offend egos in our highly gender-conscious culture. Still, Singer believes in it, spiritual integrity, and goes after it with determination: let the rebbes thank God each morning that they were not born female; let them scream at the ladies \"A woman shall not wear what pertaineth to a man.\" Singer will insist that God created man and woman alike in the most important way. 49

rather see her with Anshel than with out the gentile cult of the \"lady,\" murest bourgeoise, more of Victoria's any other man. blushing, genteel, and self-effacing, England than of Nicholas' ghettos. We the arbitrary ridiculousness of female catch only glimpses of her mother, and In twenty pages Singer weaves a subordination churns away, danger- Avigdor's battle-ax wife-spiteful, funny, poignant tale, part bubbemeise ously close to the surface ofjewish life. shrill, but manager of shop and till-is for all its improbabilities and part Res- How could we have perpetuated it for stricken from the screenplay. In short, toration comedy for its fascination with so long? all persuasive, influential women are disguise and unveiling, hiding and rev- nowhere to be found-an absence elation. And, as is usual in Singer sto- Singer, who doesn't give a whit about which obviates the very Jewish contra- ries, it is full of description of shtetLlife. sexual politics, points up if God gave diction Singer articulates. While such The food , the rough furnishings, the women the secheL [brains] to study His women are only fleeting in his story, passage of Jewish months punctuated laws and muse over their meaning, Singer is writing for Jews sufficiently by Jewish holidays are sketched simply then how dare men, with petty egos concerned with their culture to read and matter-of-factly. The details of and limited comprehension of His him, who presumably know what Jew- Jewish ritual and even the motions ye- ways, prevent them? Even after Yentl ish women were like. They are, willy shiva boys use when arguing a midrash admits her sex to Avigdor, the two go nilly, implicit. Streisand addresses au- (\"Anshel spoke in a singsong, gesticu- back to arguing points of law: \"In the diences who may be entirely ignorant lated with her thumb, clutched her darkness, they seemed to be listening of shtetl life. The difference between sidelocks, plucked at the beardless chin to each other's thoughts. The Law for- story and film begins as one of context bade Avigdor to stay in the room alone and ends with the most basic inten- ... ) are employed more to move the with Anshel, but he could not think of tions. plot along than to draw attention to her just as a woman. What a strange themselves. Singer is saying, quite power there is in clothing, he thought.\" If the issue for Singer is the androg- plainly, this is the way it was. His pur- They search for the level of intellectual yny of intellect and spirit, the issue for pose is not to explain Jewish life to and spiritual effort where minds and Streisand (who produced, directed, and gentiles but to teach Jews-who souls meet, and where even gender, starred in the film and co-wrote it with should already know their history- which we like to think of as La differ- Jack Rosenthal) is family and assimila- about their own shortcomings. ence, cannot intercede. It is in this im- tion-the twin petards of today's probable place that we, any of us, get a American Jewish community. Haunt- Singer's story ends with Yentl's con- glimpse of Him. ing the lives of every first and second fession to Avigdor and her understand- generation Jew are temptations which ing that, though they love each other, • overwhelm: a little comfort and money though Avigdor is divorced and the after centuries of neither; education marriage to Hadass unconsummated Such is Singer's tale ''Yentl the Ye- and jobs; a life without quotas (always and void, they cannot marry. \" 'Why shiva Boy\" ; Barbara Streisand's film , used to keep Jews out), curfews, walled did you do it [masquerade as a man]?' Yentl , is another matter. Inevitably, by ghettos, yellow stars, capital \"J\"s on Avigdor asks Yentl. 'I didn' t want to telling the story, Yentl discusses inequi- one's passport. And most of all, for re- waste my life on a baking shovel and a ties based on gender, but in the film lief from violence in the middle of the kneading through . .. ' All Anshel's ex- they become examples of sexism- night. planations seemed to point to one even the word is inappropriate for the thing: she had the soul of a man and the original story-reworked for modern • body of a woman. Anshel had married audiences. They don't become matters Hadass only in order to be near Avigdor. of the soul. Made clean, wealthy, and In the Jewish psyche, the scramble 'You could have married me,' Avigdor secular, the characters drift far from for comfort and political clout brings a said. 'I wanted to study the Gemara and shtetl life, from the particular assump- second seduction, the allure of the Commentaries with you, not darn your tions and, more accurately in this case, other, of becoming like ordinary peo- socks!' \" the contradictions of Jewish culture. ple. But a Jew who is not a Jew is no- For example, when Yentl cuts her hair, body at all: not a Christian certainly- What is startling here is not a freakish she doesn't leave payes (the sidelocks never that secure, that at home or at amalgam of masculine and feminine every three year old in Williamsburg, ease-and not of his own kind, having and not even the insistence that per- Brooklyn still sports); Avigdor (Mandy forsaken the law, the community, the sons with breasts and wombs have Patinkin), though bearded, doesn't ritual, and the language. And more, be- minds and souls as well, but the admo- have them either; Hadass (Amy Irving) hind the passion to be undistinguish- nition from Singer, addressed to Jews, has the hair and clothing of a Gibson able and therefore safe, is the nagging, that we have been kidding ourselves for Girl; and if my grandparents had taunting fear that-no matter how quite a while. Jewish women have long $250,000 homes like those in the film monied, well-dressed, housed, and re- been tough and smart; our strength and with rich food piled to the chandeliers, spected-when they come to get the savvy is as much responsible for Jewish they never would've come to this coun- Jews, they'll know who you are. We survival in the Diaspora as is any bit of try. must stick together, though the lure of learning. And, as anyone who grew up becoming the other pulls us apart. in a Jewish family knows (and thanks to These are cosmetic alterations, of Philip Roth et aI., several million who course, the postcard aesthetics ex- The Jewish family, enthralled in the grew up in non-Jewish homes, be- pected from Hollywood films, but they assimilationist crisis, doles out a stream sides), Jewish wives and mothers are set the stage for the one impermissable of double messages: Go out and do; be rarely retiring-their force and pres- change: a shift in the story's view of the smartest, the quickest, the best; be ence affecting those all-important, for- women. The only female character we so good they can't turn you away; go as mative, familial relationships and the see with any regularity is Hadass, a girl far as you can so we can say, \"See Ein- very psyche of individual Jews. With- whose demeanor rivals that of the de- stein-he's Jewish.\" But: stay close to 50

the family; call regularly and tell us film is FiddLer on the Roofand its history The sequel-in concept if not everything; you can't trust anybody but us; you can't love anybody but us; most recalls the evolution of much of the strictly in time-to the immigrant/as- of all, you can't ever trust or love a goy -as soon as they get angry, they'll call genre. Beginning as a story, \"Tevye the similation films are the Jewish-kid- you a dirty Jew. Escape, escap.e, es- cape, but don't leave it behind . Milkman,\" by Shalom Aleichem, it il- makes-good pictures. These serve un- So entangling are these strains in luminates the essence of the modern abashedly as P.R. for the Jewish contemporary Jewish life that genera- tions of authors cannot forget. Singer, Jews' dilemma: the inevitable end of community-and with good reason. Irving Howe , Alfred Kazin, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, \"go out and do\" is that the next genera- One of the early ones, The lazz Singer Chaim Potok and Cynthia Ozick, all rehearse the progress of Jews in this tion will leave not only the neighbor- (1927, with AI Jolson), was made at a country: the economic gains, the cul- tural schizophrenia-a mixture of hu- hood but the fold-as did Tevye's third time when business didn't hire Jews , bris and paranoia-the psychological turmoil. Three generations of writers daughter upon marrying a gentile Yid-bashing was a popular street sport, and two of filmmakers, but rarely do the films talk as intimately about Jew- farmer. The Jewish community will and recognition of the need for \"posi- ish concerns as does the literature. Be- cause they are viewed by so many, be- dwindle, then die out-a fate only tive images of Jews in the media\" was cause they must be viewed by so many (to pay the backers back), \"Jewish\" somewhat less feared than another Hol- considered progressive. films must export. They must tell mid- dle and late twentieth-century Ameri- ocaust. (When they're doing it to you, Jolson's image on screen (along with cans about middle and late twentieth- century us. It's a project that's been you at least have a recourse to martyr- George Gershwin's, for example, on profitable ever since the Holocaust made our martyrdom chic. dom , a role all underdogs learn to love.) stage) thrilled Jews who saw both a har- Potok's novel , The Chosen, for exam- In the story, Aleichem barely has to binger of acceptance and the possibility ple, like much of his work, is an anthem to a tug of war between the European say that life in Anatevka is no picnic; he of a Jewish hero not limited to the traditions of the parents and their son's expanding horizons in New York. The can assume that the push-pull between ghetto. That image , however, also book is meant to address Jewish fami- lies. The film based on the book, with ghetto existence and the modern (non- served as a kind of proxy to the gentile fewer arcane references to immigrant Jewish life, more sex, and a likable Jewish) world will be familiar to the court, arguing for the admission of all youth for a hero (none of the objection- able pushiness or stinginess will be story's Jewish readership. In the Broad- Jews : we're not dark, unwashed , mi- found here) tells gentiles of the son's generation a moving story about an ex- way musical , Anatevka is still crude and serly; we're bright, talented people. otic childhood, thereby making the man he'll become more comprehensi- grim, through softened by the haze of Try us, you'll like us. (In the 1952 re- ble to his peers. nostalgia, but in the film, it is positively make with Danny Thomas, the subtex- Picking up where The Chosen leaves off, Philip Roth's novels ask Jews to bucolic, its inhabitants picturesque. tual, super patriotism may've been the look at what they've become in their flight to the suburbs. It is the kind of Unlike the written tale which speaks to response of striving Jews to the guilt- critique which Jews conduct among themselves when the goyim aren't lis- Jews in the throes of geographic and by-association threat posed by the Ro- tening. But the films of Goodbye Co- Lumbus and Portnoy's CompLaint tailor cultural dislocation, the film has more senberg case. I wonder if the 1980 ver- the view of middle-class, Jewish life for export to gentile society. Parvenus to say to the non-Jews in this country sion with Neil Diamond, with its own though we are and tacky as hell, the films suggest, we have a lot more fun who'll receive them : these are our brand of Americana, wasn't meant to than your Aunt Tilly in Toledo. The WASPs who, in the late Sixties and early fears; this is why we' re so ethnocentric, soothe America's growing weariness Seventies, were finally learning the pleasures of letting loose, lapped it up: so cliquish; so rabid on the subject of and distaste for supplying arms to Is- breeding, boys, is for the birds. our kids marrying out. Yet FiddLer, the rael's war.) Perhaps the most well-known export film, like most export films , retains an Forty years later, starring in Funny interest for the Jewish community as GirL, Streisand made the same point- well, through its focus on the family, on though with a nostalgic cast not unlike the ties that bind when religion and that over the Broadway FiddLer. This ritual slacken their hold. While few to- time, girl singer and entertainer makes day care if their kinder are kosher or it big, but not surprisingly, the story is marry under the chuppah, only the Is- Fannie Brice's, a performer of Jolson's rael question rankles as much as inter- generation. The first four or five dec- marnage. ades of this century, setting and model The dream sequence in Norman lewison's Fiddler on the Roof. 51

for films with this theme, were the more lightweight than the Jewish-kid- racism, and his gags are broader than years when the struggle for acceptance makes-good films, they at least offered Allen's, more visual, and idiotically was most dire and least assured, when Jewish audiences comic heroes (better self-congratu latory. Pred ictably, Jews, with literally no place else to go, than none) and suggested to the gen- Brooks plays better in Boise. said to America: take me. tiles that Jews were funny and enter- taining (which is better than being dan- • In 1974, Ted Kotcheff, director of gerous and depraved). They provided a The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, vision, the first of its kind since the In all these films, from the adapta- took another approach, risking what the Diaspora, of Jews being treated with tions of Yiddish literature to the slap- Roth films had gambled on and won. affection. stick of Brooks, two strains pervade: for Kravitz is not a nice Jewish boy whom Jews, a straight-forward celebration of any gentile could love. His pathetic By the late Sixties, Jewish humor contemporary Jewish culture and fuel stabs at success are not genteel. He's could be ranked Most Successfully Ex- for the fantasy of insiderness, a reassur- calculating and crass, uneducated, un- ported Cultural Artifact-thanks to ance that we're okay because they come refined, and of course, pushy. You're Streisand, but more to Woody Allen to see our movies; for gentiles, an alien, not supposed to like him-as you're and Mel Brooks. Jewish humor brought possibly polluting people is made ex- not supposed to like Brando-you're to Yiddish to younger American Jews otic, tantalizing. If one doubts the pres- admire his endurance and respect his (who had never learned it) and to the ence of the double communication, pride. He is Jew-as-fighter, a hero mouths of Methodists across the land. compare these to the films made for spawned by Israeli heroism and later, Allen seems especially adept with our Jewish audiences only-at one time belligerence. In response to having insecurity, with a world view which there were many-the Yiddish-lan- nothing, this Jew would never display goes something like: When the ship guage films of the Thirties and Forties, intelligence or talent, hoping their looks tight, start looking for the leaks. shown in the Jewish ghetto theaters of agreeability will lubricate entry into the His humor is verbal and witty, self-con- the Lower East Side. Most have been haven called inclusion; he just grabs. forgotten, and though the Jewish Mu- Early films about Israel-Exodus, ... seum and YIVO screen a bunch now and Sword in the Desert, Judith, Cast a Long then, too few actually see them. The Shadow-traded in similar persona, in- Robby Benson in The Chosen. majority of today's Jews prefer to get troducing and then canonizing the new their nostalgia, fantasies, and opiates Jew: virile and aggressive rather than scious, self-deprecating, and close to for the chronic cramp of paranoia from defensive, one who takes rather than the stories Jews concocted when they mass-market pictures. beseeches. had no one to make laugh but them- selves. Yet the Jews in Allen's audi- Unexpectedly, however, the 1982 Kravitz is set in the Forties, taking ences are not laughing only among New York Film Festival screened Ed- advantage-if the word can be used- themselves. Allen may not be bringing gar Ulmer's 1939 Fishke der Krumer, of the Holocaust and gentile guilt. Jews to America so much as he is bring- giving it a sudden burst of visibility. Those were the days when pity for Jews ing America to the Jews (the latter indi- Fishke (starring David Opatoshu and ran high, the days of Gentleman's Agree- cating a bit more pride) but the final Helen Beverly) is conspicuous not for ment (a sort of precursor to the book familiarity comes to the same thing. In its purity but its voice. Like Brooks' Black Like Me) and of Crossfire, a mur- his variation of the export film, Allen work, it is a mix of forms, part Yiddish der-thriller in which the victim was hawks neurosis as a way of life and psy- folk tale, part Thirties B romance. But changed from the underdog of dubious choanalysis as the real, if failed, salva- in spite of what Ulmer lifted from merit, the homosexual, to the surefire tion. Therapy may be a joke, but it is American cinema of the era, the film tearjerker, the Jew. But Kravitz is also a our joke and-you will notice-they're addresses Jewish issues with scarcely a film of the Seventies, when Jews had all laughing. thought to what the goyim will think. earned enough clout, both in the Mid- The absence of the gentile, the capri- east and the West, to forego the halo of Brooks' style is newer, an alloy of cious judge, bolts from the screen. The martyrdom, to dare to defend their loud American slapstick, vaudeville, and set, though stylized, betrays a run- expressiveness, their aggressiveness- monied-but-marginal (and therefore down, dirty, cramped town. The cloth- all the bits that offend. Kravitz may still exotic) suburban Jewish culture. ing and habits of the characters reveal remind Jews how tough it was, how He's best, for example, with our guilt- what many of us were in Europe: poor misery makes people mean, but it also less ethnocentricity-bordering-on- (not-even peasants), prohibited from attempts to explain the boorish Jews to owning land, deracinated, something genteel society, to claim a place even between lumpen and leech. And to add for them. insult to injury, some of us were stupid. It is against this stupidity that Men- • dele, the bookpeddler, battles, push- ing the young Fishke and Hodele to Clearly, the export business can be flee the primitive hamlet and begin grim indeed, but throughout, it has also new lives in the modern city of Odessa. trafficked in humor. Jolson often played in lighthearted musicals, and Remarkable though it may seem to the Twenties and Thirties saw a series American Jews today, Fishke der Kru- of pictures with comic Jewish charac- mer discusses progress, modernization, ters: Abie's Irish Rose, Potash and even leaving the shtetl, without a trace Perlmutter, and the Cohen and Kelly of fear that the kinder will abandon reli- series. These, while trivializing, were gion or ritual. The film's conflict is not attempts at promotion and, though between Jewish and non-Jewish cus- 52

tom but between two traditions within Singer, not the Song. Judaism: study and enlightenment versus insular superstition. Like the The topic was \"How to be a Jewish hind our contradictions, behind the stories of Singer, Potok, and Aleichem, Writer. \" The man who emerged from surfaces of opposites lies the swirl of Fishke der Krumer exposes and cri- behind the curtain had a face unlike souls that are androgynous. It is a tiques our lackings or shortcomings any other. The features were soft and word Singer uses; it lets us look be- with the freedom of a conversation for sharp at the same time: a fleshy nose neath our clothing and see bones and which only members of the family are that cut the air like a hawk; a thin stars. present. Since it's not talking to mouth that fought against the desire strangers, it doesn't have to advertise. of its corners to break into a smile; the It is hard to believe that there are eyes-one comic, one tragic-that Yiddishists-most dwindling, some Jews have become far too American- read the world and betrayed nothing; surviving-who dispute his worth; ized to support a Yiddish-language film eyebrows that at once seemed like the but they do. I skipped a beat when industry, however small, and that sense wings of swallows, then like angry one told me, \"You know, he's just re- of private conversation is now nearly slashes that disappeared into the cycling junk. His brother was better.\" impos~ible to achieve. The contempo- white moon of his forehead. The candle that burns through the rary film which comes closest is Joan night is the one I need. And on the Micklin Silver's Hester Street (1974), It was Isaac Bashevis Singer. \"How few occasions I have seen or heard about the adaptation of a young immi- to be a Jewish Writer,\" he began. him, Isaac Bashevis Singer, speaking grant husband and wife to life in the \"First you have to be Jewish. Then in an English bent by Yiddish, was new world. It is a primer of turn-of-the- you have to write. And since I am and three steps ahead of me. As he was on century assimilation meant for latter- I do, now I will read a story.\" And he the December day I called: day Jews rather than for non-Jews and, read an unpublished story, then titled like Fishke der Krumer, doesn't indulge \"Mrs. Pupko's Beard,\" now Have you seen Yentl, the film? in heavy-handed self-promotion. The published and titled \"The Beard.\" No, I haven't seen it yet. This is Lower East Side, for example, looks His eyebrows would rise and fall as he completely different from what I overcrowded and filthy, with all the read, with pauses that permitted his wrote. Of course, they bought it and buying and selling and general street eyes to meet another pair first here, adopted it. I have never written the life-the outgrowth of the decrepit then there. way it is in the film. It's not written to two-room flats in which whole families be a musical. It's a serious story about struggled to live, eat, work, do laundry, Images of a nameless steamtable a woman who wanted to study Tal- and change swaddling clothes. cafeteria-who knows, maybe the mud. Not sing songs. Garden, or Parkway, or Belvidere; all I have been told that ... the end of The sweatshops in Hester Street are gone now-rained and evaporated the movie, the woman goes to Amer- noisy firetraps and \"accommodations\" over us at the command of this white ica. Well, for a woman like her to go to for the newest arrivals include a bench ghost. He is not a nostalgia merchant. America-especially in those years- by the door of someone else's two-room He is a traveler who has crossed the is as far from my writing as can be. flat. Appropriately, the film is shot in veil of the unknown and seen the Were you not consulted on that shift? black and white. When Carol Kane gets spirits we deny. Or, as Mrs. Pupko, Those who buy things with con- off the boat, she's attired-using the who has grown a beard, replies to his tracts, this is what they can do. word generously-in some dark, inquiry of why she smokes cigars: The film was a rationale for coming shapeless rag which was probably that \"Nu, one mustn't know everything.\" to America, not at all about the andro- character's best dress, and as for her gyny ofthe soul . .. sheitl (customary wig), it looks less like In any event, \"Yentl, the Yeshiva This is a cliche, the androgyny of a Buster Brown haircut than like Buster Boy\" is not the first time Singer has the soul. What does it mean? The soul Brown's dog. With dark circles under had a woman invade a man's peroga- is a soul. Not a man or a woman. her eyes, she appears not to have had a tive. \"A beard isn't only a man's privi- \"Yentl\" is a story about a woman who decent meal or a night's sleep in ten lege,\" says Mrs. Pupko, who let hers wanted to study Torah and has no years, and she's clearly aging before her grow to please her husband, Bendit, a chance. She couldn't because the time: \"tubercular\" might sum it up. millionaire with little use for money, a world was against her. literary romantic who bribed critics, a Hester Street holds to this standard of That was all. He said call back any- authenticity down to the details: the -.seeker oftruth in a schemer's suit. Be- time and stated the best hours of the film is strewn with Russian and Yidd- day for him to talk. There is only one ish, and the English is accented with thing that has been bothering me. the distortions of those languages rather than with the Brooklynese of later gen- Fifteen years ago, when I went to erations. On hot nights, everyone in the find out how be a Jewish writer, I ap- neighborhood slept on the roof; if you proached him last in line and reluc- wanted to make love, you did it behind tantly-because I don't believe in the someone's laundry line-a \"found\" practice-asked him to inscribe a variation, albeit an innocent one-on copy of his story, \"When Shlemiel public sex. If, as in Fishke der Krumer, Went to Warsaw.\" \"Is it for a child,\" the guy most respected is the gentle he inquired? \"No, it's for me,\" I said. scholar, Hester Street also admits Jews \"And, are you not a child,\" he asked? who are loutish and dumb; some are I've been thinking about my answer. even money grubbers. Clearly, no one -HARLAN JACOBSON 53

involved with this film was worried is set in 1904 Bechev, its style-costly Hadass-albeit on the forehead and about what the goyim would think. but obvious and overblown-is that of with obvious discomfort-we get a present-day American Jewry. A short peek at forbidden fruit. But it's a trompe Unlike the Yiddish-language films, example: in the film's opening section, l' oeil: Hadass thinks her husband is a Hester Street was seen by general audi- Yentl, still dressed in dresses, sneakily man and Anshel knows herself to be a ences-but for them, the life described wraps herself in the father's tallis (a woman in love with Avigdor. The more is a curiosity. For Jews it is a reminder of prayer shawl forbidden to women) and authentic homoerotic sentiment is ac- our past and the values we held then. admires herself in the mirror. The shot tually Avigdor's; he thinks his study More painful and confusing to contem- is taken from the back so that the audi- partner and confidant is a teenage boy. porary Jews, it reminds us of the ethics ence sees Streisand's corsetted, curva- And again, the film contains a newly which that past dictates. Such recent cious silhouette through the long, concocted scene which lets the sexual escapees from immigrant slums cannot translucent, white drapery. A moment underlayer of this friendship rise closer be landlords to the next wave of new- of the spirit has become a moment of to the surface than it ever does in the comers-yet we are. Such recent vic- fashion and eroticism surely not of shtetl written tale. Horsing around one sum- tims of discrimination and humiliation sensibility. Combine this with the char- mer afternoon, Avigdor tackles Anshel cannot foist the same on others-yet acters' opulence and Yentl, more than and, having pinned \"him\" to the we do. Beneath its sweet nostalgia, providing any accurate glimpse of East ground, looks into the boy's face with these are the issues Hester Street asks European life, will make the Method- appreciation, exhilaration, and wonder. Jews to consider; beneath the self- ists from Omaha more comfortable with It couldn't be just the sport. righteousness that the underdog posi- the Jews they'll meet if they ever visit tion always bestows, these are. the con- New York or L.A. The role of sexual attraction in sup- tradictions it asks Jews to confront. posedly platonic relationships is not And of course, the Jews of those Singer's project, and for Streisand, I IfHester Street glances at these prob- cities have one more hero, one more suspect the hetero (and homo) sex are lems, Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker celebration of themselves, to calm the just window dressing around the main takes them by the throat with a grisly gnawing sense of being ever vulnerable event: soothing Jewish fears about the story of a Holocaust survivor (Rod to the next burst of anti-Semitism. family. The screenplay is filled with Steiger) haunted by his past, unable to They also have one more assurance that continual references-not found in the prevent it from repeating itself in the they chose well in giving up the ghetto; story-to the importance of children, present. Like Hester Street, the style in shedding the old conspicuous cloth- and Streisand has added a whole scene and set of the film are gritty, sometimes ing, manners, rituals; in becoming of her own invention on this theme. harrowing, and always realistic. The American in order to make it in Amer- Anshel argues for a common ground special torture of Steiger's life in the ica. Chickens come home to roost: between women and men, and Avigdor U.S. is the relationship between blacks Streisand, the working class girl from settles the matter by pointing to a preg- and whites-an association filled with Brooklyn, holds high the esthetics of nant woman and young mother (shot in the fear and fascination , contempt and suburbia, the palmy, secular society romantic pastels and soft focus) and in- intimacy of Nazi and Jew. Even for which must've seemed glamorous to sisting that propagation is the great ac- non-Jews, The Pawnbroker is more than her in Brooklyn when she was small and complishment. Motherhood is pitted a curio. It is an exposure of the impressionable, when it counts. against Mishna, and motherhood wins wounded souls which emerged from -as if to say to today's parents, whose the camps-an exposure so ghastly as Speaking of fashion and eroticism, baby-boom kids are busy being doctors to be by definition an imposition; it there is, in general, much more talk and lawyers, delaying marriage and cannot be wanted-and an attempt at about sex (between Avigdor and Anshel pregnancy: don't worry, eventually explaining why those souls can never and even between Hadass and Anshel) they'll give you grandchildren. heal. The ethos of the camps survives in Streisand than in Singer. In the out- within them, ironically, sadistically, rageously anachronistic-but endear- Moreover, though Singer ends with even in their effofts to construct new ing-wedding sequence, Avigdor pulls Yentl continuing her travesty and lives. For Jews, The Pawnbroker is all Anshel aside, telling \"him\" to make searching for a new yeshiva, Streisand this, the exposure and explanation, but love to Hadass gently, to arouse her and ends with Yentl, dressed as a girl, on a it is also a charge: think carefully about wait for her desire. Since when do ye- boat to America-a rather pointed tip where you are going, the essence of shiva bochers talk like Dr. Ruth West- of the hat to her audiences-and sing- your Judaism is at stake. heimer? And the frisson of homoeroti- ing to her deceased Papa. Repeating a cism, which inevitably attends travesty, motif which appears early on and sev- This is the heart of the matter, is given far more play in the film than in eral times in the sweeping, inappropri- pinned down and dissected by the cut- the story, locating it even more securely ately Hollywood-sounding Michel Le- ting edges of a vast literature (including in the sensibilities of the Eighties- grand score, this song explains the Sartre's Antisemite and Jew, much of homosexuality being today's chic-est decision to go to America: It's the usual Hannah Arendt's writings, and lately, taboo. spread-my-wings-and-fly business, a Earl Shorris' Jews Without Mercy) and, reworking of Funny Girl's \"Don't Rain less methodically but just as certainly, Whereas the tale says virtually noth- on My Parade,\" also sung at the bow of by the history of American Jewish ing about the relationship between An- a ship. In this song, Yentl asks for Papa's films. What is happening to the base shel and Hadass, the movie shows approval, insuring that, though he and core of American Judaism? If Yentl them engaging in what looks suspi- taught her to think for herself, she'll is any indication, we have changed- ciously like girl-talk, with Anshel rais- never really do anything contrary to his and in the change, lost too much. ing the consciousness of the sheltered wishes or values. This is just what Hadass. These little intimacies lead to American Jewish parents of today want Yentl is braided with the same strains mock-lesbian gestures. When as other export films. No matter that it Streisand, dressed as a youth, kisses 54

to hear: the contradiction between \"go Illustrated . The Greatest MOTION PICTURE out and do\" and \"don't leave the fold\" Selection of Things to SCRIPTS WANTED. is not impossible; somehow the kids Show. Videocassettes will do both. Somehow, the assimila- and VideoDiscs, slides, Human and capital resources development tion of the parents will not lead to the super 8 & 16mm films . corporation searching for NEW theatrical mo- disaffection of the children, it will not All guaranteed to be tion picture scripts. We offer comprehensive end with the attrition of the Jews. 100% satisfactory. Our critiques and sales research for marketable 57th year. material. Inquire Grasshopper Productions , By now, Jews in America have it Box 67 , Manchaca, TX 78652 pretty good. We may remain oddities to Blackhawk Films some, gauche annoyances or even AUTHORS WANTED BY aliens to others , but we are no longer Dept. 404 NEW YORK PUBLISHER body-snatchers. Yet one wonders if Middle Americans can tolerate Jews 1235 W. 5th St., Davenport, lA 52802 Leading subs idy book publish e r seeks manuscripts and things Jewish only because we are of all t ypes : fiction , non-fiction , poetry, scholarly now so like them. Third generation and juvenile works. etc. New authors welcomed. Jews are on the verge of assuming their Send for free, illustrated 40-pag e brochure H- 83 assimilation-Jewishness never inter- Vantage Press, 516 W . 34 St., New York, N .Y . 10001 fering with their lives-and of asking just how much Israel is necessarily their FILM & CRITICISM problem. And we may have to face facts. It is for this that we came to this Centre Universitaire Americain du Cinema et de la Critique a Paris country: to cease being special, to blend in, to fit-the cost of being the The Film Studie s Prog r a m a nd C o nte mpo rar y C ritic ism a nd Culture (CCC ) chosen people finally having inflated aProg ram at th e C e ntr e Uni ve r s it a ire Ameri c ain du Cinema et de la Critiqu e too high. Israel, in direr straits, is already busy Paris bo th bo as t a curriculum o f inn ovati v e se minars and co urses w hic h e xamin e the theo ries and critical tho ug ht that ha ve influenced the study o f film and o th e r claiming for herself the right to be ordi- fo rm s o f expressio n over the pas t 40 years . nary. But being ordinary isn't always easy. Some Jews cannot bear what will Th e Film S tudi es Pr og ram have to be relinquished; loss of empa- pr ov id es s tud e nt s wi th thy is a travesty of Jewish ethics. The pursuit of material well-being at the ... co ur ses and se min a rs ana- expense of the spirit and intellect, the lyti ca l o f fil m th eo r y, h is- fostering of racism which ends in ex- to r y, fo rm a l s tru ctures, ploitation and force, are acts egregious id eo logy , a nd th e re la ti on- and immoral. They linger with the be- s hips be t wee n film a nd lief that our actions should be guided by o th e r a rt fo rm s, a nd lan- the questions: For what purpose and at g uage a nd p syc h oanal ys is. whose expense? Without these, even Pa rti cipa nt s di sc u ss s uc h Israel-so recently embraced not only th e m es as th e s il e nt film s as a refuge but as a place where justice o f C riffith , La ng, Ei se n- might emerge from indignity and pain s te in , a nd Keat o n; class ic -becomes an irony. Without those Ho ll ywood film s; , evo lu- questions, the homeland is lost. ti o n o f ea rl y cin e ma ; a nd Eur opea n and Am e ri ca n But such ingenuous considerations a va nt-ga rd e cine mas . are, of course, the naive mumblings of the people of the book, people both- \" Elffel ~.IW hI:> Tuwt'r Th e C C C focu ses o n rece nt d evel- ered by the state of the soul, like Men- 1Il t hl' f\"f nl \"f ,I opm e nt s in Fr e nch po liti ca l th o ug ht dele the book-peddler, like Singer's ~ t' n \"u~ ubWl\"I , a nd soci al in s tituti o n s, ling uis ti cs, Yentl, like Singer himself. To these r,ll ltl l \\,d . u::.t'ful ; nwn soc ia l sc ie nces, a nd lit e rar y th eo r y. lambs, the triumph of American Jewish n ' l u rll It It l h lln In Th e Prog ram , int e rdi sc iplin a ry in acculturation is bittersweet. Having tht' (, If m tlf ,1 g r t',)t na ture, a nal yzes te xts and doc u- made America safe for the Jews, the b.,r ,'YuL' In'.Irn ment s as we ll a s n on- ve rbal re pres - Jews are now phasing themselves out. Wh \" h I.{ulk \",l I Uf.dly enta ti o n s s u ch a s ph o tog ra ph y, film And to the protest, \"We will always be and tel ev isi o n , by draw in g fr o m th e Jews; when the gestapo comes, we'll t\"ulh t,:> I'll th t· fi e ld s o f lin g ui s ti cs , p syc hoan a lys is, end up in Auschwitz even if we never anthro po logy, phil oso ph y, a nd po l- lit a Shabbos candle or said kiddush,\" bl'rJ(,f::. I.j lht' itical scie nce. one can only say: anti-Semitism is not Judaism and is no reason to be Jewish. tr \" J ,l lt' !l,,1 \" A re quired sessio n th a t in clud es The reasons are in the ritual and the /':','/,,11,1 HIII/h,', inte ns ive la ng uage tra inin g a nd an ethics; without them, we indeed have introdu cti o n to film a na lys is, th e- only Auschwitz. For some, the mourn- o ry and se mi ology precedes th e ing for what we are about to lose has yea r-l o ng Prog ra m s. Ad va nced und erg radu a te and g radu a te stu- already begun. ® de nt s w ith a min imum o f two ye a rs of uni ve rs it y-le ve l Fre nch o r th e equi va le nt ma y a ppl y. Fo r furth e r info rm a ti o n , w rit e : Uni ve rs it y o f C alif o rni a Edu cati o n Abroa d Prog ra m Santa Barbara, C A 93106 Sponsored by University of California Education Abroad Program & Council on International Educational Exchange 55

ANNOUNCING THE FORMATION OF THE We're re-releasing some of our timeless issues of the past: FILM COMMENT ALM CO\"\"\"-'ENT .-~\" , \", r-~ Vol. 2,1964 Fall 1969 JanlFeb 1973 MarchlApril1973 JanlFeb 1974 Exploitation films; Harold Lloyd on Cinema Sex Issue; Sergio Leone; Schrader's Yakuza- Maysles Bros.; Film Being Funny; Rise of Russ Meyer; Radley Mizoguchi; David Eiga Primer; in China American Film Metzger Newman, Robert Benton Resnais; Nora Sayre May/June 1977 NovlDec 1977 Iilm July/Aug 1978 film Gangster.; & G-Men; Bertolucci; Character Sc reenwriter Actor.;; Michael May/June 1978 Midsection; Rock ' n C (J \\1 \\I I, '\\ 1 ANNlEHALL Ritchie Art Director Roll Movies Midsection; Burt ~ fitiD Reynolds ; Malle; Cai n film Sep/Oct 1978 Sound Midsection; Scorsese's Pleasures; DAYS OF HEAVEN NovlDec 1979, MarchlApril1980 July/Aug 1980 Sep/Oct 1980 Nov/Dec 1980 Herzog Midsection; Richard Gere; Ronald Reagan ; Peter Sellers; 3-D; \"Making It\" Blake Edwards; Canadian Film; Sarris Rednecks & Ru ~s Jonathan Demme; Midsection; Sarris on Dudley Moore on Oscar Meyer; Michael Cai ne The Zoom by Mr. X Sports Movies Iilm' c () ~I \\1 E '\\ T MarchlApril1982 July/Aug 1982 Sep/Oct 1982 NovlDec 1982 JanlFeb 1983 Roger Corman; Marilyn; Fassbinder; Selling a Script- GAND HI : Video Games Genre Films; Paul ROAD WARRIOR ; Hawks; Comic Art ; The CASABLANCA Midsection; W.R. Schrader Paul Bartel Caper; Goldie Hawn; Burnett Richard Pryor; BLADE Novel to Film MarchlApril1983 RUNNER; Producers July/Aug 1983 ,fil111 BETRAYAL ; Olivier; Midsection \\1 I ' '\\ 1 Italian Midsection RETURN OF THE JED! ; ifllm Sep/Oct 1983 NovlDec 1983 c: () \\1 \\1 I~ '\\ r Ulmer; MTV; John BIG CH ILL; Coppola ~ Water.;; Kurys interview; Asian THE RIGHTSTUFF; Midsection May/June 1983 Sam Shepherd, \"Getting it Made;\" Psychedelic Movies; TESTAMENT SUPERMAN III

FILM COMMENT CLASSICS DIVISION! They're New Prints ... They're Uncensored ... They're Classics! FILM ~T. Sep/Oct 1974 Nov/Dec 1974 May/June 1975 Nov/Dec 1976 MarchiApril1977 Rivette, Gene Film Noir Issue; Makavejev; DAYOF Vincente & Liza Film Editor Issue; Hackman interview; Raymond Chandler; Minnelli; Chabrol; Editors' Altman MaxOphuls THE LOCUIT, Feuillade Filmographies; Langlois film film Stroheim film 111m T Nov/Dec 1978 Jan/Feb 1979 MarchiApril1979 May/June 1979 July/Aug 1979 Hollywood Makeup; Philip Kaufman ; Movie Palaces; Milos Bob Hope; Jerry TV Issue: TV Ads; Sidney Billy Wilder; Star- Forman ; Hitchcock Lewis; Woody Allen; Commercials, Lumet Making George Romero Comedy, Carson Iifiilm)I <: () \\1 \\1 I'. , 1 MarchiApril1981 July/Aug 1981 Sevt/Oct 1981 Nov/Dec 1981 Jan/Feb 1982 Barbara Stanwyck; George Lucas MGM Midsection; Classic French Film; An Director Peter O'Toole; interview; RAIDERS; Terry Gilliam; Midsection; REDS & Jessica Lange SPFX; Jews in the Movies Movie Music; Independents Fassbinder; Kasdan RAGTIME Please send coupon with payment. U,S, funds only. Back issues are $3.00 each , postpaid. QUANTITYIISSUE _ _ May/Jun '77 _ _ NovlDec '79 _ _ Mar/Apr '82 COMMENT _ _ Nov/Dec '77 _ _ Mar/Apr '80 _ ' _Jul/Aug'82 _ _ Vol. 2,1964 _ _ May/June '78 _ _ Jul/Aug '80 _ _ Sep/Oct '82 _ _ Fall 1969 _ _ Jul/Aug '78 __ Sept/Oct '80 _ _ Nov/Dec '82 _ _ Jan/Feb '73 __ Sep/Oct '78 __ Nov/Dec '80 _ _ Jan/Feb '83 _ _ Mar/Apr '73 _ _ NovlDec '78 _ _ Mar/Apr '8 1 _ _ Mar/Apr '83 __ Jan/Feb '74 _ _ Jan/Feb ' 79 _ _ Jul/Aug '81 _ _ May/June ' 83 __ Sep/Oct '74 _ _ Mar/Apr '79 _ _ Sep/Oct '81 _ _ Jul/Aug '83 __ NovlDec '74 _ _ May/June ' 79 __ NovlDec '8 1 _ _ Sep/Oct '83 _ _ May/Jun '75 _ _ Jul/Aug '79 _ _ Jan/Feb '82 _ _ Nov/Dec '83 __ NovlDec '76 _ _ Mar/Apr '77 If any of the issues I have ordered are no longer available , please send me NAME _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _one_o_f th_es_e t_wo_al_ter_na_tes_: __ or _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ ADDRESS THE MEN WITH THE MOVIE CAME RAS is a filmography of75 cin- CITY _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ ematographers, published in 1972. It is available for $2.00. STATE - - - -_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ZIP _ _ _ __ The INDEX SETS for Film Comment, Volumes 1-19, listing every ar- Mail with check or money order to: FILM COMMENT CLASSICS ~icle ever published in Film Comment, are available for $2.00/sec. 140 West 65th Street New York, NY 10023 QUANTITY AMOUNT _ _ _ Back issues of Film Comment, $3.00/issue $---- _ _ _ IndexSecs, $2.00/set $---- ___ The Men with the Movie Cameras, $2.00 $--- TOTAL $-----

Charmsand theMan have been a child?) If sense-memory Grant came forward to present the Acad- by David Thomson and shared experience of character are emy's life achievement Oscar to Olivier. \"You may remember that during the first releven t to acting, then Lonely Heart was Grant was spiffed up with pleasure: no part [of North by Northwest] all sorts of things happen to the hero with such bewil- his most personal picture. But he was one else on screen has ever made that dering rapidity that he doesn't know what it's all about. Anyway, Cary Grant came such a skeptic about emotional disclo- spirit more touching or philosophical. up to me and said, 'It's a terrible script. We've already done a third of the picture sure. He was shy, but it is his taste that Never a Flynn or a Power (he was humil- and I still can't make head or tail of it.' ... without realising it he was using a feels the indecency ofshowing-off when iated and grim in The Pride and the Pas- line ofhis own dialogue .\" the medium is already a huge display. sion), he conveys a disposition for scru- -Alfred Hitchcock in Hitchcock, by Fran~ois Truffaut Whoever it is in there, he has preferred tiny that is the most intriguing moral It doesn't get us far wrestling with the to tease the idea of \"Cary Grant\" (co- stance in American film , distinct but solemn question, How good an actor was Cary Grant? To appreciate this starring with Tony Curtis soon after elusive-we have to work to compre- auteur, it is better to practice standing still, listening, and watching. He was as Some Like It Hot) instead of becoming hend it. He gives fun its proper, high poised and attentive as the medium. Whenever he tried hard-in None But other characters. He is something more status; and in its pure form, fun is so the Lonely Heart, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Howards of Virginia-he seemed and less than an actor, like E. T., a pres- rare. Which other movie actor makes noisy and embarrassed, like someone explaining a joke to a deaf aunt. Perhaps ence in whom sincerity and intelligence well-being so subtle or attractive, or so he was an unconvinced liar, as well as a guarded soul. He does handle lies gin- are parallel modes, not a specious braid rarely succumbs to self-pity? gerly, and he lets us feel that the soul is private, inestimable, and vulnerable. of life. With Olivier's Oscar in his happy There is no sanctimony in this, just re- spect for the free , lonely course of intel- Few people now remember Grant grasp, Grant seemed diffident about his ligence. Other people talk and posture; Grant simply listens until their foolish- from the stage; when he was a Broadway own vigor standing beside Olivier's gut- ness sinks in on them . His reticence fosters cool wisdom in a picture and un- actor, in the late Twenties and early tering organism. He was too trusting or der-playing among alert actors. Thirties, he kept to musical comedy and too amiable to wonder whether malady None But the Lonely Heart was a novel he liked enough to buy. It had a role light romance. Invariably, he has been has been Olivier's richest role for the last from roots similar to his own; it re- minded Archie Leach of losing his too serious to invite momentous or clas- decade. Yet the screen's Grant is the mother to an institution when he was a boy and meeting her again twenty years sical roles; he is uncomfortable out of a quickest detector of indulgence in later. (Is it coincidence that this actor whose boyishness is so hopeful and lounge suit. In Only Angels Have Wings others, and so suspicious of it in himself sometimes so chronic seems never to one can suppose him wondering if the that he seems instinctively averse to the banana republic setting explains the close-up and its luster of self-hood. swag of his trousers. We can imagine the Grant wills the group shot in his films whatever next? grin, the fastidious dis- just as C. K. Dexter Haven wants us all cretion in turning away to smile, the to behave: Naturally. Honoring the frail cock of the head between perplexity and lord of living theater, Grant fell into the disdain, if anyone ever suggested that wide-eyed wonder that often spells trap he might try Hamlet, Malvolio, Astrov, in his pictures. He was like an English- Sol ness, James Tyrone, Shylock, the man's version of a delighted American real Cole Porter (as opposed to tourist, let in at the stage door of the Warners'), or Archie Rice-no matter National Theatre. Gee, Sir Laurence, I that Grant had grown up in Archie's just wanted to say . . . I know, dear boy, I world of Empires, while Olivier had to know . be taken to the last active music halls to But Olivier didn't notice, and perhaps get a look at stand-up comedy. it has been a mystery that old Cary Grant You can hear his self-effacement: Oh chose not to get into. Still, on that Oscar goily, Susan (Grant could feast on a night we were being asked to assent to a woman's name, in a way lechers need a myth: that it is noble to pretend to be CinemaScope of thighs), he's an actor, others, but silly to pretend to be your- and I'm just a . ... His awe for the real self. As if Grant's screen work was not thing was plain to see, in 1979, when ridiculously superior to Olivier's. Oli- 58



vier's vibrant ghost brought a shiver to Hitchcock's elaborately orchestrated kiss in North by Northwest every spine; when he felt the tingle in his body perhaps he believed he could osity; he is cut off from life in close-ups. give credit to lucky directors. expire from the exaltation of being ad- He is always fretting at, muttering His persistent note of questioning mired . Grant is suspicious of affection or against, or edging away from the soli- praise; his ego is too dark, his doubts too tude that stars generally inhaled with the leads us into the issues of his films, as great. light. He does not quite talk to the audi- when early in Penny Serenade he and ence or look at the camera, but he com- Irene Dunne have this brief exchange: He has the grin of someone who munes with the film. Grant constitutes learned to trust no one, but who man- an edge of heckling scrutiny around his \"When you're with me you're safe,\" aged it politely and without ever giving best films, like the real space that makes he tells her. up on people. He is as narrow and deep a stage audience into jurors, not voyeurs. as any lonely person. In trying to say It encourages distance, argument, and \"I don't know if it's safe.\" why he is the most fascinating male per- respect to think we are watching not life, ''I'm darned ifl do, either.\" sonality in pictures, we have to recog- but a game. nize him thinking ahead of his films, • never turning a blind eye to where he is, His best films are by good or better making an unspoken aside to the audi- directors. But his achievement is so dis- The best Grant films have to ac- ence: But this is a movie, didn't you cerning of the medium, and of the knowledge that having him around has know? No, don't drift off. You can't sleep change from acting to being there (but diverted their subject matter. His mild hidden) on the screen, that it transcends but subversive presence has urged a new here; Jimmy the Nipper'll get you if you and educates his directors. Perhaps he reflexiveness on filmmaking. He is too responded most to comrades, or people sensible to suppose that good audiences do. he enjoyed. There is a remarkable feel- (and he does require the best in us) ing for friendship when he looks at could believe in the illusion. He thinks In movies, acting yields to fascina- others on the screen. In Holiday, it is his we're worthy of seeing the story and its tion. The medium winces at bold, dra- love for Edward Everett Horton and intricate process of being told. Just as in matic declaration; it wants to creep up Jean Dixon that helps us see the impor- a good joke, we observe the pleasure of on beautiful people. Whereas Olivier tance of his friendship with Katharine the person telling the story. It would elected to make himself a Moor, with a Hepburn, the woman he loves. This af- take a frame analysis to show how dex- new voice and a fresh face, Grant pre- finity is more critical than his quizzical trously Grant nurses teeming full shots ferred as little alteration as possible. He view of love or sex. He is so much more with his casualness; he.can knit up disor- guesses that the movie audience will in harmony with values that can work der and deliver a joke with one double imagine more adventurously if his face is against each other--discrimination and take that flicks across the nerves of a enigmatic, better half-closed than over- loyalty. scene. He is looking and reacting within full. That leaves room for the spectator. a scene the way some directors hope to Always thinking, he seldom sends up Nothing is as heady for him as fun, or impose meaning with a variety of points thought balloons. We know him for a as much fun as the head. Because he is of view and cutting. It appears that he mind , and so we don't need signals. We often a surrogate director, he teaches us must always play the cleverest person in should not ask, can he act, but can he be how the people in a picture indicate a a film. The wonder is that sometimes he watched? How was he watched for director's attitude. Some stars slow or was a very learned idiot (Bringing Up thirty-five years and seventy-odd films lull their pictures, dragging them toward Baby), still guiding our eyes with the without him or us becoming bored? narcissism. But Grant stimulates his col- frowns and frosts of injured innocence. leagues. In saying keep your wits about Cary Grant has never settled for being you, he raises the possibility of wit. As It's as if an astute referee was teaching a glossy, romantic star, a ghost in our he glances and notices, so we pick up pugs how to box, or a ghost (Topper) dreams. He has instead lent himself to the pace and shift of his attention-and advising mortals where to step and how the kind of dismantling that culminates to speak, and watch out for the joke. He in North by Northwest where he plays the was so well balanced-and his physical epitome of \"Cary Gram,\" a dry-gin fig- aplomb so gentlemanly-that he could ment of Madison Avenue put through an look like a layman who'd wandered in insane obstacle course to regain his hu- manity. But that aim had always been part of Grant's approach; his faith in fun is based in moral propriety; it is never facetious and never content with surface allure. Grant takes a film deeper into itself, adroitly slipping away from all the easy lies of screen authority-that the camera is not there, that the situation on the screen is real, and the feelings heart- felt. Pauline Kael once joined with Mae West in saying that Grant \"could be had.\" I think not. He never gives him- self up, he stands for the principle that group shots are composed of separate people joined in lines of observation and judgment. That web appeals to his curi- 60

Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint: \"The lavish embrace is hiding trap or dishonesty. ... \" unawares on some tumblers, and yet chip can slip down between the breasts her room, and in the open doorway, she somehow, without plan or knowledge and looking off in the wrong direction, of a lady sitting beneath and in front of pauses and rises to kiss his passive con- caught the girl flying through the air: Oh, haLlo, her pretty bundle landing in him. And that, of course, is a \"bet\" de- sort figure, like a blue chiffon trout tak- his available arms: Well, haLlo! He con- trives to let us feel we have seen a re- signed to be seen-by Jessie Royce ing a fly, the rod, the angler, and Izaak hearsal that turned out so well that there is no need to do a real take. Cary Grant's Landis (one of his most appreciative Walton, too. There is a beatific smile on taunting charm springs from his passion- ate reluctance to quite do it, properly. screen friends), as well as by the camera. his face when he turns, but he isn't just There is little in print on how Grant It is a superb unobtrusiveness in Grant impressed by the lady or the kiss. His behaved and worked on set, but in her 1975 New Yorker article Pauline Kael that flashes through his eyes, Oh, did you smile is asking, How would you like to be said, \"Although Grant is a perfectionist on the set, some of his directors say that see that from there? This is rococo shy- in a movie? Think how many times we had he wrecks certain scenes because he won't do fully articulated passages of ness. No other actor admits the gratifica- to take that. dialogue. He wants always to be search- ing for how he feels; he wants to waffle tion in having himselfbe seen, or so kids This is late Grant, escorting the cin- charmingly.\" How else do we gain the piercing sense that Grant is thinking be- the pretense that no one is watching. ema closer to a realization that its nature fore he speaks, and discarding some thoughts as unworthy or unnecessary? The most famous line in To Catch a is camp. But his testy reluctance to be It is his policy in films, and the thrust Thief-reason enough for making it- in, or immersed in, his own films, to do of his casting, to skirt our foolish, fond expectations for him by the simple ploy has Grant and Grace Kelly stopping for a them properly or take them seriously, of having us reflect on them. There is immediate humor in the possibility that picnic. He is between her and the cam- had been there from the beginning. The Grant might have spent a part of his life clambering over roofs, crawling into era, nicely played in the kind of triangu- wonder in his films with Mae West is not windows. Thus the appeal of the pre- posterous casting of To Catch a Thief lar discourse common in Grant films that she had found a cute partner, so that And when John Robey actually takes to the Riviera rooftops, we think of a witty (action-Grant-audience) , when she the audience went wild imagining those set of sharp angles with an Astaire dandy anxious not to step on the lines. On the opens the hamper of cold chicken and two getting it on, but that someone had few occasions when Grant is required to hurry in a film, even as the skeleton asks him whether he'll have a leg or a stepped up on her stage (so hard to in- collapses around him, we are reminded that he was once a damned acrobat. breast. habit if you weren't a sofa) and whis- John Robey's head for heights is bet- Grant doesn't eye the camera with a pered in her silk purse, Good Lord, you ter employed deciding just how a casino How-d'ya-like-that? (He did that once are anoldfraud, aren' t you? But keep it up in movies, at the end of The Philadelphia . .. nudge me in the loin and I'll blush. Story, when the ensemble turns to the Not once was Grant sexual on screen. \"wings\" and the cheeky appearance of Instead, he knew that watching was Sidney Kidd, Spy himself, with camera.) erotic, that the glow of imagery was sug- With Grace, Grant never moves or gestive, but no one was actually going to flickers: it is his acme to sit quiet and do it. still, trusting we are there, falling about, The finest romantic implication of knowing the humor is more acute be- any film is that, up there, or after the cause this is happening to \"Cary Grant. \" \"cut,\" or tonight, or sometime, there's He tells Kelly, \"You decide,\" always de- going to be an orgy-isn't that the sex of ferring. Stanley Cavell has noticed, in bodies so large?-but as for here and Pursuits of Happiness , how in Philadel- now.... Susan, that's out ofthe question. phia Story, Dexter deflects leading ques- They're watching. Anyway, I go gay when tions with an \"Am I?\" or \"Is it?\"-\"as if I'm being watched. His allure, his seduc- always aware that a liberating interpreta- tiveness, rests on his clear preference for tion must be arrived at for oneself. \" some future loving condition of intimacy The picnic with Kelly follows a pat- and invisibility. Oh, you can' t wait, eh? tern set up a little earlier when Grant's Well , you'll just have to . We' re having fun alleged Oregon timber-man walks her to now. 61

It's surely no accident that for his two surely Hitch was on more fruitful ground The filmmakers knew the routines by most prolonged kissing sequences, in letting Cary go sunny and brisk if he heart; they ignored the joke in the spe- Hichcock waited for Cary Grant. They wanted him to be disturbing. It is also cial lines, situations, and camera angles occur with Ingrid Bergman in Notorious the perfect means for Hitchcock of hav- that displayed the stars. Kidding was and with Eva Marie Saint in North by ing murder seem resourceful, under- very rare: Cagney might pick up the odd Northwest, and in both cases the lavish standable, and playful to make Grant grapefruit after Public Enemy and smile embrace is hiding trap or dishonesty. No embody the good-humored sportiveness demurely at the continuity girl; The Big Borzage, Hitchcock wants to warn us of the classic reader of an old English Sleep is beguiling because the Burbank about mistake, misunderstanding, or thriller: Did he do it or not? I can't tell. house-party ignores the rigged-up non- theft in a kiss. As he admitted, he em- Nor was Hitch sure that he could get sense of its story. barrassed the players with the length away with this blithe killer. To the very and engineering of the kisses. But he is end he didn't know if censorship would But that is Hawks again, perfecting a goading the audience, too, making them permit Grant's cheery malice, or disregard for all but fun that Grant an offer that can never payoff. This whether the Francis lies original would helped crystallize in the screwball come- explicit nagging at Grant's restraint is as have to be stood on its head with a happy calculated as having the back of his head dies. r ve seen you, you're doing my thing, be our first look at him in Notorious, ending. Not to worry, r II play it in the surveying Alicia Huberman and Ingrid aren't you? Got Bogart to look happy at Bergman, spinning a scheme around middle-\"Hallo dear, how are you, had last. Mae West gave it license, and Cu- them. Hitchcock felt the cold, disap- your milk yet?\"-and you'll be able to use kor seems to have understood the libera- proving edge in Grant's urge for with- it however the thing ends. tion of Sylvia Scarlett in which Grant drawal, just as Hawks and others read could play an English con artist. The into it the warmth that likes to keep love In the film, Grant turns out not a slyness there is all the sharper because it out of camera range. murderer, or not for the moment; he is confronts the fatuous grandeur of Brian just the spirit of irresponsibility, some- Aherne. And thank God for Ralph Bel- Still, I doubt if the Notorious kiss one who enjoys murder mysteries more lamy, the essential stooge in two movies would have been set up if Hitchcock than hard work. Hitch wanted an ending about the special but not quite kind fun hadn't first learned from films by in which Grant does poison Joan Fon- a married couple have in pretending Hawks, Cukor, and McCarey. In Hitch- taine, but not before she has reported they are going to be divorced: The Awful cock's gradual discovery of the links be- everything in a letter that he conscien- Truth and His Girl Friday. tween universal voyeurism and film- tiously posts in the last shot. RKO set- making, Notorious brings a new tled for the \"happy\" ending: Joan living Pauline Kael noticed that in both The confusion of arousal and discomfort in on with unreliability. To that end, in the Awful Truth and Bringing Up Baby there the audience. As he told Truffaut about director's absence, they looked at the are references to Grant as Jerry the Nip- the kiss, \"I felt it was indispensable that picture with eyes of righteous woe and per. In Gunga Din, he makes his charac- they should not separate, and I also felt planned to take out all the scenes in ter's name, \"Archi-bald?\" feel like a that the public, represented by the cam- which Grant looked like a murderer. yawn that impedes full waking. In Holi- era, was the third party to this embrace. That brought a 99-minute movie down day, in the first sequence, when Grant The public was being given the great to 55 minutes. Well, ofcourse I look like a calls his fellows-Edward Everett Hor- murderer. You listen to anyone on screen ton and Jean Dixon-to tell them he's in privilege of embracing Cary Grant and long enough, and you look as ifyou want love, he leaves with a cartWheel to the Ingrid Bergman together. It was a kind to go to bed with them, or kill them ... or door. This isn't out of place; it fits the pilgrim-like quest for well-being in of temporary menage atrois.\" both. The movies are always about sex Johnny Case that he might have studied and violence, even if people are stand- acrobatics in the evenings. But one feels No Grant admirer should turn away ing still and regarding one another. that the film has gauged the pent-up from his brusqueness in Notorious . physicality in Grant's borrowed-tie There is a risk of being cutting in all • courtliness and whispered to him about game-playing. Hawks had already used a somersault. What, do it here? In a pic- it in Only Angels Have Wings and His Girl I hope I'm making a fair attempt at ture? You're kidding. How easily the Friday, the latter the fiercest proof that if talking in Grant's voice. I'm trying it most elegant teases put themselves in the fun or the game ever stops then we'll because so often Grant speaks out of a the position of being sent up. But it die like rats in poisonous boredom. But film, as well as within it. He's like an happens; the story and the illusion halt Notorious is just about the only major uncle in a children's game, who knows and Grant at last goes end over end. But Grant film without a laugh or a smile, the kids are hiding and listening, and this is allowed because he has managed the work in which his relaxed dynamo is who throws them lines occasionally or- to let us hear his thoughts, Look, suppose most subjugated by a film's oppressive- as with the leg and the breast-aware ness. It's as if Grant had fallen quiet and that they are growing up fast, allows we do this . . .. r II show you . ...There, you morose, not quite sure that he wouldn't them just a beat, and then carries on, prefer the Claude Rains part. He seems talking to cover their laughter in the like it? Yes, I like it, too. So, let's do bitter, which suits his blaming security dark. It's a modest trick, maybe, to be a it . ... What? You mean you did it? You are agent: If you ask me Rains has got the dummy on the knee of the film, but a fox. I haven't seen anything as sharp as plum. You know, I like Claude. Look at Grant is an Archie who can nudge the him do that bit there-effortless. ventriloquist, scold him a little, and then you since the knife old Archie Leach used make fun of his pursed lips. Magic. Hitchcock had already helped Grant to cut his throat. appreciate the ambiguity in a husband's Grant's films picked up on this possi- Which brings us to the haunting mo- attentiveness. Suspicion is unthinkable bility very early, in a way that occurred without Grant's bravura insouciance; with no other great star. Everyone ment in His Girl Friday, a tremor in the played fair by the rules of a Joan Craw- great satin shroud of Hollywood illusion, ford vehicle, or a Gary Cooper picture.. when a razor slashes the cloth and a picture breathes, for an instant, with an idea ahead of its time-that nothing is so 62

Bringing Up Baby Blonde Venus center-Indiscreet I Was A Male War Bride intriguing about Hollywood as the pious world; and it intersects with His Girl The tantalizing giveaway epitomizes gravity with which everyone is lying and Friday's gallows humor. If it is a throw- Grant's art. It is there if you're not stu- dry-cleaning the lies. The authorities away, it is also the moment the film pid , quick enough to pick it up, and are threatening Grant's editor with jail- screams; but screams silently, as if to sensitive enough to work it out for your- as if the picture is not a series of cages- admit that American pictures are com- self. No one laid down such drastic stan- and the actor looks away from his ac- merciallies made by a few to please the dards of intelligence on the screen, or cusers, into the dark, and says, \"The last masses . was more scathing of sentimentality. man to say that to me was Archie Leach, Who's Archie? Any of you fellows ever just a week before he cut his throat.\" Despite those cartwheels, Grant was heard ofArchie? No , I think you've come no revolutionary. Sadness, optimism, to the wrong pLace . Every time I see the film, I want to and the disconcerting poker-faced smile hear more about Archie. The aside says are all he shows to his or the world's Only for a few years did American Boo! to the dream that a film is for every- disasters. \"Me, the life I want, the pictures keep that streamlined grace; one. Movies are made for any idiot with house I want, the fun I want\"-Johnny's fiLm nair is the first great slowing in Hol- 50 cents for a seat in the dark, while creed from Holiday, so lucid but so mis- lywood, and that is what makes the picture people stay up there, inanely taken as to what he thinks the first sister genre the treat of depressives. By 1952, wealthy but making HoLiday, wondering loves in him-tempts a Hemingway re- and Monkey Business, the older and if the suckers will fall for this or that, joinder, from The Sun Also Rises, wiser Howard Hawks is on to Grant's having fun making fools of themselves. \"Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?\" The mystery, but he tries to spell it out. At The aside nods back at the very dark this Archie Leach line is lost in the express the beginning of the film, an off-screen star escaped; it hints at what had to die action ofHis Girl Friday. You can't get at voice speaks to Grant, and calls him before he could look so good for the it, take it apart, and ask what it means. \"Cary,\" coaxing the actor into the action 63

FILm FORum but rebuking his absent-minded prema- tureness. It's a generous tribute, and an- ATWIN CINEMA NEXT DOOR TO SOHO other funny film, but just as Monkey Business is coarser than Bringing Up Presenting NYC premieres of independent films Baby, so Hawks doesn't realize that & retrospectives of foreign & American classics Grant needs no voice on the sound- track. He was always going in and out of Jan. 4-17: THE HORSE by Ali Ozgenturk his pictures-crossing the line, hobnob- Jan. 18-31: WHEN THE MOUNTAINS TREMBLE and bing with the camera. NICARAGUA: REPORT FROM THE FRONT It is only natural that his very best Feb. 1-14: SCRUBBERS by Mai Zetterling works-his most complex, amusing, but Feb. 15-28: CHORDS OF FAME and IN OUR HANDS unsettling pictures-are both studies in Feb. 29-Mar. 6: James Benning's AMERICAN DREAMS Hollywood fun, and in the particular de- Open 7 days a week. Call or write for calendar & member discount Information. light there is (or was) in making films. 57 Watts Street, NYC 10013 Box Office: (212)431-1590 Isn't screwball usually a metaphor for Hollywood? Bringing Up Baby and His Panially supponed by the NYS Council on the Ans & the National Endowment tor the Ans Girl Friday are checkmates of nonsense and intelligence: You've got to be very TIre1.7th smart and a little crazy to run a screwball. International Tournee of Animation The two pictures cherish intelli- A tribute to the animation artistry of the gence, but they wonder if it is not a National Film Board of Canada handicap in the wild world. The farther it ventures, the more its advantage looks A feature-length program of 21 award-winning animated films in 16mm, avail- ridiculous. David Huxley is tops on old able for theatrical and non-theatrical rental from: bones; and he is doing the infinite aca- demic work that keeps so many wise 4530 18TH STREET men out of action-putting together an SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. 94114 old skeleton. Walter Johnson is putting out a daily newspaper. He is more PHONE (415) 863-6100 worldly than Huxley, as cunning as re- pressed disenchantment. But what he produces clogs the gutter a few hours after its sensational release. The paper challenges ignorance and darkness just as Huxley's hope to name and label parts confronts the animal savagery that pre- vails in the jungles of Connecticut. The comedy is rife with desperation. These are portraits of madness and hu- miliation, corruption and callousness ~ offset by heroic idealism, a trust in fun, and a whimsical nostalgia for orderli- ness. A kind of demented originality is all that makes life supportable. As if the last razor-stroke could be averted, or as if marriage might still be admired, His Girl Friday seizes on a last chance in di- vorce-the ex-husband's fresh opportu- nity to woo back his wife. He succeeds, but because he out-talks her, out-plays her, directs her into something like sub- mission. Romance must arrange itself so wooing never stops. Hildy might as well acknowledge that she will be too bL sy on the paper to get married, that Walter and Grant, eschewing decent plot, will stand up at the altar and then trip her up on her way back to mother. Broken your clavicle? I suppose /' II fwve to look after you now. Crisis must continue if this love is to be secure. If Hildy wants Walter- and he does put the onus on her-then she will have to find new Bellamies (cousins to Bunbury) to provoke the in- 64

genuity that is as near as he can come to how to see, when to hurry, when to stop Cinema admitting love. So Grant can honor a and think. Grant's perplexed intelli- Studies: woman best of all by thinking fast for gence is always doing that on the screen: her. he counts the beat in a double take, he An education gallantly shields Susan's silk drawers, he for our tiIne Bringing Up Baby is the same legend, comments on the action-\"It never will a similar chase, even if it is run out-of- be clear as long as she's explaining it. \" Film is the art form that defines our doors. No one could hope for a settled He is on the screen, in skirts and tatters, time. Films by Eisenstein, Bergman, marriage between David and Susan; this or in a hat and in charge. No matter and Fassbinder, for instance, offer pen- doctor will be taken over by his wild which, he is also, always, a man in a chair etrating insights into human behavior, child. The \"fun\" he ends up appreciat- watching the film, chatting to it, sharp- cultural change, life as we live it and ing requires that the night of chasing ening its edge: There , now ifJ trim a bit perceive it At New York University's leopards go on forever. It is not so much off that, and then if she looks in the other Tisch School of the Arts, we believe Connecticut as a desert island (where direction, and I'll say. .. . Oh, yes, J like the study of film develops analytic Fridays live), a pitch, a court, or a board that. skills, hones critical thinking, and game where you can keep passing broadens perspectives. It offers under- \"Go.\" \"Because Cary is such a great Having fun , perched somewhere be- graduates superb preparation for many receiver. He was so marvelous. We fi- tween skill and exhilaration, Grant is of life's callings. nally got so that I'd say, \"Cary, this is a both the deft director of the circus and a good chance to do Number Seven.' kid in love with the show. Only such Our program in cinema studies Number Seven was trying to talk to a intense pleasure can rise above guilt or allows undergraduates to study film woman who was doing a lot of talking. doubt; on the brink, a game may be the with the same distinguished scholars We'd just do Number Seven. And he'd best way of forgetting and being oneself: who teach our graduate students. The have to find variations on that. He and Susan, this is a travesty. Now , please, I'll department's film archives, variety of Hepburn were just great together.\" put my hands over my eyes, and then you courses, and viewing facilities are go away. A pause, and there are Grant's exceptional. And, students have access That's for real; it's Hawks in an inter- hounded eyes again, wondering if we to all the film screenings that make view. But the sublime calling ofwinning saw it all right and asking us if we really New York City the richest film center plays is like playing screwball while Mu- intend to take such far-fetched bliss seri- in the world. nich hangs in the balance. That is not ously. Only Fred Astaire matches him in meant to be censorious. Still, screwball the way he grins at us apologetically, Because film is a truly interdisciplin- coincided with terrifying times, and its aware that these lumbering, expensive, ary art form, the program includes the stories shout and hurry to shut out the years-in-the-making things called study of related subjects: art, history, dread. Screwball is a lyric delirium away movies are really so silly-they are like a psychology, and even film production. from responsibility; its fun is made more lOOO-franc chip, cold and lost, between As a result, our students get a broadly heartbreaking because the dark eyes of the confectioner's custard bosoms of a based education as they undertake a Cary Grant guess how close the brink is. lady who doesn't know the language. J serious study of cinema It's hard to believe in a fuller paradise asked her what interest she proposed to than making Bringing Up Baby; the pic- pay me, but she didn' t seem to hear me . J For more information, return the ture and the process could go on forever, believe she thought J was going to retrieve coupon below or call (212) 598-7777 . the longing in all Hawks movies. That it... J ask you . I'd never do that. I've made lets us see how far the director is the it a policy: J never do that. Tisch School of the Arts. metaphor for life's most accommodating Our name is new. gentleman, a tactful manipulator whose To watch a Grant movie is to be in- cut and thrust are made gracious by the fected with this quick talk. Or, as the Our reputation is established. revels he designs. Katharine Hepburn character rejoices in Holiday, we clap hands because \"Life - - - - - - - - - - FcIiii4 Although his posture in the two pic- Tisch School of the Arts Admissions tures appears so different-the whip- walked into this house this morning.\" New York University cracking center of His Girl Friday, the One day, Hollywood will be remem- P.o. Box 909, Cooper Station bewildered, tottering follower of the bered for a perilous line of smart senti- New York , N .Y. 10276 trail in Bringing Up Baby-still Grant ment, and Cary Grant will be known as stands for the director. Susan is in a whirl its exemplar, just as Magritte's bowler- Please send information on the cinema studies of her own, as pretty and disruptive as a hatted straight man presides over program. leopard. David is the white hunter, still dreams. aware of how this all looks and sounds, o undergraduate 0 graduate still trying to recover the situation and • his dignity, and drawn to Susan as a Name lepidopterist might see a butterfly, its A first draft of this article was sent to colors and frills all jazzy with madness. Mr. Grant. He was anxious lest some Address My word, Howard, look at that one . What readers think he had actually said the a beauty! Look, I'll keep up with her, and if things I invent for him. Those lines are I Cily/SlaleiZip I you can keep up with me . . .. Justfollow- in italic. Anything in quotes was truly but walk, don't run. Got it? Walk quickly, said in a film, or by a director or a critic. I I ~~ Y? rk Uni ve rsity is an affirmative action/equal oppl'rlunity ofcourse . ... Oh, she's off! Susan, Susan! hope there is no misunderstanding. I'm coming! Cary Grant is 80 this January. Happy birthday, sir, and please know that some A director shows us where to look, of us would not think as highly of movies if it was not for you. ~ Lm~I~ __________ -.l 65

Pacino as \"Scarface\" Tony Montana before the bubbLes burst. by David Chute trade; a teeming arena in which prosti- \"We don't want them.\" But when the tutes were violated on stage by a sex- boats arrived in Cuba, they were also Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on athlete known as \"Superman.\" It was forced to carry back 25,000 unwanted doing it. clear, from his expression, that Michael passengers-hardened criminals knew that activities like his were respon- flushed out of Castro's prisons. \"That -Tony \"Scarface\" Camonte, 1932. sible for this squalor. son-of-a-bitch Castro is shitting all over us,\" fumes a U.S. immigration officer In The Godfather, Part II, Michael Later still, Michael watched as Cas- early in the film. Corleone went to festering pre-Castro tro's victorious troops stormed through Cuba to purchase a piece of the country. the city, cleansing Cuba of the lowlifes De Palma's producer, Martin A meeting was arranged there in which Corleone and his cronies had been feed- Bregman, is credited with the percep- Corleone and his mobster-ally Hyman lOgon. tion that the storyline of the '32 Scarface Roth sat down to bargain for shares with could be aptly updated by transplanting Battista officials and agents of American • it, virtually intact, from Chicago to mod- conglomerates. The \"legitimate\" busi- ern Miami, and by transforming its im- nessmen were not snobbish; they didn't In Brian De Palma's new Scarface, a migrant Italians (modeled on Capone seem to look down on the gangsters, and bloated re-make of the 1932 Howard and company) into immigrant Cubans each man took charge of the commodity Hawks classic, we see what happened to getting filthy rich from the cocaine traf- that he knew best. In Michael's case, it the refuse Castro swept away: It washed fic. The coke industry in Miami takes in just happened to be heroin. Business is up on the beach at Miami, and took root an estimated $100 billion a year (ten business. and flourished there. De Palma supplies times that of the film and TV industries an historical epigraph: In 1980, Castro combined), and an eruption of nouveau Later in Part II, Michael visited one of opened the Port of Mariel and invited wealth on that scale would have to gen- the fleshpots of Havana, to watch de- exiled Cuban refugees to sail in and col- erate an unparalleled display of garish bauched natives cater to the tourist lect their relatives: \"They cannot adapt overconsumption. What could be more to the spirit of our revolution,\" Castro bellows, in a snippet of newsreel film. 66

cinematic than that? And Scarface '83, as lieu, and its values lingered on-anach- strong. The intensity of Scarface's a would-be epic gangster picture, could ronistic sexual values, in particular. chainsaw scene-in which Tony's make good use ofthis bloated milieu, to Tony Montana, however, was uprooted friend's arm and leg are grotesquely am- extend and intensify the brutal themes and denatured long before he left home, putated-is essential, precisely because of the original. because the Cuban society that formed we need to see how quickly Tony shrugs him was already fundamentally corrupt. it off. The discrepancy between his re- The many screenwriters of the first action and ours is more horrifying than Scarface included Ben Hecht, John Lee A crucial distinction between Mon- the scene itself. Almost immediately, Mahin and W. R. Burnett, newspaper tana and Camonte is that Camonte at while our nerves are still fluttering , veterans who had met some real-life least had some clumsy high-cultural pre- Tony is using what he's been through to gangsters and harbored few illusions tensions and a yen for self-improve- score points with Robert Loggia's spon- about their inate nobility or sense of ment. He lived in a pre-pop period gey Lopez: \"My buddy died for this. I honor. Their Capone-figure, Tony Ca- when distinctions between high and low make you a present of it.\" monte, was just a dumb thug with a society still meant something; one rea- simian brow and a Chico Marx accent son Camonte wanted money was to buy Tony is described as a \"peasant\" by (Muni supposedly prepared for the role quality. Tony Montana craves only Michelle Pfeiffer's snooty Elvira. A hick by studying photographs of apes). quantity. He knows instinctively that from the sticks. And the garishness of Camonte has no natural leadership abil- quality is a discredited concept these the Miami mansion he acquires-with ity; he gets to the top (briefly) because days. There is no longer a functioning its solid-gold bathtub and red-velvet ca- he's hungrier and more impatient than cultural aristocracy, only poverty and sino wallpaper-is outlandish but everybody else, and has fewer inhibi- wealth-and Tony is obscenely rich. weirdly familiar. Tony has achieved the tions about violence. (De Palma's prob- He's a bold vulgarian who enjoys watch- same sort of kitsch splendor that aspiring lems with the MPAA are nothing new: small-timers always seem to crave-the Hawks' Scarface was banned in several Brian De Palma. Paul Snider of Star 80, for instance, states and bowdlerized by the Hays ing well-dressed Anglos squirm when he gawking at the Playboy Mansion, or Office.) talks dirty in a French restaurant; he Elvis enthroned in Las Vegas. Of knows he can rub their noses in it with course, there's an element of elitist Our first view of AI Pacino's serrated impunity. He flaunts his vulgarity and snobbery in most accounts of new-rich mug in the new Scarface confirms that savors it, wields it as a weapon. Even as a aspiration; Bob Fosse, in Star 80, seems the conception here-as worked out by billionaire he has an outlaw sensibility. to suggest that Snider is not really much Bregman, De Palma and screenwriter He wants to shock the world. different from Hugh Hefner or Peter Oliver Stone-runs along very similar Bogdanovich, but he still can't resist lines. Pacino's Tony Montana, too, has Pacino's performance is staggering on sneering at the guy for his gaudy clothes nothing going for him except his hunger, this primal level. You can feel Tony's and his social gaucheries. Scarface, too, his balls, and a garish Hawaiian shirt that hunger, and his willingness-his eager- comes dangerously close to suggesting pin-points his aesthetic sense. It would ness-to leap into violence. \"I would that Tony Montana is destroyed by his not be difficult to imagine Pacino's Tony kill a communist for fun,\" he says, \"but bad taste-not because he wants too Montana hanging around that live-sex for a green-card I carve him up real much or goes after it immorally, but just club in Havana, watching \"Superman\" nice.\" Pacino plays a man whose greed because he wants the wrong things- along with Michael Corleone. And then , is so intense that it becomes power. For cheap, flimsy, vulgar things that can't with a wolfish grin, Tony declares that Tony, a man with weak desires is a weak possibly be satisfying. his father was a visiting American; if man, and Tony's hunger makes him Corleone wasn't Tony's father in any lit- Every great movie gangster (someone eral sense, he definitely was figuratively. said) is Richard III in a double-breasted Tony is the bastard offspring of colonial suit; getting there is all the fun but being corruption. (The bestselling novel on the top of the world is a drag. Even Monimbo, by Robert Moss and Arnaud the Godfather saga says more or less the De Borchgrave, apparently suggests same thing. But Tony isn't tragic by a that Castro's convict-dump on the U.S. long shot, because he's too narrowly de- was a conscious attempt to \"destabilize\" fined in terms of appetite. Neurotic, ob- the country. De Palma might claim that sessive hunger is not a tragic flaw , it's a Castro was simply restoring these mu- sickness, like bulimia. \"This is it?\" tant children to their true, spiritual par- Tony wails. \"Eating? Fucking? Snort- ents.) ing?\"-and we don't feel much except disgust. One of the crucial visual motifs The Corleones brought an en- in Scarface is the acceleration of Tony's trenched cultural value system with cocaine consumption; the more he them to the U.S., and then maintained snorts, the more he needs. It's the story it against all comers. Part of what at- of his life. The grotesque climax of the tracted moviegoers to the Corleone clan coke subplot has Tony shoving his was their apparent self-sufficiency, as an whole face into the snowy mound alternate social unit. The Corleones be- h~aped up on his desk, grunting like a haved as if America were a colony of pig. theirs-and so, under Michael, the Cor- leone code was eroded from within. Howard Hawks conceded that Tony Hawks' Tony Camonte, too, was still Camonte was a bit \"childish.\" (\"Some rooted in a relatively solid old-world mi- toy, huh?\" Camonte beams, cradling his 67

new Tommy-gun. \"I'm gonna write my trusts himself. When he's finally drawn has blue-ribbon counter-cultural creden- out again (by Nancy Allen) he tries to tials: Consider Greetings (1968), Diony- name all over town with it, in big let- cancel out his past mistake with another sus in '69, Hi Mom! (1970) and even the clever technical ploy-planting a bug on God-awful Get to Know Your Rabbit ters!\") De Palma's Tony Montana, how- the girl, in a deadly situation, when he (1973). And he's maintained his links should be there in person to protect her. with the youth and rock cultures ever ever, is downright infantile. The coded since, in Phantom of the Paradise (1974) Blow Out is an artist's nightmare- and Home Movies (1980). You might say message of The Godfather (although not movie about what can happen if the art- De Palma has adapted Hitchcockian life balance is thrown out of whack. It shock techniques to fantasy-genre ver- of Part II) was that these mobsters just reaches a crescendo when the actual sions of the blast-in-the-face finale of death howl of a hooker, played by Mrs. Easy Rider. might be better people than we are. The Brian De Palma, is applied to the soundtrack of the latest cheesy horror This outraged pessimism in De message of the new Scaiface is that they picture-neatly solving the knotty tech- Palma's work is sometimes misidenti- nical problem . When we leave him, fied as \"nihilism.\" Similar mistakes are are much, much worse. Travolta's so far gone, it doesn't look like occasionally made about Sam Peckin- he's ever coming back. pah, too, whose distinctive stance (cack- De Palma's past films have expressed affection for the garish underside of pop- schlock, and his film style has redeemed schlock and made it beautiful. Why can't he redeem Tony, this monster with a schlocky soul? Does it have anything to do with an insidious determination to get really serious in this film, to put aside childish (or even infantile) things? I don't mean that De Palma should glorify Tony Montana, only that the film might work a little better if Tony was at least likable. As it is, we' re never thinking, \"What happened to Tony could happen to me.\" Instead we're thinking, \"God, he's gross! I'm sure glad I'm not like him. \" • In the spangled horror films that first established his notoriety, Brian De Palma displayed a grisly-minded prank- ster's sensibility. There's an implication in those early films that everything from menstruation to slit throats can furnish raw material for black humor, neon-lit and Turtle-waxed. Even when the plot's a shambles, De Palma stages episodes of carnage and catastrophe with so much verve you'd swear he was reveling in horror. And indeed, terms like \"nihilis- tic\" and \"sadistic\" are routinely em- Pacino's Michael Corleone. ployed (and by his friends more often than by his enemies). De Palma's trade- The reason De Palma's black sight- ling with laughter on the brink of the gags hurt so much, I think, is that he also abyss) is quite close to De Palma's. Sar- mark, in fact , is the horrorific closing stirs up enormous warmth for his belea- casm could be De Palma's New York-hip guered characters. Maliciously, perhaps, equivalent of Peckinpah's macho exis- kicker that's like the punchline of a sick just to make it hurt more later on? Not tentialism. At any rate, De Palma isn't likely. No director could work himself likely ever to please people who seek joke-the grasping hand in Carrie; John into such a froth over his characters' suf- \"affirmation\" at the movies. fering unless he felt it as his own. De Cassavetes' explosive demise in The Palma hates bullies too much (as Carrie None of this would matter much if De demonstrates) to have any ambitions in Palma was a less expressive stylist. Fury; the final lingering \"snuff' death- that direction. On the contrary-no There are lots of bitter Sixties hold-outs other recent American director has been floating around, but only this one could scream in Blow Out-in movies about as ironic or as playful as De Palma. He's have made The Fury. De Palma's images a professed disciple of Hitchcock (his (in that film especially) are the most gar- movies in which art does not imitate life, 1976 Obsession is virtually a re-make of ishly pop-influenced in current movies. Vertigo) who assumes a complicity in And De Palma differs from his peers- but devours it. wickedness between the viewer and the guys like Steven Spielberg, George moviemaker. He doesn't work us over, Miller, and Walter Hill-in entertain- The external threat in Blow Out (a but he does play rough. ment value, in combining sharp, bright comic-art graphics with an ltalianate ro- freaky government agent, played by Don't forget, Brian De Palma is one mantic sweep that's more like Coppola ofthe few leading lights of the New York or Scorsese. (And behind them all stands John Lithgow, and the cover-up conspir- film-school mafia (which includes Fran- Luchino Visconti.) cis Coppola and Martin Scorsese) who acy he represents) is just a catalyst for Objects don't throb with vitality in De horrors whose real roots are in our hero's personality. John Travolta plays a sound technician doing post-production dub- jobs on cheesy horror films. At the open- ing, he can't find just the right death-rat- tle for the soundtrack of the latest knife-kill flick. He has retreated into his work, because a failure in some wiring he did for the police caused the death of an undercover cop, and he no longer 68

Palma's images, as they do in fantasy material to wrestle with the real Scaiface are mostly decorative; they Spielberg's. Even when De Palma's world-and he's selected branch-out don't cut to the heart of the matter. De camera swoops and swerves ecstatically, projects based on a sense of his own gifts Palma's Scaiface isn't a metaphoric re- it observes static tableaux that are frozen that is so acute, it's scary. He fought for thinking of the first; it is the first, but and then enveloped in emotion, like the years to make a film about the Yablonsky with drugs instead of booze, in Miami stretched-out peak moments at a grand trade union murders. He actually instead of Chicago, and with different opera, when the music swirls around the worked for several months developing ethnic accents. Admittedly, Pacino gets stationary singers. There's a characteris- Prince ofthe City for Travolta, until some even more mileage from an accent than tic De Palma movement in the very first nitwit got cold feet and replaced him Meryl Streep did in Sophie's Choice . shot of Scaiface-the camera circling with Sidney Lumet. The Yablonsky There's nothing quite so droll here as warily around AI Pacino's Tony Montana story and Prince of the City are apt De Streep's Polish imitation of a Southern as he explains himself to some immigra- Palma projects for their tone and subject belle, but Pacino's obscenities are pretty tion officers, just after his arrival in the matter; Prince is such close kin to Blow rich. (My personal favorite is the word States, from Cuba. The gliding, pacing, Out that both films use that bit about the \"chit.\" As in, \"jou worless piece of back-and-forth shifts of position are an listening-wire on a cop that short-circuits chit! \") orchestral accompaniment to Pacino's in contact with his sweat and burns his virtuoso vocalizing. And whereas Peck- chest. And Scaiface is appropriate not In fairness, De Palma has not been well-served by Stone's screenplay, which is strong on structure (it sensibly preserves the solid plot of Scaiface '32) but very short on precise behavioral de- tail and dialogue. Stone favors pummel- ing repetition to make his points seem weightier. The premises of scenes are interesting, but what goes on in them often isn' t. The interactions between the characters don't take us any more deeply into the situations, or expand on them. The scenes are dramatically inert; they don't develop, they continue. The sight ofPacino lolling in his gold bathtub is a welcome one; what I missed most in the first Scaiface were scenes, like this, of Tony at the top savoring his new goodies. (In 1932, movies were not al- lowed to show crooks enjoying what they stole.) But that scene only has one real point to make-Tony is getting jaded- and that one point sits there on the screen, staring at us, for ten solid minu- John Travolta bugs Nancy Allen in Blow Out. tes. Scaiface isn't the \"epic character inpah, say, might use slow motion for an only for its bitter social outlook, but also study\" De Palma claims was intended; impressionistic effect, De Palma uses it because (as it's been updated) its visual it doesn't study Tony Montana, it just romantically, to extend and enhance the conception is absolutely in De Palma's watches him. And while we see Tony act emotional flavors of peak incidents in a range. It would be hard to imagine any up a lot, we never get to see him do story (the prom episode of Carrie, for real-world milieu that already looks much, even as a crook. Perhaps to nar- example, or the daringly extended more like a De Palma film than Tony row the focus on his personality, a lot of \"death-knell\" sequence in The Fury). Montana's-unless it's Elvis Presley's at Tony's actual professional activity has The only other area of popular culture Graceland. Or Jim Morrison's. been ignored, and it's activity we need • to see, to anchor and explain the person- where gleeful junkiness and surging ro- manticism mingle to this extent is in In a sense, even Scaiface is still a De ality-how, exactly, did this crass, certain kinds of grandiose rock music- Palma fantasy picture, because most of pushy, vulgar little creep harness his which is why it almost seems too good to it takes place inside the real-life dream personality and pull in so much dough? be true that De Palma's next announced world that Tony has fabricated for him- An aspect that was central in both the project, Fire, a Travolta rock picture, self. A man with almost unlimited old Scaiface and the two Godfather films will be to The Jim Morrison Story what wealth, and few inhibitions about using is mostly missing here-clear workaday The Rose was to The Janis Joplin Story. it, Tony creates an environment that's a information about how illicit enterprises (There were rights problems in both projected image of his soul. Thus, the operate. The journalists who wrote cases.) But it seems too good, in part, most important revelations of character Scaiface gave us a step-by-step account because \"De Palma's Scaiface\" sounds in Scaiface come to us through the vis- of exactly how Tony Camonte built up perfect, too-until you see the film. uals, in set designs and color schemes his bootlegging business: by intimidat- Has De Palma become a tad self-con- that envelop Tony in the trappings of a ing tavern owners in rival territories, pre- scious? In recent years he has repeatedly trash prince. cipitating gang warfare, and then rub- expressed an urge to \"branch out\" from But the really new elements of this bing out his rivals one by one. And 69

Mario Puzo's Godfather novel hailed a fat-suit. from the \"inside dope\" school of bestsel- ler pulp. There's nothing comparable in this In the Stone-De Palma Scarface we version to the brisk, pulpy payoffs of the are told, not shown, that Tony has been doing cocaine deals behind Frank Lo- original-like the bullets that bounce pez's back. But the information is con- fusing, because the only specific drug off the steel windows of Camonte's deal we have seen (with Paul Shanar's oily Sosa in Bolivia) was rejected by Lo- brownstone fortress , killing his all-too pez and then apparently abandoned. Later on, after Loggia is eliminated and beloved sister. (Slaughtered by a device Tony revives the Sosa deal, we find our- selves wondering again , \"How has Tony that's intended to protect her. Sounds a been keeping busy in the meantime?\" bit like BLow Out.) A paranoid obsession In comparison with true epics like The Godfather or The Leopard, De Palma's with security, as an obvious drawback of three-hour Scarface is a fraud. It doesn't come by its epic proportions naturally or sudden, illicit wealth, pops up in De honestly. The Godfather needs to be long because it's stuffed with incidents and Palma's Scarface, too, as the basis for detail; Scarface is long because De Palma wants it long. It has a compara- one of his funniest scenes. Every nook tively minor case of the Heaven's Gate Syndrome-an afflictive belief that an and cranny of Tony's mansion seems to PauL Muni in Hawks' Scarface. ordinary snappy story can be transmogri- be scrutinized by paranoid video cam- fied into an epic by making the sets bigger and the scene longer. The lithe eras which (declares Steven Bauer's as if turning the character into a lump of frame of Hawks' original is still discern- able , though, swaddled-up in the pro- Manny Ray), \"are eating up twelve per- pure aggression, like the Jake LaMotta duction values (and \"direction values\") of the new Scarface like a thin person in cent of our adjusted gross.\" (The resem- of Raging BuLL, will reveal some deeper, c16edifm d-tnal9sis ~eries blance to film-biz jargon is intentional, I darker truth about human nature. And presents a series of guides for hope.) The video installations are so even on its own dumb terms, De Palma screen writing study. elaborately fabricated and displayed that doesn't use this strategy consistently. Each book analyzes a film in detail, including the sequence every fiber of the moviegoer's being tin- You don't create a monster like Tony structure, the plots and subplots, act climaxes, scene structure, gles in anticipation of a pay-off. Perhaps Montana and then make the plot hinge and the elements of theme, Tony has depleted the company coffers upon his sudden unwillingness to kill P.!characterization, and ....... to such an extent that he will be unable women. Nothing else we've seen in motivation. ~~ to cough up the cash at some critical Tony has prepared us to accept the no- moment? Not quite. When it comes tion that he has scruples. time for the security system to prove De Palma has never been a great sto- itself, it functions perfectly; the assas- ryteller, but I've never felt before Scar- sins' approach is exhaustively recorded face that he was hemmed in by precon- on the monitors. But Tony is so far gone ceived ideas that didn't even make on coke by that time (and he's so accus- sense in terms of showmanship and au- tomed to the constant background drone dience involvement. Scarface looks of images) that he never even glances at marvelous, but a great visual scheme, the screens-which are clearly visible to alone, is not sufficient if the center us, right over Tony's shoulder. Their doesn't hold. There's not much focus or warnings are ignored. momentum in Scarface, and very little For a De Palma film , in fact, Scarface zest. It's De Palma's first really draggy is surprisingly clumsy in a lot of annoy- movie-earnest and methodical, grimly ing little ways. There are crowd scenes thought-out but rarely felt. here (at the distractingly mirrored Baby- I don't want to back myself into the lon Club, for instance) that are so con- assertion that it's always disaster time fusingly shot, we can't locate the princi- when an artist stops just doing things pals until we're right on top of them. instinctively and starts thinking out his The failure to get a fix on the characters steps beforehand. Movieland needs Guides are available visually is less serious, however, than more clear thinking, not less. If the anxi- for the following movies, as well as others: the failure to get a fix on them psycho- eties about ingrown activity that he ex- logically or morally. pressed in BLow Out are as real as they For the brother-sister incest theme, seem, it makes sense that De Palma • E. T- The Extra-Terrestrial for example, to be anything more than a might want to get outside his own fe- • Gandhi lurid leftover from 1932, there have to vered brain for a while, to muck about in • Tootsie be other facets in Tony Montana's na- the real world-to begin applying his • Raiders of the Lost Ark ture that might seem to jibe with it. But prodigious skills to objective, serious, • Chariots of Fire in his actions, this Tony never seems grown-up material, like a movie about • Star Wars ,....S-1-1-.9-5-e-a-c-h...., complicated or perverse enough to merit trade unions or even gangsters, since it's • Chinatown such a colorful obsesssion. All De Palma more or less the same ballgame. But • Citizen Kane (shipping • Casablanca included) can do is insist on its oddness visually, Scarface suggests that De Palma has with colored lighting and some creepy stiffened up, that he's not feeling quite Send check to: miniature tracking shots, as Giorgio so free and easy anymore. It's a stiff- The Film Analysis Series 5515 Jackson Drive, Suite 246 Moroder makes weird noises on the mu- jointed, lumbering hulk of a movie. La Mesa, CA 92041 sic track. Let's hope that next time he can ease up For catalog, send $1.00, which In fact, it seems to be Stone's and De and get the swing back in his step. will be refunded on first purchase. Palma's wish to strip the character of When De Palma swings, it's heaven. every impulse except the brutal ones- Scarface is more like the opposite. ~ 70

NEW RELEASES FROM NEW YORKER FILMS \"GENUINELY STARTLING! VISUALLY New Yorker Films is pleased to announce the BRIGHT AND ARRESTING. The right 16mm non-theatrical availability of IlQUID S~ the outrageous and startlingly original low- audiences are bound to appreciate the originality budget \"sleeper\" hit of 1983. Directed by Rus- sian emigre Slava Tsukerman, IlQUID SKY is a displayed here. not to mention the color. rage. modern fairy tale-a fabulous sci-fi fantasy nonchalance. sly humor. and ferocious fashion with a gorgeous high tech/high fashion look, about aliens from space who descend on the .......sense.\" -Janet Maslin. N.Y. Times ~' inhabitants of Manhattan's downtown \"punk\" ~--... scene in search of a strange euphoria-inducing chemical substance. Adazzling, funny, disturb- ing New Wl.ve black comedy that David Denby of New lVrk Magazine calls \"the funniest, craziest, dirtiest, most perversely beautiful science fiction movie ever made.\" \"'UQUID SKY' HAS STYLE TO GIVE AWAY! Impressively high-slick-strenously exotic. The film's humor is midnight dark.\" -J'. Hoberman. Village Voice \"A RARE AND UNUSUALTALENT! Tsukerman's deadpan delirium of a drug dream provides relief from the general run of movies.\" -Vincent Canby, NY Times ALSO: New Yorker Films is proud to announce the acquisition of selected titles from the Unifilm Collection: THE BATTLE OF CHILE BYE BYE BRAZIL GAIJIN THE LAST SUPPER LUCIA MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT MUDDY RIVER PIXOTE PORTRAIT OF TERESA XICA For information on additional titles, please contact New Yorker Films. tltfJ!!rbM 16 West 61st Street, New Vorl<, NV 10023 (212) 247-6110

• The End ofthe Not-Readyfor-Prime-Time News She'd trimmed her hair, lost some Good for nothing, it turned out. Over- by Richard Corliss weight, and bought a pair of glasses night cost NBC $7 million a year and I was an Overnight junkie. Come 1:30 whose lenses were approximately the brought in only $1 million in ad revenue A.M. five nights a week I would lay down the evening paper, take the floss out of span of the Mount Palomar telescope. (if you believe The New York Times re- my teeth, bell the cat, muzzle the baby, and turn to Channel 4 for NBC News These were the Snappy Talk Twins, port, which I don't-they spelled Overnight. There, sitting behind her low-tech desk, a gum-chewing wench monitoring the day's ructions with an Linda's name \"Ellerby\"). Whatever the named Linda Ellerbee would announce the day's top story in tones equally testy even stare and a not quite audible sigh. profit-and-Ioss statement, it does not in- and perky. Her partner Bill Schechner, looking like a rain-soaked basset hound The world's in a mess; tune in tomorrow clude such intangibles as exposure for on whom an impish child had pasted Groucho's mustache, would then find for more of the same. reporters, good will toward affiliate sta- some angel-hair thread that connected the night's other features. Michael Overnight wasn't only style. Thanks tions, and critical prestige. Announcing Devon's friendly synthesizer would pump out the Overnight theme; and all to general editor Ellerbee, senior pro- Overnight's demise, NBC news boss was well for another S8 minutes. This junkie was happy. The fix was on. Of Reuven Frank praised the show's non- the 367 Overnights that aired from July S, 1982 to December 2, 1983, I must pareil quality and ruefully added: \"Be- have seen about 330 (and most of the missing nigh ts I was ou t of the country.) ing the best is not enough.\" That state- Sometimes I even watched the Over- night reruns that Channel 4 would put on ment could serve as the obit for much at 4:30 A.M. The word \"fan\" has its root in \"fanatic.\" more than Overnight. It confirms that Rolling Stone called Overnight \"news the networks' news divisions are just an- for smart people.\" This doubtless re- ferred to such Mensa touches as the fic- other wholly owned subsidiary of A.C. tional staff member in charge of location (\"Archie P. Lago\") and the story leads Nielsen; that they refuse to make time relentlessly culled from Bartlett's Ob- scure Quotations (\"George Santayana for non-profit achievement, even for an once said . .. ,\" \"The British physician Sir Wilfred Grenfell once told his stu- hour in the middle of the night; that the dents ... ,\" \"In Johnny Belinda Jane Wy- man was heard to opine ... ,\" etc., etc.). pleas of a program's constituency (more But every evening's quotation could have come from Ambrose Bierce, be- than 10,000 letters, telegrams, bunches cause Overnight was really \"news for cynics\"-and for liberals, insomniacs, of flowers, songs, toys, and even some informaniacs, and animal lovers. money) don't amount to a Tinker's dam. Ellerbee's original co-anchor, Lloyd Dobyns (since banished to prime time Anchors Bill Schechner and Linda Ellerbee The best news show ever would have to for NBC's First Camera), set the show's close up shop. And so it went. tone with his hip, puckish style and a blase faire tag line swiped from Kurt ducer Cheryl Gould, and executive pro- Overnight went as it came: with class. Vonnegut, Jr.: \"And so it goes.\" By the time he departed, Ellerbee had estab- ducer Deborah Johnson-all these And with all its nettling, endearing ec- lished herself as the Queen of Tart: women!-it was a real news show (as centricities intact: the \"sports\" segment opposed to CBS News' dippy chatfest, that mostly ignored professional sports; Nightwatch, which continues in the 2-6 the inexhaustible run of Stupid Pet A.M. slot). Overnight's best regular re- Tapes; the filler items that often co- porter, Andrea Mitchell, covered the opted the show's third quarter-hour; the White House with a big wet blanket and tincture of condescension toward all kept the President's men on their toes, other news programs. Amazingly, the running for help. In her final story, re- Overnight people were every bit as good porting on Reagan~s affinity for the no- as they thought they were. The final news \"photo opportunities,\" Mitchell show's Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time- declared: \"Driving a tractor in Peoria News segment featured memorable TV beats having to explain unemployment news farewells: David Brinkley, Barbara . . .. Is there life after the photo op? .... Walters, Chet Huntley, the Ellerbee- With a tele-prompter Reagan can ex- Dobyns Weekend, and finally the WJM plain arms control; but without a script gang from the Mary Tyler Moore show. the stuff gets awfully complicated .. . . That fictional news family seems closer Reagan's aides describe the President as to the smart, human, cynical, soldiering- smart but lazy.\" As Ellerbee said of on Overnighters than any group on the Mitchell in the intro: \"She doesn't hate \"real\" news shows. These days Mary, Mr. Reagan. She isn't out to get him. Lou, Murray, Ted, and the rest live on She is, professionally, out to get the in syndication. Can a fan hope for the story. It's her job. At the White House, same with Overnight? Come on, NBC, it any White House, that's not easy to do. \" won't cost you a cent and it'd help a few Good story, good reporting, good writ- melancholy souls get through the night. mg. Let's hear it for Overnight reruns! 72

NEW RELEASES FROM NEW YORKER FILMS \"AN EXTREMELY GOOD FILM:' -Vincent Canb~.. N\\, Times \" ABSOLUTELY MAGICAL',' - Judith Crist, IXMQH .i'PoND ../.-~ j . & lt A New Yorter Films Release Plus: Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin-Feminin, Werner Herzog's Huie's Sermon and God's Angry Man, Edgardo Cozarinsky's One Man's War, Ababacar Samb's Jom, Ousmane Sembene's Mandabi. *The Atomic Cafe is available for non-theatrical rental only. CALL OR WRITE FOR OUR 1983 SPECIAL ATTRACTIONS CATALOGUE. et:l!t~~a 16 West 61 st Street, New York, NY 10023 (212) 247-6110

ooks That's the Game ofthe 'Breaks' . by Harlan Jacobson Pickford, Bill y Wilder, Barbara Rolling Breaks and Other Movie Busi- Stanwyck, Jackie Cooper, and Adolph ness, by Aljean Harmetz, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1983. $ 14.95. Zukor, when long past their career ze- Overlooked in the ge neral capital me- niths. Though no one anthologizes their lee of the Seventies, when Big Auto and Big Steel ran smack into Big Imports errors, the roster here shows a good eye because Big Oil and Big Government fell into bed wi th Big Sheik, the movie at work. business kept right on lurching along from oasis to oasis. Whatever its prob- Her look at \"Fonda at Forty\" should lems, and they are many, Hollywood- consistently a contributor to the net bal- be handed out by Fonda at large. (\"I've ance of payments-has never had to contend with Big Foreign Film. In fact, always been ashamed of privilege. It be- the only enemy it has ever had-with one or two notable exceptions- has gan with my not ever understanding been itself. why it was that the people who have a lot Our stories and storymakers reflect our state of being and are as vital to our are the ones other people are trying to sel f-image at home as they are to our image and revenues abroad. They are as give things to. \") Aljean perceives the crucial to our competitive stance as the cars we make, the foreign policy we set, political content to Fonda's and husband or the politics we endure-all areas es- sentially of trade reporting that have Tom Hayden's lives and sees that it runs long ago broadened out as central to the state.:of the union. It has only been since through even the seemingly innocuous the David Begelman contretemps at Co- lumbia , which began in 1977 but did not comedies of Fun with Dick and Jane and find its way into the pages of the Wall St . Journal until late that year, that coverage 9 to 5. But it also courses through of the entertainment industry became centered on something larger than what Fonda's trade show appearances which or who was onscreen. border on the pert and perky, as well as F or the past half-dozen years, good reporters have hovered around the busi- through her diet and fitness merchandis- ness side (it's called the movie business) in search of the elusive synthesis of fact ing, all of which is designed to make her and trend . Among others, they number David McClintick, ex- of the Journal, acceptable to the mainstream , while Dale Pollock of the Los Angeles Times, Stuart Byron, late of the Voice, and per- permitting her to continue shaping the haps most visibly, Aljean Harmetz of the New York Times. No one refers to her by public opinion bulge on political issues. anything but her first name, and no one in the business fails to refer to her. Aljean Harmetz. Fonda at 52 may want to be President Jane. Reading her just -published Rolling Breaks and Other Movie Business and Photoplay, is as instructive about her Aljean's portrait of Lucas is good, if (Knopf), a collection of profiles and re- portage that dates back to the Sixties perceptive intelligence and basic values surpassed by Pollock's book, Skywalk- when Aljean wrote for Motion Picture as it is about the limits of reporting: ing, in drawing out Lucas' hot-rodder Sometimes the questions stop one short character, but it stops shy of understand- of the big one, sometimes the story is ing that he is a latter-day Disney who has between the lines. always been at heart a producer in direc- The seemingly random organization tor's clothing. Her five pages on Jackie of Rolling Breaks actually coalesces Cooper at 58, lamenting his lost child- around two main themes: the way the hood, must limn her own reservations business works and the way it works on about child acting today. But that is ab- the people who work in it; and how the sent here and remains a back-burner outsider personalities of some major press issue even now , after the 1982 stars, directors and executives (who are Twilight Zone accident that killed two the new stars) teeter in delicate balance. children and actor Vic Morrow . There are short, readable chapters on Aljean's real strength, however, is her Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah, and understanding of the mechanics of the Jessica Lange written before they had business. While her gloss on the Be- translated into wide currency, and one gelman affair, written in 1980, is late on Larry Kasdan , who has become more reading now post-Indecent Exposure, she visible with the release of his The Big has her considerable moments else- Chill. There are profiles of Jack Ni- where. Her chapter on the new cable cholson, Jane Fonda, Rona Barrett, and video challenge to the theatrical dis- C3PO and R2D2, Martin Ritt, Sam tribution system demonstrates her fa- Arkoff and George Lucas all written at miliarity with the thought patterns and the height of their arc or when still ris- cant of the Hollywood oligopoly, just as ing. And there are sketches of Mary it evidences the hint of executives made 74

nervous for the first time over their vi- ing? The same weevil of timidity that A FILM BY RICK SCHMIDT sion about something larger than an in- eviscerated American initiative dividual film. It is the best of her busi- throughout its postwar industries also EMERALD ness fora ys, perhaps even the most lives in Hollywood . One reason L.A. CITIES cogent piece written on the industry's hasn' t been eaten alive by Toho, the corporate repositioning over the past two filmic equivalent of Honda, is that the Rick Schmidt's film style is blending the decades and the next two, but it begs Japanese resolutely refuse to learn mad-cap humor of the Marx Brothers, a two important questions. English, and movies are language and heady version of American surrealism, and culture specific in this country only. iconoclastic inspira:tion, perhaps, of Jean- The first is that of deregulation : how Also, whatever else it is , Hollywood is Luc Godard . long till it arrives in Hollywood? The still a Mecca for immigrants, space in- major companies want scrapped the an- vaders, hicks, and psychopaths, and - Vic Skolnick titrust agreements that altered and gov- they make things happen . New Community Cinema erned their conduct since 1948. They point to the dispersion of production to Aljean's examination ofthe MPAArat- EMERALD CITIES is an exhilarating pop independent producers (which is some- ing system or her anatomization of a cultural explosion. thing of a sham), as well as the predomi- sneak preview-while good slices of the nance of HBO in the cable market mechanics of both processes and their - Michael Silverblatt (which is not), as proof of the agree- effects on the people and pictures that L.A. Weekly ments' obsolescence and irrelevance. endure them-don' t push far enough. Aljean amply chronicles the major stu- So we sweat with Alan Ladd, Jr. over the EMERALD CITIES also attacks, in its way, dio chairmens' disavowal of interest in Dallas sneak of Outland, or commiserate contemporary life .. . by satirizing obvious owning the technological\"hardware\" with Daniel Melnick, who refused to murksprings of the American Way. and their confidence in the continuing sneak Making Love out of fear that ex- worth of \"software,\" or film production. hibitors would attend and reject the film - Calvin Ahlgren As Alan Hirschfield, chairman of 20th for its handling of the homosexual S.F. Chronical Century-Fox, is quoted: \"You can't sell plotline. But if what Melnick (a favorite milk without the cows, and I've got the of hers, it seems) told Aljean -is symp- FILM FESTIVALS 1983 cows. \" tomatic of how the business thinks (\"If ROTTERDAM you're setting out to entertain and an SYDNEY But Hirschfield , as Aljean notes, audience isn't entertained, you had bet- FLORENCE glows with talk about the \"electronic ter rethink what you've done.\") and I cottage,\" with its home video hearth think it is, then it shouldn't be terribly The film juxtaposes the Santa Claus myth, that can recapture the movie audience hard to see why revenues are up but nuclear war, punk rock, hypnotic self- that vanished over the last 30 years. Ex- attendance is down. The public's recep- analysis, psychedelic drugs and video trapolated, greater video \"penetration\" tivity to programming is a complex is- manipulation - you know, all that stuff we (in the colorful argot of the MBAs) sue, but it's apparent that the only gam- usually think about. Featuring FLIPPER and means the death of all movie theaters ble the companies take (or used to take) THE MUTANTS, this is one of the best in- that can't compete, or which the major is on the size of the ante, which makes dependent films we've seen all year - it companies do not buy in a deregulated them gamblers, period. Whoa! Let puts SMITHEREENS to shame. era. It also portends more than simply George, Steven and Francis take real putting back the production and theatri- risk-not us. - Bruce D. Rhodewalt, cal distribution pieces that were split Marci Marks, Craig Lee apart in the late Forties under anti-trust In Rolling Breaks, the larger questions law. A hands-off policy by the Justice are notable for their absence: Does the L.A. DEE DA Department now would essentially per- film industry have to drive into the fu- mit anew, vertical reintegration of the ture looking squarely into the rearview As with Schmidt's earlier 1988-THE industry, with production also control- mirror of its overplush car (per McLu- REMAKE, EMERALD CITIES displays ling theatrical and video distribution. han), and isn't this an endemic problem editorial wizardry which mixes moods and of American leadership, whether in De- media in a dizzying pace which at first may That would be a stunning reversal of troit, Pittsburgh or Washington? Will seem haphazard, but which at a second the antitrust tide that began a century marketplace deregulation and union re- glance takes on an order which its material ago with banking, continued through trenchment compensate for scared lead- would seem incapable of prodUCing. brokerage and belatedly culminated ership? with the dismantling of AT&T (much to - Jon Jost even liberals' trepidation today), but There are good moments here, partic- would be entirely consistent with ularly in the Arkoff, Fonda and Peckin- 90 minutes, color, 16mm, 1983 Washington's rethinking ofwhat is and is pah profiles, and in the general selection not fair competition in a global market- of topics. But even the book's title, For bookings and information please place. It may be that film companies which derives from the constantly rede- telephone : owning and supplying the evolving fined and receding point of profit typical distribution apparatus could result in of most movie deals, Aljean offers only (201) 891-8240 a concentration of revenues and power as a metaphorical inscription. Not permitting someone in Hollywood to enough, finally. Rolling Breaks keeps Or write take risk again. It may well not. rolling away, after so much intelligent elucidation, just at the point when the That brings up the second begged big payoff seems onhand at last.~ question: What happened to risk tak- 75

Hart Beats Backstage at the Ballet. In rehearsal for Swan Lake in Derek H art's Backstage at the Kirov. by N aney Vreeland burg, its theater the Maryinsky. After Hammer's behalf); other Hammer films the revolution, the Kirov's great teacher, reflect his longtime activities on behalf \"The dancers said: 'You have written of Soviet-Sino-American relations. Not us a beautiful poem,''' said Kenneth Vaganova, codified her method. In 1957 surprisingly, the millionaire's movies Locker, executive producer of Back- make money. Backstage at the Kirov cost stage at the Kirov . \"You don't imagine the Kirov school was renamed for her: $450,000, including a fee to the Soviet people talking to each other and hug- hers are the \"Children of Theater Ministry of Broadcasting. By Decem- ging and smiling and having a wonderful Street\" we meet in another dance ber, it had almost broken even on fo- time-and my god, I've had wonderful reign sales in 20 countries. times in Russia, \" added Derek Hart. movie . From the Kirov have come many of Watching Kirov, one is struck by the Backstage at the Kirov is a valentine in sameness of ballet companies, not the the form of a feature-length documen- classical ballet's great treasures, and differences. Yes, there is the exceptional tary, a love letter sent publicly at a mo- many of the American stage's great corps the film features , but the disci- ment when it is not so fashionable to ballet architects and heartthrobs: pline, however harsh , is a standard of love anything Russian. The sender is Balanchine, Nureyev, Makarova, ballet life everywhere. The French Derek Hart, its writer/director; the re- terms of ballet steps fall from the lips of cipient is the corps de ballet of the Kirov Baryshnikov. Russian teachers just as they do from Ballet, which celebrated its 200th anni- Derek Hart shot Kirov in six weeks, ballet teachers worldwide: glisse, versary last year. using a British crew financed by Armand chasse, pirouette . Before the revolution, the Kirov was Hammer Productions, which since 1979 The voice-over of the movie is in called the Imperial Ballet of St. Peters- has produced some three dozen non- theatrical and documentary films. Some English, but Hart interweaves subtitles, have been of the \"You and Your Oil Der- Russians speaking English , and voice- rick\" ilk (Hart, a former ballet dancer with the Stuttgart and Ballet Rambert, has shot oil wells in Colorado on Dr. 76

over translations , which-heard over onstage apotheosis in the role, briefly, at ROBERT J. FLAHERTY the muted background voices of the Russians-are marvels. Each \"charac- the close of the film , it is in rehearsals A Biography ter\" has an American voice, but with a Paul Rotha Russian accent. These voices were that we most appreciate her. Here, in Edited by fay Ruby taped in Hollywood, using Russian- \"Flaherty'S life and his person- American actors who do not speak per- the offstage footage , we can feel her ality are the stuff of stories, and fect English, but English as Russians his work remains a central grace, the ruffled movements of her milestone in the history of speak it. film .\" The interviews and \"dancer-in-the- head, the way she can murmur with her -Larry Gross, Editor, Studies in Visual Communication street\" shots establish both Kirov's back- arms. Unfortunately, there is nothing of \"Of first rate quality and of ground-filled with the school, its re- tremendous importance to hearsals, meetings, and a bit of historical a swan in Mezensteva, who makes a students of the documentary footage-and Hart's story line. The off- film and of world cinema.\" stage scenes contain the most lyrical ma- perfectly dreadful Odette. Even her -William T. Murphy, National terial in the movie and the best solo Archives performances , odd for a film built partner, Konstantin Zaklinsky, makes a This captivating biography around Act II of Swan Lake. And there is presents a totally new perspec- grandeur in the counterpoint of archival better Siegfried rehearsing by himself tive on Flaherty, producer of footage Hart located in the Herman Ax- Nanook of the North, Moana, e1bank Film Collection at Stanford Uni- than as her beloved. . Man ofAran, and other pioneer- versity: St. Petersburg at the turn of the ing documentaries. century, carriages, tillers in the fields, Hart chose well in showing us Swan 448 pages, 52 illustrations and then, the Revolution. $25.00 cloth Lake, for the corps does well by him, by • upp us, and by the Kirov, but his ballet star Director of photography Ian Strasburg University of Pennsylvania Press may never again find images of purer undermines his movie. Although her 3933 Walnut Street beauty than the 10-year old ballerinas of Philadelphia 19104 the Vaganova School, and no more per- technique is perfect, one supposes, Me- fect moment than the instant one of rf~ RTS them stifles a miniature, fairy sneeze. In zensteva's interpretation is terrifically their cotton undershirtS and panties, Film Music Is these endearing, enduring, and ador- odd. The role of Odette is lyrical; she is Our Forte able little girls catch at one's heart. They are utterly exquisite, transparent; Stras- the leader of a flock of poetical crea- Exclusive Soundtrack Selections burg reveals them as little Botticelli And Umited Editions! maidens. tures. Mezensteva's Odette is cold, ma- Over 1,000,000 LP'S available: Equally touching in another way are nipulative, overly dramatic yet totally In-Print and Out-of-Print, an array of the stocky women who teach and coach, imports, highly-desired reissues, and for each of these tough old babes is withholding. She is Odile, the flip-side original casts (on and off Broadway). likely one of those little ones grown up. This is the story of even the greatest of Odette, the white swan who appears We offer the finest service ballerinas: one begins and one ends available - monthly auctions by mail one's career in the classroom, taking and in another act and is often danced by the (rare, unique titles), the only monthly then passing on one's great art. Fdmusic Newsletter \"Music Gazette\" same ballerina; Odile is the black swan. Hart focuses on one young ballerina For YOUR copy of our extensive in between these two extremes, Altynai Mezensteva's got them mixed up. catalog, a sample of \"Music Gazette\" Assylmuratova, the Kirov's rising star. ($2 value), and monthly auction, We meet her at a turning point in her One wonders if the film's audience Please Remit $1.00 TODAY TO: career, and Hart is not above applying a will be mixed up, too. SwanLake's story- RTS, Dept. 21A twist of A Star if Born to the film. He line never emerges from amidst all the P.O. Box 1829 chose to film Assylmuratova both as a Novato, California 94948 member of the swan corps in Swan Lake, plu mage, but it probably does not and in her first (was it really?) appear- 415/883/2179, Tues 12-4 pm ance as the Swan Queen. Assylmuratova need to. It is enough , and more, to see more than justifies Hart's attention, for she is a lush, romantic ballerina, much the corps lining its eyes, being laced into more in the mold of an Alicia Alonso, from what we see here, than a Galina tutus , rustling about in the wings. For Mezensteva, the 1971 Vaganova gradu- ate who dances Odette, the Swan much of the onstage time, we see Queen, for most of the film's onstage segments. through ballerina eyes, as the camera Although we do see Assylmuratova dances along, or seems to. Although this is not, as Armand Hammer's publicity states, \"an innovative method\" - Charles Atlas , Merce Cunningham's cinematographer, is one filmmaker whose use of camera-as-dancer comes to mind-Strasburg's use of a Steadicam is wonderful, smooth and exciting. The Steadicam allows Strasburg a special point of view: we see as dancers see, with occasional cuts to full prosce- nium audience point-of-view, then to TVclose-up. We become the swan corps. Running onto the stage, we see the other swan's backs. It makes one want to see the entire ballet from the back. Here, as critic Mindy Aloff has pointed out, is the source of the Kirov ballerina's power. If you think of ballet as stiff, you have only to see these supple spines, these fluent shoulder blades, to learn otherwise. As their movement ceases, and the camera pans in on the lovely, momentar- ily stilled faces silently beading with sweat, we see that the hardest work, and the most important, is to be a member of the corps. Backstage at the Kirov shows 77

ORIGINAL AMERICAN & EUROPEAN / us a lamentable Swan Queen dancing to a lugubriously paced score (a pace which MOVIE POSTERS I Hart, incidentally, approves); it shows us snatches of execrable modern chore- LOBBY CARDS AND PRESSBOOKS;11 ography in rehearsal. \"Oh, come on, this will never work,\" the poor soloist in one i?t fll~ ~()II?/J>I(I\\I ~ J>4~ 1--- dreadful piece says after she is dragged (()1?~4~/()()()41?()/l4~(J about; one agrees with her. But, it also J I--:-- shows us a beautiful theater in which a stout old charwoman who, as the harpist ,i I--I- begins to rehearse her cadenza, waves her heavy hands in the air just like a ::j, - l- ballerina marking her part. And it intro- duces us to Assylmuratova, who we sur- 1; ~11(~(()(I\\/f4§§UI~()11? - l- ely want to see again and again. fUllll?/f()I?()/II?Uff4UI - t-- There is much of life intersecting art in Kirov and its making: Somewhere, ... MAN~ MORE -- bobbing up and down in the swan corps in the wings, is Ludmilla Lopokova, -- who had married into and divorced out of the Kopokov famil y-dynastic in r--- Ru ss ian ballet-before Derek Hart went to Russia. Now, she is Hart's own 1- - swan. As he made this movie, Hart fell in love. Before he left Russia , he mar- I--t-- ried Ludmilla. By the time you read this, he hopes she will be here with him, , -t-- free to come and go with him. Says Hart, , -t-- \"I've made the movie of my dreams ... and I fell in love. For me the film was a f\"'.-:-:~/-~:«;-:\"·~:' A \";·'·'';:'v __ :.~ _ ·'''':~i.'::;:..,-1~. \"',:C\"~:r, ~ 1 ~'{:4t. < M mechanism for a very graceful unfolding I of my own life. \" ® L- HEAVILY ILLUSTRATED CATALOG FILLED WITH INFO - - PHOTO CREDITS: C BS Television : y iFor the Advanced Collector & Novice. $5. Walter Reuben/Box - / - p.26. Columbia Pictures: p.23(2). Francois Du- 26 6, pe~t. /Aystir' jX 7187~8 1 1 1 1 1 1 I I I hame l-Mega: p.4. Film Society of Lincoln Ce n- I 1 ter: p . 12, 15, 70. Filmways: p.69. Alfred A. Knopf: p.74. Ladd Co.: p.23(1). MGM /UA: /I p.16,49 Museum of Modern Art Film Stills Ar- chive: p. 9,10, 11,14,25,50,51 ,52 ,53 ,59,60(1 ,2), Quality stills, 61,(1,2,3), 63(1,2,3,4,5). Orion: p.29. Para- original posters, mou nt Pictures: p.15 , 18(1), 19(4,5) , 68 (I) . rare lobby cards PBS: p.27. 20th Century-Fox: p. 18(2), 19(1 ,2). U ni versa l Pictures: p .2, 19(3),66,67,68(2). Wa rn er Bros.: p.18(3). Specific CONTRIBUTORS Inquiries David Chute writes on film for the L.A. Welcomed Herald-Examiner. Cliff Froehlich is an Catalog editor at C.Y. Mosby Publishing and re- $4.00 views films for the Riveifront Times in St. Some of The Caine Mutiny 27x41 Louis. Todd McCarthy is a staff writer our posters Jou rney Into Fear 27 x41 available : Now, Voyager 27x41 for Daily Variety. A frequent contributor Racket Buster 27x41 Roman Scandals 22x28 to the Village Voice , Marcia Pally is arts Shane 14x36 editor ofTheN.Y. Native. Lloyd Rose is Sign of the Cross 27 x41 A Woman's Face 14x 36 literary manager and dramaturg at the Collections Bought, Sold,Traded New Playwrights Theater in Wash- CI~~ '\"@~[)~ ington, D.C. and a freelance writer on 12.6 P.M. Tuesday·Saturday (415) 776-9988 film. David Thomson is a San Fran- 1488 Vallejo St. at Polk, San Francisco,Ca., 94109 cisco-based film critic. Nancy Vreeland is a contributing editor to Dance Magazine. Dan Yakir lives In New York and writes on film. 78

The Historyof Movie Photography ALL NEW IN '84 INTERNATIONAL FILM GUIDE: 1984. Peter Cowie, ed. Celebrating 21 years as the world's most useful film annual. News , THE SHAPE OF RAGE: The Films of reviews , and stills from 60 countries . THE HISTORY OF MOVIE David Cronenberg. Piers Handling , ed. Over 500 pages of vital information. Illus- PHOTOGRAPHY . Brian Coe . A The first book about Canada's \"Baron of trated. Paper $11.95. fascinating study of the art of Blood .\" Director of THE DEAD ZONE , VIDEODROME, SCANNERS, THE INTERNATIONAL MUSIC GUIDE: 1984 cinematography from its beginn ings BROOD ... creator of everyone's ultimate Jane Dudman, ed . This all new '84 Edition through sound and color to widescreen fantasies and nightmares. A detailed focuses on trends in good music and and 3-D . Lavishly illustrated with full- exploration of his films plus an extensive music-making around the world . Reports color photos and diagrams . Oversize . interview offer unique insights into the from more than 25 countries take you to 176 pp. cloth $24 .95 . man and his controversial works. Illus- trated with many previously unpublished the best concerts and operas, and intro- MOVIES FROM THE MANSION : A photographs , this book is a must for all duce you to world reknowned composers History of Pinewood Studios . George horror/sci ence-fiction fans and Cronen- and soloists. Plus expanded sections on Perry. The story of Eng land's most berg followers . Complete filmography Early Music , major music festivals, music famous and colorful movie studio . with credits. Paper $11.95. schools, scores, music shops, etc. illus- Oversize and heavily illustrated . 192 pp. trated. Paper $11 .95 . cloth $19 .95 . INTERNATIONAL TV AND VIDEO GUIDE: 1984. Olli Tuomola, ed. The HOLLYWOOD: THE FIRST HUNDRED brand new 2nd Edition of this com- prehensive annual is packed with infor- YEARS . Bruce T. Torrence . The story of THE FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY mation on visual technology, from current programming to the latest equipment. America 's own Shangri-la by one of CALENDAR With an essay by James Reports from more than 30 countries on Hollywood 's native sons . Illustrated with Monaco . In 1792 , the French had a television and video programs, movies , and personalities . Plus surveys of the more than 300 stunning duotone better idea : a new calendar free of best video cassette sources, magazines, photographs from the author's personal unreason , superstition , and tyranny I We shops, U.S. cable stations, etc. Illus- archives . 288 pp. cloth $24 .95/paper think it's time to revive the calendar trated . Paper $11.95. $15 .95 . (even if the revolution must wait). Twelve NEW YORK ZOETROPE months of thirty days (plus five holidays publishes more than ninety at the end of the year). And best of all- books on film, media and ten-day weeks . Think of the weekends! paper $5 .95 . - Qther subjects. - - - -- - -- - - - - - - - - - - - -- - ----- - ---- -- - - - Hello Zoetrope : o Send me the following books, I've o Also send me your free catalogue . enclosed the proper amount plus NAME _____________________ $1.50 for postage and handling (2.00 for 5 or more books). Thanks l ADDRESS ________________- Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. _ -_ _ _ _ _ _ ZIP _ _ __ NYS residents add 8 Y. % sales ta x. NEW YORK ZOETROPE Suite 516 Dept M84 80 East 11th Street New York 10003

Quiz Number 5: The Class Picture Show QUIZ #5 is relatively easy: any ea- we' ll toss them into our giant FILM Youth (youth) and the Argentine film dot COMMENT tumbler and pick a winner at gle-eyed film buff or first-year med stu- random. Said random winner, whose dot dot ( . .. ); in the third paragraph, dent should figure it out in no time. Just name will be announced next issue, gets identify and assemble the pictures a free year of the magazine. Send all en- Point Blank (point ); in the fifth , The shown above. Your entry may be either a tries to FILM COMMENT Quiz #5, 140 collage of these elements or a sketch us- West 65th St. New York, N.Y. 10023. Space Children (the children); and at ing the identifying numbers (one through 14) in place of the photos. QUIZ #4 contained a bunch of the beginning of the sixth, Bullet for a There is only one correct answer to the quiz; ifwe receive more than one correct semi-hidden film titles. There were also Bad11U1n (. For a bad-man . . . ). Our win- entry before the February 13 deadline, five \"sneaky\" titles, all involving punc- tuation: in the first paragraph, Accent on ner, with 169 correct titles (printed be- low), is the indefatigable Morton Tankus of New York City. Congrats to Mr. Thankus and our tanks to all the readers who participated. -R.C. Visions . Romance•. Marry . Youth . Move. Rhino . Desire . Stand-In . Boy. The Bed . Delicious. The Flame. MOlher. Caprice. Rice . lee. Life. Hot Blood . Blood. Blood Mania . Light. Pleasure Cruise . The Crea- tures . The Word. Hope . World Premiere . Judith. Princess Daisy. Gold . On Golden Pond. Che. Trash. Daydreams . Dreams .IThe Happy Ending . Happy End. II Happened to Jane . Bustin' Loose. Smart Alec. Smark Alecks . Pop . Love . The Encyclopedia of Sex• . Sex . Marquis . Russia. The Front. The Front Page . Street Angel. Angel. Lights . Rape . Ape. Dangerous . Rampage . Illid t. Passion. Shopworn, More . Parade . Wicked . Tycoon. Sand. Slim . I WUSA. Sin. Kean. Hotel . Money. Lolita . England Made Me . The Law. Stale Fair. Reno. Lonesome. Scarface . Caravan . Stranded. Marooned . Them . Divine· . Star. Wonder Bar. China . China Girl . Rapt . Rapture . Free. The Point . Sleep . The Corridor. Power. The Four-Poster. Rich and Strange . I Network . Work . Rain . Nap . Film . Charade. Desire Me·. Remember? Remember Wh en. Hot Stuff. Tim . Rawhide. Actors and Sin•. Ashanti. Woman . Woman Obsessed . Obsessed . Posse. Possession. Condemned . Fear. Redemption. Wlfemistress. Anna . Claudia . Who ? Can-Can . The Car. Th e Card. The Cardinal . Kes . Brute Force . Kismet. Dondi.I The Women. Wo men. The Men . The Child. The Children. ass. Wagner. Masada . Sodal . Ada. She . Mammy. M·A·S· H . Shame . Eva. Ora . Kelly. Lydia . Diane . Contract. Artists and Models . Artists and Models Abroad . Elsa. Mannequin . Fashions. Spark. Together. Together Again . The Osterman Weekend. um . D .O .A . The End. I Bad. Eve . Inspiration . Mud Honey . Honey. Angel Face . Wicked Wicked . Wicked Woman . The Lower Depths. Glas. Eve . Venom. Villain. Ju stice . /' d Rather Be Rich . (. =film titles not cited by Morton Tan1cus .) 80

brances by Sidney Luft, who guidedJudy's return to stardom. It's a collector's item that will brighten up every home video library! And it's available now at your local video store. \\MRNER HOME VIDEO A Warner Communications Company Write far our latest caIIIIag:4000 Warner Blvd., Burbank, CA91522.