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incest no, we don't have incest,suicide, you name it, the whole whiz. RUSS MEYER Ars Gratia Artis M·G·M MOTTO Sometimes you wonder what it's all about. ON FILM
THE LONDON FILM SCHOOL
Our intensive two-year courses concentrate on the arts and techniques of professional film-
making. Our studio in central London is, however, within easy reach of most picture galleries,
museums, concert halls, theatres, cinemas, etc. Students are therefore ideally situated to keep
up with the other arts at first hand.
Narrow specialisation is discouraged: every student is expected to reach a reasonable
standard in all departments-and to pass tests in the practical use of cameras, etc. During
the second year each student should achieve fully professional results in any job allocated
to him.
All films are based on the students' own original work. The choice of subjects-and of jobs-
is largely democratic, especially in the first year-but films must be made within the required
budget. Advice is given by experienced film-makers and production is supervised by pro-
fessional course directors. Course Directors within the last year include: Charles Crichton,
Sidney Cole, Guy Hamilton, Desmond Davis, Clive Donner, Michael Truman, Wolf Rilla,
and James Clark.

QUALIFICATIONS CURRICULUM
Scholarships or grants previously awarded by any Apart from lectures and practicals all Students must
educational authority, government or Foundation do work on at least six films:
not necessarily guarantee acceptance by the school.
Students must be able to understand and communicate 1 16 mm. black and white silent exterior location films
in English at an advanced level. Students must be pre- with Bolex camera in units of 6, each member under-
pared to work hard in an environment that is more a taking all jobs.
workshop than an academy. 2 16 mm. black and white location sound films, interior
Although there is no official minimum age, no candi- and/or exterior, no Iip-synch. with Arriflex Camera
date is enrolled immediately on completion of his with zoom. Units of 5 or 6. (Note: Colour will be
secondary education. Candidates are invited to apply at used on this exercise from Course No. 54 onwards.)
this time for an interview, in order that their potenti- 3 35 mm. black and white Studio sound films (Cameftex,
alities may be assessed. If considered suitable they will Newman, etc., cameras). No Iip-synch. Units of 5 or 6.
be given provisional acceptance for a later course, but
will be expected to work or travel for a year or so 4 16 mm. short individual colour films-one to be made
before actually joining the school. by each student. Arriflex with zoom. Units of 3...or 4.
Candidates who are already graduates of Universities 5 35 mm. black and white Studio dialogue film with full
or colleges may be accepted without this requirement. lip-synchronisation. Mitchell Camera with Blimp and
velocilator. Units of 9 to 12. It is possible to work
on more than one film.
For Overseas Residents
6 Final exercise in 16 mm. or 35 mm., colour or black
DIPLOMA COURSE and white. Units of 4 to 7.
Applicants from abroad must be university graduates A one-year course in animation is available either
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For Residents of the United Kingdom

DATES
Minimum educational requirements are a university COURSE 55 11th January 1971
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experience of film-making may be accepted in some COURSE 57 27th September 1971
cases. Applicants will be asked to submit work and COURSE 58 lOth January 1972
must in all cases attend for at least one interview at
this school; they may also be interviewed by their local Note: A complete self-contained course commences
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~HE LONDON FILM SCHOOL, 24 SHELTON STREET, LONDON, W.C.2
ii
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 please THE MOVIES AS MEDIUM
• An Anthology Selected, Arranged and Introduced

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fora This book undertakes to investigate the nature of the

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free The essays collected here-written by experts in

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iv
Five
enlightening films
from BP
'The Shadow of Progress' 'Oil-theTwo-Way Benefit' ~------------l
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 National Film
Theatres
and
SouthBankl
Waterloo
The Autumn period at the National
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auditorium will run in tandem with
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In November the 14th London Film
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To coincide with-and complement-
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the World's film festivals plus a
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vi
 Contents Autumn 197o
VOLUME 39 NO 4

Features 172 The Crisis We Deserve: KEVIN BILLINGTON,

JOHN BOORMAN, KEVIN BROWNLOW, JAMES CLARK,
DICK CLEMENT, PETER HALL
185 In the Picture
196 The Conformist
211 Festivals 70: Berlin, Edinburgh, Venice
225 Correspondence
226 Notes on Contributors
228 Film Guide

Articles 179 Ma Barker to von Richthofen: an interview with

Roger Corman: PHILIP STRICK
183 Bloody Mama: TOM MILNE
188 It's Not Quite All True: RICHARD WILSON
194 Welles' Immortal Story: JOSEPH McBRIDE
198 Dateline: Reports on Death in Venice,
Bloody Sunday and The Go-Between:
MARGARET HINXMAN, JOHN RUSSELL TAYLOR
204 New York 1970: the Year of the Foof:ELLIOTT STEIN
208 Hello, Sister: RICHARD KOSZARSKI

Film Reviews 216 A Passion: PHILIP STRICK

217 Fellini Satyricon: JOHN RUSSELL TAYLOR
218 Catch-22: STEPHEN FARBER
219 A Married Couple: PHILIP STRICK
220 Getting Straight: JAN DAWSON
220 The Kremlin letter: JOHN RUSSELL TAYLOR
220 The Virgin and the Gypsy: NIGEL ANDREWS
221 Downhill Racer: PENELOPE HOUSTON
222 Antonio das Mortes: MIKE WALLINGTON

Book Reviews 223 When the Movies Were Young and History of the
American Film Industry: DAVID ROBINSON
223 Film in the Third Reich: DAVID WILSON
224 Mauritz Stiller och hans filmer, 1912-1916:
NEVILLE HUNNINGS

Cover: Dustin Hoffman in Arthur Penn's

'Little Big Man'

Editor: Penelope Houston Associate: Tom Milne

Designer: John Harmer Business Manager: John Smoker

SIGHT AND SOUND Is an Independent critical magazine sponsored and published

by the British Film Institute. It is not an organ for the expression of official British
Film Institute policy; signed articles represent the views of their authors.

Copyright «:l 1970 by The British Film Institute. EDITORIAL. PUBLISHING AND ADVER-
TISING OFFICES: British Film Institute. 81 Dean Street. London. W.1. (01-437 4355).
Entered as 2nd class matter at the Post Office, New York, N.Y. Printed in England. Published
and distributed in the U.S.A. by SIGHT AND SOUND. All American subscriptions and
advertising enquiries should be directed to Eastern News Distributors Inc.. 155 West 15th
Street, New York 10011.

171
ABOVE: PETER COOK. DENHOLM ELLIOTT IN "THE RISE AND RISE OF MICHAEL RIMMER ". RIGHT: "LEO THE LAST".

4 1970: a small procession marches through Soho,

A
UGUST
headed by a brass band which sounds from a distance like
the 76 trombones but proves, on closer inspection, to be
more bravely modest. These are film technicians protesting
THE about the Boreham Wood closure, and they don't really look
as though they expected their band to penetrate the walls of
Wardour Street. There is a long, sad list of defunct studios

CRISIS behind them, all the way back to Baling and Beaconsfield and
Korda's Denham. The British cinema's present state of
depression revives many old questions; about our vulner-
ability as a province of the American production empire,
WE about the creaking and complex structures of the industry. It
follows a period of excitement and some waste and intermit-
tent promise. It comes at a time when technological change is

DESERVE
bound soon to affect the way we see films.
We asked a number of the younger British film-makers for
their views, putting specific questions with the idea that these
should be regarded not as a questionnaire but rather as a frame
of reference. What do film-makers feel about the context-
not only economic-in which pictures are now being made?
Although, as expected, the questions produced more indirect
comment than specific answers, they are printed here for
reference.

172
QuestiOnS TO BILLINGTON/
BOORMAN I BROWNLOW I CLARK I CLEMENT I HALL
1 Are you at present making/planning a picture? Have you 5 Do you think 'Swinging London' etc. had much to do with
personally had projects cancelled or postponed recently, or helping to sell British films abroad, and that now London's
run into budget problems you mightn't have expected a year no longer such a fashionable place that is a further problem?
or so ago? Or that other factors overwhelmingly outweigh this one?
6 Now that we have the evidence of the first productions, do
2 Is there simply a shortage of cash, or also a real crisis of
confidence-failure of nerve with themes that might look you see Bryan Forbes' programme as providing new scope,
hard to sell, and so on ? or new answers ?

Do you think British directors (and producers) made the

7 With audiences, the move now is towards the development
3 best use of the years of easy American investment? Were
of all sorts of extra-commercial outlets (ICA, Other
Cinema, etc.). Do you see this as something on its own? Do
too many non-viable pictures made? Has a wave receded you foresee, in production, any rapprochement between
without leaving enough that's solid to build on? 'commercial' and 'underground'?
Part of Hollywood's answer is to chase the youth market. 8 Do you think there is a reluctance among the more
4 Do you see that happening here? Do you think, as has been significant British film-makers to take on 'commercial'
suggested, that people running the British industry are just subjects-to do a thriller, for instance? Or that there
too old? Or that directors and writers aren't interested? aren't now any 'commercial' subjects anyhow?
(No British Strawberry Statements or Alice's Restau- 9 Do you think fundamental problems remain unchanged-
rants ... ?) Or that it would be a false move anyway- difficulties of a circuit release, conservatism offilm bookers,
commercially or otherwise ? etc.? Or do you think there are new and different issues?
 tions : about Britain, about what's happening in England,
about elections and polls. Whatever one thought about this
film, if it was going to make any money the time to put it out
was clearly before the election. And what really disconcerts
Kevin me about the industry is not necessarily that they are bad
about art, but that they so often seem bad at the business side
Billington of things.
Early this year I was due to start a film, but it was turned
down by Bryan Forbes. So this regeneration of the British
cinema didn't happen for me, at least not in that particular
area. I'm glad to say that the film is now being made by some-
one else-with American money. But this was particularly a
to make The Light at the Edge of the World, with
l
AM ABOUT
British film, it was a small picture, and everyone involved said,
Kirk Douglas and Yul Brynner; and I think this particular 'Yes, we'll take percentages, we'll cut our money down.'
picture shows a way in which films can be made without Everyone concerned did all those things you are told to do ...
using the old system. This is not an alternative to the big and the picture didn't get off the ground.
studio system, or an alternative to native British production. I don't know the quality of the pictures Bryan Forbes has
It is simply a way that one should perhaps be thinking of as put out, because I haven't yet seen them. One thing, though,
another possible outlet for oneself, for making films. that I couldn't understand about the whole set-up was that it
This is in fact a Spanish-French-Italian co-production; the seemed from the beginning as though Bryan Forbes was
money comes from one country, from a bank, given guarantees saddling himself-or being saddled-with a situation that
through distributors in various countries. It's very difficult to everyone said had been wrong with Hollywood. That was the
do; it's set up with about 23 co-production deals; there are link between the studio and the film-maker; running a studio
problems about casting and about language. It puts much more while at the same time you are making films, rather than
strain on a director, because he is very much a director, a having a studio as space which someone comes and hires. This
producer, a politician, a tactician-all the things he should be was one thing that went wrong in Hollywood. It was a big
anyway if he's going to make a picture. But it is a way to make thing to carry along, and having to keep so many hundred or
films; and that's the important thing. Two years ago, agents thousand men employed is not necessarily compatible with
and directors could sit at home and the phones rang and the making interesting pictures.
scripts arrived. Now you have to put yourself in a more There is no easy solution to all this. The other day somebody
vulnerable and exposed position-one that in some ways you was saying that stars should take less money. I agree: let them
could possibly be criticised for taking-by entering into take less money. But that isn't the real cause of the crisis.
situations where you accept limitations from the start. When Most of the film industry's problems are caused by things
you make a film there are always limitations-your talent, happening outside it: the general economic situation in
time, money. This is another one: that you have to persuade a America being the absolutely principal one. There are people
lot of people in different countries, and not just one person or in the tin-tacks industry who are out of work, people in the
one studio, that your film is worth making. aero-space industry. Look at the number of men Boeing have
Although it is much harder, I see this method as being one laid off in the last year. They don't blame the stars for that.
possible line of hope. I think I speak positively at the moment The interesting thing about the film industry-it always
because I am making a picture. We're all individualistic: if has been-is that it's like the stock exchange squared. In
you are working, you're working so hard that you tend to other words, they work entirely on bulls and bears, extremes
become selfish. The worst thing for me at the moment is the of optimism and pessimism. This is what it is to be part of
number of people I know with real talent, at every level, who this particular industry, and one has to face it. Every few years
aren't working. And an awful thing about the cinema is the times are really good; every few years times are absolutely
way 'failure' or 'success' depends on whether you are working terrible. And somehow in between never comes, and there
or not working. It's almost like the nineteenth century puritan never is a normal state. The great crisis of confidence in
view that a man who wasn't in work didn't deserve work ... England, I would say, has probably been the whole Boreham
But if you are about to start working yourself, or are in the Wood business. In America, however, it happened long before.
middle of a picture, it is very difficult to visualise being out. I was in America in spring 1969, when everything seemed
I was out, as they say, for almost two years after Interlude, marvellous. By the end of the summer. .. it was all disaster.
and looking back I can't make out whether that was me or the But I saw in Variety today that the actual takings are 14 per
industry. Now I would blame the terrible state of the industry, cent up on the same time last year, and the top ten pictures are
whereas two years ago I just thought, 'Well, my things aren't taking much more money. Of course the top films are doing
working out . . .' Various plans fell through; like everyone it all ... But it is still an industry which needs product: some-
else, I worked for months on projects which collapsed. But one has got to make some pictures. The link between the stock
to me two years not making a film was two years wasted, and market and the film industry is so clear to me that I'm amazed
the effect of this time was to make me realise that you really nobody has mentioned it. Because when you are paying 15 per
have to work to make films: you can't just wait for it to cent for your money, of course you are going to be careful how
happen. If you sit back for the ideal film, then you will never you spend it. But towards the end of this year, I think money
make it, ever. The marvellous work in films has generally been will be pouring into America, because some big films are doing
done by people who kept working ... And this is a craft as well. And of course everything ties up. Cambodia, Vietnam ...
well as an art. You have to keep practising it. You'd laugh if If Nixon can sort that out, confidence will come back.
someone said he was a carpenter, and you asked him, 'What I find that a lot of your questions seem to imagine there is
have you done in the last couple of years?' and he said, 'Well, something called the British Film Industry. But where is this
actually I've spent most of the time reading ... ' How can you thing, this creature? I can't find it. More and more, it seems
call yourself a film director if you don't make films? But you to me a world industry, and really it is a question of the
have to go out and find them, and it is harder being in the individuals in it. Provided they can find work, it doesn't seem
industry now. to me terribly important whether it is at Shepperton, or abroad,
The problem is not just making films; it is also getting them or wherever. .. I'm doing my bit to help the British film
shown. I made a film last year, The Rise and Rise of Michael industry, because I'm making a Spanish-French-Italian
Rimmer, which I think fits exactly what you're asking here- picture, with no English money at all, and I have an English
about British films, going into British problems. The British Z, continuity girl, an English editor, an English costume designer
really ... it was a comedy, of course. But the film hasn't been and an English casting director. And I'm using an English
shown yet. It should have been shown early in the year, before boat in the film ...
the election, because some things we did will now look like But in Britain a couple of years ago, the idea was that if you
being wise after the event whereas in fact they were predic- walked down Wardour Street holding a camera you were

174
likely to be dragged in and made to make a film. We all know we hope to publish concrete plans soon.
that a lot of very bad films were made, but this was the As to the British industry itself, what is there left to say
atmosphere: the whole swinging nonsense, and the idea that if about it? American money flooded in when it was 30 to 40 per
a film was made in England, and the skirts were up to here, cent cheaper to make pictures here. The American unions
then it had to be a success. You can't blame anybody, or put have made big concessions and the price gap has been
your finger on one particular cause: lots of people got considerably closed. This must be very damaging to our
caught up in that mood, playing the old film industry game of prospects.
follow my leader. And in the same way, if anyone now says, 'I
am going to save the British film industry,' you know that he
can't do it. Nobody can, no one man, because there are too
many links with too many other factors.
The answers I've seen to the problems range all the way
from 'Let's have the Polish Film School and state control' to
'Ah, well, it's a pity, it's a terrible industry .. .' Neither Kevin
of which is very helpful. But perhaps one problem in the
film industry is that we haven't had any Tolpuddle Martyrs Brownlow
yet, in the sense that through the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the
growth of trade unionism, an attitude was taken by groups of
people. No real attitude, it seems to me, has yet been taken
by the people in the industry, to know exactly what it is that
they want. When times are good, it's every man for himself;
when times are bad, it's a general wringing of hands. THIS CRISIS IS NOT the result of a sudden withdrawal of
American finance. It is the end result of a process which
(Edited from a tape recording.) has been steadily exacting its toll since the end of the war.
When I joined the industry in 1955, technicians were still
talking in sepulchral tones of the Great Slump of 1947. Since
then, the union has fought hard to ensure that such a crisis
never occurred again; they operated a closed shop, they
boosted crews to unprecedented proportions, they constantly
raised the limits on salaries. Now, they have circulated a
John panic-stricken notice headed: Will You Be Working Next
Year? Thank you for your concern, brothers. I haven't been
Boorman working this year.
No one learned anything from the Great Slump of 1947, and
audience figures have gone downhill ever since. Soon, motion
pictures will be relegated to the role of the theatre: culture for
the privileged minority.
FOR THE LAST SIX MONTHS J have been making a script (with One sad product of the current crisis has been the canoni-
Rospo Pallenberg) of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. I have sation of Bryan Forbes as the Saviour of the Industry-by
now submitted script and budget to United Artists, who people who couldn't wait to lash out at the standard of his
have financed the venture thus far, and I await their verdict. studio's output. Forbes is as much a prisoner of the system as
The film is an epic fantasy and will be expensive to make. anyone else in the feature business. Responsible for vast sums
Presumably, United Artists will hold the script in one hand of money, he is forced to play safe. The first three films have
and the budget in the other and weigh their chances. Other been disappointing only to those who believed the ABPC
factors will influence them-their borrowing power, current publicity, and looked forward to 'a fresh, vigorous approach,
interest rates, how much they have committed to other films, with young talent providing the impetus.' The result is the
the state of the world, the weather in New York, etc. Since mixture as before: you can't stampede the film industry.
they have already invested money in this project, they Andrew Mollo and I have long been veterans of the awe-
obviously wish to make it. Now they must decide whether or inspiring conservatism of the picture business. Project after
not it is good business. project has faded away, starved of enthusiasm, enmeshed in a
Even in bad times, one thing is in the film-maker's favour. muddled web of apathy, uncertainty and deceit. They are all
The distributors have huge staffs spread across the world, received with that phony bonhomie we have grown to expect
chains of cinemas, studios, offices, overheads. This cumbersome from producers: 'Why, this is a very, very remarkable script.
beast which renders so many films unprofitable is at the same It'll make a very, very wonderful motion picture. No, I mean
time a monster that demands to be fed. It is cheaper to make that. Sincerely... '
films than not to make them. And under all this tightrope
walking and financial acrobatics is the safety net of television 'Part of Hollywood's answer is to chase the youth market,'
sales. you say. 'Do you see that happening here?' It has already
We are all caught in this precarious, inefficient system and happened. And it has already failed. Paramount, as an example,
subject to its vagaries and hysterical pressures. It lumbers from were splashing out money, entrusting projects to young
crisis to crisis, dragging us with it. It lives in a permanent state directors, just a couple of years ago. But those young directors
of collapse. It dictates what we make, and what we fail to make. had to have proved themselves as commercial propositions
It is always behind the times, unadventurous, greedy. I don't in some other field-the theatre, television, photography and,
like the system, but it's all we've got. It gives access to a big, in one case, as a pop singer. At this period, only two men
classless, world-wide audience, and this is important. It managed to become film directors by working their way
would be tragic if film became as disassociated from a mass through the ranks of the film industry: Anthony Harvey and
audience as are the other arts. Nicholas Roeg.
However, other distribution systems must come into being. Television produced Ken Loach-a few more talents like
The sex-circuit has sprung up all over the world with its own that, and it will be worth having a slump. Television, in any
cinemas and distribution system. Only by broadening the case, is more likely to produce committed film-makers than the
basis of exhibition-small automated cinemas, cassettes, the feature industry. And at least you work in television. If you
Other Cinema, etc., will it be possible to extend the range and stick to your guns and try to get a feature set up, you will have
type of film made. And only by pressure from these parallel your time wasted by a display of stupidity it would be libellous
systems will the existing one reform itself. to expand upon.
I have recently had discussions with a number of directors Waste is the film industry's primary activity. It wastes
about new ways of financing and distributing our pictures and money in a fashion that would once have been considered

175
immoral. Worse still, it wastes time. In the old days, a director times its production cost before showing a profit (some put
could expect to make a feature in three months, from start to this figure higher) would seem unnecessary-and those actors
finish. In exceptional cases, he could manage six pictures a year. and technicians who agree to participation in lieu of salary
Now it takes several years from the inception of the idea, rarely see a return. The expenses are too easily loaded, and
through the writing of the script, the endless vacuous inter- there is little opportunity for producers to check.
views with producers and distributors and the on-again, off- The merchandising of films is lamentably old-fashioned;
again period of production. A director of thirty will be even the advertising misjudges public taste. It's surely time
fortunate, if present conditions continue, to make ten pictures that film people realised that they are in the Leisure Business,
throughout the entire course of his life ... which involves participation with the public on all levels.
So far, there has only been one way to make professional Frankly, I see no reason why we should not go to the public if
pictures-the wrong way. The fact that some remarkable the public won't come to us. Television is, to a large degree,
pictures have resulted from a ridiculous system is a tribute to an outlet-not so much an art-and it is to this outlet that we
the creative technicians, not the producers. No sensible should be looking. I see no barrier, once the box in the corner
producer would permit the kind of situation where two people has been supplanted by the more sophisticated wall-screens.
are in front of the camera, and a hundred and fifty are behind This will leave the cinemas in the large urban areas to cater
it. So far, the unions have successfully forced this anomaly, to the 'carriage trade'-for the events and spectacles and for
for no one has had the courage to oppose them. Now that the reruns of successful films already seen on TV.
industry has sunk through sheer weight of numbers, will the There is much talk of cassettes in the trade press, as if they
union permit their members to work in a more rational way? in themselves offer some salvation. Obviously they will have
Will they allow them to work on films that don't conform some influence on cinema, but are basically ideal for self-
to the agreement? A feature film can be made by a crew of five teaching. They will be used also as a circulating library for
or six. But you risk being blacklisted if you try it. old feature films, and we may see the death of the 16 mm.
The people who run this industry have always been library which demands more elaborate and expensive
frightened. They have always avoided important themes, hardware.
stayed well clear of political pictures. But those of us committed The British cinema has rarely been politically involved-
to a better film industry are not well served by people who lay and it can't be denied that we are living through a particularly
the blame on producers and distributors. Conservatism and grey period. America is in political and racial turmoil, so their
ineptitude have marked their trail, certainly, but the blame lies cinema reflects that situation. France, during the Algerian war,
fairly and squarely with us-the creative technicians. We have produced committed films. Germany, politically placid for
put up with these people, and played their game, according to years, has remained cinematically impotent. The only recent
their rules. We have collaborated to the point of extinction. We British film with any socially conscious strength was Kes,
have accepted salaries we knew were out of all proportion to which was really dealing with problems of provincial secondary
our effort. We did nothing to try to create a better atmosphere, education (the boy/bird story being a sub-plot, or the sugar
or a more rational system. We played along because it was on the pill); and look at the stormy passage that had.
easy and profitable. We had the industry we deserved-now Our cinema won't grow balls until it grows up, and some-
we have the crisis we deserve. how I have the feeling that the pre-pubescent stage is just
ending. Even if we're not exactly heading for maturity, at
least most people would agree that adolescence is both
confusing and exciting-a period of change and discovery. I,
for one, am anticipating it with an intensity of delight I haven't
felt for years.
James
Clark
Dick
YOU ASK ME QUESTIONS which I may not be qualified to Clement
answer-so the following observations are really random
thoughts caused by the present crisis.
That our industry is experiencing a severe tremor is undeni-
able. All the old ideas of audience requirements, production
costs and merchandising are no longer applicable. Perhaps, in A FEW YEARS AGO the Americans were all of a sudden in love
five years time, the movie business will be unrecognisable. with the idea of British directors. It was one of those band-
Perhaps there will be less production (jobs for fewer people), wagon movements which seem typical of American culture.
and perhaps the number of cinemas will decrease (less Inevitably, because it was an irrational love affair, it produced
potential audience), but it all amounts to a change-almost a some fairly terrible movies. It provided great opportunities
revolution in the whole concept of cinema. This, to me, is the for new directors, however, and one or two have managed
excitement, the anticipation of an upheaval long overdue, and to break through.
I'm a delighted participant. I am at present preparing a film which will be entirely
The British cinema has been whoring long enough, living off financed from the continent. Perhaps this is one answer to
immoral dollar earnings. It has taken an American recession the receding tide of American finance. Certainly it is a fact
to bring us finally to our senses, and the first three (British that France can still produce people who are 'stars' within
financed) films from EMI have merely confirmed the paucity their own country, and whose names can provide finance
of talent that remains to us. It is clear that the industry, as an on their own. We can't do this in England because para-
organised whole, barely exists. Rank make very few pictures. doxically we are saddled with the burden of a common
EMI supply the quota requirements for ABC, and after that language with America. Our 'stars' have to make it on both
there is precious little-an occasional home-grown product sides of the Atlantic. If you reply, to hell with stars, that's
from British Lion, and some independently financed pictures fine. But in spite of the films that have made it without
looking for the highest bidder and a circuit release, often them, most backers still feel reassured to have them around.
failing. Add the odd bit of porn and you see the dismal scene. And the old, old casting arguments still go on about getting
Meanwhile, the elephantine system of distribution and exhibi- a name for the fifth most important part-you know-'Why
tion continues to grind on, their overheads too large, their don't we get Yul Brynner to play the Staffordshire country
excesses too gross. That a film should be required to make 2! doctor?'

176
 Perhaps because of this need to keep an eye on the Ameri- fact, more rigorous than those which are necessary in an
cans at all times, we have lost any sense of having our own ordinary monogamous marriage. The film is about the in-
film culture. I can only think of one film which felt really escapable ethics of human relationships. The first draft
'British' in the recent past and that is Kes. Not that I care, script was liked by many people and nobody said no: the
all that much. I don't believe in a Daily Express 'Now at trouble was that nobody said yes either. (A producer I know
last we've beaten the Americans at their own game' kind of always keeps his spirits up by saying of any subject, 'I am
jingoism. I myself feel completely international in my attitude getting no "noes" on this subject.') I thought that after
to film-making. But it is a pity that people can't flourish in Three Into Two Won't Go, I would have little difficulty in
the sort of thing they do best. setting up this project. It was not expensive, it was funny,
The other film I'm preparing with my partner, Ian la it also exposed the inconsistencies in our modern liberal
Frenais, is a thriller and it is entirely British in background. morality. But given the fact that most companies this summer
We've taken no money for the idea. We're just writing the are dedicated to the safe policy of making no films at all,
screenplay whenever we're solvent. As far as I'm concerned perhaps it wasn't a difficult film to refuse. Perhaps it is not
it's the most personal film I've yet been involved in. But one daring and shocking enough. Perhaps it would be too like a
can't afford to be personal all the time. rather outspoken television play. Anyway I could not get it
A lot of things that are wrong are the same old things. moving, although I'm sure it would have been easy two or
The distribution, of course. And the hopeless trend following three years ago.
of people jumping on yesterday's bandwagons. In the end My other project was a film set in Suffolk and based on
it amounts to a lack of taste. In a way we haven't even got Ronald Blythe's bestseller Akenfield. This subject would
good bad taste in Britain. If you're going to go out and make always have been difficult to find the money for. It is a study
Airport or The Adventurers, fine. Can you see anyone making of the break-up of an English village. I believe the story is
them, or their equivalent, over here? So we get safe little very commercial. because I think that people all over the
middle of the road films-each way bets which come fourth urban West are wondering where their communities went to
and please nobody. and at what point they lost their families and their contact
Incidentally, there has been a lot of talk about people with their environment.
taking lower fees and a percentage of the profits. It's splendid I want to shoot the film with no actors-using a village
and logical. But to go with it, we also need honest book- in Suffolk and real people. It is a very cheap film to make.
keeping so that the profits really are worked out fairly. A A feature made like a documentary. It also happens personally
few people are working towards this. Not yet enough. to be the thing that I want to do most. The major companies
In the last year I've had two projects cancelled. It's been a were very nervous ('No actors! Incomprehensible accents!
very frustrating year. I feel ultimately confident in the future Who cares about an English village even if the book was a
of the industry-but that is using the word in its broadest bestseller in America?') There was also an underlying feeling
sense. A lot of people who have been in the business merely that the film was not expensive enough to be 'a real movie'.
to find the crock of gold at the end of Easy Rider Meets I therefore tried television companies. They found it too
Gidget will have to go back to real estate first. expensive to be a television film. I am not going to give either
of these projects up, because I happen to believe that they
could be unique.
The crisis of confidence in the industry is because we have
lost our audience. Producers do not know what to make.
Most pictures fail. My local cinema is empty, even for the
greatest London hits. Nobody in my little country town
Peter seems very interested in going to the cinema any more. I
don't blame them. Television is cheaper and more comfortable.
Hall I think we all have to avoid middle-of-the-road pictures
done in a middle-brow way which lack any character or
uniqueness. It is still sensible to make an expensive picture
if the money lavished on it makes it unique and not the
product of a tired formula. It is even more sensible, in my
1 AM AT PRESENT engaged in intensive preparation for a film view, to make a small budget picture which is unique because
of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World for Dimitri de Grun- it is unusual. I shall only get Akenfield made by taking my
wald. It is planned to begin shooting early next year. It is technicians into partnership with me on a sharing basis,
obviously a large picture, but we are trying to make the cost really doing the thing cheaply.
sensible and economic by detailed planning at an early stage. I am personally glad that the easy years of American invest-
At the same time, therefore, that Dennis Cannan and I are ment are over. They did not encourage uniqueness of product
working on the screenplay, I am also beginning work with because the Americans were, and are, essentially absentee
the art director. It is obvious to industry that planning saves landlords. What we have to sell here is British creative talent
money. But the conditions of the film industry do not ordi- -writers, actors, directors. Absentee landlords are not the
narily a1low it. Proper planning costs money and money is best judges of how to cherish the uniqueness of those talents.
usually unavailable in the preparatory stages of a film. When It's always subject to 'the coast'.
the film is definitely going to be made-that is, when the We have to recognise that we have allowed the British
money is forthcoming on the basis of the script-everything film industry to collapse. Now the Americans have gone,
is improvised hastily and, therefore, expensively. In this case, there is no industry. I would like to see small budget pictures
sufficient money has been made available in the early stages. financed by Government in the same way that the Arts
This is why I am very grateful to de Grunwald, who has not Council has encouraged the theatre. In this way experiments
only given me a marvellous subject but the right conditions could be tried and new talents developed. I don't want a
to plan it. For me, film-making should be controlled impro- nationalised industry. I do want competition. I think that
visation. But without a plan it is financial and artistic chaos. the cinema industry depends on a dialogue between art and
I have had no film projects cancelled in the last twelve commerce to maintain its health. At the moment it is aU
months, but there are two projects which I failed to get commerce. A national film production unit could put the
finance for. They are worth describing, as I think they illus- commercial boys on their toes.
trate a dilemma in the industry. The renaissance in the British theatre has really been
The first script was based on Lorna Pegram's book Summer produced by subsidy. I believe this has had a good effect on
Fires. It studied the problems of a man living with two wives, the commercial theatre as well. A great deal of the British
only one of whom could have children. The rules and con- commercial theatre now has heavy American investment in
ventions that the characters had to impose on each other to it. But so far the Americans have not taken over. If they do,
make an emotionally charged situation bearable were, in the product will cease to be home-grown, and the West End

177
will become an extension of Broadway. There will then be I think its influence was insignificant.
nothing to export. The parallel with the present state of the I believe that a director must only do what he wants to do.
film industry is obvious. But personally I think that directors should direct. Here I
But I believe that the present chaos will finally be healthy. am speaking for myself. I need to work, and I believe I work
The industry as a whole has to recognise that films no longer better if I continue to work. I know many talented directors
automatically make money. It is incredible that it has taken who spend so long waiting for the right subject that the actual
twenty years for this fact to sink into anybody's head. I act of making a film becomes a rarity that makes them
believe that everybody concerned with films gets paid too paralytic with nerves.
much. The present move for profit participation, if the film I couldn't direct a picture well that I didn't find attractive in
is a success, is the only way to make a picture. But then we some way. But I think that categories such as 'commercial'
all have to know where the money goes. I don 't want a or 'specialist' are something invented by critics and not film-
profit participation in a picture when I know I shall only get makers. I think it better to make a film which interests one
a cut after the overheads of an enormous company have been in some respect than to sit at home and worry about the
paid. Because of this, we are left with a situation where masterpiece you may never make.
everybody- stars, directors, producers, agents- steals every- I believe that the cinema as a building and a social activity
thing they can lay their hands on. The fat days were so fat is dying and may soon be dead. I fail to see why anyone
that the word 'film' is enough to double the price of everything. should go out to a run-down building and see a film projected
Last autumn, I shot a picnic scene with Ursula Andress and in inadequate conditions. It may be that cinema buildings in
Stanley Baker on the bank of a reservoir. Beneath us 75 large cities- modernised and comfortable- will survive. It
people were drinking coffee and eating hotdogs. About eight may be that the young will always go to the cinema because
of us were working. they want to get away from their parents. But what about
Because of the fat pickings of the past, the industry is still entertaining their parents? Distributors and producers have
full of entrepreneurs who, as a theatre man, I find a new pursued the young audience so hard that I believe they have
breed. The theatre has insufficient profits in it to encourage lost their total audience. I hate audiences which are minorities
the kind of middle-men who are out to make quick money of any kind (young, old, working-class, aristocratic, intellec-
from talent. I have had innumerable encounters with Ameri- tual). Such an audience is unresponsive because it is un-
can film gentlemen who put up at a good hotel, ring me up, representative.
ask me if I am interested in making a film of a newly published But as the cinema wi11 decline, I believe that film-making,
book I subsequently discover they don't own, and then ask paradoxically, will increase. Within a few years, we shall all
me, after an amiable meeting, which companies are prepared be playing film on cassettes on our television sets at home.
to finance me in making a picture . . . I am very glad that the We shall subscribe to libraries, and have new films on first
present slump has sent these wheeler-dealers from our shores. release at home. Who will care to go to the cinema? I think
I don't believe that Swinging London was ever anything the cinema owners and distributors are running wild because
but an invention of Time magazine. They were the first to they fear (with reason) that their day is over. If within the
tell me that I was running a swinging theatre company at very near future, the makers of video-hardware can agree on
Stratford and at the Aldwych Theatre. Perhaps Swinging standards for new developments in home projection, I believe
London made a few extra promoters come to our shores, but there will be such an explosion of movie-making that the
I don' t believe it helped to make pictures or to sell them. present problems will be seen as the death of the old system.

PETER HALL DI RECTS DAVID WA RNE R AND STANLEY BAKE R IN " PER FECT FRI DAY".

178
MA BARI<ER TO VON HTHCJFEN
Roger Corman talks
to Philip Strick
OGER CORMAN was standing in the middle of a field in

R Ireland with a swarm of single-seater planes buzzing like

hornets in the sky above his head. 'They're making my
film up there!' he announced delightedly as the crackle of
gunfire drifted down from the clouds, one of the hornets
developed a streaming tail of smoke, and a vivid red triplane
did an elegant victory roll. The weather, it seemed, had been
terrible but Corman, unperturbed, was bang on schedule. Even
as we watched, four sequences from his new film, Von Richt-
hofen and Brown, were being shot simultaneously, and his
ground-crew, a mixture of Irish, English and American, had
a distinctly breathless look. 'On this picture I'm just the Air
Traffic Controller,' Corman said. 'I walk up and down the
airfield a couple of times and the pilots just seem to take off
and get busy. I won't need to do any work until the actors
turn up.'
As the aircraft drifted back to the ground, however, he ,
was waiting for them, deciding the need for retakes and
checking the cameras that were stuck all over them in unlikely
places. A helicopter landed and Corman went into discussion
with his art director-Jimmy Murakami who, after a notable
career in animation, is shortly to direct his first feature and,
like many directors before him, has been given the chance of
some preliminary experience as part of Corman's team.
Around the airfield, hangars and full-size mock-ups of First
World War planes were being constructed with dizzying
speed. It seemed an incalculable distance away from the
hermetic world of Roderick Usher, but one of the many
surprises that Corman can produce is the ability to make
any subject his own.

* * *
A gangster film, a science-fiction fantasy, and now the story
of von Richthofen. Why the contrasts?
Very broadly, I believe that I'm attempting to deal in an
honest fashion with what is taking place in the world today,
which is a slightly pretentious statement even as I say it but
is nevertheless the nearest I can get to an explanation. Given
this preoccupation, I have the choice of approaching the
subject directly, in which case I seem to run into censorship
difficulties, or indirectly through horror films, science-fiction
and so forth, where the issues seem more acceptable in their
disguised form. All of my films have been concerned simply
with man as a social animal, although in the 1950s I was a
more hopeful person from a liberal standpoint, whereas more
recently, in common with many other Americans, I have
become somewhat harder in my opinions, presenting possibly
a somewhat blacker look at the world today. I think my
choice of subjects for filming is undoubtedly influenced by ROGER CORMAN WITH HIS VON RICHTHOFEN. JOHN PHILIP LAW.
this, although I should add that I've never made the film I
wanted to make-no matter what happens, it never turns out say in six months or a year, so I went ahead. The New York
exactly as I had hoped. Times said it was a better picture than Bonnie and Clyde, and
What attracted you particularly to the subject of BLOODY other critics have said it was a cheap imitation, so I knew I'd
MAMA? been right all along!
As it happens, this was one of the few scripts I have shot When I got into it, what worried me was not so much any
recently that I did not develop personally. It was written by resemblance to Penn's picture as that the script had a great
Bob Thorn for AlP as an original script, and I chose to do the deal of perverted sex which I didn't want to go into that
subject as part of my contract, selecting it out of a number of deeply. I eased back very heavily on those scenes. AlP sup-
scripts that they offered me and doing some rewriting on it ported me in this, as they wanted the film to be an art-house
myself. What attracted me to it wasn't so much the subject release. As far as Bonnie and Clyde went, my decision was
matter, at least not consciously. It was just the best-written not to romanticise or glorify but to stay closer to what I
script, and I thought I could make a good picture out of it. felt the reality was. I had pictures of the Barkers and I knew
As a matter of fact I almost turned it down because of the what they looked like-they were not handsome or pretty.
subject matter. I thought there was going to be an inevitable I did a fair amount of research into the period, and it was
comparison with Bonnie and Clyde, and why should I get from a magazine article that I got the scene of the alligator.
myself into that? And then I thought it was still the best The gang was hiding out at a lake in Florida and they simply
script, and I can't worry about what some critic is going to got bored and went out in this boat with a submachine-gun

179
 I thought this particular sequence worked very well-it
had to do with the relationship between Ma Barker and her
husband, what she expected from her children, and what she
thought of her father. Shelley played it rather well. And we
went from there into the children as early teenagers and the
stealing of a gold ring from a negro who was being lynched,
and from that into the scene where they have given the ring
to their mother. These sequences were taken out by AlP in
an attempt to make the film play faster. I felt the film always
went fast and was never in any way a slow picture, and they
should have stayed in as important contributory scenes to the
understanding of the relationships in the film. They explained
a great deal. For example several people have told me that

and shot up this alligator, a stupid action which led to their

discovery by the police.
Where did the documentary shots in the film come from?
I hired a young researcher, a student from UCLA, who
unearthed quite a bit of film from which I chose the shots I
wanted. I have no idea where the Wall Street crash montage
came from-possibly a 1930s Warner Brothers picture, or a
March of Time-but it was obviously the simplest way to show
the financial chaos of the whole country. I used documentary
to relate the picture to the actuality of the period in a broad
way; we talked about the Stock Market crash, we talked
about the Depression, but at the same time we talked about
Aimee Semple McPherson (a great evangelist of the period
with a tremendous radio following), Lindbergh, the Ku Klux
Klan, and so on, trying to tie together the significant and the
trivial to show that in fact it's all significant. The Ku Klux
Klan parade was put in because I bad never known that the
Klan bad paraded in those numbers in Washington. I was
really thinking of the current protests, and the fact that
people are parading on generally left-wing-to-liberal protests,
but here there was a right-wing group that bad paraded.
You give a lot of emphasis to the religious activities of the
Barkers.
This was historically a vital part of their family life. She
took her sons to church most Sundays whenever it was possi-
ble for them to go, all the way through their lives. She was a
very firm believer.
The gang even uses a church as a hideout after the kidnapping.
Well, that's not actually how it happened. The script had
them hiding out beside a lake, and I figured we had had enough
of houses beside lakes by that time, so I started looking
around for something interesting in Arkansas and we eventu-
ally ran into this old negro chapel. It seemed to me the only
place that was really right, particularly in view of Ma Barker's they "didn't know who the girl was at the beginning; there's
beliefs. a danger now of confusing her with the girl the boys are
The opening sequence of the film, establishing the formation supposed to have raped before the Sheriff pays them a visit.
of Ma Barker's character by showing her being raped by her There's been a lot of chopping-! wouldn't even use the word
family as a young girl, seems ambiguous as to whether she was cutting-which has damaged the film: such as a scene in
horrified by the experience or had become reconciled to it. which Mona turns down the ring that Herman steals from the
Oh, she's horrified. On the other hand it probably will jeweller's shop, so that he gives it to Ma instead.
happen again and she knows it, and it may well have happened Is there anything in the missing sequences that expands more
previously. I made a point of not establishing or saying in fully the obsession Herman has with his father's eyes?
any way that this was the first time it had happened to her. No, the references here are intact. The eyes are primarily
Something to notice there, by the way, is that she refers to a symbol for the father and, going further, they have links
her own children, the sons she wi11 have, in the past tense, with the Oedipus story and the fact that the battle for the
although of course they are not yet born. On the one hand possession of the mother is a necessary part of growing up.
this is simply an error in grammar, but you can go beyond Oedipus, having won that battle, was forced to tear out his
that and say that she's thinking ahead in order to get herself eyes. Herman and the other boys, never having had to go
out of an unsatisfactory present, and she's already telling the through that battle because their father was so weak, might
story of her life as though it's a flashback. This makes quite well use the eyes as a symbol for the fact that they achieved
a neat lead-in to the beginning of the film, which originally a 'nothing' victory.
was a scene, immediately after the credits, of Ma Barker The end of Herman is the shot of the machine-gun blasting
giving birth to her last child. straight into the eyes of the audience ...

180
 Well, I wasn't conscious of pushing the analogy quite so whenever there was shooting-so long as there were more
far! Historically, Herman actually did kill himself in that way police than gangsters so that it was safe. We met people who
(although not at the scene of the fight). Also it's not too easy claimed to have known the Barkers in Arkansas and got a
to do the scene any other way without complicated effects. lot of stories about them, most of them probably untrue.
But it's true that it does complete the Oedipus story. It is fact, however, that Ma Barker was the last to die, which
What is the reason for his suicide? It seems a little out of of course was very useful dramatically.
character. Her influence had been on the wane for some time, according
It's his realisation that it's over; the growing derangement to the film.
of Ma Barker has reached the point at which she has simply I wanted to show Ma Barker's authority beginning to erode
flipped. There's nothing left at all. It's significant that when from the point at which she insists on killing Rembrandt, the
he took over their troubles truly began. No matter how many girl Lloyd picks up out of the lake. The point was that Ma
mistakes she made, no matter how emotionally troubled she was the brains of the gang (this is historically true) and most
was, she ran the gang well. It was Herman who had brought of her decisions were made logically and intelligently for the
type of operation they were doing. But Rembrandt's was not
a necessary death-it would have been possible to find a
different way out of that situation.
So it was the first cold-blooded, unmotivated killing they'd
done. And it was also, at least to some of them, evidence
that she was behaving a little irrationally and with a certain
jealousy of the fact that Lloyd was attracted to another
woman, a threat to her control. She had allowed Mona to
join the gang on the basis that she was common property
and was there to service them all, whereas Rembrandt
offered an inducement to one member only, to move outside
the gang. From that moment on, they began to question her
authority, and it culminated with her decision to kill Pendle-
bury. An additional factor was Ma's seduction of Pendlebury
in apparent contempt for the emotions of her sons who were
watching. What I was hoping for was to set up the series of
events leading to her final decision that he was to be killed,
and at the same time to her sons' conclusion that Ma was
no longer rational.
It struck me that you use water as a conscious link between
the various stages of the family's career. After the murder on
the ferry you end the scene with the boat halted seemingly
permanently in mid-stream. There's a similar effect with the
dumping of the girl's body in the lake, and again for the alli-
gator-shooting sequence when the news of Lloyd's death leaves
the two men drifting aimlessly in their canoe.
This was intentional, but I can't give you a full explanation
of it-I never defined it for myself. The primary forces-fire,
water, the elements-symbolise certain natural powers and
drives, and there may be a cleansing element in there as well.
For instance, in the Poe pictures I used fire a number oftimes;
so many times, in fact, for the necessary destruction of the
"GAS - S- S !" : BRUCE KARCHER AS EDGAR ALLAN POE.

''BLOODY MAMA".

them to this level, who had caused the deaths of his brothers
-they had reached a point where she couldn't run the gang
any more and he simply was not capable of it.
I understand that the Barker family split up some time before
the end and were not in fact all present for the final shoot-out
as they are in the film.
I simply felt that as far as the story was concerned it was
better to keep them together. It was important dramatically to
show the family unit being shattered from outside as well as
from within. One idea I had while we were on location was
for local sightseers to turn up and watch. We were scouting
this location and I was looking at this house, and the idea
just came to me that people come to see gangster films, so
how much more natural it would be for them to come out
to see the gangsters themselves, rather like people watching
gladiatorial contests in Rome, or bullfights today. The police
who surrounded the house were all policemen off duty, and
I later talked with their Chief of Police, from Little Rock,
and he said it was true that there tended to be an audience
 ~
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C/I'M~ lt;lt&L

STORYBOARD SKETCHES BY JIMMY MURAKAMI FOR AN AIR BATTLE IN "VON RICHTHOFEN AND BROWN".

house, that when I came to do The Terror I said 'We're going fiction picture with some allegorical overtones, and I went
to flood this house.' I don't think I've ever analysed what through the first draft with George Armitage, a young
these uses stand for, other than natural force, on the basis writer who'd never written a script before. I thought there
that (to quote certain religions) we are all one, and we come was some good work in it, but the points I was trying to
out of natural elements. make in the script either did not come through or carne
You intercut the shots of the pig choking along in the water through too obviously in different parts, and it became less
with the discovery of Lloyd's death. Why the close connection? and less science-fiction and more and more a direct liberal
Actually at one time I was going to intercut it even more and left-wing statement picture. I didn't want to be quite that
intercut it into the funeral. I had one cut of the picture where obvious about what I was doing. So I then decided to switch
I did do that and I felt it was too heavy, that I was pushing it to a comedy, thinking back to Bucket of Blood and Little
the point again that we are all one: the pig, the alligator, Shop of Horrors.
Lloyd, that these are all living forces and all of these things This was the ideal subject for a black comedy: the U.S.
die, some violently, some by other means, and that this Army Chemical Warfare Testing Centre accidentally uses a
is simply a natural process of life and death. But when I bottle of newly developed gas instead of a champagne bottle
intercut the pig more deeply into Lloyd's funeral I discovered to christen a new chemical warfare unit, and the gas works
it was beginning to have a connotation I didn't intend (which on the enzymes of the body and kills everybody over 25 of
was that Lloyd was a pig). So I came back and used much less instant old age. As the U.S. President says on television
cutting-! was simply talking about death as a general, shortly before he dies, it's a human error anybody could
natural phenomenon. It was all part of my feeling about the have made. The subtitle of the film-It Became Necessary
Barkers, that their primary basic force was pre-civilisation; to Destroy the World in Order to Save It-came from a
they came out of the hills, they were hillbillies, they had notorious incident in Vietnam when a lieutenant secured a
certain basic desires and drives that were only slightly modi- village from Vietcong infiltration by wiping it out completely
fied by civilisation-for instance, the use of incest, that is the and gave as his reason that this was the only way the village
ban on incest, is a ban primarily imposed by civilisation. could be saved.
The Barkers were too early for that. United Artists paid for the script but their production
Having settled with the Barkers, you turned to GAS-s-s! OR department decided the film could not be done well for less
IT BECAME NECESSARY TO DESTROY THE WORLD IN ORDER TO than two million dollars, and because it's an experimental
SAVE IT, which to judge from your own descriptions seems to be kind of picture they refused to gamble that much money.
as crazy as its title. Where did the ideafor this one come from? I then bought the script back from them and made it myself
It was an original story of mine but it changed rather on a four-week schedule around Texas and New Mexico
radically as we worked on it. My first idea was to do a science- for a little bit less than 300,000 dollars, and made a pick-up

182
 deal with AlP whereby they paid me in advance my negative aspects: there's no doubt that the desire to hunt was in his
cost, the money I invested in the film. If it makes any money basic nature. He collected little trophies for each kill, and by
we'll split and see what happens. There are themes in it the time of his death he had over 80 silver trophies around
which go back through all my previous pictures, such as the his room. He would tear off bits and pieces of the planes he
theme of the destruction of the world which I've played with shot down and put them on the wall. He said in one interview
to a certain extent, and there are some political and religious that after scoring a kill he had no desire to score another
overtones that I've dealt with before, but I've never put for about fifteen minutes. The fact that he flew a red plane
them all together like this. The film became something I at a time when everybody was camouflaging their planes, 1
firmly believed in. find phenomenal. He said, in effect, 'I am the leading ace on
Do you see GAS-s-s! as a political film ? both sides in this war, and if anybody has the nerve to come
I think there was always a political overtone in my films. against me he knows how to find me.' The sexual connota-
With the exception of The Intruder, I tried not to put it on tions are obvious, and at the same time there's egotism and
the surface, I felt it should develop out of the picture itself. the death-wish combined with it all. He's a really splendid
If the audiences got the implications, fine; if they didn't it subject to have to tackle on film ...
was just as well. I wasn't trying to push it. I feel that a film
really is a two-way street, that you present something and the
audience brings something and the net result is the meeting
between the film and the audience, and if you say what you Bloody Mama
have to say just flatly there is no interaction.
I've always felt that The Intruder, which I believed in very
Reviewed by Tom Milne
much, became too overt, a little too much of a lecture. So
of Bloody Mama there
O
since then I've moved back. The Wild Angels was to me an N THE SOUNDTRACK RECORDING
intensely political film; The Trip was a more political film but is a mysterious, haunting moment when a child's voice
I took out a couple of scenes that I'd written myself, on the wavers uncertainly into a reprise of the gaily mocking
basis again that it was a little too political, or at least too ballad which serves as a title song, turning it, in fact, into the
sociological (two different ways of saying the same thing). lullaby the lyrics are begging for:
GAS-s-s! is intensely political because-well, the cliche word
'Ma-ma
today is polarisation. If you were a vague liberal at one time, Bloody ma-ma
there's a tendency now to become rather more radical. Sing me a lullaby
Liberal ideas, although they've worked in part, have not Ma-ma
worked as fast as they should have done. Bloody ma-ma
By contrast with GAS-S-S !, the idea for VON RICHTHOFEN We'll meet in that sweet by-and-by.'
had been with you for some time ? Somewhere along the way this has disappeared from the
film, but the note of innocent yearning remains, lending a
Originally it was just Von Richthofen, and when 20th curious vulnerability to Ma Barker and her sons as seen
Century-Fox called me in a few years ago and asked me for through Corman's eyes.
any ideas, I told them this one and I told them about St. He certainly hasn't glamorised them, in the sense that they
Valentine's Day Massacre. They had just bought The Blue are not beautiful people like Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, and
Max, so we settled for the alternative and I put Von Richt- yet they are undoubtedly romantic creations, viewed through
hofen away until United Artists offered me a deal about an intense awareness that they were born on the dark side
eighteen months ago. They liked the idea but felt it was too of the moon of a society which offered them no choice but
much of a German picture, so in the discussions I agreed to to live a dead-end existence of one kind or another. The
make it Von Richthofen and Brown and do a dual story about opening sequence of Kate Barker's rape as a child by her
the Red Baron and the man who shot him down, cutting father and brothers, ravishingly shot in pale, sunbathed
back and forth between their careers. Inevitably von Richt- colours, melts into one of those paradises of inbred decay
hofen is the more glamorous character; for me, he represents so familiar from the Southern novels of Faulkner and Carson
the last of the knights, the last of the great heroes. When he McCullers: a wooden shack nestling idyllically in the trees,
was shot down, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad were shot down. father sleepy in straw hat and overalls, mother plump and
Roy Brown represents the first of the faceless-! shouldn't already ageing through the tell-tale signs of the baby doll.
say that, because we're working on this point in the script- What else could such an environment make of Ma Barker's
the beginning of the concept of mass warfare. four sons-born out of the coldly impertinent logic of her
In other words, von Richthofen was an aristocrat, the son father's words as she protested her rape, 'You ain't hospitable,
of a Prussian officer, he was placed in a military school at Kate. Don't know why you ain't hospitable. Blood's thicker
the age of six, and until he died was involved in military than water'-but asocial, amoral apostles of violence?
affairs in the army or air force. Roy Brown was a wheat Immediately, though, Corman extends his frame of
farmer from Saskatchewan, who happened to have great re- reference by setting Kate's escape with her sons from the
flexes and to be a natural pilot-if anything he was the better confines of Joplin, Missouri, against newsreel footage of the
pilot, as von Richthofen was a killer, not a pilot. Their contest period. The world in which the Barkers play out their personal
marks the end of an era, particularly in that the man who drama is one in which Mammon has fallen and God has
replaced von Richthofen was Hermann Goering, who showed risen (the Wall Street crash, on the one hand, with its lesson
a new way for Germany to develop. Also we found that when that hard work is no way to make money; and on the other,
children build model aeroplanes today, they buy more World the preachings of Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson,
War I kits than they do World War II; many young people with their message that you too can see the glory of the Lord).
can tell you the names and the exploits of the pilots of It is also a world in which humanity is trampled in the mud
World War I, but nobody knows anything about great pilots (tired dancers trudging through one of the ghoulish marathons
in World War II. celebrated in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?; a negro
What fascinated you about von Richthofen ? swinging at the end of a lynching rope and Ku Klux Klanners
I think something about the character of the man himself. parading proudly through the streets of Washington), and
I can't tell you why, but it seems that in some area I'm in which the supreme accolade is reserved for the spirit of
involved with great losers. I was preparing a script on Robert enterprise and adventure (Lindbergh's flight across the
E. Lee for United Artists and then I decided that I didn't Atlantic, or the bootleg gangsters whom Corman tactfully
want to do it-it wasn't good enough. And I've been playing does not quote). Push all this reality into the looking-glass
for years with treatments and ideas on the story of Judas. of fantasy and you have the Barkers, getting rich quick the
All these were extremely interesting people who seemed to be easy way by robbing and murdering expendable fellow-
on the wrong side, and fought very bravely in that capacity. citizens, celebrating with hymn-singing sessions led by Ma,
At the same time, von Richthofen has other intriguing and themselves becoming the object of admiration and envy.

183
America in the Thirties, Bloody Mama and her boys: they stated moment of uncomprehending desolation at the
are the head and tail of the same coin. beginning of the film with which Pa Barker accepts his wife's
All sociologically accurate, of course, but by no means the cool announcement that he is to be left behind as a useless
extent or even the main focus of Corman's interest in the appendage, and because the image of his mystified, doglike
Barkers. As a true film-maker of terror, he sees them as hurt must inevitably surface as the boys begin to withdraw in
driven by darker, more inexplicable impulses, and doomed horror from their mother's suffocating possessiveness.
to work their own destruction as fanatically as the hapless The inner mechanism of the film is therefore the process
descendants of the House of Atreus. As Ma and her sons whereby each of the boys, at first completely submissive to
set out from Joplin and rattle down dusty country roads in Kate's exclusive love, begins to fashion an independent
a car stolen from the local sheriff, there is a strong superficial existence for himself-Herman with Mona, Freddie with
resemblance to Bonnie and Clyde in the joyous amateurish- Kevin, Lloyd with his lady of the lake-only to be frustrated
ness with which they embark on their career of crime, holding by Kate's impossible demands. Appropriately enough, the
up a ferryman for a few dollars, committing a smash-and-grab image that haunts the film is one of water-not only because
on a jeweller's to obtain a trinket for a girl, and whisking of its symbolic connotations with maternity and its intima-
away from a bank robbery with four matrons of America tions of peace, but because the text of the film is 'blood is
clinging precariously to the running-boards as hostages. thicker than water'. The first crisis in their career, Herman's
But where Bonnie and Clyde gradually discover exterior murder of the farmer on the ferry, ends on a point of puzzled
reality and come to terms with the real meaning of their stasis with a long shot of the whole family suspended motion-
relationship just as the police net catches up with them and less in mid-stream. The last, leading directly to their massacre
they die tumbled over and over like the rabbits in La Regie by the police, is introduced by a tranquil shot of Lloyd
du Jeu, the Barker boys are driven closer and closer to a silhouetted against the hazy waters of the lake as he prepares
confrontation of the skull beneath their skin. For them, to give himself a fatal injection; and followed, after the dis-
death under a hail of bullets almost as merciless comes as a covery of his body, by a second moment of stasis as Herman,
release from the intolerable pain of what they have seen. hunting alligators with a tommy-gun on the lake, sits drifting
As Corman suggests, the Oedipus theme is pivotal, not only in his boat, apparently indifferent to the news of Lloyd's
because the eldest son Herman's destiny is a pristine restate- death. In between comes the storm centre of the film: Lloyd's
ment of the myth (from his initial betrayal of the father who touchingly awkward, abortive little romance with the girl
is left behind because Kate has no need of him now that her who swims up out of the lake as he sits dangling his feet in the
sons are grown up, to his final atonement when he turns his water, a vision of glory to his drug-crazed mind who has to
gun on himself and blows his face to bits), but because it be drowned in a bath and buried in the lake by Ma's orders
gives the resonance of curiously twisted ritual to certain key because she may betray them to the police. 'She was so cute
scenes in which Herman offers violence to men and subse- I just had to take a shot at her,' explains Lloyd beatifically.
quently weeps with uncontrollable remorse in his mother's 'There's nothing you won't do, Ma,' says Mona after the
arms. For instance, the farmer on the ferry whom he murders murder; and from that moment Kate's authority begins to
after standing for a moment poised immobile with his boot disintegrate, finally crumbling under the refusal of all four
on the victim's neck; and more particularly, the jeweller sons to carry out her instructions to kill Pendlebury.
whom he threatens with a shard of glass from a display case, In each case, counterpointing the image of water, is the
muttering 'Maybe I just ought to take out one of your eyes blood spilled by Herman-literally with the farmer on the
for good luck.' ferry and the alligator sprayed with machine-gun bullets just
Herman's amazed discovery in this scene that the jeweller prior to the discovery of Lloyd's body, and by implication
has 'eyes like my pa' gradually takes on the dimensions of an with the girl drowned in the bath. Since 'blood is thicker than
obsession, culminating in the extraordinary sequence where water', the wistful glimpses of happiness seen through a
he insists on removing the blindfold from Mr. Pendlebury, glass darkly and barely comprehended by the Barker boys
the kidnap victim who has somehow slipped into the role of are necessarily enveloped by the terrible holocaust of their
substitute father to all the Barker boys during his captivity, end; and since the reason for the break-up of the gang is
and whom Herman subsequently refuses to kill in defiance Herman's realisation that Kate has been exploiting his
of Kate's orders. Ordinarily speaking, so explicit an analogy hunger for violence, it is both appropriate and inevitable
with the Oedipus myth in a gangster film would doubtless that the only escape from her should be in death.
seem pretentiously over-Freudian. Here it works perfectly On the other hand there is a curious gap left unfilled by the
because it is so firmly anchored in the marvellously under- final shoot-out with the police. Lloyd is already dead. Mona
is sent off to Miami by Herman ('Just drop me a line when you
get there'), who subsequently kills himself. Freddie rushes
out of the house into a stream of police bullets after Kevin has
tried to opt out and been shot in the back by Kate. And Kate
herself, all her sons dead, dies sobbing and unrepentant with
her machine-gun to her shoulder. The enigma is the fourth
son, Arthur, the quiet one who has no dream of his own and
who dies, unexpectedly, trying to protect Kate. In Robert
Thorn's original script, more logically, Herman disappears
in search of his father, while Arthur takes up with Mona
and dies in a bank robbery, leaving a letter which refers to
a son, 'Iitle charlee'.
One can see why Corman decided to keep the Barkers
together, to have them die destroyed both from without and
within. Nevertheless, traces of Arthur's original role as the
perpetuator of the Barker legend do remain in the film,
inexplicable without reference to the original script-in
particular a shot of Arthur gently touching the pregnant
Mona's belly under the trees as they wander towards Lloyd's
dead body-and make one wish that Corman had completed
his tale of doom and destiny with the hint of cyclical prophecy
suggested in Thorn's script: 'And so, the Barkers were gone.
Unless, indeed, there is a "charlee", which no one with any
sense would doubt for a moment. There is.' Here, surely, is
the source of that wavering child's voice singing 'Ma-ma,
bloody ma-ma, sing me a lullaby ... '
Teaching Film
OPEN-MINDED, UNDOGMATIC, socially "LE CERCLE ROUGE·': JEAN - PIERRE MELVILLE WITH ALAIN DELON AND SAMURAI SWORD.
responsible and closely connected to
contemporary life: these are the sort of
qualities that Colin Young ascribes to his comments about it.' As a result, during the having the access to equipment made much
ideal film school. Next year he has the post-Cambodia campus unrest, UCLA's simpler. Way down the line they say it was
chance to begin to realise the ideal in Britain film school 'turned itself into the eyes and nice to get a class from Professor So-and-So,
when the National Film School opens with ears of the revolution,' a phrase that Young but they always think of that as an after-
him as its first director, relishes. Students mounted daily film and thought.'
Behind him are a St. Andrews degree in video-tape reports on the events of the crisis. Young's lack of preconceptions on
philosophy, a variety of jobs in the American Young compares this direct involvement curriculum is in part a reaction to the
film industry and an M.A. in Theater Arts in events with the one-time discussions slavish way in which he has seen others
(Film) at the University of California, Los among British film-makers about social teaching technique. In selecting his own
Angeles. He has been Professor and Chair- commitment. 'The old arguments always teachers he says: 'Our problem will be to
man of UCLA's Department of Theater ignored the fact that there was an enormous find technicians sympathetic to the idea that
Arts, where half of the more than 1,000 filter and smokescreen between the film- absolutely nothing has yet been proven
students study film. He also has had first- maker and his audience,' he says. 'That is to about the way technique works in creating
hand observation of how several European say he had to organise his thoughts in a a good film, with minds completely open to
schools work. totally industrial way in an industry he did the idea that every technique that has been
The Czech Film School, as he saw it at not control before he could report back to invented can be reinvented or rediscovered
work in 1967 even before Dubcek's rise to the people in the audience. What young or rejected.'
power, impressed him most. 'It was first film-makers want to do is to make that A recipe for disaster in Colin Young's
of all,' he recalls, 'quite open to its students' connection as tight as possible and to base mind would be a school which believed in
ideas. But it put this openness in the context their work on the events of the moment as indoctrinating people with its own artistic
of a strong social responsibility. And I much as possible.' taboos. 'Film is too catholic a medium for
emphasise that it was social and not socialist. Not that he rejects the need for the that. If a school had a dogmatic approach
There was no political dogma about what graduates of the British school, financed by it would have to be overthrown. You would
they should do and how they should do it. public money, to benefit the well-being of have created the base for the first student
But there was a very strong idea that those the industry, meaning in effect to find an revolt against the school. The only thing that
who had been selected to go to a school of audience for their work. It will not be a would justify this kind of dogmatic
that sort had an obligation to make films school for 'weekend film-makers'. He cites approach would be a culture that had a
which were relevant to their contemporaries the competitive bidding by exhibitors in the dogmatic approach to art in general, and I
in their country.' United States for the right to show UCLA's don't think the British culture has that
In Western countries it is harder to student-made films as evidence of the approach.'
assess how a film school has affected the audience for such works even before their TERENCE KELLY
national film industry. But Young cites the makers turn professional. 'The jump from
connection between the Italian film school doing a successful student film to doing a
and the growth of neo-realism and welcomes successful commercial film is a major Mankiewicz in London
the fact that Rossellini has now taken over problem,' he admits. 'I would hope that the
the school. 'He probably will redevelop the British school could face this problem in JOE MANKIEWICZ TIDNKS that many of today's
old idea that the cinema in Italy needs a advance by not segregating the work people young film-makers owe a lot to the optical
kind of support from the young intellectual do as students from the work they will later manufacturers for providing them with the
that at the moment it seems to be losing.' do as professionals.' vast range of telephoto and zoom lenses
Events in the United States after the The complaint oftoday's film-makers that now available. 'We're going through a
invasion of Cambodia and the killings at they work in the dark and lack mutual voyeuristic phase,' he said during one of his
Kent State re-emphasised for Young how contact is in Young's mind when he says that rare visits to London recently. 'People want
contemporary an art the cinema is. Until a British school should 'provide a way of a to look and not listen. The spoken word is
then student and underground film-makers new generation forming'. He lists the advan- out temporarily, replaced by all kinds of
had been preoccupied with the desire to tages which graduates typically think they optical imagery. Personally, I've always
overthrow current ideas on sexual morality. gain from a film school. 'One is the oppor- thought that if a director consciously comes
'But there was a moment in California tunity to see a lot of films in a short period between the screen and his audience, he's
when a black student said that finally in a fairly controlled situation where they failed. When someone in a movie nudges his
our students had recognised that there was can make maximum use of having seen them. neighbour and says: "Wonder how they did
something in the world more interesting than The second is to have been in the company that?" you've lost them.' His idea of a per-
genitalia to tum their cameras on, and that of people who had precisely similar fect film? 'One that doesn't look as if it has
perhaps they would be more interested in problems to theirs, approaching them more been directed at all.'
analysing their society and making or less systematically. And the third is Mankiewicz's blue eyes widen as he talks,

185
each gesture accompanied by the inevitable emotion. Once the script is completed be Joseph Losey's Secret Ceremony.
pipe in his hand. The only director-writer either he, or somebody else, starts all over Apparently the film was thought to be 'too
ever to win four Academy Awards back-to- again to put it on celluloid. In the old fac- ambiguous' for television. Variety reports
back from screenwriting and direction- tory days of Hollywood, though, a contract a mixture of surgery and addition. 'A seven
Letter to Three Wives in 1949 and All About director was tossed a script on a Friday to to eight minute framework of a conversation
Eve in 1950-he had, nevertheless, not begin shooting the following Monday. between a psychiatrist and an attorney, not
worked in Hollywood for fourteen years Nowadays I don't know of a top director in the original, discussing Miss Taylor's
until he made There Was a Crooked Man . .. who doesn't sit down with his writer well arrest for the murder of Mitchum, was
there for Warner Brothers last year. The before shooting and go through the screen- filmed. An out-take of her confession to a
script for There Was a Crooked Man ... is play scene by scene.' priest was put back, also carrying the voice-
by Robert Newman and David Benton, Which of his films would he single out? over of the confession into other action. Two
writers of Bonnie and Clyde, and Mankie- 'Well, I don't really like to do that. There scenes, one of Miss Farrow giving a semi-
wicz describes it as a tongue-in-cheek are some I don't talk about at all.' Was nude Miss Taylor a massage that suggests a
Western, a tilt at the mythology of the clear- Cleopatra one of those? 'Yes, and that's all physical attraction, and another of gossip
cut good and bad. It is his first Western. 'I I'm saying about that particular one.' A about Mitchum being a child molester, were
wanted to flex a few directorial muscles I pause. 'I suppose two which stand out are taken out.'
hadn't used before.' Crooked Man was like All About Eve and Julius Caesar. I always The reason for all this rather expensive
an old boy gathering for Mankiewicz. Kirk wanted to present Shakespeare in cinematic tinkering is not simply to sort out
Douglas, Henry Fonda, Hume Cronyn, terms in a contemporary style. He's an situations presumed to be too mystifying
Burgess Meredith-he grew up with them. ageless writer: his themes are as potent today for television, but to stretch pictures if
'It was fun making it. Usually I'm sus- as when he wrote his plays-power, greed, necessary to a 100-minute running time,
picious when a film is fun to shoot. But I corruption. I was determined to get away American TV's minimum length. Peter
think this one has turned out all right ... I'd from the iambic pentameter rhythms in the Hall's Three Into Two Won't Go, 'had a
like to concentrate on directing for a while,' speeches and I think it came off, particularly running time of 93 minutes before the full
Mankiewicz adds, 'and leave someone else with Brando's performance. Anyway, I had frontal nudity was excised for TV ... It also
to write the screenplay. Doing both takes hundreds of letters from students and had ambiguities about Miss Geeson's
too much out of your life. Say six months to teachers all over America thanking me for character and motivation ... which are now
write and another eighteen to shoot and presenting Shakespeare in understandable clarified for TV audiences in prologues in
edit.' terms.' which officials explain why they are looking
Mankiewicz was a writer on the Metro lot JOHN WILLIAMS for the girl.' Another recent European-made
during the Louis B. Mayer regime. Early on, film, Hubert Cornfield's The Night of the
he tried to persuade Mayer to let him Secret Ceremony Following Day, also running seven minutes
direct a film. 'I went into his office with an short of the statutory 100, has had out-takes
idea and he listened while I outlined it. Then IF AN INDUSTRY HABIT recently reported by added filling in more details of the police
he shook his head and said something which Variety becomes standard practice, life investigation.
has become a kind of classic Hollywood looks like becoming even more difficult for Cuts of violence, about which the net-
phrase. "You must crawl before you can future film historians. It has been traditional works are said to be 'very touchy', are of
walk. You must produce before you direct.''' for films to be cut for television screening; course being made as well. Eye of the Cat,
A slow smile. 'I've always thought that was the notion now being pursued by Universal the horror thriller with Eleanor Parker in a
a pretty good definition of a producer.' in Hollywood is that films should be added wheelchair and a climax involving murder
One of his early mentors was Ernst to. 'In at least six titles scheduled for release by a pack of domestic cats, has lost some
Lubitsch. 'Lubitsch could do more in visual to TV during 1970-71 ,' says Variety, 'stars feline action in its new version and ac-
terms with a shot of a woman walking up to are being brought back-in one case three quired another explanatory scene-Miss
a door and opening it than all your zoom years after the original was completed-to Parker being recalled to the studio and her
lenses and split screens.' For Mankiewicz, shoot additional scenes, entirely new wheelchair to shoot it.
writing and directing are indivisible in cine- characters are being written in and shot, and When the British films on Universal's list
matic terms. 'When a writer creates a out-takes added.' turn up in due course on English television,
screenplay he directs each scene in his head, One of the first and chief sufferers from they will presumably arrive in these versions.
visualising tempo, angles, lighting and this alteration by amplification is likely to 'When they are available, we try to consult
with the original director and writer,' says
PHILIPPE NOIRET AND PETER O'TOOLE IN " MURPHY'S WAR". PETER YATES' WARTIME the Universal official in charge of features for
ADVENTURE STORY FILMED IN VENEZUELA. television. No comments from directors and
writers have yet been reported.

Spellbound
Extract from:
THE HENLEY
Social Club Magazine
Vol. 1. No.1. June, 1919. Price Threepence
GAS
She had never been in this part of Paris
before-only reading of it in the novels of
Duvain, or seeing it at the Grand Guignol.
So this was the Montmartre? That horror
where danger lurked under cover of night;
where innocent souls perished without
warning-where doom confronted the
unwary-where the Apache revelled.
She moved cautiously in the shadow of
the high wall, looking furtively backward
for the hidden menace that might be
dogging her steps. Suddenly she darted into
an alley way, little heeding where it led ...
groping her way on in the inky blackness,
the one thought of eluding the pursuit
firmly fixed in her mind ... on she went ...
Oh! when would it end? ... Then a door-
way from which a light streamed lent itself
to her vision .... In here ... anywhere, she
thought.
The door stood at the head of a flight of
stairs ... stairs that creaked with age as she
endeavoured to creep down ... then she

186
 adventurous Miracle of Rare Device, about
two men setting themselves up as purveyors
of an imaginary mirage, was less sure of the
scope of its ambition, but at times achieved
-and in pureJy visual terms despite the
philosophical slant of its dialogue- a weird,
Antonioni-like sense of landscape acting on
people.
Most impressive was Anno Domini, a
twenty-minute diploma film which tries to
convey the enclosed world of a monastery-
the atmosphere of the place rather than the
architecture. On paper an unpromising idea;
but its director revealed a remarkable
appreciation of the descriptive and emotive
power of the simple visual image. No
decoration, no tricks, no hyperbole, and all
the better for it. On the evidence of films of
this quality, the School is doing encouraging
work. Coexistence with the proposed
National Film School remains a problem
for the future. Meanwhile, the studio moguls
will be doing British cinema a disservice if
they don't take a closer look at what the
London Film School has to offer.
DAVID WILSON

VVorkin Progress
lNGMAR BERGMAN: His first English-
speaking film, The Touch, shooting in
KIRK DOUGLAS AND MIKE BLODGETT IN "THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN Stockholm and starring Elliott Gould, Bibi
Andersson and Max von Sydow. ABC
of a School graduate making the ranks of Picture Corporation of America.
heard the sound of drunken laughter and KEVIN BILLINGTON: The Light at the Edge
shuddered-surely this was-No, not that. the chosen few. With the present industry of the World, from one of the lesser known
Anything but that! She reached the foot of crisis muffling even professional optimists Jules Verne stories, about wreckers and a
the stairs and saw an evil-smelling wine bar, it's not perhaps the most opportune moment, lighthouse. With Kirk Douglas, Yul
with wrecks of what were once men and but the School now has the help of a public Brynner and Samantha Eggar. Locations in
women indulging in a drunken orgy ... then relations firm in trying to change the picture. Spain. Bryna Productions.
they saw her, a vision of affrighted purity. To judge from a selection of films recently CLAUDE CHABROL: To follow La Rupture
Half a dozen men rushed towards her amid shown to the press, the School has good (which in his own words 'portrays the
the encouraging shouts of the rest. She was reason to think its product merits aPR push. world as it will be in ten years' time if . ..
seized. She screamed with terror ... better With an intake of over 200 students it would a really black film') with La Decade
had she been caught by her pursuer was her have been a simple matter to assemble the Prodigieuse, based on an Ellery Queen novel
one fleeting thought as they dragged her best of everything, but sensibly the selection about a wealthy philanthropist who marries
roughly across the room. The fiends lost no was arranged to give an overall impression a penniless girl, who then falls in love
time in settling her fate. They would share of the School's work-faltering first-term with his adopted son. With Orson Welles
her belongings ... and she ... Why! Was exercises as well as twenty-minute diploma and Catherine Deneuve. Films la Boetie.
this not the heart of Montmartre? She films. The result was a testimonial to the JACQUES DEMY: Peau d'Ane, based on
should go-the rats should feast. Then they School's methods, and in particular to their Perrault's fairy-tale, with Catherine
bound her and carried her down the dark policy of discouraging specialisation. Here, Deneuve (Princess), Jacques Perrin (Prince),
passage; up a flight of stairs to the riverside. in a small way, was evidence of something Jean Marais (King), Micheline Presle
The water rats should feast, they said. And British cinema has conspicuously Jacked in (Queen) and Delphine Seyrig (Fairy). Pare.
then ... then, swinging her bound body to recent years: a manifest sense of what one GEORGES FRANJU: Zo]a's La Faute de /'Abbe
and fro, dropped her with a splash into the might can co-operative creativity. Mouret, the story of a priest torn between
dark, swirling waters. Down she went, Not that working in a team inhibits faith and the flesh in the 1880s. A young
down, down. Conscious only of a choking individual imagination, at least at the later actor from the Paris Conservatoire, Francis
sensation, this was death ... then ... 'It's stages. Paucity of ideas (and a tendency to Huster, makes his screen debut in the title
out, Madam,' said the dentist. 'Half a incorporate other people's) are the usual role. Eastman Colour. Films du Carrosse.
crown, please.' hallmarks of student films, and the School FRANKLIN SCHAFFNER: Nicholas and Alexan-
HITCH is no exception. The first-year exercises were dra, at the end of the year, for Sam Spiegel
mainly just that, would-be virtuoso displays and Columbia.
Written by Hitchcock when he was working of technique at the expense of story which
for the Henley Cable Company. A trans- gave the impression-rightly or wrongly-
cription of this rare piece of pre-Hitchcock that students were being taught what they Sight and Sound
Hitchcock was recently given to the National could do with the camera and the editola
Film Archive by Jympson Harman. Do any before they had really thought out the STARTING FROM the next issue (Winter
copies of the actual magazine still survive? importance of scripting. There was a first- 1970/71), SIGHT AND SOUND will be appearing
year film about a hanging, for instance, in a new and slightly larger format. The
which was technica11y impeccable but in paper size will be A4 (8!" by 11 ~-"), and
essence just one more variation on films like binders for the magazine in this format will
London Film School Incident at Owl Creek-the corrupter be available early in 1971.
TUCKED AwAY among the warehouses at of so many amateur film-makers. The School At the same time, recent increases in the
the back of Covent Garden and almost might reply that the first hurdle is the cost of printing and paper have made it
within shouting distance of Wardour Street, acquisition of technique. And certainly the necessary for us, in common with most other
the London Film School (formerly the work of the more advanced students reveals publishers, to increase our prices. The new
London School of Film Technique) has for the confidence to tackle independent ideas. subscription rates for SIGHT AND SOUND,
too long operated without the publicity it Birthday, shown at this year's Berlin starting from January 1971, will be £1·40
deserves. The best of the School's annual Festival (where-rare event for festival for one year, £2·60 for two years, and £3·80
output of 200 films is shown at the National shorts-it was well received), is an assured for three years (postage included). Single
Film Theatre and gets an airing on the film visual reflection on the childhood memories copies will cost 30p (6s) from bookshops
society circuit, and this year an LFS student prompted by the birth of a baby. In just over and newsagents, and 35p (postage included)
was nominated for the Best Short Film- six minutes it showed a real understanding if supplied from the British Film Institute
Maker of 1969 in the SFTA awards. But of the way adult crises spark off the dark, publications department. In the United
with one or two exceptions one seldom hears remembered fears of childhood. The more States, the price per copy will be $1.25.

187
 IT'S NOT QUITE ALL TRUE
Richard Wilson

In the Spring, 1970 issue of SIGHT AND SOUND we published England, France and Italy, abound in misinformation. One
Charles Higham's article IT's ALL TRUE, about Orson Welles' of the chief fonts of inaccuracy, I recognise, has been Orson
famous, never completed, Latin American film. This was a himself. I'm sure I've added my share-who knows, probably
chapter from Mr. Higham's book on Welles, since published by to Charles' article! If memory doesn't fail, it tends to drama-
the University of California Press. Richard Wilson, Welles' tise-even more, to romanticise. After all, rationalising defeat
and exorcising misery comes very naturally to film-makers.
long-time associate, and director of AL CAPONE, INVITATION TO All the more reason, then, for setting the history straight(er).
A GUNFIGHTER, THREE IN THE ATTIC, etc. has sent US the following I would have hoped that a book from the University of Cali-
letter, addressed to Tom Milne. It gives for the first time his fornia would be meticulous in its scholarship. Since others
own detailed account of the production history of this extra- may assume it is, I can't let Charles off the hook too easily.
ordinary and ill-fated film. Charles was given free access to the files from which I'm
going to quote and chide him-not too ungently, I trust,
because I like Charles. He did more than most others before
D
EAR TOM:
Good hearing from you again. Yes, I read it. And, as I him to dig out the truth. He did talk to lots of people who were
said, feel there should be some comment. A certain tyranny actually involved. However, if painstaking research-months
is exerted by a title like It's All True. Responsibility insinuates of it-spent in these same files is a criterion, then the coming
itself upon the writer; or one assumes it has done so. Since Bogdanovich-Welles interview book promises to be the most
Charles Higham in his article of that title told it like it wasn't, definitive.
here and there, I would like to try to make it all truer, at least. I am talking about the fifteen or so drawers of working
The burden of this letter is founded on the wish that Charles memoranda, the frantic cables, the more expository letters,
had been a more rigorous cine-scholar and less exuberant the successive drafts of scripts, making up the files that happen
cineaste. to be in my safe-keeping. The two or three drawers of stills
Books and articles about Welles, published mainly in help flesh out the record. They span Welles' career, and my
STREET SCENE IN RIO: WELLES AT WORK ON ONE OF THE RESTAGED CARNIVAL SCENES.

188
 l. What is a jangada?
2. Launching of the Jangada.
3. Fishing sequence.
own with him, from the Mercury stage productions of Julius 4. Drowning of the boy.
Caesar, et al, including all the Mercury's films through
5. Lowering of the sails
Macbeth. There is also a little pre-Mercury material. Jangadeiros.
Up to this current wave of interest in Welles, I've been
generally responsive to worthwhile requests to use the files or 6. Selling of the fish and news
family.
even to send information. Once, in the midst of directing a
film, I could not respond. I'd had a letter from Peter Noble 7. Finding of the body.
asking for information for the book he was preparing. a. Funeral?
Perhaps, had I been able to answer his letter, I might have
escaped flinching at a quote from one of his sources- 9. Meeting and decision.
Augusta Weissberger-that stated of It's All True: 'When we 10. De;Jarture.
went to Brazil, Orson had formed a partnership with Jack
Moss, and Richard Wilson was sent along by Moss to protect ll. The journey itself.
his interests against Orson.' 12. Arrival.
It should be comforting to come out better if duller in
Charles' version: 'Welles' hastily assembled team for the ITEMS NOT INCLUDED IN THE STO ~ Y LINE ITSELF
Brazilian project included Richard Wilson, his faithful
assistant for many years .. .' Nothing that's not true so far, l. Wedd'lng
a. Fin·i out about a jangadeiro
but I cavil at the veracity of the rest of the sentence, and of wedding.
nearly every sentence to the end of that page. The completed b. How extensive is it?
sentence: ' ... the cameramen Eddie Pyle, Harry Wellman, c. 'INhere held?
d. Ho ~ are bride and groom dressed?
W. Howard Greene ... and, as director of photography, e. Is it likely that they be ohoto-
Harry J. Wild.' The facts: Eddie Pyle was an operator along . graphed? -(c.._ {,..._ _ ~· .t..c_\ .
with the now well-known cinematographer Joe Biroc. Harold 2. Dying the clothes :J
a. ·our bride d'Jes this.
Wellman was never with us on the film. W. Howard Greene, b. Do we present this under the head~
and not Harry Wild, was the director of photography, because ing of clothes dying, or as
at that time the Kalmus' Technicolor contract with studios incidental busine ss for pr esenting
her?
stipulated one of Technicolor's cameramen in order to be ~ Necessary shot
given one of those gigantic machines. Wild was to be the first a. Bride making lace, : referably with
cameraman for black and white filming only. For complicated type from Iracema and other Iracema
reasons (and studio orders) the actual carnival was covered - 1charactero to roun j out cast,
both ways.
Now these inaccuracies are small things, and maybe one
shouldn't carp at them. On the other hand, perpetuation in
~ .-=iUiW'kh~
print gives them the feel of authenticity, and subsequent A SCRIPT PAGE. WITH STORY OUTLINE FOR THE 'JANGADEIROS
writing on the subject tends to accept them as gospel. SECTION. THE DRAWING IS BY WELLES.
Next sentence: 'On January 20 the first group, headed by
Wilson, flew down in two chartered airliners, taking with stockholders, negotiated a private and tough agreement for
them four Technicolor cameras, while another twelve planes the U.S. Government to pay it 300,000 dollars to undertake
left with other equipment.' The facts: Everything about the its bit. This speaks eloquently enough for its evaluation of the
project should be put in a wartime frame of reference: war- project as a non-commercial venture. I personally think that
time shortages of transportation of any kind, of equipment, Orson's waiving any payment whatever for his work, and his
cameras, film stock. As a quasi-government mission, the Welles giving up a lucrative weekly radio programme, is even more
group was sent off in one flying boat that was conveniently eloquent. For a well-paid creative artist to work for over half
dispatched to bring back another Welles. The diplomatically a year for no remuneration is a most uncommon occurrence.
celebrated Rio Conference was in progress at the time, and
our arrival was timed to facilitate the return of Sumner Welles, * * *
the Assistant Secretary of State, and delegation in the same Having digressed this much, my argument with Charles
plane. We took with us two, not four, Technicolor cameras, may be easier to follow if I start at the beginning of his article.
having browbeaten the Technicolor Corporation into giving Thus: as far as Flaherty's The Captain's Chair is concerned,
us one more camera than they were going to allow us. We we did not buy it in 1938, but in 1941, the same time we
took all the Technicolor negative stocks we could get our bought the Flaherty story called (another correction) The
hands on-all 50,000 feet. The company promised us 25,000 Story of Bonito, the Bull. 2,500 dollars was the price we had
feet 'soon'. There were no twelve planes. negotiated for Bonito, not 12,000. The story is exactly three
The numbers game I play above and in what follows about pages long. Welles had not taken an option on it in 1936. In
planes, people, cameras and money may seem petty. On the 1936 Welles was twenty-one years old, was just beginning his
contrary, numbers are the very heart of my objection to the work in the Federal Theatre Project, having completed a tour
portrait of Orson conveyed by Charles' article. It exudes an as an actor with Katherine Cornell's company. Joe Noriega,
aura of profligacy on Orson's part, and stems directly from characterised by Charles as 'a superb technician', turned out
the accusations that hounded him during the making of the to be one, but at the time of hiring was an assistant editor.
picture and from which he never escaped. Accepted as fact His most important qualification: he spoke Spanish. RKO
and converted into publicity both covert and overt, these looked askance at our elevating him to production manager
rumours about It's All True kept Orson from making any and finally editor. If Nelson Rockefeller were behind Orson's
films at all until he made The Stranger in 1945. That publicity, career in any way before It's All True, I think Orson would be
still accepted as fact, in large measure inhibits his practical more surprised than I am. Not to mention mortified at never
freedom to make films even now. The insidious damage of having taken concrete advantage of it.
Charles' piece is that, by its tone and-time and time again- I'd like to try clarifying the core issue which is raised in the
by its slightly distorted detail, it is perpetuating a myth about sentence, 'Unfortunately, Welles allowed himself to be
Orson which is not deserved. pressured into agreeing to get to Rio for the Carnival ... '
What's really and ironically true about It's All True, and I Here is a statement which is worse than inaccurate, it's
don't think it has ever been stated, is that Welles was ridiculous. The 'pressure' was self-imposed. What might have
approached to make a non-commercial picture, then was been argued against Orson was, first, whether he should have
bitterly reproached for making a non-commercial picture. given in to the pressures to do this Inter-American venture at
Right here I'd like to make it a matter of record: both RKO all. Second, whether the Carnival should, indeed, have been
and Welles got into the project by trying to do their bit for the main film subject.
the war effort. However: RKO, as a company responsible to About Carnival: that came from Brazil itself. It is not

189
too hard to see how their DIP (Department of Press and commitments (Amber sons shooting and It's All True preparing,
Propaganda) would conceive luring one of the world's most and Welles' presence in Rio mandatory) made Norman's
creative film-makers to make a fantastic tourist come-on directing Journey a convenient reality.
(effective after hostilities ended, to be sure) centred around These have been selective comments on the first page of
their fabulous Carnival. So they beckoned the gullible Higham's six-page article. Obviously, it would be more
Yankees. I suggest the record is made even clearer when it is economical of space and time to write a new and more
noted that the Brazilian official put in charge of working with accurate article. But Charles seeds so many questionable
us on the film was the head of the Departmento de Turismo. sprouts: 'A full score, using Latin-American themes, was
The weakness of the whole notion was that not Orson, not commissioned from Paul Misraki, but never used.' This
any RKO production or story executive, not one of us knew irrelevant statement is whimsically appended by Charles to
anything about Carnival. The most we could really learn was quotes from press releases of Welles' description of the total
that it was a sort of super Mardi-Gras which had to be seen to film. In truth, Paul Misraki's contribution was as an arranger
be believed. This latter turned out to be literal truth. for one sequence only within the Carnival subject. It was not
Orson was very reluctant to give up the Jazz segment of the used because the film died still-born.
original It's All True, a project of four true stories, as Charles And, again, that gratuitous hint of profligacy. It's hard to
describes. So it was not until he learned that the soul of the pass over statements like: 'And when Welles, with his passion
Carnival was the Samba; that this music, like Jazz, was a most for elaboration, found it necessary to flesh out even this
powerful influence in the country's popular culture; that it, incomparably exotic material' (referring to our cameras
like Jazz, was essentially a Negro contribution, that the capturing the Sambas, and the carnival excitement in village,
Carnival subject began to seem usable to him. Even so, it was swamp and rain forest)-'he reconstructed the carnival in a
all hearsay and had to be experienced (and photographed and theatre ... and a studio ... on a still more staggering scale
recorded) before it could possibly be developed into a film. than the real one.' I hope this letter has already made clear:
The fact that Bonito, one of the original four segments, was that's what it was all about; that was the plan. That's the way
another Latin-American story and already shooting, offered one constructs a picture out of three days of madness on the
an opportunity to convert It's All True into an Inter-American streets, and totally formless film material. I must land with
project. A change of title to Pan-America was even considered both feet on the 'still more staggering scale' bit. Feeding the
for a while. How non-commercial can you get? legend of profligacy again, and wrong besides.
So the pressures to do the Carnival were indeed multi- Perhaps some time in a separate article I can comment more
faceted. The pressure to get there fast and actually see what he fully on the story line of the film as Charles constructed it
was supposed to be making a picture about was exerted versus the way it was. As we learned more down there, the
mainly by Orson. Hard to fault him for that, it seems to me. structure of the Carnival subject altered. As Orson filmed more,
A paragraph or two later, Charles quotes Orson from a press it altered. There were several structures conceived for this
release as saying: 'We have pretty much in mind what we are subject, and several structures for the whole film. At one
going to do in Brazil.' Charles buries in a footnote to this that time, the whole of Carnival, for instance, was to be told from
there was no time to prepare a script. I stress again that no the viewpoint of the heroic Jangadeiros. After the tragedy of
script was possible until Welles had actually seen the carnival. Jacare, Orson felt the need of, and proposed, a new structure
May I bring out what is even more pertinent? RKO and the for the film.
Co-ordinators Office understood this, and these were the I have to admit I'm tempted not to comment on Charles'
ground rules accepted by all. description of the tragedy because he transforms it into near-
mythology. His version is so colourful, with shark and octopus
* * * battling, the fishermen standing and thus tilting the raft,
In the same section, Charles is testily critical of Welles for Jacare disappearing, his half-digested head and arms showing
doing Journey into Fear before going rather than after, for up in a captured shark six days later. What fuel for legend!
recalling Norman Foster from Bonito in Mexico, and for not Unfortunately, I have two depositions in the files, available
returning Norman to complete it immediately after Journey: to Charles, if not found by him, along with the log I kept of
' ... incredibly Welles announced instead Foster would direct our daily activities, which was forwarded to the Co-ordinators'
Dolores del Rio in a previously abandoned Mexican melo- Office as well as to the studio.
drama in April.' A somewhat mundane document, it read like this
In all discussion about Bonito and Foster, I don't think (excerpted):
Higham or other writers have even mentioned that the 'TUESDAY, MAY 19TH: The basic facts of this unfortunate
Mercury-Welles contract with RKO specified that Orson accident are as follows: Leo Reisler, assistant on the picture,
direct his projects personally. This held for It's All True just as accompanied jangadeiros to the Fluminense Yacht Club,
it did for Kane and Ambersons. Norman was technically hired where the Jangada was kept, witnessed its being tied to the
as a second unit director whose function was to shoot all the hired launch, and instructed the jangadeiros to ride inside the
background material for Bonito (bulls, ranches, tientas, launch. To further secure the jangada, two tow ropes were
corridas, etc.). While Orson asked him to do much, much attached to the jangada. All four jangadeiros rode on the
jangada as it was towed out Guanabara Bay and past the
more, it not only would have surprised RKO, but mobilised spot chosen for the day's shooting, where the company
their Legal Department into action, were they informed that had been waiting some time. There was a considerable mist,
Norman was 'the director'. but the company on shore saw them pass and tried to signal
The footage was, as Charles describes later in his article, them. Welles asked the two chauffeurs to drive down to the
very beautiful. It elicited from Orson eventually a cable to next point and see if they could tell them to return to the
Norman: 'You asked me to be brutally frank. Okay. The film location.
is absolutely wonderful. I will repeat that the film is com- 'When the drivers arrived, they succeeded in getting the
pletely marvellous, very very exciting and as beautiful as jangadeiros' attention. Jacare ordered the captain of the
launch to come in closer and, in so doing, a tremendous
anything you ever saw in your life. From now on you are breaker caught the launch and jangada, filling the launch
official screen credited co-director of Bonito and God bless with water which saved it from overturning. Both tow lines
you. ORSON.' were broken and the jangada was freed and rolled over.
The fact remained that Orson was still contractually held Jeronimo and Jacare started to swim to the shore. Tata and
to be the director. We all felt he could and should personally Manoel Preto stayed close to the jangada and uprighted it.
complete the film when he returned from Brazil. They heard Jacare call for help, but by the time they went to
Norman's work on Bonito and Norman's personal friend- look for him he was gone.
ship with Dolores del Rio made possible his ready acceptance 'The two chauffeurs dived in the water. The jangada
turned over a second time and threw the jangadeiros once
as director of Journey. RKO wanted Journey done. It was a more into the water. When they overturned again, the
studio initiated and scheduled project, taken away from jangadeiros threw a rope to the chauffeurs, who helped
another producer by Schaefer, who asked Welles to do it in them beach the jangada . . . Welles returned with the
August of 1941. This history combined with the other Welles jangadeiros to the Fluminense Club .. .'

190
 Thus it was not a second unit; Welles was waiting, himself.
And, dramatic though the image is, Welles did not scrawl a The funeral• First the processio,l, with the
dedication to the drowned man across his script, since there biggest call possible of janga-
was no formalised script as such. The dedication may have deiros in fishing costume --
also women and children and very
been scrawled on that cuff off which the film was being shot. old men. The body carried in
Meanwhile, back at the studio ... Charles is right-there the hammock.
were serious troubles there, but he has made the protagonists
Breen and Koerner. They did indeed tilt and joust and Breen Question• Actual location near cemetery
seems very photographic, but is
was unseated as production head by Koerner. However, in it too pretty?
the real battle over control of the company, Floyd Odium-
Atlas Company vs. Chase Bank, eta/, the two saddest casual- The cemetery• Scene in the actual cemetery
ties were protagonists George Schaefer and Welles. Both lost. with procession entering, others
crowded outside the wall.
It had a Greek classicism to it.
Schaefer, the President of RKO, was responsible for
Burial and Last Rites•
bringing Welles to Hollywood, and for the unique first Grave and nearby graves dug some-
contract which gave him so much freedom. Schaefer had where else than in actual cemetery ,
managed to withstand considerable pressure when the Hearst
and allied forces in publishing and film exhibition threatened ~· (Find location for above)
him and the company over Kane. There was one part of the Many close shots, individuals,
Board of Directors that had strongly advocated not releasing two shots and three shots of the
jangadeiros and other members of
Kane at all. Schaefer fought that through. While he could the community.
never achieve a circuit booking, an absolute necessity to the
commercial success of any film, he refused to abandon Kane. ~· (Find a segue for here --)
It was Schaefer who, after hearing the records of the Mercury's The men gather, the gathering
radio production of The Magnificent Ambersons, gave Orson becomes a meeting --
the okay for that film. Then the Odlum-Koerner forces made The Meeting: Discussions, then the decision to
Orson the rock on which they broke Schaefer. Schaefer in turn make the journey to Rio.
broke Welles. The departuretThis sequence needs more thought.
The first serious skirmish lost by Welles was the non- The journey itself.
fulfilment of the RKO promise to have Robert Wise bring
the basic Welles' cut of Ambersons to Rio for further work. The arrival in Rio. ·
Before leaving for Rio, Welles had supervised editing of most HOW DO WE PAY OFF?
of the film and left instructions for the remainder. Wise's The solut1on to most of this
problem lies in writing the
presence with the film had been the agreed plan, therefore actual interview dialogue, but
Charles' contention that Welles abandoned Ambersons is real visual, punch fade-out
excruciatingly incorrect. must be found.
Bob was ready to leave for the airport with the film when BIGGEST UNSOLVED PROBLEM
the government put an embargo on non-military travel. That Where does dialogue take place.
ended RKO's effort to fulfil the promise. The picture was cut
with some necessarily inadequate cabled instructions from THE 'JANGADEIROS' STORY: A PAGE OF SCRIPT NOTES. OUTLINES AND
Orson. When preview reaction was adverse, Schaefer's fall was QUERIES.
accelerated. Jack Moss, himself in a cruel squeeze, acted as
best he could in Orson's behalf; but interpolated scenes cry. Editorials asked why we couldn't simply photograph
created by committee, compromises between a thorough Sugar Loaf, the Christ of Corcovado, and the beautiful
gutting by studio forces and a salvage operation by Welles' Cariocans-like everybody else who came there. Why, they
allies, particularly Moss and Joe Cotten, only resulted in a clamoured for days, did we have to show those horrible slums
picture that caused Welles heartache. which were going to be torn down in a year or two anyway?
(The favelas are reportedly bigger and more crowded in 1970
* * * than in 1942.)
In April, bills somehow weren't being paid in Rio for It's Unbeknownst to Orson or myself, the Department of
All True. Cables began to come asking for estimates for a Turismo went to our Production Manager and asked him to
given sequence, or for a week's shooting, or a day's. One early 'lose' the film, or not to ship it. He agreed, because he resented
morning in mid-April, Orson and I were surprised by ads in Welles and distrusted the whole project. In particular he
the financial pages of the Rio morning papers which declared loathed the favela sequence, and we later learned that he had
in beautiful Portuguese that RKO would no longer be included in his production reports felicitous phrases like
responsible for debts incurred by Orson Welles or Richard 'Welles shot nothing but niggers again today.'
Wilson. In ugly English, this meant we couldn't buy a roll of A word here about this Production Manager, Lynn Shores.
toilet tissue without an RKO okay. Orson's vigorous private He was not our nemesis out of innate villainy, of course, but
protest direct to Schaefer went unheeded. From then on, to was representative of an interesting species worth many words
understate it, production was a bit sticky! Public notice of in another context, loosely designated here as The Old
our plight, blown up into rumours of a total halt in produc- Hollywood Hand, but recognised everywhere films are made.
tion, aggravated by the clumsy cancelling of the nightclub Then and today this type resists both youth and outsiders.
finale number, took their toll. Making matters worse, the press For Lynn Shores, Orson was the enemy all rolled up in an
got hold of information that Welles and I had found and outsized one. Nevertheless we managed to calm local fears
witnessed a 'Macumba', the outlawed voodoo ceremony and shake the film loose from his grasp.
indigenous to the black culture; further, that we intended to Then the major sequence of the Carnival segment, its big
touch on it in our filmed spectrum of the country and its music. Urea nightclub finale, had to be budgeted, argued, rebud-
This alarmed the Brazilian establishment, roughly equivalent geted. It was cancelled, reinstated, modified, finally okayed
then to its oppressive shape today. by Schaefer.
The press and others in the power pyramid were indignant Before that final okay was received, in order to record
when Welles got to the nitty-gritty of the Samba story. Just as certain musicians who were leaving Brazil, but had already
jazz came from brothels, back alleys, narrow streets of New been contracted for and rehearsed, Orson signed contracts
Orleans, the Samba is literally born in the favelas of Rio, the making himself personally liable for any money spent.
picturesque but poverty-stricken shanties that ding to the Concurrently, I had to send a letter to Shores absolving RKO
steep hillsides surrounding Rio. When we actually did this from any responsibility for commitments made by us. It was
vital sequence of the story, there was a tremendous hue and only by actions like this (self-penalising rather than self-

191
seeking) that the fabulous Urea sequence, unique in being an lamented that he had died for a 'fiction'-for the 'silver
example of how Welles dealt with a popular musical produc- screen'-for a 'fantasy', as they said, but on the whole they
tion number, was put on film. That extraordinary eight did not blame us.
minute sequence with afore-noted Paul Misraki arrange- One result of Jacare's death was to stop the temporising on
ment-the only sequence of the film ever totally printed in Reisman's part. He knew he could not summarily send us all
colour, edited and considered complete-is just one of the home with some vague commitment to come back and finish
sequences which, as Charles reports, may now be on the the Jangadeiros story. In a series of meetings he imposed a
bottom of the Pacific Ocean. solution that would keep RKO's hands clean and put the
On May 2nd, before we had begun filming that sequence screws on us: 10,000 dollars was to be deposited in my name.
(May 30th), Schaefer cabled Lynn Shores: 'ABANDON FOUR MEN A silent Mitchell camera, 40,000 feet of black and white film,
ON RAFT FILM. CONTINUE TO COMPLETION CARNIVAL. MAKE NO and a young expatriate Hungarian cameraman, George Fanto,
COMMITMENTS . . . REISMAN COMING TO ACT FOR COMPANY.' were to be furnished. The rigorous control took the form of
Phil Reisman, RKO Vice-President for Foreign Sales, reservations for four people, Welles, myself, my wife Eliza-
arrived and delivered a long, bitter, castigating letter from beth and Welles' secretary, Shifra, on a flight to the United
Schaefer. Phil was at our side or on our backs from that day States six weeks after the date of our arrival in Fortaleza.
on. Reisman liked Orson, knew the country somewhat, and These transportation slots in wartime were priceless.
was susceptible to our argument that announcing abandon- In Hollywood, Herb Drake, the Mercury's publicity chief,
ment of the Jangadeiro picture would be disastrous for RKO's had already uncovered proof of a covert anti-Welles cam-
image as well as for the Co-ordinators' whole programme in paign. It was being leaked that Ambersons and Journey into
Brazil. He withdrew an absolute order that would have pre- Fear were 'disasters'; that the It's All True footage was
cluded Orson's developing the subject to be done in Fortaleza. impossible to 'put together' (a true statement only in the sense
Meantime, he admittedly was searching feverishly for a that sound and action rarely came into the United States
formula to close down the picture and ship everybody home. together and, as no cutter was assigned to it, could never be
By mid-May he was laying the groundwork for an explanation matched. All the footage, in fact, had to await Welles' super-
to the press, that Welles had to go back to Hollywood to work vision and be related to Welles' evolving story line; again, one
on the film already shot, and Welles and a smaller group of the understandings at the outset). And, finally, that Welles
would return to the north of Brazil soon afterwards. RKO, in was loafing, dragging the project out, draft-dodging and
his belief, would gamble that our failure to return could be spending money like water.
explained in some ingenious way. RKO never told the press, for instance that we had waited
So filming of certain loosely scheduled shots of the four over a month after Carnival for equipment to arrive by boat!
fishermen continued. Thus there were bitter ironies surround- That even with the Brazilian government's intercession, it
ing the tragedy of Jacare. took an additional two weeks to get the equipment through
On May 13th we shot (in colour, as part of the Carnival
footage) the four fishermen at the airport, acting out their
farewell to Rio after experiencing Carnival. We saw them
entering the plane which would take them back to Fortaleza
in eight hours . . . eight hours to cover the same distance
which their heroic odyssey by raft had taken two months to
traverse. In one story structure these were to have been the
final shots of the Brazilian segment.
May 14th: A.M. Shot Inserts and Pickups. P.M. Part of the
Plaza Eleven sequence, the heart of our Carnival story.
1,000 feet of Technicolor film left.
May 15th: More Plaza Eleven shots. Ran out of film.
Being out of film was nothing new. This problem (and
weather) plagued us throughout. Our irregular supplies of
negative came in shipments of one to five thousand feet.
On May 16th, 17th: No shooting calls, since there was no
film. Welles rehearsed singers and dancers for the Urea
sequence, supervised pre-recordings, worked on the continuity
for the Jangadeiro sequence. We still hoped to avoid the insult
to the four national heroes and to Brazil that cancellation of
that project would mean.
May 18th: No film, no call. By now the crew was under-
standably restless. In the afternoon, Welles gave one of his
series of well-received weekly lectures. (Formal lectures,
informal talks, interviews, radio broadcasts, were all parts of
his extraordinarily successful cultural exchange programme,
specifically requested by the Co-ordinators Office.)
That morning he had gone scouting a location for some
shots which could be done in black and white, since Schaefer,
after bitter argument, had decided for economy reasons that
the Four Men story would not be in colour. So these shots
were to be part of that theoretically abandoned saga, a vital
part, their arrival in Rio Harbour, the master-shot of which
Charles describes vividly and with moving enthusiasm.
On May 19th the Jacare tragedy occurred. The whole
nation was grief-stricken. None more so than our company.
It is not true, as Charles says, that we were unable to risk
coming out of our hotel for days as a result of this accident.
The press in article and editorial lamented his death, deeply
RIGHT. ABOVE: WELLES PLANNING A SET- UP FOR THE JANGADEIRO
SEQUENCE NEAR FORTALEZA. THE CAMERAMAN GEORGE FANTO IS ON
THE EXTREME LEFT.
RIGHT: THE FOUR JANGADEIROS (JACARE IN DARKER HAT) ARE INTRO-
DUCED INTO THE SETTING OF CARNIVAL.

192
customs. That without lighting equipment we couldn't re- picks up the sleeping boy, asks his name and where he lives.
stage any night material (when most Carnival action really The boy's answer is a sleepy murmur of his favourite Samba,
happens) or set up any cover sets to protect us from the featured throughout. Their walk away is intercut with Otello
weather. No announcement was made to anyone that we'd (the other star character) saying farewell to Plaza Eleven as
run out of colour film on May 15th and that it was 5 p.m. on that song, also featured, plays like an echo. The lamp above
May 29th-fourteen days later-that one 2,000 foot can of the street sign goes out. Silence. Carnival and its film are over.
colour negative arrived-or that the few remaining black and On June 8th the filming of Carnival was finished. In a matter
white shots were impossible without Jacare. Not that Welles of hours everyone and all the equipment was gone.
was idle, even then. The Urea sequences demanded rehear- By June 13th our little group was in Fortaleza, two thousand
sals and pre-recordings; and he continued to function as the miles away, near the mouth of the Amazon. But our equipment
U.S.A.'s most effective cultural ambassador to date. arrived a whole precious week after we did, and our camera
Mainly, however, night and day, we re-worked our con- was without the lens that everyone knew Welles used most.
tinuities for the whole It's All True film, and made adjustments We worked from before dawn to after darkness fell for
necessary now that Jacare was gone. A new complete story some six weeks.
line for the Carnival subject was sent as part of a report to give Welles in a letter of thanks to Assis Figueiredo, the Turismo
our side of the project's history. In it we reminded everyone chief, for the cooperation in Rio, also said: ' ... the material
that there had never been a formal budget because there had is perfectly magnificent. From the point of view of the camera,
never been a script on which to base it. Everyone had under- the combination of the country, and the people and their
stood this, and, indeed, had accepted Welles' estimate that the achievement offers, I think, an opportunity unique in docu-
picture would cost between 850,000 and a million dollars. This mentary films.' We thought we had extraordinary film. We
comprehensive forty-seven page document was an answer to never found out! The studio could never seem to find it. What
Schaefer's bitter letter. Copies were sent to Rockefeller and they found they didn't even bother to print. The film that
Whitney. Higham calls Jangadeiro film, shot in and around Rio, was
On May 30th shooting of the big Urea sequence was finally mainly transition material linking the Carnival subject to the
started. My log for Sunday, June 7th, includes: sequence in the north.
11.30 P.M.-5.00 A.M. Municipal Theatre steps Exterior. We had shot our full40,000 feet. We filmed the raft putting
Policeman and child dialogue scene Technicolor. into port at Recife and Bahia, as the Jangadeiros had done
This scene, differing somewhat from Charles' description, in their original trip. The last of our ten thousand dollars was
showed the lost child who had been featured throughout, now used to get us from Bahia to Belem in order to use our
alone and asleep against the lamp-post, surrounded by mounds precious tickets home, which we managed on time.
of confetti and the debris of revelry in empty streets stretching A month later in Hollywood, prodded by my urging, the
for blocks. Dawn is breaking. As distant figures of street studio miraculously turned up thirteen hundred feet of the
sweepers appear with their brooms, a policeman tenderly film and printed it. It was mainly camera test material and
early work. To the best of my knowledge, for all the extra-
ordinary cinematic effort Welles put into covering that subject,
for all our dawn to dusk labours, that thirteen hundred feet
was all that was ever printed. So a lot of exposed but never-
developed negative also may be on the sea floor ... if it wasn't
reclaimed for silver years before.
Instead of keeping those Welles myths afloat, Charles might
have noted about this proposed million dollar project: At the
end of June, with all the filming completed on Carnival, the
main subject; with most of the Bonito segment shot; with the
full 10,000 dollar budget included for the then shooting
Jangadeiro sequence, the total money spent was 531,910
dollars. RKO added to this an overhead charge of 27l per
cent, or 146,275 dollars, making a total of 678,185 for a
picture cancelled on the grounds of Welles' reckless extrava-
gance.
Perhaps we should have guessed what was going to happen
to It's All True, the film child delivered with such love and
pain. We had a sign ... At the height of our Rio miseries,
after falling into disfavour with the press over shooting the
favelas, after the Urea had been cancelled a second time, after
Reisman had been sent to take the picture over 'for the com-
pany', after the death of Jacare, I had a strange visit. The
leaders of the Macumba group arrived in my office. They
wanted to know when we were going to film them, as we'd
agreed. Their new white robes were ready, and they had cost
two hundred dollars. With Reisman on our necks, filming
them was out of the question. Even the production's paying
for their new white robes was impossible. I was trying to
explain our plight gently, and negotiate a price for the new
robes which Welles could pay personally, when I was called to
the 'phone in the next room.
When I came back the 'Macumbistas' were gone. Stuck in
the hard cover of my script, around the title of It's All True,
was a little ring of needles.
I'll close now. More another time. Regards to Penelope.
Best,
DICK

LEFT. ABOVE : AT THE URCA CASINO. WELLES. DR. FIGUEIREDO. RICHARD

WILSON .
LEFT : "THE U.S.A.'S MOST EFFECTIVE CULTURAL AMBASSADOR".
WELLES ENGAGED ON AN INTER-CONTINENTAL RADIO BROADCAST,
WHICH HE ALSO WROTE AND PRODUCED .

193
 WELLES'
IMMORTAL
ST0 RY Joseph McBride

There but for the grace of God, goes God. indicate the existence of the outside world. This is an interior
drama, a meditation. The old man is disconcerted when he
Description of Welles finds that all three of his puppets also know the sailor's story:
by Herman J. Mankiewicz this is an omen, a definition of the forces he will have to
overstep to carry out his will. He continues undaunted,
GENERATION AGO, in The Lady from Shanghai, Orson bursting into the bedchamber, unable to conceal his passion:
A Welles (in the guise of a young sailor) told us that Macao
was the wickedest city in the world. He said it with
bravado, hoping to impress the young lady who would later
'Because you move without pain, you think you move at your
own will. Not so-you move at my bidding. Two young,
strong and lusty jumping-jacks in this old hand of mine!'
try to destroy him. Welles made sport of a naive young man's Welles is, as he has said, primarily a man of ideas, and each
deadly tendency to be siphoned on to the most malign of of his films is to some extent a philosophical drama. The
characters-a descent into the maelstrom. The powers of evil, Immortal Story is the most theatrical work in his career. The
the lawyer, his wife and his partner, set up a drama to ensnare stage is simple and bare, the props are laid out for our
the young sailor. In The Immortal Story, Welles uses this inspection, the issues are stated and reiterated in different keys,
episode as the basis of a philosophical inquisition. His source, and the characters are aware of their roles. A further peculi-
Isak Dinesen's novella, reads like a precis of his themes, and arity: The Immortal Story is a miniature, scarcely an hour long,
he follows it quite closely, shading in his own rhythms and and it is Welles's first film in colour since It's All True. The
overtones. Its hero, Mr. Clay, a moribund and fabulously colour is soft and dream-like, recalling Fellini's statement that
wealthy Macao merchant, wants to prove his power by making colour in movies is 'like breathing underwater' because
the archetypal sailor's story-the tale of a rich old man who 'cinema is movement; colour is immobility.' The Immortal
hired a young sailor to impregnate his wife-pass from legend Story is a drama of ideas, linear and intellectually direct. But
into fact. 'I don't like pretence,' he muses. 'I don't like it is emotionally mysterious, developing a tension between
prophecies. I like facts ... People should only record things immobility and purpose.
which have already happened.' Citizen Kane is about mystery, certainly, but the mystery of
The Lady from Shanghai is packed with bewildering action; fact. With its maze-like system of cross-references, it strikes
almost nothing happens in The Immortal Story. But for a short me as essentially evasive, centrifugal (which is not to judge it,
chorus of merchants in an early scene and the handful of only to explain it). Welles assembles all the facts, disproves all
Chinese who pass through as mute witnesses, the only people of them, and declares his unwillingness to define the hero. We
in the film are the four principals: Clay, his clerk Levinsky, are made to understand the meaning of legend and to wonder
the young sailor, and Virginie, the woman Levinsky hires to at the meaning of fact. We see, hear and feel much about Kane
play the part of Clay's wife. A courtyard, two sparse rooms,
and Clay's mansion form the whole of the setting, and two ABOVE: "THE IMMORTAL STORY", JEANNE MOREAU . NORMAN
tattered sails in the foreground of the opening shot suffice to ESHLEY. ORSON WELLES.

194
(much more than about Mr. Clay), but we know that we do a solipsist, though his heroes are. At their deaths, the world
not understand him. The Immortal Story approaches legend flies apart from its bearings-signified usually by the wrench-
from the inside out. It is centripetal-Kane in negative. ing of chronology and by the grandiosity of their death scenes
But because the making of legend is itself a subjective -but Welles's style gives an ironic qualification to their
process, its meaning determined in the mind of its beholder, solipsism. The unfortunate Othello and Arkadin commit
The Immortal Story seems to me to strike into the heart of the suicide, but no Welles hero offers himself up as a martyr, as
matter. What it eschews in breadth it gains in lucidity. It Chaplin does in Monsieur Verdoux. The Welles hero dies
omits all that is peripheral to Clay, and defines him as the doer fighting, and if he takes the world with him at the end, the act
of an essential deed, which in one stroke ennobles him and makes clear the presumption implicit in his defiance. Welles is
renders meaningless his prior existence. This is Welles's a tragedian. He squares his accounts with the world.
Tempest. We are taken directly into the mind of the creator,
and leave our spectators' seats to witness the pulling of the * * *
strings above the stage. Clay's musings coincide with the flow
of the author's reasoning; when the mechanics of the story The Immortal Story differs from previous Welles films in
have been set completely in motion, Clay dies and the author that its prologue-usually his instrument for invoking a
withdraws after allowing Levinsky to make a final statement prescience of death-concerns itself with past, not future,
of the theme. The screen dissolves to white; darkness would be destruction. A chorus of three merchants, lesser Clays (an
inappropriate to our lucidity. invention of Welles's), discuss briefly and pointedly the
circumstances under which Clay drove his partner (Virginie's
* * * father) to suicide and took over his mansion. Welles's earlier
In the late work of great directors, the youthful delight in heroes looked to the past for the comforting, if illusory,
flaunting one's tools and one's splendid flashes of insight memories of innocence; Clay reveres the past, but only
gives way to a clear-eyed simplicity which the immature and because it confirms his present position. He has Levinsky read
insecure can easily mistake for senile fixation. Renoir gives us his old account books to him, and scorns the prophecy of
Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, Ford The Man Who Shot Liberty Isaiah ('. . . in the wilderness shall waters break out') that
Valance, Lubitsch Heaven Can Wait, Hawks El Dorado, Levinsky carries with him. Innocence, desire and fecundity
Dreyer Gertrud, Welles The Immortal Story. If it comes to Clay have no value for him. He contrasts the sailor's ideals with the
in his last moments to dare the impossible-if it comes to solidity of gold: 'He's young. Eh, Levinsky? He's full of the
Welles to eschew camera movements and bizarre perspec- juices oflife. He has blood in him. I suppose he's got tears. He
tives-it is because he has seen everything happen. As Clay longs, yearns for the things which dissolve people-for
eats a solitary dinner, his face reflected in a last, nostalgic, friendship, for love ... And gold, my young sailor, is solid,
melancholy series of mirrors, Welles tells us, 'It was only it's hard, it's proof against dissolution.'
natural that things should be as they were, because he had His realisation of the sailor's story is a gesture of contempt
willed them to be so.' And yet there is something Clay has not towards prophecy, an attempt to tum possibility into the
touched, cannot touch, something his machinations call up passe, but both Levinsky and Virginie prophesy several times
and cannot dispel. that Clay's latest venture will be the cause of his death. Clay
In the extraordinary erotic scenes which lie at the core of the believes that it is the future which is dangerous, because it
film, Welles shifts suddenly, breathtakingly, to the rapturous means death; but it is finally the machinery of the past, the
intimacy of a hand-held camera as Virginie drifts naked sum of his delusions, which leads him to destruction.
through the bedchamber blowing out the candles in grave The past tense of the prologue warns us that the story will
preparation for love-making (recapturing a scene from The not so much concern a hero's attempts to recapture the past
Scarlet Empress, one of the many echoes of Sternberg in this as his attempts to escape it. But where can he escape? The
delicately masochistic film). The young sailor enters to find glass ball at the beginning of Kane, like the prologue to The
her lying nude in the bed, her arms crossed over her breasts as Magnificent Ambersons, summons up feelings of mystery and
if in mingled shame and self-protection, and during his romance. The merchants' grim analysis in The Immortal
undressing Welles gives us magnificent close-ups of her face, Story leaves us in desolation, and it is only at the end that
her mouth, her eyes. Despite the frank surrender of Elsa in Welles invokes possibility-in the shell, which gives out the
The Lady from Shanghai, there was no nudity, no overt sound of the sea, a message from another world. Thus the
eroticism in that strangely chaste film. But here the tentative, typical pattern of a Welles film is exactly reversed, and the
spontaneous attraction between the two is an assertion of dropping of the shell has a meaning quite unlike the dropping
defiant tenderness, a mockery of Clay's massive, rotting flesh. of the glass ball. When Kane dies, our feeling is of awe and
No Welles hero, not even Quinlan or Falstaff, is closer to excitement, and the shattering of the ball is thrilling-we share
decay than this bitter old man. the grandeur of Kane's release. It is only subsequently that we
In his last two films, Chimes at Midnight and this, Welles are made aware of the feelings of loss and futility associated
has moved ever closer to the faces of his characters. It is a hard- with the ball. By the time that Clay drops the shell, however,
won conclusion. Earlier in his career, he had avoided, almost we have faced the fact that he has obliterated all the alter-
feared, close-ups, preferring the distancing of rhetoric and the natives to the bleakness of self-serving. Then, when we see the
qualification of irony. The faces were masks, and the cool noiselessly swaying, mute shell (we do not see it drop), we
baroque style reflected the desperation of his characters' realise suddenly, with great force and compression, that there
self-deception. Mr. Arkadin is the apogee of this tendency; has always been an alternative-the liberating voice of
from that point on, his characters have been increasingly mystery unheeded. The sensation of discovery coincides with
willing to admit their duplicity. In The Immortal Story, the moment of destruction.
everything happens in the glances passed from one person to Clay dies because his ego, his consciousness, has over-
another, and in their echoes on the face of the hero. whelmed him. Virginie looks quietly away as Levinsky
Welles has come full circle from the reporter's futile pronounces his master's epitaph: 'It's very hard on people who
investigation in Kane; the story has worked its way back to its want things so badly that they can't do without them. If they
source, the story-teller and his audience. In The Trial, K. found can't get these things, it's hard. And when they do get them,
it 'a miserable conclusion' that lying should be regarded as a surely it is very hard.' He puts the shell to his ear and listens
universal principle; Clay, like Falstaff, devotes himself to to the echo of some long-vanished wave. 'I have heard it
turning lying into truth. Why then does he die when his drama before, long ago, but where?' The futility of Kane's life is
is consummated? He doesn't die in the book. The book's epitomised by the burning of the sled at the end of the film;
sailor entrusts Levinsky with a precious shell as a parting gift forgotten possibility is Clay's final perception. Half a lifetime
to Virginie; Welles has the sailor give it to Clay himself for lies between the meticulous qualification of Citizen Kane and
deliverance to her, and a sudden close-up of the shell rocking the impassioned simplicity of The Immortal Story. The
back and forth on the floor of the verandah where Clay sits inversion of the emphasis reminds us that Welles's deepest
shows us that the old man has died. Welles is not, like Chaplin, concerns are not with failure but with potentiality.

195
 ~ ~ "' ~

r- ; .... "':#«*~ ..
•

• ;, ... t

Jean - Louis Trintignant in Bernardo Bertolucci 's

new film about a pre-war Fascist assassin,
from the novel by Alberto Moravia.
Stefania Sandrelli (right, and
far right) plays
his wife.
 for this role.' Bogarde related the story
with some relish. Later on the set, when
Death in Venice Visconti remarked that he was looking
a trifle 'old', he retorted that you could
hardly expect anything else from a dead
calculated that he had At dinner that night he was expansive pheasant.
D
IRK BOGARDE
reached his two hundred and forty- and happy. All was welL Bogarde was a The front office, apparently, was also
third 'look' and the end of his loved son. He led his film 'family' into concerned about the theme of Mann's
tether. Almost. Working for Luchino the tough little Trieste restaurant where novella. Anyone who had merely read a
Visconti on Thomas Mann's Death the food had to be superb and tradi- synopsis instead of the original might
in Venice was an experience, alternately tional and the staff buzzed around him, reasonably suppose that the film would
exalting and exasperating. Visconti- not deferentially, but like respectful be simply about an elderly man who
Duke of Modrone and descendant accomplices in an elaborate conspiracy. chases a young boy and then dies. 'It
of Charlemagne-is the absolute He was an immaculate host. One must is not about homosexuality,' Visconti
monarch, tyrant and charmer, hawk try the special bean soup, the local insisted. All the same, it was thought,
and dove. The camera and conse- cheese, the private wine. why not change the boy to a girl:
quently Visconti seemed pleased with Characteristically, he had spent the instead of a lecherous old man pursuing
the 'looks', thought Bogarde, relieved. afternoon at the castle of the Hapsburg a little boy, a lecherous old man
'Three months from now I shall know Archduke Maximilian and his wife pursuing a little girl. Reason, it appears,
it has been marvellously worthwhile. Carlotta at Miramare. Just looking and prevailed.
But just at present it is too tender to feeling and absorbing the atmosphere. It is easy to see why the book should
contemplate. Like going to the dentist Someone suggested, not entirely in jest, be such a coveted film property. It has
and having all your bridge-work done in that he had probably lugged the unit out the formidable pure classic line that
one go.' to Trieste just to have an excuse for challenges a director's skill and vision.
He considered Visconti-'V', the visiting Miramare. He thinks the real If he fails to measure up, he can expect
'monster' or the 'master', depending Hapsburg story would make a splendid no mercy. Conscious perhaps of his own
on the prevailing wind-was not unlike film: the others had been 'fairy tales'. failure with Camus' L'Etranger, Visconti
Losey, in the way each composed their Romantically wrong. started the film as some kind of sacred
films in many-layered depth. Also there The prospect of Nicholas and Alex- mission. 'If it is no good, neither of us
was the total application to the needs of andra intrigued him: 'but you can only can work in the cinema again,' he
the production, which placed punishing make it in Leningrad, nowhere else.' He assured Bogarde. Somewhat extrava-
demands on those who have to supply finds the critics tiresome at times. 'They gantly, considering he is now planning
the needs. 'Though Losey is more will always connect each of my films with the Proust film.
professional, more aware of working all the others-the link-the family. To emphasise what he feels is the
within the film industry set-up. Visconti Particularly the Americans do this. I essence of the story, he has introduced
is a brilliant amateur in the best, truest don't see the point. A compliment? a dialogue between Schonberg and
sense. Very aristocratic, very rich, very Maybe. But I could wish they would pay Gustav Mahler-upon whom Mann
talented-the coincidence of all three me a greater compliment. To judge each based the character of Aschenbach-
has conditioned how he works.' film as it comes.' taken from letters they exchanged which
We were in Trieste on the tag-end of 'What is past is past,' he says with the discuss the nature of perfect beauty.
the marathon which had begun at the urgency of a man whose next film-a Mahler-Aschenbach believes beauty is
Hotel des Bains on the Lido, where Mann Proust adaptation-may be his last. 'I created by the artist and is disproved
set his story; moved into Venice, a see only the faults in my old films. The when he discovers perfect natural beauty
nervous nose ahead of the tourist other day I saw La Terra Trema. I in the Polish boy Tadzio.
season; and fetched up at Cinecitta in thought the audience would walk out. Visconti, however, has little respect
Rome. A decaying railway terminal at How can they stand it? Though I wish for the cadence of dialogue-strangely
Trieste had been found to substitute for very much I could have completed it in for an artist whose reputation as a
the station (circa 1911) at Venice which the three episodes I planned instead of musician and producer of opera would
had inconsiderately modernised itself. just one. Oh yes. But the time is past. suggest a hypersensitive feeling for the
The location scouts were off in the hills The time for La Terra Trema is past.' rhythm of sound. He seems to share an
talent-spotting good-looking grave- Death in Venice, like all his film impatience with mere words with
yards. That would be it. Tempers had projects, has been maturing in his mind Hitchcock and Ford, whom James
stopped fraying. The End was in sight. for many years. But the plans for actually Stewart recalls ripping out entire pages
The day before shooting at the making it crystallised during The of dialogue no matter how relevant just
station was a holiday, which meant that Damned. Bogarde's first indication of it because the chat slowed up the visuals.
everyone went around with a twitch of was when he told Visconti he would The script of Death in Venice, which
conscience for being so idle, although rather be the character named he has written with Nicola Badalucco, is
Visconti himself had decreed it. No one Aschenbach (played by Helmut a pictorial poem. The lighting camera-
felt quite content until he arrived from Griem) instead of Friedrich Bruck- man Pasquale DeSantis has washed the
Venice with his entourage, a new crew- mann-the 'Macbeth' of The Damned- film in those pale mists of Venice in
cut and a brave, checkered umbrella that which many critics now agree was a which mirages take shape. There were
did duty for a sunshade. One can see monumental piece of miscasting. problems at first. 'Mahler' had to
why his crew drop everything to work Visconti was adamant that he should be become 'Thomas Mann', though
with him when he calls; why his rages, Friedrich, adding, according to Bogarde, Bogarde's fears that he might materialise
which can immobilise a set and everyone 'but you may play Aschenbach in my as 'Mr. Chips' or 'Rudyard Kipling'
on it, are instantly forgiven and for- next film, Death in Venice.' were fortunately unfounded. The
gotten. He gives his unit from the star He later justified his choice ofBogarde specially constructed Mahler nose make-
down an exhilarating sense of pride. to the baffled front office at Warner up had a distressing habit of blowing up
'These days he is a lamb,' says Piero Brothers by explaining that, 'Bogarde is in the heat. Oddly, Visconti, who can
Tosi, the costume designer who has been like a dead pheasant, which you hang hold up a morning's shooting arranging
with him since Senso, 'then he was a from the neck and when the head falls the precise fold of an extra's veil which
tiger.' the body is ripe. Bogarde is exactly ripe may just get into shot but probably
won't, was less perturbed than Bogarde,
who for the past three months had been
LEFT: "DEATH IN VENICE". TOP : BOGARDE AND VISCONTI AT THE TRIESTE STATION . thinking in terms of Mahler, since the
SILVANA MANGANO AND BJORN ANDRESEN . BELOW : AT THE HOTEL DES BAINS. memorable night in Rome before

199
production started when Visconti, with office in Trieste (alias Venice), one of the losing their false moustaches in the heat
a showman's feel for the significant crowd artists produced two modern and Bogarde was trying not to get
gesture, clued the actor into the pfennigs for a 1911 ticket to Vienna. The involved in the argument about whether
composer. Actors wait on Visconti's audience won't even see the error, let the Venetian railway tickets should be
clues, I find, like columnists panting for alone notice it, but Visconti insisted on white cardboard or a green screed. One
the latest crumb about Princess Anne. another take using the correct fare. wouldn't fancy being the fool who had
It is all they can expect. As Alain Del on, He peppers his scenes with his very overlooked that item of research. Tosi
who worked for Visconti on Rocco and particular touches. Among the inter- was inspecting Edwardian wrists for
his Brothers and The Leopard and will nationally mixed family parties at the Common Market watches, and the
play Proust in his next film, explained: hotel, the Russians are always roaring cream serge and black doeskin and
'If he picks you, it's because you have with laughter. 'Because,' said Visconti cotton dusters swept the platform
what he wants in the role. He knows brooking no argument, 'it was before grandly. One by one the extras were
what he's getting, even though you may the First World War.' They also wear called to the booking hall where
not know. He only tells you when clothes ten years out of date. 'The Visconti brooded over their placing in
you're wrong.' Russians,' he adds with, one suspects, a his scheme of the scene. Visconti, they
The search for the ideal Tadzio (which disdain worthy of the Hapsburgs, 'were said in hushed whispers, was choreo-
had defeated other directors) ended with always ten years behind the fashion.' graphing his ballet.
Bjorn Andresen, who is Swedish, Commenting on an hourglass he'd
fifteen years old and would rather spend chosen for one scene, he observed that That Death in Venice even reached the
his life playing an electric guitar. At the 'there was one just like it in my father's stage of being filmed more or less as
introductory press reception he house.' The sense one gets of sharing written is a battle won by Visconti over
mistook Bogarde for the film publicist his life with his films is very strong in Jose Ferrer, Huston, Losey, Zeffirelli,
and the film publicist for Aschenbach. this one. In 1911, after all, he was a Resnais and all the other directors who
He doesn't fancy acting. But he looks clever, cultivated child seeing all and have wanted to make it and for
superb, takes direction beautifully and noting everything. various reasons couldn't. It now remains
everyone agreed he was a nice, sensible In the Trieste railway station, par- to be seen whether he has consolidated
lad to have around. His mother is played tially bombed in the Second World War that victory where it matters. On the
by Silvana Mangano, who is doing the but still sporting the elegant roof which screen.
film pretty much for love of the book and had attracted Visconti, the extras were MARGARET HINXMo\N
Visconti.
What is surprising about Visconti is
the blend of extreme perfectionist who
plans and prepares endlessly (which I
had expected) and spontaneous creator
(which I had not expected). 'He has,' Bloody Sunday
said one observer, 'a genius for making
use of God's gifts.' In one of the film's
family groups in the salon of the Hotel OR A FILM which is about, in the nearest of the three principals to a free
des Bains was the once famous lieder
singer Masha Predit. On the spur of the
moment and for the most crucial scene
F words of its director, 'whether half
a loaf really is better than no bread,'
the extravagance of the ballroom at the
soul, 1970s style: he is genuinely fond of
both his lovers, within certain limits, but
he puts his own life, his own career, his
in the film (the death scene on the beach), Cafe Royal might seem a rather unlikely own comfort first. He feels no guilt,
Visconti recruited her to croon a location, especially when laid out for because no sense of duty towards either;
Mussorgsky lament, serenely seated in a a particularly ostentatious banquet. the relationships work as long as they do
basket-chair, as Aschenbach dies. It is a However, there is a point to be made. work, and if they stop working the best
stunning inspiration and, according to Peter Finch, as one of the characters thing is just to walk away. The other two
those who witnessed it, incomparably faced with the question about half a loaf characters have to come to terms with
beautiful. Another inspiration- (or rather less than half the affections this as best they may: to decide whether
Aschenbach walking idly along the of Murray Head, playing a young love on these terms is love enough, or
beach picking up a dead crab-Visconti designer having simultaneous affairs whether loneliness and nothing would be
reluctantly discarded because it didn't with Finch and Glenda Jackson), here more secure in the long run.
fit. 'It was very nice, but unnecessary.' comes face to face with another issue in The idea of the film has been with
At the same time he will insist his life. He is Jewish, and a doctor. He Schlesinger for a long time. Something
meticulously on pre-First World War has, as a rule, very little to do with his first began to come of it when Penelope
costumes that are not only authentic in family or organised Jewry, but on this Gilliatt visited the location of Far from
design but actual clothes of the period. occasion he has felt himself obliged to the Madding Crowd and mentioned that
It goes without saying that he and Tosi plunge back into the midst of it for his she would like to work on a film.
know two old women in Rome who have nephew's barmitzvah. It is a tiresome Schlesinger told her his idea, and she
collections of wardrobes worn and occasion for him, full of forced jollity went away and thought about it. The
discarded by Edwardian aristocracy. and coy questions about why he has result was the original screenplay of
Bogarde's raw silk summer suit, for remained unmarried for so long: it Bloody Sunday.
instance, was made in 1911. The women's confronts him with an aspect of his life 'The one thing I didn't want to make,'
linen garments were unpressed, because he has chosen to leave out of considera- says Schlesinger, 'was a problem film.
then linen was soft, creased and flowing tion, and on the whole it confirms his This had to be a story of relationships,
instead of stiff, ironed and tailored. feeling that he was right to do so. in which the characters are complex
Aschenbach's trunk, which was not No guilt: it is the key to the film's people in a difficult emotional situation.
opened in a particular scene, nevertheless subject matter. Though the background "Problems" would have detracted from
had to be packed with all the clothes he might suggest swinging London, yet their status as individuals. For instance,
would wear at the Hotel des Bains. Four again, John Schlesinger is emphatic that the character Peter Finch plays is, among
filming hours were spent waiting for an his new film is about anything but that. other things, a doctor, Jewish, and
exact Edwardian black wood photo- It is in fact designed almost as an anti- homosexual. All these elements contri-
graph frame to be found in the curio swinging London film, a dogged attempt bute to his character and his attitude
shops of Rome. The equally authentic to insist that life and life's decisions are towards the particular emotional situa-
filigree silver and gold frames submitted never easy, and least of all when merely tion in which he finds himself. But he
him would not, he considered, be proper modish solutions seem to be ready at does not have any hang-up specifically
for Aschenbach. At the station ticket hand. Bob, the young artist, is the about being homosexual or being Jewish :

200
in these respects he has taken his
decisions, he is very well adjusted. He is
not a walking problem, he is a person.
The same with Glenda Jackson: her
character is less well adjusted to her
situation, and therefore less able, or less
willing, to settle for anything less than
the largest possible commitment from
the young man. But at least she too has
no sense of guilt about the relationship.'
As a piece of shooting, at least,
Bloody Sunday sounds relatively straight-
forward. But by the time I visited it just
about everything conceivable had gone
wrong, from the illness of Ian Bannen,
which forced him out of the film after
some weeks' shooting (to be replaced by
Peter Finch, who had just seen the
picture he was preparing for collapse in
front of him), to a crane which had
snapped neatly in two a day or so earlier
and nearly killed the cameraman on it.
Despite which, everyone seemed to be in
reasonably good spirits during the
complicated and uncomfortable business
of setting up and shooting various
incidents at the dinner and covering the
background of vulgar revelry. Peter
Finch in particular was clearly delighted "BLOODY SUNDAY": PETER FINCH AND NIKE ARRIGHI.
with his role, and the unexpected chance
to work with Schlesinger again. and that because the plot demands it.' success. So I suppose they thought that
Everyone to whom he talked about The one mystery about the film is how perhaps we could do it again. The only
his role immediately brought up Oscar Schlesinger persuaded United Artists to trouble now is that hardly a week goes
Wilde, he said. 'But actually, if you look back it, since the cast and the subject are by but that some sort of award for
at it, this is the opposite of Wilde. hardly obvious box-office and with its Midnight Cowboy comes in from some-
Wilde's homosexuality was, at least at fairly lengthy shooting schedule it is no where. I'm paranoiac enough when
the period covered by the film, the centr:'ll low-budget quicky. Schlesinger himself filming anyway, but this is really so much
fact of his life. He felt tremendous gmlt is vague but pleased. 'I think they to live up to. I thank heaven that I have
about it, as well as a sort of suicidal are finally coming round in Hollywood already nearly finished another film, and
exhibitionism. In Bloody Sunday I play to the idea that they don't know what is have a third (Hadrian VII) already
a man with certain emotional problems commercial and what isn't, because lined up. Otherwise, I think I'd be so
which have nothing essentially to do with nobody knows. They didn't like the idea intimidated I might just run away and
the sex of the person he is involved with. of Midnight Cowboy particularly, but never come back.'
It might just as easily be a girl, but it they let us do it and it has had quite a JoHN RussELL TAYLOR
happens to be a boy. This is the first
script I have ever seen in which homo- "BLOODY SUNDAY" : JOHN SCHLESINGER REHEARSES A SCENE WITH GLENDA JACKSON
sexuality is just a fact about a character, AND MURRAY HEAD .
not presented at all as an issue in
itself. He is a person who reacts in a
certain way, and that's all there is to it.
I like that.'
One of the complicating factors in
acting in this film might be, I thought,
that two of the principals, Peter Finch
and Glenda Jackson, though perfectly
aware of each other's existence, live in
different spheres of the third character's
life and meet only once in the whole
story. But no, apparently not. 'Luckily
perhaps, I didn't know Glenda Jackson
at all, I'd never worked with her. And
John rather ingeniously kept it that way:
we never filmed on the same day, we
never met at all except for a quick formal
handshake until we met in the film. Each
of us relates to the boy without reference
to the relationship the other has with
him; the whole situation has been in
existence for a year or so when the film
starts, so there are no revelations, no
confrontations, no dramatic turns of fate.
We go on living while time and circum-
stance settle things for us. There's hardly
any plot, it's all character. Such a relief
to have room to move around in a role,
instead of being manreuvred this way
201
 The Go-BetW'een
o BEGIN WITH, it was too small to by camera and crew as well as the actors
T figure on any road map I could find.
True, Norfolk offered a selection of
Meltons, greater and lesser, but Melton
-and stifling. In consequence everyone
not vitally concerned with the immediate
work in hand is banished, and we creep
Constable proved to be the other side like ghosts around the echoing halls,
of Norwich from the principal clutch trying in elaborate dumbshow not to
of them-some twenty miles north, in creak boards or fall foul of crumbling
that mysterious hinterland where the plaster.
railway has never penetrated and once 'Of course,' observes Carmen Dillon
stately homes, too remote even for sotto voce, 'I think it's a hideous house.
generously endowed American institu- But the rather elaborate vulgarity of the
tions to see them as possible footholds style is just right for the story. As you
in Britain, tend to dream into slow can see'-indicating the cluttered draw-
decay amid the grain-heavy summer ing-room next to a darkly splendid
fields. One such is Melton Hall. Built dining-room where the mouldering re-
in the 1660s, illustrated by Pevsner, and mains of a large birthday tea are being
with some fantastic 17th century ceilings scrupulously preserved-'we've kept the
praised by one authority as ' a ne plus colour to an absolute minimum: nearly
ultra in plasterer's artistry', it has been all in the fawn-brown-grey range, so
deserted now for seven years, the pro- that it makes a neutral background for
perty of a farmer who lives elsewhere the characters.' I recall that Losey and
and devotes some energy to discoura- she were out to get the same sort of
ging visitors. colourless colour effect in Accident.
Despite which, he proved willing 'Yes-but all the interiors there were
enough to hand it all over to Joseph shot in the studio. Though funnily
Losey and his unit for the shooting of enough people often remark on the
The Go-Between. Apparently the house feeling of immediacy the film had from
L. P. Hartley had principally in mind being made entirely on location!'
when writing his novel was Bradenham, Do I gather that Miss Dillon is not en-
home of the Rider Haggards, but accor- tirely sold on the superiority of all-
ding to Carmen Dillon, art director on location shooting? 'I don't think it
The Go-Between, 'that was impossible: makes as much difference as everyone
hideously tarted-up.' What the film thinks. Or it needn't, particularly when
needed was a rambling country house you have a first-rate lighting cameraman
which would look as though nothing like Gerry Fisher, who will light studio
had been changed for years before the interiors to look natural instead of
high Edwardian summer in which the pouring in light from every source. A
action takes place. Melton, with its lot of it is a matter of conviction: look
overgrown gardens and external air of out of that window and what you see
unkempt splendour, filled the bill per- couldn't look more like a painted back-
fectly-especially since the interior was drop. If it was a backdrop, everyone
stripped and partly ruinous, leaving would be self-conscious about it, but
Carmen Dillon free to redecorate and since we know it's real, we take it on
furnish according to the needs of the trust that it will also look real.'
film. The shot upstairs is now in the can,
Following Losey's recent practice to and I wander up to have a word with
the extreme, the whole film will be shot Losey. He seems happy and relieved
in and around Melton Hall. The day I that the film is actually under way,
was there the weather actually approxi- after endless delays and worries about
mated to the ideal-or one of the ideals, financing, which have finally been re-
since Hartley's story of fated adult pas- solved in a rather mysterious co-produc-
sion seen or partly seen through a tion deal between ('or so they tell us')
child's eyes requires still, baking sum- Associated British and M-G-M. The
mer heat for most of the time and project actually goes back some ten
lashing thundery rain for the climax. years, and Harold Pinter came on to the
They were shooting in and from a scene some six years ago, when Losey
small upstairs room which had been first asked him to read the book. His
done out as a dainty Edwardian sitting- reaction to it was immediate and alarm-
room. Across the lawn Michael Gough ing. 'I was reading it all at one sitting
could be glimpsed talking to a gardener, and, as it happened, alone in the house.
while a little farther away some deer And suddenly, at a certain point near
had obligingly stationed themselves to the climax of the story, I found myself
complete the decorative background. in floods of tears. Really weeping. A
Inside the room Julie Christie talks few pages later I was off again. It was
to the boy who is acting as go-between all very eerie. And when Joe asked if I
in her secret romance with Alan Bates, would like to write a script based on the
the neighbouring tenant farmer. The book my first thought was. impossible:
room is tiny-at any rate when occupied I shall just be in tears for months at a
time.'
LOSEY AT MELTON CONSTABLE. All the same, he launched eagerly

202
into a script, and had written about a gradually as the film progresses we see that working with Losey is an actor's
third of the first draft when it transpired things that don't quite belong: an old dream. I chat to Margaret Leighton,
that they did not have the rights, which man, an old woman, the village changed Michael Gough and Edward Fox in
a Swiss gentleman had apparently ac- by the passage of many years. And these Michael Gough's palatial dressing-
quired. It took nearly five years to sort scenes are not in a coherent, consecutive room, where they are relaxing familially
that out, while the project hung fire. time scheme within themselves: they between scenes (one advantage of
Finally it was off again, and the present change, and break off and backtrack. shooting in a deserted country house is
script was completed about eighteen You see the old man at one moment that everyone has quarters of extrava-
months ago, to be shot absolutely un- looking at a particular cottage, just gant size, even if the plumbing is liable
changed. ('No,' says Pinter, 'I changed when the boy has been looking at it, to spit up the occasional frog when the
one word last week.') and you see him actually arriving in the fountains are turned on). Margaret
Pinter, at any rate, was glad in village quite a bit later. Leighton is dressed, a trifle bizarrely,
retrospect that the film had to be 'Gradually, I hope these two aspects in a white lacy skirt and a man's
delayed. 'Looking back at what I had of the film will grow together, so that collarless shirt. This, it transpires, is
done the first time, I realised that I had the audience comes to understand that because she is all ready to join in the
missed a whole aspect, perhaps to me the old man is the boy, that the old lads' cricket match on the front lawn,
now the most important aspect, of the woman is the young woman in the into which she made a devastatingly
book. I had concentrated on a straight earlier time. They will, as it were, co- effective incursion the previous day.
dramatisation of the central story about exist in one time-scale, with the present Observes Margaret Leighton: 'The
the young boy and the lovers. Now being not the starting-point but some- only trouble is, I have this faint worry
what I find most exciting about the thing which is seen rather in the context that everything is going too well. On
subject is the role of time: the annihi- of the past, in seemingly incoherent the last film I made (The Madwoman of
lation of time by the man's return to flashes-forward. I find this whole sub- Chail/ot ), we all had an absolutely lovely
the scene of his childhood experience. ject of time and memory particularly time, and unfortunately it did not turn
'In the book there is a prologue where exciting just now, and the film is very out a very good film. I sometimes
he finds a locked diary and this sends complex in this respect, with a lot wonder if there is a sort of law which
him back to his childhood; and then of voice over and juxtaposition of says that the best things you do are
there is a final section, more than just apparently unrelated things. But I think always the ones you least liked doing.'
an epilogue, about how this return to it will work. It is all easier to make On that ruling, The Go-Between should
the past affects him now. I didn't think clear on film than to talk about.' turn out to be one of the worst films
that you could do it like that in the film, At any rate, there is one thing the of all time. Somehow, I don't quite
so what I have done is to start in the cast seem agreed on: that the script is imagine it will work out that way.
past, with the story of the boy, and then the best they have ever worked on, and JOHN RUSSELL TAYLOR

203
"ZOO IN BUDAPEST': GENE RAYMOND.

~~~~NEW YORK 1970

subsists mainly early sound films by major directors, Down to cases, with best things first:
T
HE INSATIABLE FOOF
on a diet of 'Golden Oldies'. In the could be seen. Most had been invisible Rowland V. Lee's Zoo in Budapest (1933)
past, the New York genus often here for over thirty years. stood out as the great rediscovery.
suffered from malnutrition. Those The ball had been set rolling in Except for a short final scene, all of this
Friends of Old Films kept alive by Hollywood last year when Alex Gordon marvellously poetic work takes place
occasional strong projections at the Huff (formerly producer at AlP and arch in an Arthur Rackhamesque Tiergarten
Society, or the Museum of Modern Art's foof himself) was engaged by Fox as which serves as refuge for the three main
Brown-Borzage Emergency Nitrate archivist for a TV series. In the course of characters. Zani (Gene Raymond), son
Injection Centre, are now in good shape his research, Gordon became aware of of the ex-headkeeper, has grown up in
again. In 1970, the foof's cup ran over. the wealth of material gathering dust or the zoo, the only world be knows. He is
Indeed, a Beast With a Thousand Eyes rotting in the vaults. He convinced the on lovingly communicative terms with
would have been kept busy with all of company to essay theatrical release for a the animals and hates people from the
the great vintages coaxed out of the trial package. Nitrate to acetate trans- outside world. His habit of snatching
vaults this year-at the Museum (at last, fers were undertaken. The restoration women visitors' furs-particularly those
Murnau's City Girl, Borzage's gorgeous was 'a real chamber of horrors' accord- of an obnoxious countess who had come
Lazybones), at William Everson's in- ing to one of the renovators; many to purchase the zoo's fox for conversion
valuable 'Lost Strayed and Forgotten' prints and negatives were in a shabby into a muff-has gotten him into trouble
weekly course at the New School, in the condition, broken, scratched or wizened with the authorities. Zani aids a girl from
new clubs springing up in converted with shrinkage. The costly and tedious the orphan asylum (Eve-Loretta
garages or lofts, and above all at Dan transfer work resulted in generally fine Young) to flee from her keepers. They
Talbot's New Yorker Theatre, the most new prints. The New Yorker series spend the night together in a deserted
enterprising of the city's art houses. proved a success; another newly rescued bear cave, where they are joined by an
There, a staggering collection of 16 group of films will be put on view next unhappy boy from a rich family who has
20th Century-Fox 'vaulties', the majority season. fled his governess.

204
 The trio of fugitives are hunted down copy of the original shooting script for
like animals during a long night in the Walking Down Broadway and hasten to
deserted zoo. When captured, the lovers confirm Mr. Koszarski's view that much
owe their redemption to Zani's valour of the release version seems echt
during the spectacular finale: the escape Stroheim footage.) It is clear that the
of all the beasts, an extravagantly film was not 'completely reshot by
ferocious battle-ballet of maddened another director' (Finler: Stroheim), or
elephants, bristling porcupines and 'completely remade by Wurtzel'
flying tigers. (Weinberg: SIGHT AND SOUND, Autumn
The passages leading up to this 1962). It is likely that these assertions,
fantastic action sequence are remarkable and Lotte Eisner's' ... There is nothing
for their balance of narrative vigour and left of Stroheim in the pitiful remake
romantic lyricism. Lee Garmes' camera entitled Hello, Sister,' can be traced to
links sinuous art nouveau tracking shots Stroheim himself, who, quite naturally
which establish the physical layout of disgusted by AI Werker's patch-up job
the menageries and introduce characters on his film, probably never cared to see
(reminiscences of his previous work with the result. Bergut (Von Stroheim,
Sternberg here) and slow, caressing Terrain Vague, 1960) goes so far as to
movements during the glowing idyllic state that Walking Down Broadway was
passages. An exquisite scene is set in the never made!
marsh at dusk (impressionism of sound Broadway began with an integrated
and image: foliage and preening birds action-with-credit title sequence during
seen through the mist, Debussy music), which the four main characters were
when Eve, hiding in the bird sanctuary, seen 'Walking Down Broadway' and the
removes the drab orphan's uniform she camera panned up to the lights of a
has worn all her life and puts on woman's street of theatres flashing: 'Fox Presents
clothing for the first time. Zani arrives, Erich von Stroheim's Production ...
feels her beating heart and remarks that with ... ' etc. This was all cut; as a
she is 'all moulted'. bastard work, Hello, Sister was released
The villain, cage-sweeper Heinie (Paul with no directorial or technical credits.
Fix) is identified with the hyenas (his Millie (ZaSu Pitts) was conceived as the
entrances are accompanied by Wagner's central character of the original; the
Niebelungen motif), and serves as a plot hinged on her dream world, her
maleficent link between the human psychopathic life style and her morbid
world and that of the beasts. Indeed, the jealousy of girl-friend Peggy's romance
film seems to be showing us life as a with pick-up Jimmy. The revision
series of interconnecting zoo-prisons- softens and reduces Millie's voyeur role,
there are stunning movements during concentrating on the romance itself. With
which the camera stalks through the the shift, some bits of grotesque broad
inside of cages and we see the humans humour involving characters relating to
from the animals' point of view. The Millie were cut-lines in Jewish dialect,

THE orphans, themselves behind bars all

week, are taken to the zoo on Thursdays
to give the girls the illusion that they are
better off than the animals.

•
prohibition gags, homosexual caricature
-and above all a beautiful scene in
which ZaSu recounted her imaginary
love life to an enthralled hunchbacked
landlady and a turtle named Lady

YEAR OF
Godiva.
Under Lee's direction, Raymond There are entire scenes embedded in
(elsewhere often just a tolerable second- Hello, Sister which harken back to
leading man) is a model of gentle Greed and the harsh erotic ceremonials
virility, and Loretta Young an ideal and mitigating sentimentalities which
often lay at the heart of von Stroheim's

THEFoof
fairy-tale heroine. In spite of a long
career (he started working with Ince), work. We've only an imperfect idea of
Lee seems remembered, if at all, as a what the vandalism of Sol Wurtzel (the
derivative journeyman. His two Karloff Fox executive who ordered the hatchet
chillers, Tower of London and Son of job) has deprived us of; the added scenes
Frankenstein, are full of fine things; the shot by Werker are actually well handled,
elaborately composed Son of Franken- but their scripting is witless, of extreme
stein is the best looking member of poverty. We have, unexpectedly, against
Universal's horror family. Zoo in all odds and oracles, been gifted with
Budapest is a very special classic-yet half a 'lost' Stroheim film. Rejoice!
one is hard put to find consideration of
this really unique movie in histories of
the cinema.
•
While they are about it, the historians Men Without Women (1930), John
might do well to tidy up a few sins of Ford's first film on a Dudley Nichols
commission too. The resurrection of script, resurfaced earlier this season and
Hello, Sister at the New Yorker supplied disappointed. Judge Priest (1934), one
persuasive evidence of the crying need to of Ford's personally fondest remem-
revise most of the literature on Stroheim. bered works, lived up to its reputation,
(The film is examined at length else- that of one of the happiest of all the
where in this issue. I saw it armed with a Ford-Nichols collaborations.
Will Rogers is Priest, a lonesome
LEFT: "'ZOO IN BUDAPEST'". LORETIA YOUNG
widower, circuit court judge in an old
AND GENE RAYMOND. PAUL FIX (ABOVE) Kentucky town, circa 1890. The
REACHING THROUGH BARS. character, taken from stories by Irvin S.

205
 Dreamer, Aren't We All?'. Aside from truck driver who, tainted by depression
its dimpled good-naturedness, Sunny immorality, turns gangster. It is a quirky
Side Up is buoyed by surprisingly film with forceful bits, not really
energetic cinematography for the period successful. Rowland Brown seems some-
and the high quality of all of the DeSylva, thing of a 'lost' director. He made two
Brown and Henderson score-' Dreamer' other features, Blood Money and Hell's
'If I had a Talking Picture of You,' th~ Highway, after which he is reported to
charming title song, and the astonishing have been permanently blacklisted for
'Turn on the Heat'. striking a producer.
This big production number is the No surprise that something signed by
crowning act at a society ball, given at Raoul Walsh should be good-simple
hero Farrell's Long Island estate. When open-mouthedness that Me and My Gal
the curtain rises, several hundred Eskimo (1932), a picture with no reputation
girls, tucked in fur coats, emerge from whatsoever, should turn out to be the
"JUDGE PRIEST": BRENDA FOWLER. WILL their polar igloos and start to sing, bump
ROGERS. ANITA LOUISE. TOM BROWN . and grind. This stimulating performance
Cobb, was to reappear, as played more melts igloos and glaciers; an oozy
externally by Charles Winninger, in quicksand forms of what might reason-
The Sun Shines Bright (1953). The plot ably be described as yoghourt lava. As
is fairly simple: the judge's fight against the chorines warble, wiggle and start to
intolerance as exemplified by his own strip, things get even more torrid: palm
bigoted sister, a member of the trees sprout up from the lava, the land-
'Daughters of the Confederacy' who scape turns tropical, giant bananas
seeks to prevent her son from marrying burgeon between shapely legs, steam
beneath his station. All ends well and starts hissing from the yoghourt the
as expected with a parade. The cli~actic entire set catches fire and the girls finally
courtroom proceedings are enlivened by save themselves by diving into the
a lovely Civil War flashback and a swimming pool. This pre-Busby Berkeley
monumental expectoration scene· the frolic of inspired madness would alone
suffice to ensure Sunny Side Up's "ME AND MY GAL": BENNETT AND TRACY
dialogue is never less than vi~id­ AS CASHIER AND COP.
Cha~ley Grapewin, imbibing whisky, and
immortality.
best ofWalsh's comedies, and one of the
offenng some to the judge: 'Good corn.
You can smell the feet of the boy that •
Spencer Tracy was represented by
most invigorating products of Holly-
wood in the Thirties. It is arguably the
ploughed it.' three films, of successive years, each in a quintessential gum-chewing fast-talk-
In other hands, some of the material different way an important step in his ing depression-prohibition melodrama
would have verged on the 'folksy'. Or romance comedy of the period-
worse. Judge Priest offers the definitive career during the formative period at
Fox before he went over to M-G-M. superior to a dozen fine examples of the
half-human Negro caricature by Stepin' When the studio noted the great impres- genre made by Warners at the time.
Fetchit (a hallucinatory performance by sion he had made on the public in his Tracy is crackajack as the easy-going
an underrated actor); and for good first screen appearance (Ford's Up the Irish cop who woos and wins breezy
measure, a candy pull scene at which River, 1930), Fox felt that it had found Joan Bennett, a waterfront lunch-
Hattie McDaniel sings 'Jesus gonna the 'tough guy' required as the house counter cashier. They work wonder-
wash me as white as snow'-lyrics by answer to Paramount's George Bancroft fully together; a pity that twenty years
Nichols. But the magic is operative: this and Warner's Edward G. Robinson. He and youth passed before they were
may be heresy, but it seems to me that was vaulted to stardom in Quick Millions teamed again (in Father of the Bride)-
our tears well, not because of any real (1931), as Bugs Raymond, an honest enough evidence here that they could
past recaptured-Ford's innocent faith
and tenderness here endow a patently "THIS STIMULATING PERFORMANCE MELTS IGLOOS AND GLACIERS . .. " THE 'TURN ON TH E
hokum slice of fantasy Americana with HEAT' NUMBER IN " SUNNY SIDE UP".
be~uty and immediacy. The superb
pnnt had been located at the Will
Rogers Foundation archives .

•
Janet Gaynor's sweetness graced two
features at the New Yorker, one of her
last silents, Borzage's Seventh Heaven
(1927), and her first all-talkie, all-singie,
Sunny Side Up (1929), both with Charles
Farrell. Seventh Heaven, 'the screen's
most popular love story,' which ran off
with half the Oscars the first year they
were awarded, stands up quite well.
David Butler's Sunny Side Up seems to
be the first musical comedy written
directly for the screen; and it proved a
pure Hollywood delight, free of much of
the staginess and grimacing to the gallery
by imported Broadway stars which were
a feature of many early film musicals. The
story is a harmless poor girl-rich boy
romance, the sort of thing in which the
heroine says: 'You know, Bea, there's a
song that expresses my feelings exactly'
-and then breaks into the lovely 'I'm a

206
 Garner's suicide. It's a long hard mull.
SARAH: 'Good thing he killed himself.
That stinker killed 400 workers at the
strike.'
RALPH: 'You can't judge him by
ordinary standards. He was too big
for that.'
Cut to narratage one reel long, of
Tracy's bigness. Back again to the
Morgans.
SARAH: 'He's better off dead. That rat
drove his wife to suicide.'
RALPH: 'You can't judge him by
ordinary ... '
Cut to one reel of Tracy's fairly
ordinary marriage ... and so on.
For the defence, it should be set forth
that Colleen Moore, as Garner's first
wife, strikes the only genuine note in the
story, all of which is beautifully photo-
graphed by James Wong Howe. And if
we must cull at least half a Rosebud from
this molehill: Garner kills himself after
discovering that his second wife (Helen
Vinson) has been unfaithful to him with
his own eldest son. His infant son is
therefore most likely his grandson. You
don't get that every day .
•
An intriguing critical postulate
FORERUNNER OF 'KANE ' . . • HELEN VINSON AND TRACY IN "THE POWER AND THE GLORY".
espoused in certain arrondissements
have made one of the great romantic daring was surely not that most of the is that the officially great films of a period
comedy teams of the Thirties. Brawls, film is told in 'narratage' (it just means often do not stand up when seen a
drunk scenes, alertly vulgar Arthur fiashbacks)-life and times of ruthless generation later, whereas many which
Kober dialogue all first-rate, and the yet vulnerable Garner, president of seemed at the making mere straight
free-wheeling, unlecherous treatment of America's largest railway-but that the commercial chores do come down to us,
sex a pleasure. For good measure, there flashbacks are simply unchronological. not only as entertainment, but as 'art'.
is a love scene which starts out as a This does give Preston Sturges' script an See Gal, see Glory now, and it doesn't
parody of Strange Interlude-obviously air of helter-skelter spurious density, seem too far-fetched. Does this really
the big Marienbad 'think' movie of the although the flashbacks themselves are mean that when Persona and Hell's
period. Tracy is at last alone with Bennett all dull patches. Belles on Wheels rise up from the vaults
on the couch, and his voice on the sound- We open with Garner's funeral. His as 'Golden Oldies' thirty years from now,
track wonders (his lips do not move) how life-long associate, Henry (Ralph the superiority of Hell's Belles on Wheels
far he can go without getting slapped. Morgan), and Henry's wife (Sarah will be l' evidence meme? Let the foofs of
Her voice (lips tight) wonders just how Paddon) return home to mull over 2001 check it out for themselves.
far she can Jet him go without being
thought 'easy'. At last, he remarks out "'THE POWER AND THE GLORY" : COLLEEN MOORE AND SPENCER TRACY.
loud: 'Say, I just saw a funny movie
called Strange Inner Tube.' Bennett:
'Yeah, ya mean the one where they say
what they're thinkin' without openin'
their yaps?'

•
The Power and the Glory (1933) was a
personal project of producer Jesse
Lasky, whose own Horatio Algerish
career had been somewhat similar to that
of Thomas Garner, hero of the story
given to William K. Howard to direct.
It was a major production, treated to
special publicity which called attention
to a new technique called 'narratage'.
The critics raved. Tracy was rewarded
with a better contract. For years, I had
been waiting for a chance to see this film,
nearly always spoken of with reverence
as a brilliant experiment, a forerunner of
Citizen Kane. The sad news is that The
Power and the Glory is a windy bore;
even Tracy is not much help, miscast,
unconvincingly made up for the scenes
of Garner's last years.
In 1933, what must have seemed

207
 Richard Koszarski
T SEEMS THAT Erich von Stroheim's Walking Down Broadway, Erich von Stroheim is no longer directing.' On April 4 Variety
I his last film as a director and his only talking picture, was not
'destroyed and completely reshot' by others, as Stroheim
historians through the years have told us. The recent New York
carried the title change, and the news that only 62,000 dollars
was spent by Edwin Burke and AI Werker on retakes.
That same month the Theatre Collection received publicity
revival of Hello, Sister!, the title under which the film surfaced material on Hello, Sister!. The press sheet pointedly carried no
in 1933, reveals that what actually occurred was a brief directorial credit; Stroheim's name had disappeared from the
reshooting, amounting to most of the final reel and perhaps a posters and lobby cards illustrated, many of which were
few intermittent episodes elsewhere in the film, a total of identical to those in the 1932 press book. A different packet of
perhaps twenty-five per cent of the running time. stills was received, all bearing the classmark 'VS', as had the
The history of von Stroheim's last film is tortuous and bears earlier stills. On May 5 the film appeared as the sixth anni-
repeating, with special attention to the known production versary attraction at the Roxy. It was generally badly received
dates. In the late summer of 1932 von Stroheim completed for ('a stupid little trifle, aimless and dull,' said one reviewer).
Fox the film known in contemporary press accounts as Hardly any of the critics knew Stroheim had anything to do
Walking Down Broadway. These same accounts point out the with it, and for some reason a number listed Alan Crosland
extraordinary smoothness of the production, Stroheim's as director. The film was laid to rest with a final blast by
amicability, and his success in bringing the picture in for Herman Weinberg, who declared in Cinema Quarterly,
300,000 dollars in only 48 days. Press sheets were prepared 'there remains not a single scene of Hello, Sister! that one can
prominently listing Stroheim as director, and publicity stills isolate as having been fashioned by the hand that made either
were distributed. Such material was received by the Theatre Greed or Foolish Wives.'
Collection of the New York Public Library in November of Since then we have learned that Stroheim and his film
1932, before any of the later reshooting occurred, thus giving
us a certain idea of what the Stroheim version was like. Then ABOVE: STROH ElM'S BALCONY SCENE. WITH BELCHING SMOKESTACKS.
(IN THE REDONE FOOTAGE AT THE CONCLUSION THE AIR IS CLEAR
on February 21, 1933 it was announced in the New York Sun HERE. EVEN THOUGH THE BUILDING IS ON FIRE.) BOOTS MALLORY.
that, 'Walking Down Broadway is being remade, now that JAMES DUNN.

208
became pawns in a struggle between Sol Wurtzel and Winfield
Sheehan, who didn't mind if this minor Fox release was
sacrificed in a producers' vendetta. Von Stroheim's contract
called for him getting credit and he refused it, so it appeared
uncredited (already one should realise that if the film had been
completely reshot somebody else's name would have appeared).
The film was forgotten, and its very existence was in doubt
until last year, when a print turned up in the Fox vaults. Its
return to public view, for its first real critical appraisals,
clarifies many things about the evolution of Stroheim's style,
and the new directions in which he was progressing.
* * *
But how can we decide how much of the film, if any, is
positively Stroheim's? It should be kept in mind that only 600
feet of Stroheim footage remain in Merry-Go-Round, but that
one can pick his scenes out of that film like plums from a
pudding. Stroheim is possibly the easiest of all directors to do
this with, and such an operation works very well on Hello,
Sister!.
Although the Walking Down Broadway press sheet contains
no synopsis, we do have von Stroheim's own, as published in
the first issue of Film Culture. The first surprise is that, except
for the ending, the extant film agrees almost completely with
the Stroheim synopsis, only the last seven minutes comprising
action which is definitely at variance with Stroheim's version.
To recap briefly the plots, in Walking Down Broadway Peggy
(Boots Mallory) and Millie (ZaSu Pitts) come to New York
where they meet Jimmy (James Dunn) and his brash friend BEGINNING OF THE BATILE BETWEEN MONA AND MAC. BOOTS MAL-
Mac (Terrance Ray). When pregnancy hastens a marriage LORY. MINNA GOMBELL, TERRANCE RAY.
between Peggy and Jimmy, the jealous Millie breaks up their
engagement with lies about Peggy. But realising what she has long chute into a tank of water; they visit the fun-house, where
done, she attempts to gas herself, blowing up the apartment grotesque dwarfs batter the entrants with slap-sticks, and
house in the process. Peggy and Jimmy are reunited by her where they must make their way through a weaving mass of
deathbed confession. In Hello, Sister! Millie does not attempt phallic columns to a place where hidden air-vents blow the
suicide but instead confesses her lies to Jimmy. As they are girls' skirts over their heads. All this fits in too well with
talking the apartment house explodes, thanks to the activity numerous other Stroheim films for us to believe the scenes are
of a drunk who has been stealing dynamite and hiding it in his the work of some studio hack.
bed (Will Stanton). Jimmy saves Peggy from the resulting fire Another aspect which seems to me a Stroheim hallmark that
and they are reconciled. is seldom recognised, is his use of circular images as fate
Now the fact that so much of the plot is exactly similar is not symbols. The recurrent shots of the roulette wheel in Foolish
conclusive proof that it is merely digested from the Stroheim Wives, and the whole theme of Merry-Go-Round are perhaps
version. However, it is difficult to see why a company would the most obvious. Arthur Lennig writes that Stroheim uses the
reshoot scene for scene a minor release, except for the addition merry-go-round in that film as a cross between a revolving
of a new ending. It is even more difficult to figure out how door and a roulette wheel, and this idea finds its complement
they could reshoot this whole feature for only 62,000 dollars, in Hello, Sister! where the two lovers fatefully miss each other
much of it probably studio overhead anyway. But what really in the revolving door of the marriage licence bureau, thus
gives away the origin of much of the footage is the command- initiating a string of events which leads to the almost tragic
ing style which permeates it, which overwhelms the obvious finale.
retakes, and which is unmistakably the mark of von Stroheim. Stroheim was also one of the first American directors to
Strong mixtures of sexual and religious imagery in (usually) make consistent use of the violent forces of nature, specifically
ironic juxtaposition are perhaps the most evident and con-
sistent aspects of the Stroheim touch, and they are well in QUARTET AT A CHINESE RESTAURANT. ZASU PITIS . JAMES DUNN .
BOOTS MALLORY. TERRANCE RAY.
evidence here. Although Stroheim must forsake the baroque
splendour of his Imperial films (such as Danilo's assignation
with Sally, dominated literally by a life-size crucifix), Peggy does
have a print of the Madonna above her bed (although her
seduction is no longer in the film). Later, when we see her at
the doctor's having her fears of pregnancy confirmed, the
physician gives her a lecture on Da Vinci's Last Supper,
hanging conveniently nearby. Leonardo, too, was said to be
illegitimate, he tells her. The camera, on the painting for this
line, now begins to track in slowly. The doctor then goes on
about how motherhood is never a bad, i.e. sinful thing, and
talks of the joy of the mother who brought 'Him' into the
world, who so filled it with beauty. The camera is now on a
close-up of Christ. One of Stroheim's last film projects was
The Romance ofLeonardo Da Vinci, and it is interesting to note
his early appearance here.
As in most Stroheim films, the participants at one point or
another visit some sort of amusement park, where Stroheim
can allow his flair for the grotesque free rein, squeezing as
much metaphoric mileage as possible out of it into the bargain.
Here, the first place the two couples visit is Coney Island,
where they encounter a variety of amusements with vaguely
sexual overtones: they board a car which propels them down a
 rainstorms. The two protagonists of Hello, Sister! find their here is completely sexual and does not have the overtone of
greatest scene of dramatic conflict played out against a financial lust which colours Marcus's jealousy. Sexual
fantastic storm which forces them to scream in a manner which jealousy is a theme which runs consistently through every
magnifies their natural emotions in an uncanny fashion. This Stroheim film, and this one is no exception. Because Mac is
scene takes place on the eve of their wedding (Christmas Eve, washed up with Peggy he goes out of his way to break up her
of course) and brings decisively to mind that Christmas Eve engagement to his friend. Millie also tries to break them up for
sequence in Greed during which Mac murdered Trina. Such her own reasons. Jimmy succumbs to their arguments, and
storms appear throughout Stroheim's work, perhaps most their jealousies nearly ruin his happiness with Peggy.
notably in Greed, Foolish Wives and The Wedding March. No The contrast between the two women also has precedents,
retake director would have bothered to shoot this scene with notably in The Wedding March, but the most interesting
expensive rain equipment on a vast and crowded street factor is the addition of Mona (Minna Gombell), the prosti-
setting, as Stroheim did. But the effect makes this the most tute who appears to be the girls' only friend. She seems a
powerful scene in the film. Marguerite Tazelaar, reviewing the completely sympathetic character, making her way in the hard
film for the old New York Herald Tribune, wrote: 'Some ofthe world of New York as best she can. There are very few such
photography is good, especially the rain-drenched street when characters in Stroheim, and perhaps the African sequences of
the principals meet to quarrel. Here the mood of the piece is Queen Kelly developed this change in his perspective.
reflected in the tempestuous weather and the hurrying, These are perhaps the most obvious things about the film
dripping figures.' She might have added that a lot of the which mark the individual parts as Stroheim's. But it must be
photography is good, and the film marks a major early effort kept in mind that his original version was considerably longer
of James Wong Howe. than the six reels of Hello, Sister!, and much violence has
Even in the final fire sequence, which we know contains necessarily been done to his original conception.
reshot matter, we may see at least some of Stroheim's original
footage. There is a veritable documentary on fire-fighting *
(shades of Foolish Wives): a street sign close-up tells us the * *
location is 49th Street and 9th A venue; a policeman sends in Certainly the film as it now exists has had most of the
the alarm; the 54th Engine Company rushes to the blaze; stuffing knocked out of it. The shift in emphasis away from
hoses are connected, ladders erected, and people leap into life Millie, the ZaSu Pitts character, is probably the most obvious,
nets; the ambulance from Roosevelt Hospital arrives. It is but there are numerous examples of minor changes throughout
possible that much of this part of the finale was included for the film. When the doctor tells Peggy, 'You are going to
the sake of the production values, as its spectacle is quite become ... ' the concluding words are actually bleeped off the
convincing. soundtrack, although the message is obvious from the context
A final element which marks Hello, Sister! as a Stroheim of the scene. One observes jump cuts within single shots where
film is the complexity of the characterisations themselves. words or whole lines of dialogue were later scissored out.
Even in this truncated version we can identify the people as But despite all this manhandling the film still holds together
Stroheim creations. Mac and Jimmy, the two male characters fairly well, at least until the condusion, and deserves its place
- one brash, experienced and self-assured, the other innocent, in the body of Stroheim's work, a place from which it has been
reserved and warm-hearted-are direct descendants of Marcus stubbornly excluded for too long by many critics and histo-
and Mac of Greed and second cousins to the Princes Danilo rians. The perceptive Miss Tazelaar wrote in 1933, 'While it
and Mirko of The Merry Widow. Their close relationship (Mac falls to pieces rather badly at the end, the earlier parts have a
is hardly ever seen alone, and exists largely as a decayed human appeal which proves entertaining.' It is not too
version of Jimmy) reflects that of the two cousins in The Merry difficult to realise that many of the scenes in this film were
Widow-they represent those Jekyll and Hyde qualities which obviously directed by a powerful film-maker: the rainstorm, a
Stroheim is always revealing in friends or relatives. Just like terrific battle between Mona and Mac in which they roll down
Marcus (or Schani in The Wedding March, or Kallafati in a flight of stairs, kicking and dawing each other, and the Jove
Merry-Go-Round) Mac is generally seen as a greasy lower- scenes between Jimmy and Peggy, which have a charm and
class slob. Like Marcus he believes himself irresistible to humanity not surpassed in any other Stroheim film, are all
women, and is the first of the men to try to make it with the stunning.
female lead, an attempt which is unsuccessful. Like Marcus, he Stroheim was really striking out into new territory-
resents his friend's success with the girl, but the resentment territory which might even have turned him into a viable
commercial proposition had the film been released without
STROH ElM'S ORIGINAL ENDING (NOT IN "HE LLO , SISTER!"), WITH revisions, and had it been at least a modest success. Previously
MILLIE IN HOSPITAL AFTER A SUICIDE ATTEMPT. ZASU PITTS, BOOTS he had revelled in finding ugliness and corruption amidst
MALLORY. JAMES DUNN .
beauty and splendour- the 'moral' of all his films of Imperial
decay. Now, however, he is picking out little rays of beauty
amid a vast confusion of noise and filth-a terrifying portrait
of New York city life, with strong overtones of Lonesome and
Applause. In this he begins to resemble more and more his
mentor Griffith, particularly the Griffith of such films as Isn't
Life Wonderful?. Here the lovers play out a truly romantic love
scene beneath the moon-romantic in spite of the fact that
their balcony is a dirty skylight and the moon keeps slipping
out of view behind clouds of pollution spewed forth from the
commercial smokestacks in the distance. For a change, there
is hope: 'I'd forgotten there were any stars over New York,'
says Jimmy.
Even in its original form Walking Down Broadway was
probably not Stroheim's masterpiece. Yet for its demonstration
of the new directions he was taking, of his ability to turn out
modest personal films if he couldn't make monumental ones,
the film is probably a more important discovery than The
Devil' s Passkey might be. There is no evidence here that sound
held any difficulty for Stroheim; the production of the film was
disciplined and efficient; the results, even in this truncated
form, of considerable interest. And yet the next twenty-five
years ofStroheim's creative life produced nothing but unfilmed
projects.

210
V ERHOEVEN S " O.K."

BERLIN
EDINBURGH
FESTIVALS VENICE

CAPOVILLA'S " THE HU NGER PROPHET"

in competition to promote international harmony, ended in

BERLIN multilingual bedlam and the inevitable demise of the Festival.
But whatever the cause (and even among the German contin-
the Golden Bears into storage at Berlin gent there was evident division of opinion, with Alexander
T
HEY HAD TO PUT
this year, and it's quite likely that they will be left there to Kluge proposing to rationalise the chaos by setting up an
gather dust. It would take a Sunday Times Insight team to eleventh-hour counter-jury), the effect is clear. As at Cannes
unravel the events which triggered off the collapse of the two years ago, the festival idea has been challenged. Cannes
Festival, but the pattern was classic. The jury, we were told, survived, with modifications; Berlin may not be so fortunate,
had rejected from competition the German film O.K. (which despite the compromises which the organisers clearly hoped
re-creates, in Bavaria, the rape and murder of a Vietnamese would assimilate the clamour for reform. Quite apart from the
girl by four American soldiers); one of the jury members, irrelevance of prizes and juries to the current film mood, and
Dusan Makavejev, spilled the beans to the film's director; the always uneasy confrontation of film market place and
press conferences long into the night, ominously shadowed critical forum, Berlin itself is an unreal festival in an unreal
by the Berlin police; George Stevens, as President of the jury city (pace GUnter Grass). When this year the German papers
and an American, cast as the villain; accusations and counter- were headlining the first steps in Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik
accusations, interminable wrangling over the minutiae of jury moves, the 'International' Berlin Festival still stops short of the
protocol, the resignations of the Festival's chairman and Wall. Berlin certainly needs the Festival, but does the Festival
director. With the jury itself asked to resign, the intervention need Berlin? It's arguable that if the event were transferred to
of the Berlin Senate, and directors leaping up to announce somewhere less politically ostentatious (Munich has been
the withdrawal of their films, the Festival was dead- killed suggested) the Eastern Europeans might be more willing to
off, some said, by an elaborate plot engineered in advance by participate.
professional agitators. O.K. itself hardly merited its devious publicity. It's one of
What had started (as I now learn from the British jury those films which set out to shock and don't because one is
member) as an innocent jury request about a possible infringe- always conscious of their anxiety to get the message across.
ment of the festival regulation which headily requires all films Michael Verhoeven's distantiation devices (the cast introduc-

211
 ing themselves, the Bavarian forest setting, and the specifically conversational openings with the older women, the momen-
German jokes which the actors knowingly share with the tary collapse of inhibition followed immediately by an
audience) would seem in principle to be a good idea. In embarrassed closing of the shutters-but somehow it seems
practice, though, this kind of Verfremdungseffekt is simply a more thinly spread than before. Until, that is, towards the end,
hindrance, since one is aware throughout of the one-to-one when the camera's quiet scrutiny of an impromptu word game
transference from a real incident in Vietnam to a real re- during a picnic seems to breathe life into the film.
enactment of that incident in Bavaria. Brecht has his hand Also disappointing, after the sustained, mesmeric intensity
firmly on the pistol, but it goes off at half-cock. For all its of Sweet Hunters, was Ruy Guerra's The Gods and the Dead, a
solid foundation in the tradition of literary cinema, I much weird blend of ritual slaughter (blood by the bucketful),
preferred Roland Gall's Wie ich ein Neger wurde, which ecstatic primitive trances, and violent family feuding among
concerns a schoolmaster who takes his class to a summer cocoa farm magnates of the Twenties. Again the audacious
camp shortly before the war and finds himself half-wittingly use of chant on the soundtrack is hypnotic, the style by turns
involved in secret diary confessions and the murder of one of florid and oppressively morose. Capitalism is auto-destructive,
the boys. Nothing particularly new, but a fine, unlaboured cannibalistic, seemed to be one of the messages; violence as an
evocation of a society's rotting fabric and the creeping inevitable condition of a god who demands human sacrifice.
spider's web menace of things to come. But on one viewing it was too much to take: like so much
But the best of the German films was Rainer Werner Latin American cinema, it demands perhaps a willingness to
Fassbinder's Warum Hiuft Herr R. Amok?, a product of the submit oneself to a culture that is-as yet-at once too remote
industrious Munich antitheater group and a considerable and not remote enough (unlike, for instance, Japanese cinema)
improvement on the same director's Liebe ist kiilter als der to be easily assimilated. Less difficult, because more obviously
Tod. Herr R. is an archetypal cipher of the urban middle class, a parable, was Maurice Capovilla's The Hunger Prophet,
with a safe job, a relatively happy marriage, a comfortable which charts the fortunes of a sword-swallower who takes to
fiat and a seemingly comfortable daily routine. Alles in fasting in public when his circus collapses, is hailed as a saint
ordnung, as his doctor tells him; but one evening, when his by the peasants, imprisoned at the instigation of the Church,
wife is chattering away with a neighbour, he quietly switches and finally officially celebrated by the State (quite why didn't
off the television, picks up a candelabra, and beats wife, child clearly emerge). Oddly, and perhaps significantly, it was the
and neighbour to death. Deliberately shot in a casual, even ritual and mythological overtones (an abortive cannibal act
unattractive style, with the camera simply homing in on the at the circus, a legend re-enacted on the plains) which held the
interminable small-talk and trivial embarrassments of the attention, and not the hyperbole of newsreel interpolations of
daily round, Fassbinder's film packs a sharp, winding punch. the moon landing and the Statue of Liberty.
There's a perceptible weakness at the centre (the deadly Not much else of interest. From Chile, Miguel Littin
simplicity is perhaps just too easy, and Herr R. is a bit odd to Cucumides' The Jackal of Nahueltoro: overly simplistic in its
begin with), but for a couple of days at least conversation with insistence on poverty and superstition as the cause of a
friends was more wary than usual. peasant's unmotivated murder of a woman and her children;
One of the Italian films fell victim to the Festival's collapse; but it had something to say and said it honestly and with
The Conformist, fortunately, did not. Bertolucci's new film feeling, and without a trace of that airy intellectualism which
(from the Moravia novel) was the highlight of the Festival, and so often clouds European social documents. Israel made a bid
for me his most perfectly realised work to date. Jean-Louis for international recognition with The Traveller, a portentous
Trintignant is a Fascist philosophy lecturer ordered by the bit of guilt complex psychology about a former SS man whose
Party to assassinate a leftist professor-as it happens, his old retirement to the Negev is rudely disrupted when old memories
tutor-in Paris. Plagued by a childhood trauma which are stirred by the arrival of a mysterious Frenchman who drops
involved him in the apparent murder of a homosexualJ he laconic innuendoes about the past and starts cutting his
regards the assignment as a ritual expiation of his guilt, cheese with a paratrooper's knife: murder expected and duly
commissioned by the State and so morally unimpeachable. provided. Alain Robbe-Grillet took time off in Tunisia and
The film's piercing analysis of the overwhelming desire for came up with Eden and After, another of his aesthetic parlour
normality, and the extent to which a man will compromise his games in which, with supreme contempt for his audience, he
conscience to achieve it, is conveyed both by a pared-down plots a girl student's search for a missing painting by way of all
narrative format (the continuous movement in the film is the familiar distorting mirrors of cinema illusion. A Swedish
almost musical) and by a visual style ambitious even for Love Story, a first film by Roy Andersson, was good when
Bertolucci. observing the uncomplicated byways of a teenage encounter
with first love, less good when poking too easy fun at the
From the vast corridors and anterooms of the opening scenes dehydrated older generation.
to the final enactment of the murder in winter woods (shot in A final word for the Retrospective, always well programmed
chilling silence, with Trintignant watching Brutus-like from a at Berlin and this year offering-in a selection of Astaire-
car), the constantly tilted camera constructs a kind of archi- Rogers musicals-a welcome antidote to all that Brazilian
tectural comment on the character's confused psychology. blood-letting. For all their narrative corniness, these musicals
And unlike Visconti in The Damned, Bertolucci's rendering of are evergreen, as the rapturous reception for Swing Time
the fetid decadence of the immediate pre-war period looks amply demonstrated. One hopes the jury troubles didn't stop
unnervingly convincing: muted colours for minds willingly George Stevens being there to hear it.
trapped into conformity at any price, the twisting cross- DAVID WILSON
currents of suspicion and betrayal, a cafe tango sequence shot
from above in which the lecturer's wife (Stefania Sandrelli,
disarmingly frivolous) lets herself go in what is almost a
symbolic farewell gesture to Thirties indifference. EDINBURGH
The Conformist is due at this year's London Festival, when this year it looked as if Edinburgh might have
F
OR A WHILE
there will be more to say about it. So, too, is Satyajit Ray's the dubious distinction of being the first film festival to be
Days and Nights in the Forest, about which, sadly, there is less closed down not by left wing revolutionaries but by a
to say than one had hoped. After last year's venture into conservative establishment. The Festival's right to hold public
fairytale with Goopy and Bagha, Ray is here back on more screenings of films not yet approved by a censorship board
familiar ground with a story of four men who drive from turned out to derive from a long-standing gentleman's agree-
Calcutta for a holiday in the wooded country of the north, ment which the police-suspecting that some of this year's
where they variously pursue a local village girl and two lonely films were anything but gentlemanly-decided to challenge.
but by no means complaisant women who share their own Accordingly, private screenings of the programme's more
educated, middle-class background. Ray's observation is as controversial titles were requested by a panel of six magis-
deft as ever-the men's childish excitement when they first see trates empowered to determine their fitness for public con-
the village girl (whom they dub 'Miss India'), the sparring for sumption, and Roger Corman's Bloody Mama-refused a

212
 certificate by the BBFC but granted an X in Berkshire-
appeared the most likely non-starter. But at the eleventh hour
the crisis blew over; the lady magistrate seconding the motion
to ban the film admitted that she had not actually seen it but
had merely 'heard sufficient', and the magistrates voted 4-2
to grant Bloody Mama an X certificate, valid for one night.
Despite a few other casualties in the scheduled programme
' -the German film O.K. is virtually sub judice at the moment
and the London Film-Makers' Co-op abruptly decided to
remain, with their films, in London-the Festival has retained
the heterogeneous character that Murray Grigor has imposed
on it in the few years since he became its director and freed
it from the now rather restrictive tradition of John Grierson
and the regional documentary. While the main Edinburgh
Festival retains the distinction between 'straight' and 'fringe'
productions, the Film Festival juxtaposes new works by
established directors working within the system (Boetticher,
Wajda) with the latest independent productions. Indeed,
Edinburgh is fast becoming the closest thing we have to a
central showcase for underground films and independent
distributors, and you often get the feeling that there are two
film festivals going on here rather than one.
Formally, the Festival opened with a chauvinistic gala
performance of J. Lee Thompson's Country Dance, set in
Scotland and written by the late [James Kennaway: a kind
of Enfants Pseudo-Terribles which, despite some four-letter
expletives and the surface daring of its subject (aristocrat "LA SIRENE DU MISSISSIPPI": BELMONDO AND DENEUVE.
farmer's obsessive love for married sister drives him to drink Cannibalism, the different ways people feed off others'
and insanity), emerges as a piece of Fifties' family entertain- vital energies, is a central theme, and the hero whose powers
ment doctored to meet the tastes of a more permissive and of survival the film celebrates (until he's devoured by a man-
Lelouch-ridden age. An intrusive score signals latent tragedy eating mermaid) is a major culprit, whether stealing food and
throughout its determinedly lighthearted moments, and girls from his brothers, greedily sharing the picnic of a tramp
Peter O'Toole and Susannah York play the eccentric siblings reduced to chewing slices of his own testicles, or pimping off
with a ruthless histrionic charm that ingratiates the characters' the revolution by serving as gigolo to a sexy guerrilla eventu-
behaviour to the middle-class sensibilities it is supposed to ally exploded by her own time-bomb.
offend. Photographed in brilliant colour by Guido Cosulich,
Less formally, the Festival opened some hours earlier with Macunaima interweaves familiar Cinema Novo themes-
a programme of independently made pop music films, in- Brazil's racism and poverty, the conservatism of a peasant
cluding Peter Neal's loving and unexploitative Be Glad, about mentality that puts its faith in luck and cunning rather than
the Incredible String Band (a Scottish group!). It uses inter- political change, the migration from country to city-in a
views and footage from concerts to bring out the Incredibles' surreal pageant no less revolutionary for being entertaining.
disconcerting combination of music, myth and magic, and Gas-s-s!, Roger Corman's picaresque fable about America's
builds unforcedly to an enchanting mime, about man's socio-economic alternatives, is considerably less successful.
misguided efforts to alter his destiny, that provides the Seemingly born of Easy Rider by Week-End and Wild in the
occasion for the group's first, successful, excursion into Streets, it concerns a hippy odyssey through a United States
electronic music. where everyone over twenty-five has been killed by a deadly
But so far (siGHT AND SOUND's press date limits me to nerve gas and where Law-and-Orderism is maintained by the
reporting on the first week) the most exciting example of new middle class, Hell's Angels, whose authority is threatened
independent film-making has been the retrospective of Ian by a fraternity football team, determinedly sacking cities
Hugo's work, generally labelled 'underground' but revealing and reducing their populations to slavery. Much of the satire
a perfectionism and precision the term seldom implies. misses its mark and it is not even clear whether the utopian
Apart from the semi-documentary first feature Ai- Ye, made ending is intended cynically or prophetically. Though devotees
in 1948, Hugo's films are not so much abstract as abstractions may be amused by the countless cross-references to other
of an idea (the lights of New York, the Venice canals), and Corman films (Poe periodically showing up on a motorbike
they manage to restore even these post-card cliches to their with Leonore riding pillion), it's sad to see the people brought
pristine integrity through a fluid succession of superimposed to life in Wild Angels reduced to the stereotypes they are in
images. A former copper engraver who became fascinated other films. Corman's strength has always been in exploring
by the play of light on copper, Hugo's predominant interest the point where fantasy and reality blur. With plain fantasy
is in the convergence of light, colour and motion. His films he's considerably less effective, and the film exudes a sad kind
create a kind of mobile impressionism, and his images-many of self-consciousness.
of them shot through mirrors, glass or water-build to a In contrast, even in the dubbed version shown here, La
descriptive poetry of the unconscious: a surreal terrain Sirene du Mississippi is quintessential Truffaut. Based, like
between light and shadow, waking world and dream. The Bride Wore Black, on a William Irish novel, it concerns
Back in the 35 mm. mainstream, the picaresque Macunaima a conventional businessman (Belmondo) determined to love
offers a hilarious, scatological Cinema Novo fable of Brazil's his carefully selected mail-order bride (Deneuve), and con-
social and economic problems. Its director-scriptwriter stantly obliged by gradual revelations of her sinister past and
Joaquim Pedro de Andrade manages, without sacrificing real identity to modify his preconceptions. The connection
any of Rocha's national or nationalistic relevance, to be between Truffaut's Hitchcockery and his romantic idealism
considerably less hermetic. His cynical humour is in the tradi- has never shown more clearly. In his universe governed by
tion of Swift and Voltaire, and many of the legends he draws chance not choice, the only true love is one that accepts with
on derive from international folklore: his simian-faced hero like equanimity the mysteries of future and past. And in
emerges a full-grown black dwarf from the loins of his butch another amoral celebration of the unforeseen, his hero finds
mother and changes into a handsome white prince whenever a greater happiness as a penniless murderer on the run than
he can kiss his sister-in-law; the wicked capitalist whom he in the social role for which he had groomed himself.
slays in undignified com bat is a grotesque cannibalistic giant. JAN DAWSON

213
 significance. Russia started the rot with almost three hours of
Crime and Punishment, directed by Lev Kulidjanov as though
to cut a line of golden prose would be a mortal sin. Britain
carried on stoutly with Laurence Olivier's startlingly prosaic
record of the National Theatre production of The Three Sisters,
all pregnant pauses and no Chekhov. And Argentina delivered
the coup de grace with Marcos Madanes' El Seiior Presidente,
an indescribable hotchpotch of political intrigue, droopy
sentiment and lusty tortures, evidently intended as a bitter
social indictment but looking more like an hilarious variation
on The Hunchback of Notre Dame executed in a style reminis-
cent of the tattier excesses of Caligarism.
How, one wondered, could anybody have selected such
rubbish as El Senor Presidente for a festival ... and how,
indeed, could the same committee have recognised the shy,
elusive charm of Barbara Loden's Wanda, which, after initial
misgivings occasioned by the news that the director was Elia
Kazan's wife, that she played the lead herself, and that the
film was a semi-underground blow-up from 16 mm., turned
out to be the sleeper of the Festival.
Inevitably, I suppose, one has to say that this is Bonnie and
Clyde told the way it looked rather than the way it felt.
Deglamorised, in a word, and with its touching note of tragedy
stemming from the characters' total inability to cope with
either themselves or the world they live in. Fragile, freakish
and forlorn in grubby jeans and hair-curlers, Barbara Loden
plays one of those Fellini waifs who look on the world with
shining innocence and seem to thrive on misfortune. Laconi-
VENICE cally agreeing that she is a lousy wife and mother, she drifts
out of the divorce courts into a one-night affair with a
ow MANY GOOD FILMS does it take to make a good festival?
H It's an impossible question to answer, but by any standards
Venice 1970 was a disaster and confirmed last year's
sneaking suspicions that the new regime under Ernesto G.
trave1ling salesman, is unceremoniously dumped by the way-
side, loses all her belongings, and finally stumbles into a bar
to cadge a free drink from the barman. He, as it happens,
is tied up under the counter, and the greyish, bookish man
Laura was going to tread an uneasy tightrope between fashion she accosts is busy rifling the till. And since the latter's
and fustian. Perhaps, by the time I have rhapsodised over imagination won't stretch far enough to encompass this
Bertolucci, Szabo, Barbara Loden and the handful of other unexpected development, he just takes her along for the ride.
needles found lurking in the haystack, Venice won't sound Fellini, I said. But there is nothing coy about the edgy,
too bad; but then festival reports are notoriously unbalanced uncertain relationship which springs up between the pair as
since there never seems much point in expatiating upon the they embark on a sordid little career of petty crime, he
horrors one is forced to sit through. Or rather, storm out of. infuriated by her scatterbrained incompetence, she terrified by
There appeared to be no end, for instance, to films like his propensity for violence. They end, just before the inevi-
Jaakko Pakkasvirta's Summer Rebellion (a glancing blow, table disaster, in a kind of loving, but only because the gulf
Darling-style, at the Finnish consumer society by way of the of age, temperament and experience which yawns between
glossy life of a fashion model), or the Jugoslavian Bube U them is gradually lessened, unnoticed by either, by the yearning
Glavi (a wide-angle, upside-down camera romp by Misa loneliness which each suffers but cannot recognise in the other.
Radivojevic round two young people driven into an asylum Impossible, in the space I have here, to define the strange,
by the pressures of circumstance and society), whose only sidelong poetry of scenes like one in which they stop for an
distinction was that their directors had seen a lot of movies alfresco meal in a field and he suddenly leaps up on top of the
and absorbed a lot of smartness. Apparently equally intermin- car as an aeroplane flies overhead, calling 'Come back! Come
able was the flow of films offering beanfeasts of culture and back!' Impossible, too, to draw out the note of indefinably
quirkish humour which runs through both characters and
situations to give them an engaging air of self-deprecation.
But Barbara Loden, actress and director, is definitely
somebody.
So, too, is Bernardo Bertolucci. No news to his admirers,
but for the rest of us-if glowing reports of The Conformist
from Berlin are to be believed-he seems once and for all to
have thrown off his early uncertainties and the second-hand
Godardery of Partner. The Spider's Strategy, adapted from a
story by Borges, is a television film but looks so stunning
that it seems like lese-majeste to say so. Behind the credits
we are shown a series of animal paintings by Ligabue,
brilliant, glittering studies, distantly echoing the half-
hallucinatory, half-crazed world of Douanier Rousseau. Then
a train draws in at a trim little country station, a young man
gets off and walks through the dark, deserted streets, past
isolated figures or little groups huddled in doorways, until he
emerges in a cool, airy mansion hung with ivy and grapevines
tinged with the luminous green of the jungle.
He has come, it transpires, to investigate a lingering mystery
about what really happened one day in 1936 when his father
supposedly died in an assassination attempt on Mussolini,
and was subsequently consecrated as the town hero. He is
warmly welcomed by his father's mistress (Alida Valli), who
tells him part of the story. He meets his father's three staunch,

214
 "'THE SPID ER'S STRATEG Y ..

anti-Fascist friends, who tell him more but only increase his his fear that she is betraying him, on the other by her fear
sense that something is being kept from him. He is chased that he is leading the animals in some dark plot against her-
away by guards when he tries to penetrate the stronghold self, and maybe the world. Meanwhile the weird collection of
inhabited by the town's leading Fascist. And finally, half- animals, birds and insects gaze gravely out from the screen,
exasperated by the maze of misinformation, half-terrified by protesting witnesses to a world of human incomprehension,
his sense of being an unwelcome intruder on a town buried suspicion and fear in which they, too, are victims.
with its memories, he decides to leave, only to be drawn Simply and cleanly directed by Chalonge, who deserves
irresistibly back when he hears, as he waits at the station, the three small cheers for having rediscovered the Karina of the
music from Rigoletto apparently coming from nowhere and Godard years, L ' Alliance never quite makes the most of its
echoing that night in 1936 when the attempt on Mussolini's own possibilities: something that could hardly be said of
life was made in the opera house. Istvan Szabo's magnificent A Love Film, although the pre-
This time, in a hallucinating but perfectly rational time vailing opinion in Venice seemed to be that it was simply a
slip, he becomes identified with his father to discover the woman's mag tale of love enduring. Certainly the film is
true meaning of fear and courage, and, incidentally, the truth that: a Resnais-like movement through time as a young
of what happened that day in 1936. Characteristically, in a film Hungarian sets off to France for a reunion with the childhood
which gives free, beautifully controlled rein to his taste for sweetheart who left for the West in 1956, and as the train
bizarre jokes with its crossbred atmosphere of Rousseau's takes him to her, remembers in a jumble of scenes and frag-
enchanted jungle and Hollywood's haunted house, Bertolucci ments, sometimes true, sometimes idealised, how two children
ends with a last shot which both confirms and denies the whole grew up together through an unbroken line of happenings-
thing, at the same time opening up intriguing new avenues of the discovery of a live fish on a tram, the presence of the
interpretation. In Venice the film was shown unsubtitled and Germans, a sleigh-ride in the snow, the coming of the
wasn't too easy to follow in its verbal fireworks: a suivre, Russians.
therefore, when and if it comes to London. But behind it lies a much more resonant theme- 'Now at
An odd footnote to The Spider's Strategy came with Christ- last I'm abroad' mutters the hero to himself as he sits on the
ian de Chalonge's L' Alliance, a quaintly engaging film based train bound for France, and a sudden memory flash shows
on a novel by Jean-Claude Carriere, scriptwriter of Belle de him rushing, free and joyous, headlong through a green field.
Jour and La Voie Lactee. Maybe Bufiuel should have directed Nevertheless he returns to Hungary, tearing himself away
the film to pin down the full flavour of obsessional ambiguity from the girl but happy in the knowledge that if only he closes
in its tale of a veterinary surgeon (Jean-Claude Carriere) who his eyes he can carry everything he loves within him. The
applies to a marriage bureau for a wife with a large house, bitterness and the reconciliation of the Hungarian tragedy is
gets one (Anna Karina), and promptly fills the place up with cried aloud in two superb scenes: one a long, remorseless
a horde of animal pets and patients. A tender, tentative love track along the counter of a post office where endless lines
is born between the couple, tormented on the one hand by Continued on page 226

215
 well off the ground as he fumbles with The days when they were in harmony
roof-slates, his identity seems clear-that of have been illustrated ambivalently enough
the gentle dreamer, responsive guardian to in the montage of fishing-trip shots (Berg-
a small flock of sheep, prone to stop every- man's use of fish, boats and the sea has
thing in order to smile at sunsets and cause always been multilayered); but those days
optical i11usions through his pipesmoke. By are past. The delicacy with which Bergman
the end of the film, even his name has exposes the mortal wound in the relation-
become as nebulous as his fragmenting ship between Andreas, constantly conceal-
image. Whatever label he may have borne ing truth, and Anna Fromm (the name
before his prison sentence, whatever he means pious in Swedish) with her desperate
may assume after this new breakdown, the lip-service towards candour, is rather
tensions that convulse him from inside seem ponderously reinforced by the crash of
certain to return to destroy the fa<;:ade. spilt milk, but the total sequence is other-
Bergman spells them out from time to time wise an impeccably judged portrait of
in giant Godardian close-ups, these 'terrible emotional disintegration. Everything con-
mental disturbances leading to physical and tributes its special charge: Anna grappling
psychical acts of violence.' They are the at her typewriter with problems of trans-
result, quite simply, of living a lie. Andreas, lation, Andreas wearily copying out another
it quickly becomes apparent, is the de- man's inspirations, the frustrated eroticism
ceiving kind; his calm exterior conceals a of the fantasy, even the desperation with
talent for eavesdropping on phone calls, which the couple cling together at the
reading private correspondence, borrowing recognition of the ruin around their feet.
without prospect of repayment, wife- If A Passion has its more banal symbols-
stealing, and, in moments of desperation, the milk, the bonfire, the imprisoned
threatening murder. In words, he reveals butterfly-it is also rich in metaphors of
nothing about his past; in his actions, as torment such as these.
much of that past as one could need to 'This time he was called Andreas Win-
know becomes plain from the moment a kelman.' Another time, perhaps, Everyman.
neglected bucket pursues him down the What Persona started and Shame broadened,
A PASSION roof during his inept efforts to keep his
house in order.
A Passion starkly continues in a catalogue
of obscenities. Madmen roam the world,
Employing superbly the discoveries of torturing and killing aimlessly: a dog, some
Persona, Bergman leaves great gaps in the sheep, an old man, a horse, a Vietnamese
'THIS TIME HE WAS CALLED Andreas film's narrative, perplexing jumps in time, prisoner, the tiny bursts of pain, blood and
Winkelman,' remarks the narrator omission of incidents later mentioned as flame mount into a crescendo roar that
calmly at the end of A Passion (United crucial; he rushes his audience headlong almost obscures the soundtrack as Andreas
Artists) as a shambling, agonised supplicant through a fog of rumours, vague references and Anna snarl in the snow. Their domestic
is bleached from the screen. The almost and reports, hearsay evidence, the echoes of confrontations are part of a nightmare that
cheerful epitaph has about as many edges other lives. It's blatant artifice, but the is beyond judgment; distracted from the
to it as Rohmer's razor-blade sculpture in effect is brilliantly naturalistic. When expressionless contemplation of a television
La Collectionneuse, but its first cut un- Andreas briefly dreams of a woman we have execution (from which Bergman in seem-
doubtedly comes from Bergman's brisk never seen before, what matters is not so ingly unconscious paradox omits the most
transference of his withdrawal symptoms to much that she may have been his wife, or ghastly instant), they kill a stunned bird,
his audience. Once again, narration is being a casual affair at any point in the past, or bury it in finger-scrabbled earth, wash their
used as insulation, to raise the curtain and that she may even be sheer Faustian fan- hands free of complicity and retire to a
to lower it in a denial of personal involve- tasy, her vaguely medical air giving the game of chess which immediately deteri-
ment that is knowingly and ironically greater plausibility to her diagnosis of his orates into self-deceit.
unconvincing. Last time, he was called Jan condition ('cancer of the soul-you'll die Their lives are founded upon an intol-
Rosenberg; the time before, Johan Borg. a horrible death')-but that he chooses not erable conflict between the passions of the
And despite the elaborate dossiers that have to reveal any part of his dream to Anna, animal and the ambitious sterility of the
been provided on each of the main charac- and that she instantly recognises his lie. cerebral. In a society in which both sides
ters in the film, it is clear that Max von
Sydow, with his seemingly limitless range
of troubled masks, is once again to be ERLAND JOSEPHSSON IN "A PASS ION".
regarded as Bergman's chief spokesman.
This time the harassed hermit (vinkel is
Swedish for corner) has been given a back-
ground that might suggest a temporary
departure from the art-in-society debate
were it not that Bergman's artists have
consistently been forgers, failures, and
dropouts. In all other respects, however,
the cheerless ecology of the director's
Baltic island remains unaltered, while von
Sydow's pragmatic counterpart (Bjorn-
strand has been replaced by the fractionally
more sinister Erland Josephsson, collabo-
rator with Bergman on a couple of earlier
screenplays, but the resonances are the
same) is disconcertingly named Vergerus,
in living memory of the soulless analyst in
The Face. The balancing members of the
quartet, the two girls, are the embodiments
of brooding integrity (Liv Ullmann) and
natural impetuosity (Bibi Andersson), who
have already grappled their way through
The Silence (Thulin versus Lindblom),
Persona (Ullmann versus Andersson), and
Hour of the Wolf (Ullmann versus Thulin).
It's yet another variation, then, on Berg-
man's obsessively recurring themes, and
once more, superbly, a variation that adapts
those themes, revitalises, and finally tran-
scends them.
'This time he was called Andreas Winkel-
man.' When we first encounter him, feet

216
 have reached an unprecedented level of
insistence, Bergman sees our choice as
either to accept and exploit or to be passive.
In the final shot, Andreas paces, caged,
between the two. To counterbalance the
atrocities, Bergman uses the particularly
insidious nature of Elis, the man with the
money (Anna's husband, the first Andreas,
' was also in his debt), the influence, the
talent, and the conviction that it is sheer
hypocrisy to shudder at the follies of
mankind. Andreas, Eva and Anna are all
dependent upon Elis for their shelter,
welfare and support, and each is linked
with him by telephone at a certain point in
the film, as if on a direct line to a chilly,
materialistic God. But Elis, too, is as much
the universal victim as any of them, his
wife betraying him in favour of one Andreas
after another. He converts his environment
into boxes stuffed with photographs, all of
them misleading (the recluse Johan resem-
bles a killer, Eva looks radiant despite an
imminent migraine), and prefers, in tight-
lipped restraint, to get no closer to the woes
of the world. To care or not to care; either
way, Bergman sees little comfort for any
of us. Humiliation, as his spokesman puts
it, has overwhelmed us like a sickness or
a drug.
That Bergman should choose this melan-
choly point to return to the use of colour
seems at first curiously inappropriate. As
it turns out, however, it is precisely through ""FELLif\JI SATYRICON"
colour that A Passion transcends his previ-
ous island films. After the gentle warmth of
its early landscapes comes the misleading highly-coloured fantasies of Giulietta in express counts for nothing. The point is
gaiety of the elegant golden dinner party, full flight. The result should be impossible, made relatively directly in the little scene
of which some of the jubilation carries utterly indigestible, but paradoxically it is near the beginning in which Encolpius goes
over into the seduction of Eva, filmed not: one adjusts rapidly to accepting the t? a picture gallery in which the great,
through a humorously enticing red filter. extreme ornateness of the action (what is Simple works of the past are held up as a
The film then assumes naturalistic tones, going on in front of the camera much more reproach to a present gaudy, awful and
gradually becoming almost monochrome, than how the camera records it) as a sort of artificial. The obscene elaboration of
except for the uncomfortable session in norm, so that effects which even in Trimalchio's feast, or the accumulation of
Elis's bleakly antiseptic white studio. Giulietta would have drawn attention to freaks in the rabbit-warren tenement/
Snow-dusted exteriors alternate with themselves as extraordinary and excep- brothel, which is at first quaint, then
dusky-or at best subdued-interiors for tional here seem hardly more remarkable disgusting, and finally mind-dizzying, are
the film's second half, punctuated only by in themselves than a dead metaphor in not, in other words, there as a self-indul-
the urgent flame of the police-car's warning everyday speech. gence, for their own sake or for the fun
light and the burning stable. The major It may be magnificent, but it is hardly Fellini has in putting them together. Their
exceptions are Anna's dream (seemingly a Petronius. Nor, presumably, is it meant to very ornat~ness takes on a moral quality,
fragment of what might once have ended be: this is emphatically 'Fellini Satyricon', by provokmg finally a moral response.
Shame) in which colour has not surprisingly taking only a few hints of situation and a And this is essentially what makes the
been lost entirely, the extraordinary shot fragmentary structure from the classic text. film different from its predecessors in
of sunlight blazing on to the dead face of Petronius was above all a sophisticate, Fellini's oeuvre. 8! is a work which shows
Johan (the scene then fades out through deadpan or at most mildly amused at the Fellini's creative imagination working at
red), and the final shot in which Andreas casual couplings and re-couplings of his maximum intensity. Its greatest effect lies
becomes no more than a trembling mass cast of whores, masqueraders and vul- in ~ . paradox of which, one suspects,
of disparate shades. garians, male and/or female. There is a Felhm was hardly aware while he was
While Bergman can still be so plainly curious charm, grace, and even innocence making it: that while it is about the mind
fascinated by such expressionism, while he about the world he creates because of his at the end of its tether, the imagination
can still build a whole subplot out of the complete refusal to be shocked by it, or exhausted and impotent, the film he has
exchange of confessions or the opening and to expect us to be. Not so with Fellini. made on this subject is full of imagination
shutting of doors, and while he is still Charm and grace are not particularly exuberantly and fruitfully at play. Giulietta
prepared to experiment so boldly as to Fellinian qualities, and the last thing he is a work of fancy rather than imagination,
include in mid-narrative some interviews ever is is a sophisticate. In a way this is his if we may try to preserve the Coleridgian
with his actors about their part in the film, greatest strength. In all his films, though distinction: lighter, slighter, less deeply
it is consolingly difficult to believe that the particularly of course those from La Dolce involved or involving, it frolics pleasurably
despair in his message is entirely terminal. Vita on, it is the sheer spate of ideas that with and on parts of Fellini's regular mental
pours from him and on to the screen, like furniture. What Satyricon does is to return
PHILIP STRICK
a force of nature, which silences criticism yet again to these materials, but now using
if anything can. Of discretion, good taste, them in such a way that they contain a
or anything namby-pamby like that, he built-in criticism of themselves. The spate
knows and cares nothing. of invention is still there, but it is no longer
FELLINI SATYRICON Especially in Satyricon. For the light and joyful. Its effect in Giulietta is sometimes
good humour of Petronius he substitutes smothering, suffocating, where one senses
something dark, menacing, lit at best with it was not meant to be. Here, even as one
to do when you have flames of hellish fire from some John is battered and weighed down by the sheer
T HE ONLY THING
gone too far, said Cocteau, is to go
further. Hence, perhaps inevitably, Fellini's
Martin vision of cosmic disaster in the
ancient world. Hardly any of Fellini's
accumulation of detail, one can recognise
it as part of Fellini's intention that one
Satyricon (United Artists). Whatever else Satyricon is actually funny; it is instead a should be. La Dolce Vita, investing Fellini's
it may or may not be, it is undoubtedly sort of nightmare vision of a civilisation on private city of dreadful night with the face
Fellini to the nth degree; it starts where its last legs, over-rich, over-ripe, decorating and features of modern Rome, showed us
Giulietta degli Spiriti left off, moving its surfaces with a neurotic elaboration a few of the 120 jours de Sodome and told
wholly into a world of dreams and visions, because form has come to be the only us that they were a bore and a bane.
bigger and more bizarre even than the consideration, and what the form should Satyricon, disguising the same city of

217
 Fellini's mind as ancient Rome, not only
tells us, but puts us through every grinding,
asphyxiating moment.
Or makes us feel that we have been
through it all. For the film does, though
sometimes by a very narrow margin,
function as a work of art, recreating effects
rather than reproducing them. It even
achieves that most difficult of feats, con-
veying boredom without actually boring.
The later sequences lose their hold a little-
though even here the slow unscrewing of
tension, the relaxation of grip, seems to be
intentional, easing us towards the open end
of a journey continued off the edge of the
page into infinity. We are not touched by
the characters, we do not care at all about
their fate (except perhaps slightly in the
weird and inexplicably disturbing sequence
in which they steal the hermaphrodite
demi-god and then helplessly watch him
die); the characters are simply part of the
overall pattern, and it is the pattern which
works on us if anything does.
As with all Fellini's later, more con-
fessional films, I suspect that Satyricon is a
film you have to succumb to completely,
live along with for more than two hours and
accept the discomforts as well as the
insights involved in seeing things as Fellini
sees them, if it is to work at all. But for
those who can let it work on them, Fellini's
journey to the end of night is a chastening
and, surprisingly enough, an elevating "CATCH 22": ALAN ARKIN AS YOSSARIAN.
experience.
JoHN RussELL TAYLOR
are accentuated so that we will appreciate art director (Richard Sylbert) and photo-
the film's nobility. Even so, it lumbers grapher (David Watkin), not spun out of
along rather monotonously. Nichols has the troubled imagination of the character
CATCH-22 not yet quite been able to transcend his at the centre of the film.
nightclub background; though he makes The structure of the film is more intri-
a serious effort to give the film a unity of guing. Most movies that jumble their time
EOPLE HAVE BEEN DEBATING for months
P whether M* A *S*H is really an anti-war
movie, but there should be no doubt at all
tone and visual style, it keeps falling apart
into blackout sketches. (Part of this
problem may be attributable to Heller.)
sequences are very rational puzzles. If we
work hard enough, we can usually put the
pieces in order and come up with a straight
about the intentions of Mike Nichols' Too many sequences can be reduced to a chronological timetable. In Catch 22
bleak film of Catch 22 (Paramount). It is simple point-The Lunacy of Military Y ossarian's fragmented memories are not
ironic that of the two films M* A *S*H Bureaucracy, The Impotence of Religion, so easily rearranged. The transitions are
seems more indebted to Joseph Heller's The Naivete of Patriotism-which is extraordinarily complex: for example, at
novel; the screwball black comedy that is usually dramatised early and then tediously an early point in the long flashback that
Heller's trademark is central to the con- elaborated. makes up the bulk of the film, Y ossarian
ception of M* A *S*H, but it plays a Still, Catch 22 is largely free of the is hit in the leg while on a bombing mission.
relatively minor part in the film of Catch commercial calculation and baldly deriva- As he loses consciousness, we move into a
22. Nichols keeps some of the novel's tive visual trickery of The Graduate; in memory of an event that probably happened
Alice-in-Wonderland rhetoric and a little fact, the conception of this film is remark- later: Yossarian's painful experience with
of its black comedy-for example, a scene ably pure, clear and cogent. The book has the dying young English pilot Snowden.
in which two nurses discuss fried chicken been restructured as an hallucinatory This leads into fantasy, Yossarian imagin-
as they change the bottles of fluid that vision of Y ossarian's-fashioned in over- ing himself swimming toward the naked
dangle from the limbs of a body covered in lapping and intersecting flashbacks, in Nurse Duckett, and finally back in time
bandages-but his film is more sombre images designed to convey a highly charged again, almost to the starting point-the
than its source. The movie's jokes some- personal obsession with the terrifying hospital where Yossarian is being treated
times make us gasp, but they only insanity of war. Unfortunately, this sub- for the leg wound he suffered during that
occasionally make us laugh. jective point of view is not quite consistently first bombing mission. This non-rational
An anti-war epic like this film or Oh! sustained: there are a few set-pieces in structuring (flashbacks, flash-forwards,
What a Lovely War seems to me a contra- which Yossarian does not appear- fantasies within flashbacks) approximates
diction in terms; these films are made on Colonel Cathcart and Colonel Korn in the movements of consciousness better
such a grandiose scale-they look so conference, Major Major giving instructions than most subjective films, and creates a
imposing and so respectable-that their to his assistant, the old Italian lecturing powerful sense of inner disorientation.
anti-social bitterness seems slightly strained. Nately in the whorehouse. It is easy to see The memories of the death of Snowden
An important part of Catch 22 is its why Nichols could not resist these scenes, form an important motif-they recur
savage mockery of capitalism; but this but they confuse our perspective in a regularly in the film, revealing a little more
can't help appearing hypocritical in a damaging way. In addition, very little of each time, and they reach a dramatic
movie that is itself made on a budget of the film's surrealistic imagery, impressive climax. By the time of the last of these
15 million dollars. though it is, has a truly intimate, interior flashbacks, we think we understand the
In contrast to many Hollywood super- quality; the majestic, visionary designs seem horror of Snowden's death; but just then
productions, some of the expense that coolly impersonal, almost superhuman. Nichols shocks us with a ghastly bloody
went into Catch 22 actually shows up on Y ossarian's walk through a stylised, moment strong enough to shake the
the screen, in the brilliant all-star cast and grotesquely perverted Roman back street complacency anyone-hawk or dove-
the gargantuan stylised sets. But Catch 22 reeks of Fellini and Dali. Even the most feels about war.
could use a little of the improvisatory interesting and original images-the The formal achievements of the film
lightness of touch, the anarchic, irreverent bombers taking off together into an eerie would be insignificant if it were not for the
madness of M* A *S*H. The film is too white haze, Yossarian walking past the strength of Alan Arkin's performance as
impressed with itself. Striking shots are giant airstrip and gutted buildings of the Yossarian. Most of Arkin's previous
lingered over, the black comic bits are shabby, desolate camp-seem to have performances have been 'character' roles,
carefully highlighted, all the serious speeches been composed by a spectacularly talented off-beat ethnic star turns, a gallery of

218
freaks-the Russian submarine commander up, to the moment when he blows up their At least, that's what may have happened.
in The Russians Are Coming, the psycho- own base so that the Germans will take the Nobody, now, can be altogether sure, not
pathic killer in Wait Until Dark, the deaf cotton off their hands, his character is even Billy and Antoinette. For during ten
mute in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. In beautifully exposed; the offhand treatment weeks that summer their home was occu-
Catch 22 his performance impresses us not of these scenes heightens our terror at pied by a four-man film unit with a 16 mm.
by its virtuosity but by its humanity, and Milo's 'benevolent' Fascism. (Unfortun- camera and a budget of 225,000 dollars,
it is rich and compelling enough to keep ately, there is a rather self-conscious coda: and whatever the family did or said, in
the film in focus through some of its most Milo's ride through Rome, in which whichever room, from dawn until after
digressive episodes. The performance has lighting and composition make him look midnight each day, was illuminated, ob-
surprises, effective variations in tone. In like a sinister Nazi.) served, recorded, and (intermittently) filmed.
the first scenes Arkin deliberately exagge- In building these scenes to a macabre From the resultant seventy hours of footage
rates Y ossarian's hysteria so that he seems climax, Nichols demonstrates a graceful emerges Allan King's A Married Couple
shrilly paranoid and insane; as we come to cinematic sense of drama which is new to (Contemporary), comfortably expanded to
realise that paranoia is the only sane his work. Catch 22 is unquestionably a 35 mm. with hardly a grain in sight, and
response to what is going on around him, failure, too solemn and portentous for the showing an action-packed 112 minutes of
the performance mellows, always in modest rewards it offers, but its intermittent matrimony at work. It could have been em-
proportion to our growing awareness of dramatic intensities, its arresting experi- barrassing, boring, arch, phoney, and static,
the horror Y ossarian is trying to escape. ments with time in relation to point of but Billy and Antoinette would appear to
Some lovely quiet moments-such as a view, and the power of Alan Arkin's be none of these things. On the contrary,
tender scene with a prostitute that is less performance make it worth seeing. With there is little sign of restraint either in their
self-conscious than anything I have seen this film Mike Nichols finally reveals the behaviour or in their language. The film
Arkin play before-and scenes of increas- first indications of the talent that his fans is largely created by their dialogue, a
ingly intense anguish and anger transform have taken for granted for a decade. barrage of words that are hurled like mis-
him in our eyes from a madman into an STEPHEN FARBER siles, a few of them clumsy but the larger
eccentric but vital anti-war hero. Arkin percentage funny, scurrilous, and articulate.
and Nichols so skilfully solidify our They also have a most convincing air of
identification with Yossarian as the film spontaneity.
progresses that we are even willing to A MARRIED COUPLE Nevertheless, if Married Couple were
accept the flamboyance of the ending- really what it appears to be, it would
Yossarian lighting out for Sweden in a promptly cease to function with any kind of
tiny rubber raft-and share his sense of AND ANTOINETTE Edwards, their
exhilaration.
Perhaps because he is here dealing with
B ILLY
three-year-old son Bogart, and their dog
Merton, were living in Toronto, Canada, in
validity. The unconscious rhythms, routines
and tensions of any household invaded by a
camera for ten weeks are unavoidably going
a more 'classical' subject than he was in the summer of 1968. Billy was in advertising, to be mutated by the persistent audience
The Graduate, Nichols can keep the material and Antoinette would run him to the office into a combination of reticence and ex-
under better control. And he successfully in the car nearly every day to make sure he hibitionism. Bedroom routine, for example,
avoids the trap that most anti-war movies wouldn't be late for work and lose his job is likely to assume a new dimension of
fall into. Because Catch 22 stays away from as he sometimes had in the past, and then auto-censorship, meals would take on a new
any scenes of combat, it never inadvertently she would go off and plan what to do with formality, the neighbours would start acting
glamorises war or makes it seem exciting: his earnings-such as redesigning the up, and even the smallest decisions (such as
the most effective anti-war movies are kitchen or planning to buy a harpsichord. whether or not to swim in the nude) would
almost invariably the most indirect. Heller Billy would always pour scorn on her ideas be more complex to make.
deserves credit for some of the film's best when he came home and they'd usually That Billy and Antoinette should be able
conceptions, particularly the character of have a bit of an argument. In the same to argue as vehemently as they do despite
Milo Minderbinder (splendidly played by summer, they all went to a lakeside cottage the presence of a film unit may very well be
Jon Voight), a striking, outrageous parody in Maine for their holiday. They threw a part of their nature; the trouble is, the
of the cheerful all-American wheeler party, had a tremendous row over nothing audience can never be certain of this. Nor
dealer. From the early scene in which Milo the next day, decided their marriage was all can we know the extent to which that pre-
appears talking to the impatient Colonel through, and then sat down on the sofa and sence has encouraged the couple to drama-
Cathcart about a cotton deal he is cooking made it up. tise, underplay, or invent their actions and
reactions, just as in Allan King's Warrendale
"A MARRIED COUPLE": THE EDWARDS AT HOME. there was no conclusive indication that
children and staff would battle as furiously
under normal circumstances as they do
when encouraged by a lens pushed into their
faces. The documentary camera, together
with the documentary editor, can create
innumerable fictions-and when Married
Couple works, it is, for all the verisimilitude,
on a fictional level. Possibly the facts are
that for some of those ten weeks in 1968 the
Edwards home was exactly like this; more
interestingly, the film creates an example
of raucous, flexible, and possibly normal
marriage that has enough truth in it to
relate to any number of other, more real
marriages.
Billy and Antoinette play their parts
beautifully. The affectionate romps at night,
the comatose mornings full of hazard ('I'm
going through a period of destroying my
feet,' grumbles Billy), the brief explosions
over tiny details, the concern over whether
the record-player is functioning properly,
the interludes of lunacy, the half-foreboding,
half-eager preparations for a monumental
row- their exchanges flow with the ease and
logic of any scripted marital drama. The
crisis point, reached in the miserable calm
that succeeds an outbreak of violence,
could hardly be a more authentic combina-
tion of tragedy and bathos, in which they
discuss the division of the house into his
half and hers ('Some nights, you could even
come upstairs and baby-sit'), until the

219
words at last run out and they cling to each the oppressive structure of the multiplex individual members of the team to a choice
other in a huddle of reconciliation. Whether university (the location was an actual between the survival of the whole and the
or not their marriage was in fact ever like campus in Oregon) is conveyed in the many interests of the single member. And the
this, or might have been, or might not have shots of endless concrete ramps and banks answers are not always easy. In The Kremlin
been, it comes across on film, thanks to the of computers lurking amid the seemingly Letter, for instance, the hero-as, amidst all
ambiguity of Allan King's method, as all unused libraries. the ambiguities, Patrick O'Neal finally turns
too plausible an experience. But while the film's strength derives from out to be-eventually has to make a split-
PHILIP STRICK some unerringly accurate observation of second decision about which of the group
comic detail, its satirical realism is constantly he will save, if indeed he can save anyone
undermined by Rush's intrusively arty else. And there is no right answer; it is not
device of varying the focus within a single even sure that the group is a Good Thing in
two-person shot, and by his tendency to itself.
GETTING STRAIGHT photograph academic dignitaries through a But all this seems to be taking the film
distorting lens. The obsessional scholar rather solemnly, and indeed it is. Even if
who examines Harry for his M.A. and whose Huston meant it to be about the group,
HE FINAL SHOTS of Richard Rush's black demonic insistence on the homosexual loyalty and so on, it does not come out
T and sentimental comedy of campus crisis
encapsulate the film's weaknesses and
undertones of The Great Gatsby provokes
Harry's freak-out ('It's going to be a hell of a
quite that way. Like a painting in which the
painter has changed his mind about the
ambiguities; its tendency-shared with its surprise to Sheila Graham!') is appallingly, design after the first sketch, The Kremlin
hero Harry Bailey-to shout wittily and recognisably, real until the camera's leering Letter occasionally lets us glimpse an
vitriolically about pressing political prob- close-ups push him into the crude realms of original intention showing through. But the
lems while backing away from all but the caricature and reduce the scene to a slap- final design is very different. The finished
most ad hoc personal solutions. As troopers stick set-piece. Similarly, the police assault, film bears about the same relationship to
close in for another bloody assault on the though convincing in its evocation of We Were Strangers that Beat the Devil does
student demonstrators, Harry (who has just Chicago, is so out of proportion to the to The Maltese Falcon: mocking, fantasising,
thrown his M.A. oral) and his girl-friend handful of demonstrators who provoke it taking cool pleasure in sheer throwaway
Jan (who has just renounced her chance of that it becomes an emotive catch-all symbol virtuosity. The plot is ridiculously compli-
matrimonial security with an unattractive at the expense of narrative credibility. Rush cated, with so many bluffs and counter-
gynaecologist) espy one another over the may have intended his film to reflect a bluffs that obviously nobody is expected to
waving picket signs and, moving with soft- contemporary chaos, but he often seems follow every last in and out. Instead it
focus immunity through the surrounding merely to be exploiting the symptoms (from provides a perfectly sufficient excuse for a
violence, proceed to rip off one another's permissive sex to police brutality) he set out rich gallery of grotesques. There is Orson
clothes and make love as their fellow to explore. One is left wondering whether he Welles booming away magisterially as a very
students have their heads smashed in by the really sees the motto for the Seventies as dubious Russian plotter with a taste for
defenders of law and order. 'Make Love and War.' snapping up Klees in New York. And
It's hard to read this as affirming that the JAN DAWSON George Sanders, extravagantly bewigged
road to collective revolution runs through and gowned, doing a sultry drag act in a San
personal fulfilment, when the film's preced- Francisco gay bar. Lila Kedrova as a
ing two hours have time and again shown Moscow madame exchanging titbits of
political and institutional structures to be a professional gossip with Nigel Green, an
major source of personal frustration. The THE KREMLIN LETTER Anglo-Mexican pimp disguised as a Czech
message may be a cliched 'be yourself' but whores-trader, over the samovar. Even
it means nothing in the context of a society Barbara Parkins (late of Peyton Place), if
already denounced for allowing people no HERE ARE TWO FILMS yoked together in put in with an obvious shrug as the inescap-
room to be themselves in. Getting Straight
(Columbia) may hilariously document the
T The Kremlin Letter (Fox): the film it was
apparently meant to be, and the film it
able romantic relief, is allowed her interest-
ing speciality: an inherited gift for opening
pressures that drive young idealists into actually turns out to be. The situation is not safes with her toes.
dropping out, but it sidesteps the problem it extraordinary; what is extraordinary is that No doubt, as serious people say, we
purports to deal with, that of the idealist both are interesting, and both in their should expect more of Huston. But even at
who wants to help society by dropping back different ways equally characteristic of their his most casual, as in Sinful Davy, he does
in. creator. There is little doubt that the film have the gift of making film-making look as
Harry Bailey, six years outside the system, John Huston set out to make may be read though he enjoys it, of being so prodigal of
a former Freedom Rider, activist and in the light of the little scene he gives invention that it doesn't matter if we don't
veteran of Selma, has decided that being himself near the beginning. He is the admiral care for one or two of his ideas-he's got a
himself involves teaching children and has called on to discharge Patrick O'Neal (to million of them. The Kremlin Letter comes
accordingly returned to University to obtain his own mystification and against his at you in a breathless rush, and carries you
his M.A. and a teaching credential. Already wishes, as it happens) from the U.S. Navy off on a switchback course of comedy, satire,
alienated by his age from the majority of his so that he can take his place in a complicated irony and deeper meaning. Even if we forget
fellow students, he refuses to become counter-espionage manreuvre (maybe it is the meaning and concentrate on the fun-
involved in their attempted revolution, espionage tout court, but that is one of as Huston himself has done for long
considers their causes (from legalised pot to several other stories). O'Neal is puzzled and stretches-the eventful trip through Huston-
mixed dormitories) puerile and parochial, unhappy; the admiral is coldly furious. He land should leave us with little cause for
and outrages Jan by accusing her of going sees it, quite simply, as a dereliction of duty, complaint.
on demonstrations principally because the a failure of loyalty and, worst of all, a JoHN RussELL TAYLOR
violence makes her feel sexy (something he's wilful copping out of the group. O'Neal, as
the first to exploit). At the same time, he is far as he is concerned, has chosen to put
appalled by the complacency of careerist some sort of personal whim or maybe some
professors nursing their liberal consciences private loyalty in front of his loyalty to the
in tract homes in the suburbs, while they- group of which he is a part. And that is THE VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY
more surprisingly-persist in offering him unforgivable.
university posts, finding it incomprehensible It can hardly be accidental that this, on
that anyone of his academic brilliance one level, is the theme of the film. Not, of EVEN AGO Christopher Miles made
should wilfully pursue a humbler vocation.
Harry, the one-man generation gap, with
course, that the script (by Huston himself
and the faithful Gladys Hill) contents itself
S YEARS
his name with a short film called Six-
Sided Triangle, a set of variations on the
his schizophrenic mixture of outrage and with a cut-and-dried assertion that the theme of sexual infidelity seen through the
indolence, achieves total credibility in admiral/Huston's point of view is right. But imaginary lens of six directors, from Griffith
Elliott Gould's brilliant throwaway perfor- the whole latter part of the story may be seen to Bergman. It was an exercise in pastiche,
mance, ably supported by Candice Bergen, as a re-examination of that subject which slight but sharp enough to suggest that its
revealing an unexpected flair for comedy, has so often come up in Huston's films-in maker had a feeling for the minutiae of
and by Robert F. Lyons, as a turned-on We Were Strangers, The Treasure of Sierra style, the unconscious mannerisms that
drop-out whom the script (less convincingly) Madre, The Asphalt Jungle: the perhaps betray different temperaments. Miles goes
converts to paramilitary zeal on a bad acid arbitrary formation of a group to do some- to work with a similar dissecting glee on the
trip. Robert Kaufman's exceptionally witty thing, idealistic or cynically commercial or foibles of Lawrence's clerical household in
and accurately idiomatic dialogue reinforces downright criminal, anything which involves The Virgin and the Gypsy (London Screen-
the film's pretensions to authenticity, while a group loyalty and eventually brings plays). The result is no more true Lawrence

220
 than were the flamboyant tableaux of Ken
Russell's Women in Love, but it at least
outlines one more viable approach to what
Dr. Leavis has condemned as the 'obscene
undertaking' of putting Lawrence's novels
on film.
Leavis could not complain that Miles has
missed the point of the fable. The
' antagonism between civilised and elemental
values is caught in the juxtaposition of the
film's two opening shots-churchyard and
waterfall-and highlighted throughout by
incidental images, some wittily interpolated
into Alan Plater's screenplay. A blast of
steam startles Yvette and Lucille out of their
demure small talk as they cross the railway
bridge; the film cuts more than once from
the tight-lipped bickering round the rectory
table to the grey howling rain outside.
Miles' film, with its unforced sense of
landscape and period, works to achieve
far more thematic unity than Russell's;
what it lacks is some of the latter's simple
extravagance.
As interrelated character studies, the
vicar's family is beautifully observed.
Maurice Denham's rector is smug, ingratia-
ting and ponderously facetious; Kay
Walsh's Aunt Cissie, doomed to spinster-
hood, chews chocolates with compensatory
passion; Fay Compton as Granny retreats
from her vindictive outbursts into a cringing
show of senility. Miles fills the dinner-table
silences in these early scenes with a superb
selection of 'noises off'-heavy chewing
from Granny, throat-clearing from the
rector, the clang and scrape of cutlery-to GEORGE SANDERS IN "THE KREMLIN LETTER".
complement the close-ups of boiled potatoes
and lukewarm cod. in chance close-ups-a pair of infinitely of success. The skier (Robert Redford)
Yvette's provincial and family ennui is jaded eyes reflected momentarily in a moving realistically sums up his one talent: he skis
thus painstakingly documented. But car mirror, the stifled yawns and giggles at faster than other people. He is also tolerably
Lawrence's heroine was a victim of more the dinner table. As the sisters lie in bed at realistic in appraising what this skill lets
than ennui; The Virgin and the Gypsy is a night, discussing sex in awed tones, the him get away with, in terms of a rebellious
sweeping critique of the entire Protestant camera sensitively underscores their contras- arrogance buttressing uncertainty. But if
life-style-its exclusiveness, its bigotry, its ting attitudes by zooming slowly in on this country boy skier, recruited into a
sanctimonious repressions. Granny, more Yvette's intense, half-fascinated features, team of smooth graduates from Eastern
than an exasperating old lady, is envisaged and out from Lucille, whose reaction is colleges, approaches the standard sports
as a toad ('bloated', 'obscene' are the usual instinctively one of recoil. film chip-on-the-shoulder champion, the
epithets), and in. naturalising such charac- Such counterpointing of images does a film keeps its characterisations well this
ters Miles and Plater risk reducing their good deal to convey the growing isolation side of cliche. Stock situations loom up; but
stature from the allegorical to the merely of Yvette, pitifully ill-at-ease in her own James Salter's script leaves most plot ends
picturesque. The force of the gypsy's impact world, but too fearful to commit herself to engagingly untied. The team coach (intelli-
on Yvette seems especially diminished. the other. By way of synthesis, we have the gently played by Gene Hackman) ticks the
Franco Nero is suitably virile and taciturn, self-conscious Bohemianism of the Major hero off without converting him to a sudden
but the recurring bleached flashbacks in and Mrs. Fawcett-but musical soirees, onrush of team spirit. We never know
which she sees herself escorted from the car nude bathing and a madly vivacious Honor whether his girl friend, his shiny fashion-
and clasped in the gypsy's arms are on too Blackman add up to a world no nearer the plate dream of Europe, ditches him out of
wanly conventional a level of feminine gypsy's in its flight from 'civilised' values boredom, or whether she was merely
wish-fulfilment to suggest anything like than the rectory itself. The weakness of engaged in a little sales-promotion for her
(the original) Yvette's urge to be subsumed Miles' film, and in some ways the strength, employer's skis. (His American girl friend
by another will. is that for all its corrosive faults and foibles, dimly speculates on her future as holiday
Here and elsewhere, no doubt, Lawrence the vicar's family emerges as far more waitress or dental nurse: a small scene,
overstated his case. There is something human than its elemental Utopian counter- beautifully played on blankness.)
intractably schematic and axe-grinding part. The dodging of cliche may look like a
about his writing in The Virgin and the NIGEL ANDREWS negative asset; it becomes almost positive
Gypsy, which renders any attempt to when it sustains vitality in characters who
visualise it in 'realistic' terms doomed, both by the nature of things are spending much
by the extravagant contempt with which its of their time on skis. Downhill Racer is
minor characters are drawn, and by the DOWNHILL RACER not ashamed to be a sports film: it is simply
creaking machinery of the story's climax. a better sports film than most because it
The flood, drowning Granny and swirling respects the attitudes of its subject. Skiing
Yvette into the gypsy's arms, is improbably of Downhill Racer scenes are shot less as lyrical interludes on
convenient. And although one is thankful
that, despite the standard opulence of a
A T THE CENTRE
(Paramount) there is a scene in which
the hero, new ace skier on the American
snow than for thudding, dangerous speed
-the main action of the film is framed
Dimitri de Grunwald production, Miles has Olympic squad, goes back to the family between two jolting crashes. There is a
resisted giving Lawrence the big screen home in the mid-West. A reunion with his resourceful emphasis not only on the
treatment, it still comes across as an father is morose on both sides. The old mechanics of sport (crash helmets, goggles,
absurdly bombastic denouement. farmer is silently sceptical about his son's score-boards) but on the mechanics of
Where Miles' style scores is in the sheer European gallivanting; the son, boredly audience participation-action not always
conviction that pressure of detail creates, not munching biscuits in the farm kitchen, filmed directly but filtered through the
only in the glum daily round of the rectory, expects some faint recognition of his bumbling identifications and over-heated
but in Joanna Shimkus' beautiful low-key exploits. 'Champions?' says the old man, excitements of television commentaries.
performance as Yvette. Her features, out of a silence. 'The world's full of them.' It is a device that works, perhaps in some-
resentment and longing alike enveloped in a Downhill Racer seems not entirely to what McLuhanish terms, because this is
trance-like languor, betray her feelings only reject this exceptionally unHollywood view the way most of us do actually watch

221
 master of power (his trinity of marionettes
represent the police, the church and the
schools) and also love (his mistress, Laura,
from the Bahia brothels), and is sufficiently
real as a designation of his class and as a
reminder of the Vargas dictatorship which
outlawed African religions.
Like a mystery play, Antonio das Mortes
is both opera and social parable. Whereas
Black God, White Devil evoked the years of
Lampiao and Corisco before 1940, here we
are in 1969. Antonio is modelled on a living
septuagenarian jagunco whose name is Jose
Rufino and who appears in a short docu-
mentary by Gil Soares; the legend of St.
George and the Dragon is still alive in the
culture of the town of Milagres amongst
whose inhabitants the film (and other
Brazilian films) is shot; and the ingredients
for revolution which Rocha underlines-
Antonio's mystical moralism and the
teacher's political consciousness-are per-
haps more applicable today than in 1940.
The triumph of the film is in the translation
of the amalgam of legend and reality into an
epic and lyrical whole.
Gone is the neo-realism of Vidas Secas,
though it lingers like the tang of the earth in
the grey-green hills and the leathery peasant
faces. Gone are the Eisensteinian principles
\
and Brechtian techniques, yet the montage
of shots in the final showdown and the
""ANTONIO DAS MORTES"": ROSA MARIA PENNA. 'characterisation' of the padre, loping like
Groucho Marx round the lovers, are still
reminiscent. In fact, these elements are still
sport: the TV view, one could say, looks are battling rather than complementing there but they are transfigured by an acute
realer than real. each other. stylisation, so that the carnival imagery is
Michael Ritchie, the director, himself Glauber Rocha's fourth film is both a even more highly composed than in previous
comes from television; and what is attrac- resume and critique of his earlier work, a films, more vulgar, more plastic, more
tive about his first film is its sense of repor- partly autobiographical reflection on the baroque. And here Rocha is often least
tage, of the transitory mood of training people and culture of Brazil. His thesis, understood : he is against theoretical cinema
camps and airports and Alpine hotels, developed through Barravento, Black God, and for critical polemical cinema. His is
combined with a kind of alert reasonable- White Devil and Terra em Transe, is that rhetorical cinema-musical counterpoint,
ness in the approach to character. Brian revolution is inherent in popular mass explosions of violent colour, modulated
Probyn's camerawork ensures that the film culture (the middle class of Brazil being a tonality of voices and songs, hieratic
looks consistently good, on and off the decultured elite aping the standards of gestures, few interior shots, and space
snow. The brief return to rural America imperialist media-vide the Brazilian cinema exaggerated by solemn lateral travelling
is a visual impression of a homelier, run- prior to cinema novo), and that cinema shots or respectful motionless camera-holds.
down world: an oddly effective and quiet reflecting this culture might pinpoint the With the remarkable electronic music of
contrast, because it seems to be made contradictions which make revolution a Marlos Nobre and the formal beauty of
within the terms of the skier's own possibility and a necessity. Rocha's dialectic Alfonso Beato's lighting, Rocha can inscribe
experience. is not didactic-its elementary humanity is the primitive improvisations of his peasant
PENELOPE HOUSTON with the 'real' Brazil: Indian, black, poor, actors without over-decoration. In filming
mystical, violent and sentimental. Antonio his Western ballad he has looked to
das Mortes concentrates especially on the Peckinpah's Guns in the Afternoon (and to
ANTONIO DAS MORTES 'permanent state of madness', the orgiastic Faulkner), yet he achieves the atmosphere
nature of these people whose frustrations of Leone.
are channelled into a snaking hieratic Unfortunately, stylistic concerns can
LEARLY THIRD WORLD CINEMA demands carnival, a blend of African ritual and easily obscure the meaning of parts of the
C our respect, if not our complete under-
standing-the spate of cinema novo films
catholic ceremonial. Perhaps it is here that
we begin to get lost, not in the choreography
film. The relationship between the indivi-
dual drama of Laura, the 'colonel' and the
touring international festivals seems to deal and folk-ballads but in the mythology of the police commissioner and the collective
with quite specific Brazilian socio-political North East, in the religious syncretism, and drama of the peasants and jaguncos is
problems which subsume the special aware- (every revolutionary secretes his 'ism') the opaque; the matching up of characters and
ness of Brazilian culture we so often lack; precepts of 'tropicalism'. incidents on both sides is a little contrived;
yet the same films are so often a wow with What we lose on the roundabouts we the use of hiccupped editing and over-
critics because they have some claim to make up on the swings-our understanding exposure for the 'colonel's' slaying is
changing our consciousness of the general deepens with respect to the central figure of somewhat tricksy; and the hysterical
nature of 'cinematographic language'. None Antonio (Mauricio do Valle), who, for no violence is never cathartic or liberating for
of us would be surprised if Senegal produced payment, is hired by the land-owning the audience. That the film is revolutionary,
a 'masterpiece' or two by 1975, and none of 'colonel' to snuff out the cangaceiros in form and content, we are left in no doubt.
us flinch when the pre-credit sequence of leading a peasant revolt, finds his mission Touched by grace, Antonio, the jagunco
Antonio das Mortes (Connoisseur) gives us a ignoble and swops sides in order to avenge turned cangaceiro, walks out of legend into
short glossary of terms used in the film. It the peasants and kill the jaguncos. Rocha history, a hulking victor in these tristes
becomes less and less the exoticism of subject shows that parallel with 'progress' (the long- tropiques plodding the road marred by a new
matter that appeals to us, and much more distance lorries, the nationalist drum- dragon to be vanquished by anew generation
the sheer originality of the treatment-and majorettes) there exists an almost mediaeval of Brazilians-the sign of the Shell Oil
the cinema novo movement is at that system of oppression by landed proprietors. Company, symbol of late capitalism.
interesting stage where form and content The 'colonel', symbolically blind, is the MIKE WALLINGTON

222
 manoeuvring for dictatorship by control of exhibition outlets.
Hampton was a curious figure. Originally a journalist, he had
become a vice-president of the giant American Tobacco Company
when around 1916 he turned his attention to films. His fascination-
characteristic of the period-with big business, and particularly
with the business peculiarities of the film industry, led him into an
unsuccessful attempt to manoeuvre Paramount and V.S.L.E. into a
monopolistic merger. Later he became an independent producer in
his own right. As a producer he was very undistinguished. His
aesthetic outlook was limited (he seems never to have heard of the
Russians or Eisenstein; and thought Ben Hur and King of Kings the
highest peaks of the art). His contribution to the massive Hollywood
clean-up which led to the creation of the Hays Office was to call 'on
the club women of America to work with decent producers and to
agitate for the use of the police power in sending indecent manu-
facturers, distributors, and exhibitors to jail.·
Yet with all these shortcomings, he remains a remarkable
historian. The detail and precision of his record of industrial develop-
WHEN THE MOVIES WERE YOUNG, by Mrs. D. W. Griffith (Linda ment and organisation is given enormous vitality by his personal
Arvidson). Illustrated. (Dover/Constable, 24s.) fascination and the strong element of autobiography. Little in his
history of the years from 1895 to 1931 needs revising today; and very
HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN FILM tNDUSTRY, FROM ITS BEGINNINGS much of his analysis still remains valid.
TO 1931, by Benjamin B. Hampton. Illustrated. (Dover/Constable,
38s.)
Hampton's key discovery-commonplace today, though very
novel for his times-was that in the cinema the consumer for the
first time exerted an absolute and final control of an industry. 'When
WHEN THE MOVIES WERE YOUNG originally appeared in 1925. Linda films left the organised variety theatres and entered the rabble of
Arvidson, its author, was married to D. W. Griffith in 1906, and small, cheap shows, they passed to the control of the consumers,
separated from him about five or six years later (though they were the American populace; and the power then acquired has never
not divorced until 1936). Perhaps theirs was one of the earliest film been relinquished. This unusual condition has made the movies a
marriages to suffer the strain of success; for in this brief period phenomenon that industrial leaders, bankers and students have been
Griffith progressed from struggles as an unsuccessful actor and unable to appreciate.'
aspiring writer to the first firm steps along his path as the most As an industrialist who did appreciate the phenomenon, Hampton
influential creative innovator in the history of the cinema. By 1911 perceived the dangers-to become so real in and after the Thirties-
Pippa Passes, A Corner in Wheat, Enoch Arden and The Battle had of attempting to impose industrial organisation at the creative level:
already removed American film-making from the 'factory' to the ' ... the inelastic business methods of bureaucracy replaced the
'studio'. loose practices of democracy in picture making. Now a new idea,
Though the Griffith revolution was well on its way, and though instead of having to win the "O.K." of one autocrat of a little king-
the business men were already fighting for mastery of the billion- dom, had to run the gauntlet of editorial boards, production
dollar industry to be, the world of which Miss Arvidson was witness committees, and conferences of various sorts. A multitude of
now seems impossibly, idyllically remote from everything we alleged experts awaited the fellow with the new thought, and when
understand as film-making. It was a bit like a village dramatic his innovation had completed the circuit of the studio's intricate
society, with the actors (out-of-work hams and girls just out of system there was seldom a trace of originality or novelty left in it.
school) standing a better chance of casting if their hat or their The sharp shears and heavy smoothing-irons of the experts had
waistcoat suited the role. In other respects life at Biograph's famous transformed the wild, crazy idea to one of the rigid patterns in
old studio in the brownstone mansion at 11 East Fourteenth Street favour, at the time, with the studio head and his yes-men and yes-
must have resembled a Wellsian linen-drapers, with Mr. Griffith women.' (Hampton, of course, was writing as an independent
sternly governing his young ladies and gentlemen, and little Bobby producer.) There is still food for thought in the principle he reports:
Harron, the lunch boy, laying the tablecloths on prop baskets. 'A poor picture will keep audiences away from a theatre for several
There is something even more romantic about the beginnings of weeks ... No matter what they cost, it is economy to throw away
the migration from the Eastern cities to the Western sunshine the bad pictures.'
(Biograph was not one of the less reputable companies for whom the There is, altogether, a great deal to justify the reprinting of these
West offered not only saving of electricity, but also freedom from ancient, long out-of-print and rare source-books on American film
pursuit by the Edison Patents Trust). These pioneers made their history; though the illustrations deserved far better reproduction.
card-playing (cheaper-rates-for-party-travel) train treks to a DAVID ROBINSON
California of isolated farmsteads and oil wells and ramshackle hotels
where they had to sleep three to a bed.
For a while you take Miss Arvidson's narrative as charming
nostalgic chatter, albeit full of marvellous illuminations of the artis- FILM IN THE THIRD REICH, by David Stewart Hull. Illustrated.
tic discoveries and industrial developments of those years. Reading (University of California Press, 85s.)
on, you discover the sharp perception and sharper tongue behind
the faux-naive appearances. There are malicious little allusions to
Mack Sennett's care with money and quite funless unsociability; GOEBBELS COULDN'T HAVE KNOWN, when he rushed OUt Kolberg a
to the more than kindly interest of Kate Bruce (the lady bruiser who few weeks before the final collapse of the Third Reich, that twenty-
tended to play virago wives and mothers-in-law in later slapstick five years later people in London would be queuing to see it. The
shorts) in the welfare of the girls of the company ('She had a strong recent season at the National Film Theatre testified to the Nazi
maternal complex, had the maidenly Kate Bruce'); to the young cinema's continuing fascination, yet with the exception of
ladies of the troupe who sought the Master's favour by mooning Kracauer's postscript to From Ca/igari to Hitler and a few random
about with the works of Tennyson under their arms. She is especially articles, little has been written on the subject in English. Which
unsparing of Lillian Gish: 'With a tight little hat on her head, and a makes it all the more disappointing that one can't welcome David
red rose on the side of it from which flowed veils and veils, and a Stewart Hull's meticulously documented study of the period with
soulful expression in her eyes, Miss Gish was even then, so long ago, more enthusiasm.
affecting the Madonna.' The trouble with K.racauer is not simply the blinkered post hoc
Miss Arvidson noted how even in those early days Mary Pick- rationalisation which can explain away the transition from Caligari
ford's mother was looking keenly after the financial interests of her to Jud Siiss in terms of 'a secret history involving the inner disposi-
gifted offspring. At Biograph, though, Mrs. Smith was harrying the tions of the German people', but also his failure to set the pro-
producers to get only another five or ten dollars a week. By the time grammed output of the Third Reich in the context of propaganda
Benjamin Hampton came to be acquainted with her, she was using as a whole. It is a fault common to nearly all studies of the period,
the same techniques on Zukor or whoever else it might be to raise manifested particularly in those facile and not infrequently hypo-
Mary's earnings to a cool million dollars and more. Hampton's critical accounts which seem to want to categorise film propaganda
personal observation of the American film industry, and his history as a phenomenon unique to Nazi Germany. Propaganda is, of
(which originally appeared in 1931 as A History of the Movies), course, a highly emotive term, igniting different prejudices in
covered the rise of the film as a maverick, piratical, but indubitably different people; it's also relative, which means accepting the
lucrative industry; and the attempts over the years of various disagreeable fact that Baptism of Fire and London Can Take It
interests to gain absolute domination-from Edison's efforts to can and indeed should be talked about in the same breath. Like
impress the authority of his patents to Zukor's devious and brilliant so many previous inquests, Mr. Hull's analysis simply fails to

223
acknowledge that in totalitarian states, and in countries at war, which lengthily debated the pros and cons of euthanasia, and on
distortion of the truth is the rule rather than the exception. In the changes made in Harlan's Der grosse Konig after the invasion
retrospect, the difference between Nazi and British or American of Russia. He makes the interesting point (but then fails to develop
propaganda is only one of degree. it) that many of the films directed at potential recruits for the Nazi
But it would be misleading to imply that Film in the Third Reich youth brigades featured recalcitrant heroes whose American
is primarily concerned with the more notorious products of counterparts would be juvenile delinquents. And he usefully spot-
Goebbels' Filmkammer. Perhaps one day someone will tackle the lights some of the unjustly neglected films of Harlan, Herbert
question one would really like answered about this dark chapter in Selpin, Kautner (though 'heir to Ophuls' he is not) and Gustav
cinema history: just how did the average German audience react Ucicky. It would have been interesting to have more on these
to a monstrosity like Der ewige Jude? Meanwhile, Mr. Hull has films, if only because they confirm that the Gleichscha/tung process
little to say about this aspect of the subject that has not been said did not entirely obliterate individual talent.
already. He has interviewed Veit Harlan and documents the genesis Instead, Mr. Hull spends space on potted biographies of actors
of Jud Suss (though his contention that it was the Lida Baarova and directors, Goebbels' love life, the Pola Negri affair, a gossipy
scandal which influenced Goebbels' decision to launch the anti- letter about the alleged racial impurities of the first president of
Semitic programme is, to say the least, arguable); but apart from the Filmkammer. And there are tedious pages on the plots of
a few cracks at Leni Riefenstahl's expense he postpones judgment nwnerous deservedly forgotten films on which his critical com-
on Triumph of the Will and Olympia, of which his analysis is ments are confined to vague assessments of acting and photo-
disappointingly cursory. Indeed, Mr. Hull's exasperating reluctance graphy. Where he does venture comment, it is sometimes mis-
to commit himself to an opinion is the major weakness of his book. leading. To say, for instance, that Selpin's Die Reiter von Deutsch-
His rigidly chronological approach (Olympia is mentioned in his Ostafrika (1934) is 'violently anti-British' is to misunderstand the
chapter on 1936 only to be earmarked for discussion two chapters film's political and historical context: the British are indeed
later because it was not released until 1938) inevitably creates an crudely caricatured, but so were Germans in British films of this
impression that the book has been sewn together from copious period, when politically the Germans had no more reason to be
volumes of notes. · anti-British than they were in the frequently misunderstood
The disadvantage of this comprehensive approach is soon Morgenrot (1932). Both these films, and a good many more, were
apparent in the ratio of film titles to pages; with so many films more anti-war than anti-British.
jostling for attention it's not surprising that one can't see the wood For his sources Mr. Hull relies heavily on Dr. Bauer's catalogue,
for the trees. The book would have been much better, and much contemporary reports from the New York Times, and Joseph
more useful than as a casual work of reference, if Mr. Hull had Wulf's documentation Theater und Film im Dritten Reich, but
assembled his facts to illustrate a thesis (as Erwin Leiser does in his indiscriminate use of these and other sources is characteristic
his more readable if still rather fragmented Deutschland, erwache!). of the general lack of direction in the book. His own style (not
The fact that the Germans produced 147 films in 1934 is of minimal helped by frequent misspellings and typographical errors) is
interest compared to the barely discussed opposition, from artists often almost as turgid as his literal translations of original docu-
and public alike, to some of those films. ments, which make the admittedly bombastic official German of
The synoptic method might be justified on the grounds that it the time virtually unreadable. The book is the work of nine years'
does allow Mr. Hull to introduce us to some little-known films, research. It is a pity that the fruits of that research are so often
as well as supplying some valuable and hitherto barely documented squandered on such unhelpful bits of information as the price of
background material. He is informative on the structure of the breakfast at the State Film Academy.
industry, on Karl Ritter's militarist propaganda ((jber Alles in DAVID WILSON
der Welt and the ludicrous Stukas, in which the hero's jaded morale
is miraculously boosted by listening to Wagner), on the retrospec-
tively sinister background to Wolfgang Liebeneiner's Ich klage an!, MAURITZ STILLER OCH HANS FILMER 1912-1916 [Mauritz Stiller and
his Films 1912-1916], by Gosta Werner. lllustratu. (P. A. Norstedt,
Stockholm, 98 Sw. Cr.)

BFI GIFT TOI<ENS THE NEW GENERATION of film historians is growing steadily. To
Jacques Deslandes and Gordon Hendricks must now be added
Give your friends a Gift Token for membership Gosta Werner, who has the added distinction of himself being a
of the British Film Institute. very talented film-maker; and just as the two former self-consciously
react in their scholarship against the earlier generation of pioneer
synthesist historians represented by Georges Sadoul and Terry
ASSOCIATE TOKENS £1 Ramsaye respectively, so Gosta Werner takes his national historian,
Bengt Idestam-Almquist, as the butt of his criticism.
Covers the supply of the illustrated NFT But there are other and more noteworthy ways in which this is an
Programme, and entitles the recipient to important book. In particular, the author has undertaken to clarify,
purchase two tickets to performances at the as far as is now possible, the early work of Stiller before he made the
films for which he is famous. And that is no easy task, for of the 32
NATIONAL FILM THEATRE during the films which can be attributed to him with certainty between 1912
coming year. and 1916, only one, Love and Journalism, has survived in full,
together with fragments from three others. Gosta Werner's task has
been, therefore, two-fold. He has related Stiller's life, first in the
MEMBERSHIP TOKENS £2.5.0 theatre (in Finland and then in Sweden) and subsequently in the
Covers the supply of the world famous cinema (with Svenska Bio, the forerunner of Svensk Filmindustri)
using only unimpeachable primary sources. But this is only the
quarterly magazine SIGHT AND SOUND; the hors d'oeuvre. For the main course he has reconstructed the plots of
illustrated NFT Programme; entitles the the first 32 films, again using only completely trustworthy material.
recipient to purchase up to four tickets to Consequently, we now have for the first time fairly full and reliable
performances at the NATIONAL FILM synopses of all Stiller's early work, based on stills and lists of sub-
titles. Other major source material used includes the archives of
THEATRE; also to make use of the services Svensk Filmindustri and the records of the State Film Censorship
of the Information Department, Book, Film Board.
and Stills Libraries. The first pages of the book, which relate Stiller's early history, are
the easiest reading for they alone are narrative. The centre section
(pp. 73-327) contains the detailed critical filmography, well illus
Available from: trated with stills, with reconstructed synopses, credits, details of
surviving source material (including prints), and discussion of
The National Film Theatre, such matters as script. A final section contains some very detailed
South Bank, Waterloo, London SE1 tables.
or The research for this book has been prodigious, and it is mainly
owing to Svensk Filmindustri, which was celebrating its 50th
The British Film Institute, anniversary, and the Holger and Thyra Lauritzen Foundation that it
81 Dean Street, London W1 V 6AA. could be published in the lavishly uncompromising form in which it
appears. Certainly no one can now write about Stiller or the early
Swedish cinema without using this book as a prime source of his

224
information. Its usefulness is made a little greater by contaming an
eight page summary in English. Unfortunately, the summary gives
access only to the narrative portions and the tables. It is to be hoped
that Svensk Filmindustri or F.I.A.F. will subsidise an English
translation of the reconstructed synopses in the hope that prints of
at least some of the 31 missing films may be lying as yet unidentified
in an archive or collection somewhere. For instance, Balettprima-
Tovvards a Sociology
donnan was distributed in at least 56 copies abroad, of which at
least 15 came to Britain; and similar figures are given for many of
of the Cinema
the other films. As the author has researched almost entirely in
Nordic material (naturally enough), there is a possibility that A Comparative Essay on the Structure
foreign research may yet be able to supplement the information so and Functioning of a Major Entertainment
magnificently gathered by him. It would also be rather nice if he Industry
would go on to do the same for early Sjostrom.
NEVILLE HUNNINGS
I. C. JARVIE Professor of Philosophy,
York University, Toronto. Dr. Jarvie pro-
vides a framework for the comparative
sociological analysis of the cinema. He
examines various central problems, in-
cluding the structure and organization of
the making of films, of what the audience
experiences and of the evaluative pro-
cess. The book concludes with an ex-
Topaz Conoluded tensive annotated bibliography of material
The Editor, SIGHT AND SOUND on the sociology and psychology of the
SIR,-I was intrigued by your researches into the ending of cinema.
Hitchcock's Topaz. It appears that there must be at least three
endings, because that seen on the release print in Toronto corre- 'A provocative and agreeably opinionated
sponded to none of those described in SIGHT AND SOUND. Mter the book'-DILYS POWELL, Sunday Times.
spy Gnters his house there is a shot and the frame freezes. Cut to a
Paris boulevard where we see the headline on a newspaper being International Library of Sociology £4
read by someone sitting on a bench. The headline reads something
like 'Missile Crisis Over'. The newspaper is discarded on to the
pavement and its reader shuffles off. People are going about their ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL
business, yesterday's headlines are already on the rubbish heap of
history. Swell up of the martial music which was played behind the
titles. Do readers know of any other versions of the ending?
Yours faithfully,
York University, Toronto. I. C. JARVIE
To clarify a point which may have confused other readers: both LIBRAIRIE DU SPECTACLE
release versions end with the street scene described by Professor

efJt~~tefj
Jarvie. In one version this follows the implied suicide of the spy,
Granville; in the other, it follows the scene of the encounter at the
airport.
Bergman with Cuts
SIR,-I have now seen three different versions 0f Bergman's FRENCH AND FOREIGN BOOKS
outstanding film The Silence: the apparently complete version, in AND MAGAZINES ABOUT THE
Germany, in 1963; the pre-censored British version, which had some CINEMA
substantial cuts; and recently, at the National Film Theatre, a version
with still more cuts. This last one was part of the extensive Bergman CATALOGUE ON REQUEST
series, and it's a pity that the NFT were fobbed off with this very
incomplete copy. Oddly enough, the Programme Officer told me he FOREIGN ORDERS WELCOMED
thought it was complete. So, I suppose, did most of the audience,
and many people must have wondered what all the controversy could
have been about when the film first appeared. 24, RUE DU COLISEE, CHAMPS EL YSEES
Yours faithfully, PARIS (VIlle) TEL.: 256 17-71
Sevenoaks, Kent. DAviD Cox
Oxford Animation Festival
SIR,-SIGHT AND soUND readers may be interested to know that
the Oxford Animation Festival takes place on November 6th to 8th
""here
to find out almost all you could want to know about
1970 at the Moulin Rouge Cinema, Oxford. Seventy leading
animators have been asked to select their six favourite films. Based LON CHANEY e The Witch of Oz MARGARET
on their replies, the festival programme will provide a comprehen- HAMILTON e SUZANNE PLESHETTE e and
sive picture of world animation, 1909-1970. Among films new to Patton, The Molly Maguires, Colonel Wolodyjowski
Britain will be the American musical Shinbone Alley and Jan They Shoot Horses, Don't They? In the third issue of
Lenica's feature Adam 2.
Information and tickets from 22 Lloyd Square, London, W.C.l.
or from 9a Paradise Street, Oxford.
London, W.C.l.
Yours faithfully,
PETER SHELTON
FOCUS ON FILM
Contents of fourth issue (just out) focus on
SERGEI BONDARCHUK • RONALD COLMAN
It's All True
Le Samourai, Erotissimo, Midnight, etc.
In the Winter issue of SIGHT AND SOUND, Charles Higham will be
answering fully the letter by Richard Wilson in this issue (pages 188- Copies Sf- ($1) from shops or 6/- ($1) direct from
193) about the history ofn's ALL TRUE. TANTIVY PRESS, 108 New Bond St., London WIY OQX

225
FESTIVALS 70: VENICE superb, but the film just doesn't hold the attention after
Kubrick's much more complex dissection of the mechanics
continued from page 215 of power. The Rocha, set in Africa and offering a clarion call
of people stand composing letters to those absent in alien to revolution, has none of the hieratic splendour of Antonio
lands; the other a breathless moment when the hero, passing das Mortes. It could, in fact, be called a shambles, with false
briefly through Paris on his way home, rushes out of the prophets, CIA agents, missionaries, revolutionaries, down-
station to register one all-embracing look at the promised trodden blacks, and a nude lady called the Golden Beast of
land to treasure on his return to the Hungary he cannot Violence all swilling round in an apocalyptic jumble.
leave. A Love Film is perhaps a trifle too long and repetitive: Lastly, there were two appealing oddities. Poland contri-
otherwise I'd say it was a masterpiece. buted Lokis, adapted from the Merimee story and directed
Two more films from RAI, the enterprising Italian TV by Janusz Majewski as something of a Hammer Horror about
service responsible for The Spider's Strategy. I didn't much a young man whose mother was carried off by a bear on her
care for Fellini's I Clowns, a jocular attempt to explain his wedding day, and who broods endlessly about the possibility
obsession with the circus, concocted with some historical chit- that he is a were-bear until he finally cuts his bride's throat
chat, some film-within-the-film pretensions, and the usual on her wedding night and disappears into the forest. Also
flights of bloated fantasy. Rossellini's Socrates, though, is in vaguely Hammerish, the Egyptian Night of Counting the
its minor key way almost as striking as La Prise de Pouvoir Years is a moody, moonlit piece based on the true story of
par Louis XIV. The opening is hideous, with half-hearted the discovery in 1881 of a priceless cache of forty royal
Spartan extras attacking a segment of wobbly wall and mummies. Somehow, out of the clash between villagers who
knocking it down to reveal painted backdrops of the Acro- rob the sarcophagi and museum curators who remove them
polis, followed by some stilted historical situation-setting. in the interests of history, while the young hero stands between
But as soon as Socrates appears-a marvellously wry, amused them haunted by mysterious echoes of Egypt's buried past,
performance by Jean Sylvere-the film collects itself into a director Shadi Abdelsalam creates a strange, mystical crisis of
compelling explanation of the man, his philosophy, and why national identity. At the moment Abdelsalam's chiaroscuro
his modest logic so got under his contemporaries' skins. images are a little too carefully composed, his pace a shade
Minimal cinema, perhaps, but a film of exquisite insight. too measured, but this is only his first film and it unquestion-
Two major disappointments, too, in Francesco Rosi's ably reveals a film-maker. T M
Uomini Contro and Glauber Rocha's multi-lingually but uTI- OM ILNE
grammatically titled Der Leone Have Sept Cabecas. Although
Uomini Contro may be tolerably daring in an Italian context ftOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
as a denunciation of war, it is difficult to see why Rosi should MARGARET HINXMAN has been a film journalist and reviewer for
have wanted to make it. Like Paths of Glory, it concentrates twenty years on Time and Tide, Picturegoer, The Daily (now
on one unit condemned to suicidal attacks on a hilltop Today's) Cinema, Queen and other publications; for the past three
stronghold in the First World War, and coolly records the years has been film critic on the Sunday Telegraph . . . TERENCE
futility and waste as the generals command, the men obey, KELLY is a freelance journalist and former BBC TV News script-
and mutiny brews. Rosi's direction is impeccable, and writer and radio producer. He was principal author of the Bow
Group study A Competitive Cinema ..• RICHARD KOSZARSKI has
Pasqualino De Santis' chillingly blue-toned photography is completed work for his M.A. in Cinema Studies at New York
University and is writing a book on von Stroheim's films ... JOSEPH
MCBRIDE is a newspaper reporter working for the Wisconsin State
Journal and has recently completed a book about Orson Welles •••
PHILIP STRICK is head of Film Distribution at the British Institute,
and is working on a book about Roger Corman ... JOHN RUSSELL
Binders TAYLOR is film critic of The Times. Has written numerous books
including Anger and After, Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear, The Art
Nouveau Book in Britain.
for ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
UNITED ARTISTS for A Passion, Fellini Satyricon, Leo the Last, Von Richthofen
and Brown, Bloody Sunday, La Sirene du Mississippi, photograph of John
Boorman.

Sight and Sound

PARAMOUNT PICTURES for Murphy's War, Catch 22.
WARNER BROS. for The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, There Was a Crooked
Man, Death in Venice, photograph of Kevin Billington.
20th CENTURY-FOX for The Kremlin Letter, Me and My Girl, Judge Priest, The
Power and the Glory.
20th CENTURY-FOX/CINEMA CENTER FILMS for Little Big Man.
COLUMBIA PICTURES for photograph of Dick Clement.
are available at 16/6d. inc. postage. Each MGM-EMI for The Go-Between.
RANK DISTRIBUTORS for photograph of Peter Hall.
binder holds eight numbers, is covered BRITISH LION for photograph of James Clark.
in blue fabrilene and lettered in gold. LONDON SCREENPLAYS for Perfect Friday.
CONTEMPORARY FILMS for A Married Couple.
AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES for Bloody Mama, Gas-s-s
HUNTER FILMS for The Immortal Story.
UNIFRANCE/FILMS CORONA for Le Cerc/e Rouge.
MARS FILM/MARIANNE/MORAN for The Conformist.
HOUWER-FILM for O.K.
CINEDISTRI S. PAULO for The Hunger Prophet.
Binders for the new format, to be CAPAC for L'Alliance.
HUNGAROFILM for Love Story.
introduced January 1st 1971, will be RAI-RADIOTELEVISIONE ITALIANA for The Spider's Strategy.
CONNOISSEUR/NEW CINEMA CLUB for Antonio das Mortes.
available from that date price 18/- (90p.) MUSEUM OF MODERN ART/FILM STILLS ARCHIVE NEW YORK for
Hello, Sister.
inc. postage. NATIONAL FILM ARCHIVE for Zoo In Budapest, Sunny Side Up.
MAMOUN HASSAN for photograph of Kevin Brownlow.
RICHARD WILSON for photographs and script pages from It's All True.
CORRESPONDENTS
HOLLYWOOD: Axel Madsen SCANDINAVIA: lb Monty
ITALY: Giulio Cesare Castello SPAIN: Francisco Aranda
FRANCE: ~Gilles Jacob, Rui POLAND: Boleslaw Michalek
Nogueira INDIA: Amita Malik
The British Film Institute, AUSTRALIA: Charles Higham
Publications Department, SOLE AGENTS for U.S.A.: Eastern News Distributors, 155 West 15th Street,
New York 10011.
72 Dean Street, PRINTED BY The Whitefriars Press Ltd., London and Tonbridge, England.
London W1V 5HB. BLOCKS by Art Reproduction Co. Ltd., London.
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION RATES (4 issues) 28s. (£1·40) including postage.
PUBLICATION DATES: lst January, lst April, lst July, and lst October.
Overseas Editions: 12th of these months.

226
TYNESIDE FILM THEATRES ONE AND TWO
PILGRIM STREET, NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE TEL. 21506

MEDIUM COOL

REVOLUTION!
ANTONIO DAS MORTES • CUBA Sl! • GREETINGS • BIKE BOY • OCTOBER
PRAISE MARX AND PASS THE AMMUNITION • BLACK GOD, WHITE DEVIL • LBJ
EASY RIDER • SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL • DIARY OF A SHINJUKU THIEF
VIVA ZAPATA • POSTERS • TO DIE IN MADRID • FLASH GORDON ! THE TRIP
CY GRANT AND HERB GREER MULTI-MEDIA EXPERIENCE • IAN WHITCOMB, etc.

MONDAY OCTOBER 5 TO SATURDAY OCTOBER 24

BO WIDERBERG SEASON NOVEMBER 16- 28

BRIGHTON FILM THEATRE RAVEN'S END, LOVE '65, ELVIRA MADIGAN,
NORTH STREET, BRIGHTON TEL. 29563 THE PRAM, and ADALEN '31

BOLTON FILM THEATRE GALA OPENING FRIDAY OCTOBER 30 at 8.15 p.m.

Claude Guillemot's LA TREVE (U)
HANOVER STREET, BOLTON TEl. 24469 SATURDAY OCTOBER 31 at 7.45 p.m.

NOTTINGHAM FILM THEATRE HUNGARIAN FILM WEEK OCTOBER 26-NOVEMBER I

British Premieres of THE FALCONS and GRIMACE.
14 BROAD STREET, NOTTINGHAM TE·L. 46094 NIGHTLY at 7.30 p.m.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW SEASON AND EXHIBITION
LUTON FILM THEATRE OCTOBER 28-30
DOCTOR'S DILEMMA, ANDROCLES AND THE LION,
CENTRAL LIBRARY, LUTON TEL. 32629
GREAT CATHERINE
DECEMBER 6 and 7 DANISH BLUE (Members only)
TEESSIDE FILM THEATRE DECEMBER 8 and 9 FLESH (Members only)
LITTLE THEATRE, T.HE AVENUE, MIDDLESBROUGH TEL 85181 DECEMBER 10-12 OH! WHAT A LOVELY WAR (A)
THESE ARE JUST SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF PROGRAMMES PRESENTED AT THE BRITISH FILM
INSTITUTE'S THIRTY-FIVE REGIONAL FILM THEATRES. ALL ARE OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
SOME HAVE MEMBERSHIP SCHEMES.

227
 *FRAGMENT OF FEAR (Columbia) Young garbage strike to mugging, that New York can
reformed drug addict runs into eccentric, wildly offer. Intermittently hilarious, the single joke
ramifying conspiracy while investigating the wears a bit thin, and Jack Lemmon and Sandy
death of Aunt Flora Robson. Some effectively Dennis maintain an unvarying hysterical pitch
un~asy encounters, even if the whole thing only as the luckless visitors. (Director, Arthur Hiller.
butlds to one of those madman's trick endings. Movielab.)
(David Hemmings, Gayle Hunnicutt; director,
Richard Sarafian. Technicolor.) ****PASSION, A (United Artists) Bergman's second
film in colour and probably his most uncom-
GAMES, THE (Fox) Cliche-bound attempt, set promising exploration of existential neuroses.
against the Rome Olympics, to encapsulate the Driven to despair and violence in their quest for
less publicised manoeuvrings of big time inter- ~motions they no longer feel, four irredeemably'
na~ional athletics. Flashily directed by Michael Isolated people act out their emptiness on Faro
Wmner, though the marathon finale is well island. (Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann. Eastman
staged despite an unconvincing quartet of run- Colour.) Reviewed.
ners. (Michael Crawford, Stanley Baker, Charles PERFECT FRIDAY (London Screenplays) Cun-
Aznavour. DeLuxe Colour, Panavision.) ningly plotted and executed perfect robbery
*GETTING STRAIGHT (Columbia) Like The provides the main interest in a would-be swinging
Graduate, Richard Rush's romantic comedy of comedy fatally short on charm. Stanley Baker's
st~dent unrest combines hard-hitting dialogue
glum bank official abetted by David Warner and
Films of special interest to SIGHT AND Ursula Andress as an improbable peer and his
with a soft moral centre. Its exploitation of
SOUND readers are denoted by one, two, fashionable themes, from permissive sex to even more improbable wife. (Director, Peter
police brutality, is largely redeemed by Elliott Hall. In colour.)
three or four stars.
Gould's splendid performance as a vociferous *PUTNEY SWOPE (Contemporary) Promise
drop-out trying hard to drop back in. (Candice unfulfilled in what starts brightly as a Negro
Bergen, Robert F. Lyons. Eastman Colour.) take-over of a Madison Avenue advertising
*BORSALINO (Paramount) Belmondo and Delon Reviewed. agency. The rest is like an overlong satire show,
as smalltime racketeers who rise to the top in the with just a few good jokes in among too many
pre-war Marseilles underworld. France's answer GOODBYE GEMINI (C.l.R.O.) Risibly mis- undisciplined swipes at ad mass, Black Power,
to Bonnie and Clyde, carried along quite spiritedly co~ceived me~ange of incest, homosexual black-
et a[. (Arnold Johnson, Laura Green; director,
by the tailored star performances and interior mall an~ s~rdid murde.r amid the exotic trappings Robert Downey. Part Eastman Colour.)
decoration rather than by direction or script. of a swmgmg London not even Time magazine
(Michel Bouquet; director, Jacques Deray. could have invented. An embarrassed Michael *REIVERS, THE (Warner-Pathi) Glowingly
Eastman Colour.} Redgrave stumbles through it all as a most romantic adaptation of Faulkner's novel about
*BOYS IN THE BAND, THE (Cinema Center/ unlikely progressive MP. (Judy Geeson, Martin the careless rhapsody of youth in turn-of-the-
Fox) Somewhat over-wrought film from Mart Potter; director, Alan Gibson. Eastman Colour.) century Mississippi. Likeable performance from
Crowley's play about a New York homosexual Steve McQueen, but a general anxiety to please
**GRAZIE, ZIA (Avco Embassy) First film by rather spoils the carefully spiced flavour of the
party and the confessional orgies triggered off Sa~vatore Sam peri: much influenced by Belloc-
by the presence of a 'straight' outsider. Abrasive, original. (Mitch Vogel, Sharon Farrell; director,
c~IO (among others) but revealing real flair in a Mark Rydell. Technicolor, Panavision.)
waspish dialogue, but the sweating, tear-stained bizarre tale about a neurotic youth who shams
close-ups get a bit out of hand. (Kenneth Nelson, paralysis and amuses himself from a wheelchair SICILIAN CLAN, THE (Fox) Professional but
Leonard Frey; director, William Friedkin. by drawing his pretty doctor-aunt into a vortex somewhat low-pressure thriller about an Italian
DeLuxe Colour.) of sexual-necrological games. (Lou Castel Lisa gang in Paris, masterminded by a grandfatherly
BUTTERCUP CHAIN, THE (Columbia) Musical Gastoni, Gabriele Ferzetti.) ' Jean Gabin, who stage elaborate plane hijack.
chairs among a menage a quatre as they glide Dubbed dialogue; enough devious plotting to
~LLO-GOODBYE (Fox) Romantic comedy keep interest simmering. (Alain Delon, Lino
across pretty scenery from Sweden to Spain.
Occasionally intriguing in its oblique shuffling of wh1ch maladroitly combines old-fashioned Holly- Ventura; director, Henri Verneuil. DeLuxe
relationships, but a too brightly enamelled sur- wood ~iscretion with nods to contemporary Colour, Panavision.)
face obscures characters and motives. (Hywel mores m the shape of a fashionably enigmatic
French woman eluding the attentions of a SUNFLOWER (Avco Embassy) De Sica con-
Bennett, Leigh Taylor-Young, Jane Asher; tinues to abandon social realism for sentimental
director, Robert Ellis Miller. Technicolor, Pana- besotten English car fiend. Disappointingly
clumsy comeback for Jean Negulesco. (Michael fantasy in this wistful soap opera spectacular in
vision.) which Sophia Loren wanders disconsolately
Crawford, Genevieve Gilles, Curd Jurgens,
CHISUM (Warner) Standard saga of Billy the DeLuxe Colour.) round the USSR in search of a long-lost husband.
Kid, except that John Wayne-first and last seen Authentic locations merely emphasise the
brooding monumentally from a hilltop- HETEROSEXUAL (Antony Balch) Girl leaves artificiality of the rest. (Marcello Mastroianni.
breathes heavily on the sidelines as an ageing C<?nvent to get embroiled in lesbianism, drug Technicolor.)
cattle baron sighing for the good old days. mghtmares and a crash course in updated de
(Forrest Tucker, Christopher George, Ben Sade under the guidance of an elderly disciple. *THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?
Johnson; director, Andrew McLaglen. Techni- Tawdry, humourless sex drama. (Maria Pia (C.l.R.O.) Sydney Pollack wrings every ounce of
color, Panavision.) Conti, Lea Nanni; director, Warren Kiefer. allegory from this story of a mid-Depression
Eastman Colour.) marathon dance contest. Abrasive performances
CROMWELL (Columbia) Fair child's history from Gig Young as a cynical master of cere-
film, though too often spotted with inaccuracies, HOFFMAN (Warner-Pathi) Peter Sellers as a monies and Jane Fonda as a desperate two-time
taking Richard Harris' hoarse, solemn Cromwell neurotic bachelor who blackmails a girl from the loser, but the characters are too neatly stereo-
through the Civil War and into a de Gaullish typing pool into spending a week with him. True typed to gain power as individuals. (Michael
retirement from which he emerges as Lord love finally rears its head. Some brightish, nervous Sarrazin, Susannah York. DeLuxe Colour,
Protector. Alec Guinness' testily vacillating dialogue is spread pretty thinly over this stretched Panavision.)
Charles loses his head with predictable grace. version of a more claustrophobic TV play.
(Robert Morley, Dorothy Tutin; director, Ken (Sinead Cusack; director, Alvin Rakoff. Techni- *TOO LATE THE HERO (C.l.R .O.) The Dirty
Hughes. Technicolor, Panavision.) color.) Dozen revisited, with Michael Caine and Cliff
Robertson bantering national insults as an
**DOWNHlLL RACER (Paramount) Superior M_AN CALL~D H<?RSE, A (Cinema Center) army patrol performs reluctant World War II
sports story, about a young skier on the American Richard Harns as an Improbable English lordling heroics against the Japanese. A witty script
Olympic team who wins gold. Alert direction by who is captured by the Sioux and after painful (first half) and nice performances (Denholm
a newcomer, Michael Ritchie, and a script by initiation rites emerges as full-blown tribal chief. Elliott, Ian Bannen) keep things going. (Harry
James Salter which slaloms cunningly and S~id to be accurate down_to the last wigwam, but Andrews, Ronald Fraser; director, Robert
engagingly through the cliches. (Robert Redford, st1ll a rather arduous mixture of dour incident Aldrich. Metrocolor, 70 mm.)
Gene Hackman, Camilla Sparv. Technicolor.) and stray hints of self-parody. (Judith Anderson,
Reviewed. Jean Gascon; director, Elliot Silverstein. Techni- TOOMORROW (Rank) Harry Saltzman makes
color, Panavision.) a bid for the teenage market with a corny blend
EL CONDOR (Carthay Center) Absolutely of pop and science fiction. Extravagant sets and
routine Western-Italian-style but American MAN CALLED SLEDGE, A (Columbia) a fresh-faced, embarrassingly ingratiating pop
with English direction-offering little but nudity Briskly violent European Western about gold group light years removed from the real thing.
and violence as two amiable bad men and Apache fever, with characterless playing and direction (Olivia Newton-John, Benny Thomas, Roy
friends besiege a Mexican fort in search of gold which, curiously, mixes elements of Sierra Madre Dotrice; director, Val Guest. Technicolor,
that isn't there. (Jim Brown, Lee Van Cleef, and Riot in Cell Block 11. Unconvincing on most Panavision.)
Patrick O'Neal; director, John Guillermin. levels. (James Garner, Dennis Weaver, John
Technicolor .) Marley; director, Vic Morrow. Technicolor **VIRGIN AND THE GYPSY, THE (London
Techniscope.) ' Screenplays) Christopher Miles reveals a gift for
EXPLOSION (Rank) American draft-dodger atmospheric landscape and domestic detail in
takes up with hippy on trek through Canada. MAN WHO HAUNTED HIMSELF, THE this sensitive and unsensational adaptation of
Confused, cliche-bound effort at saying some- (Warner-Pathi) Depressed psychological thriller Lawrence's novella. A wistful, restrained per-
thing significant about responsibility and which sets the clock back twenty years in its stolid formance from Joanna Shimkus as the epony-
generational conflict; unlike Prologue, the treatment of a story about a business executive mous virgin and an earnestly madcap adulteress
medium not equal to the message. (Don Stroud, plagued by his alter ego. An inauspicious start to from Honor Blackman. (Franco Nero. In
Gordon Thomson; director, Jules Bricken. Bryan Forbes' new production programme. colour.) Reviewed.
Technicolor.) (Roger Moore, Hildegard Neil; director, Basil WALK IN THE SPRING RAIN, A (Columbia)
**FELLINI SATYRICON (United Artists) What Dearden. Technicolor.) Ingrid Bergman goes back to nature with
might have been a sex-spectacular romp becomes Anthony Quinn, a sort of Zorba from the
a nightmarish exploration of a Roman under- **MARRIED COUPLE, A (Contemporary) A
compendium of incidents in the daily existence of Tennessee mountains, but renounces him even-
world not so very different from that of La Dolce tually for the duties of a suburban grandmother.
Vita, and equally a projection of Fellini's own a Canadian advertising executive and his family,
constructed by Allan King with every evidence Miss Bergman retains her dignity in the most
imagination. Fantastic colour effects; in every embarrassing situations. (Fritz Weaver,
sense stunning. (Martin Potter, Hiram Keller, of being genuine but with an inevitable sense of
contrivance lurking not too far away. As com- Katherine Crawford; director, Guy Green.
Alain Cuny. DeLuxe Colour, Panavision.) Technicolor, Panavision.)
Reviewed. pelling a portrait of the storms and summers of
the married state as one could encounter on the **WOODSTOCK (Warner-Pathe) Mike Wad-
***FEMME DOUCE, UNE (Academy/Connoisseur) screen or anywhere else. (Billy Edwards,
The pin-point precision of Dostoievsky's enig- leigh's exhilarating split-screen account of the
Antoinette Edwards, Bogart Edwards. Techni- celebrated pop music festival and the quarter of a
matic character sketch somehow eludes Bresson, color.) Reviewed.
whose heroine tends to remain a cross rather million crowd who attended it. Not just a filmed
than a gentle soul. Hypnotic, notwithstanding. *OUT-OF-TOWNERS, THE (Paramount) Neil concert, but a lively and sympathetic exploration
(Dominique Sanda, Guy Frangin. Eastman Simon scripted comedy of a pair of mid-Western- of America's dropped out sub-culture. (Richie
Colour.) ers exposed to every hazard, from blizzard to Havens, The Who, Jimi Hendrix. Technicolor.)

228
 ~~,,~
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Sweden 1 and 2
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The most complete assessment in English of the
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filmographies plus credits and synopses for 70 major
films. with an index to 1.200 titles listed in
the text. Volume 2 is a critical study of the themes,
trends and directors in Swedish cinema.
A. Zwemmer Limited
Each volume: 18s. paper, 30s. cloth

A Film Trilogy 0
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(Winter Light; Through a Glass Darkly; The Silence) (,)
41
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15s. paper, 35s. cloth
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IE
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1 2s. 6d. paper c
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Wild Strawberries. A Filmscript ..0
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THE ACADEMY CINEMA TWO
will present from October 1970

ROBERT BRESSON'S
first film in colour

A GENTLE CREATURE
Based on a story by DOSTOYEVSKY