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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Students' Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 20. September 3, 1968
Films
Films
Hi—tiddly Eyetie!
They are still showing too much crap, and I refuse to endure much more of it. They've been giving the children of New Zealand, a pseudo-infantilic botch of contrived cinema that wouldn't even seem fit at an IHC Christmas party.
Charge of The Light Brigade is all Victorianal fantasies, sporty vignettes of Dickensian fashions and squalor, a [unclear: althily] coloured snitch of events leading to the great Crimean balls-up. Splendid Trevor Howard speaks Charles Wood like a trooper. Both Vanessa Redgrave and Mrs John Osborne are congruently marvellous, and the David Watkin-Peter Suschitzky department shouldn't eat so many Turkish delights. I should have taken heed of director Richardson and stayed away.
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The most exciting, and visually incredible film that I opened my eyes fully to look at was Sergio Corbucci's Navajo Joe. This is one of these Italian/Spanish affairs, that is mutilated beyond intelligence by Mr McI. It was at the St James for a week. I had never heard of it recently until a new Cahiers du Cinema wrote (if you'll forgive their pigeon-french) "Ajoute le rousseauisms aux references habitueles du w.i., celles-ci restant par aillcurs Salgari et Verdi; le tout desamorce par le serieux de Corbucci." Which is rather incredible, considering the film was an amalgamation of style and minimum of language. The camera seemed possesed by Furie-ous demons. It was built entirely on the way of the zoom, swinging back to reveal a totally different grouping or scene. Knifing and shooting in every scene. The "traditional" stuff. But even that must have seemed too much for the censor, for on a blinking he missed a beauty. Rock thudding against a face, which was pure yuck. The avenger in the style of a sort of Indian-rebel was played by Burt Reynolds, the great killer, and a lovely Italian wench who looked at Joe throughout the film, Nicoletta Machiavelli. Everyone gets killed by the end, including Joe. and the anaemic music, (rather unfortunately so, it needed the power of a Morrieone) carried the 8000 feet odd on to the end. I seem doubtful about all of this movie. It semed to have been shot on the wrong speed, so, I can hardly remember a thing about it It was so incredibly effective and please remember the director's name is Sydney Corbett.
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Gerard Oury's Don't Look Now ... we're being shot at, is a French comedy (advertised as British), in French (sometimes) and English (I think) with a French cast (usually) hiding behind English titles, wot are in English if they re not speaking French, or dubbed by same, drop jokes (mainly naughty French ones) about the body and Berlioz. A nun wearing a gasmask and the Turpinesque chappy with his squint are the highlights of this multicoloured welcomely funny Anglo-French film. Bourvil and Louis de Funes (starred in the less happy The Sucker) are perfect clowns, and Terry-Thomas enunciates. It's a new film to most shores and since they're doing so well, Rank should have the courage to release Jacques Tati's Playtime.
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Outlaw leader Aldo Sanbrell and a reluctant Nicoletta Machiavelli in Navajo Joe
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King of Hearts (UA) eventually got to all those who saw it. Like the Kubrick experience, the Lets-Co-Lido was brimming with healthy varsity cinema lovers, after word of mouth got round, unprecedented since the great W'arkworth Incident.
Philippe de Broca is a latter-day Renoir at times, and his lesser efforts include, Chinese Adventures in China and to a degree That Man From Rio. He certainly lets his mood change from film to film, but King of Hearts is back in the clays of le Farceur and les Jeux de I'Amour.
Alan Bates as the bewildered soldier in a Scottish division during the German occupation of a tiny French village, is sent to uncover a bunker, and ends up with an entire asylum electing him king, and getting him married off to little Colombine (Genieveve Bujold).
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Burt Reynolds as Navajo Joe
It was rather like a musical Marat/Sade with overtones of Federice, and the quaintly-pantomimical surrealisms of Came. All sadly expressed on the borderlines of tears arid farce, its De Broca's loveliest effort since Male Companion, with young Pierre Lhomme's images-superbe and Georges Delerue's wonderful score adding to the charm and overall sincerity.
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The Gnome-Mobile (Walt e mort) is about jaunty cars, little people that wear nests to nothing, and Walter Brennan playing himself which must have been rather strenuous. Those Merry Dropping kids are at it again and if they don't stop Arch Wizard Stevenson will no doubt be held responsible by health authorities, let alone the '61 cinematograph Act's new certificate insert (good job there Film Unit). The super-flying matte work is unbelievable considering Miss Pickford looked more at ease talking to her easies in the 1920's. and especially when you realise no one looks in the direction of the person to whom they are addressing. I then piggy-backed out crab-wise.
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You aren't elected hedonist-supreme when its wade through Anthony Simmon's Four in The Morning (N.Z.F.S.)-time. This little English film made over four years ago doesn't startle as it should. It contains enough Kitchen sink to be labelled fiat-Lux, but adopts a speed of its own, namely impotent realism in the crawling lane. Judi Dench as the young mother with a reaming real baby, is superb, and if it wasn't for the venereal sub-plots (which have an air of rampant Lustgarten-apathy a la Tim Turner about them) this would have made a much greater impression on any person. There's a maudlin alto fluttery by John Barry, and Larry Pizer's photography (Losey's son, Gavrick, pulled the focus, so they say!) Anthony Simmons should wake up and try again if he hasn't changed his name, i.e.
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Judi Dench
It's albright by night
Admittedly it had gained an underswell reputation, but even that didn't prepare us for the baffling vagaries of Deadly Roulette (Universal), which had a one day release recently. After The Defector a Few weeks back, nothing surprises any more. The incarnation of the well-scrubbed high school crewe graduate, Robert Wagner is another emasculated male who proves no match for smoothie Peter Lawford in this came of masculine upmanship. But Lawford is no great allrounder either. His puppetry has even more diabolical strings. As for the audience they have no strings at all. The plot is a Pynchon-inspired paranoiac monstrosity which demands even more than hardest seated Lido addict could endure.
That said, one might wonder what the attraction is. Those who have seen Wagner on TV will realise how unsettling he is: there is no aura of comfort or assurance—he's strictly minor in league and talent. This unsettlingness is reinforced by the degenerate cruise ship—surely once occupied by Gabriel and Mrs Fogarty. This time we not only have Lola Albright (worth twice the price and smile) but Jill St John too! The ladies abet the unfortunate presence of Wagner in a weird pas de deux which may rhyme to little reason. Even a deadbeat Matt Helm finale can't submerge the nightmarish inexplicability. A mystique of powerlessness volcanieally underlies it which no amount of exegesis will clear. Lalo Schifrin's harpsichordic score added only another dimension of mental instability.
Universal, it seems, not just content to specialise in the low-budget TV-film, are dead set on unnerving audiences by letting younger directors and writers create with as much freedom as those in the Underground cinema, usual strings attached. With less money, you chance less. Deadly Roulette smacks of what we might believe from Emshwiller, but William Hale! And that isn't all. In the matrix of the antipathy of both popular and "art" audiences, these limbo movies are unjustly served. Christchurch audiences a few weeks back unprecedently forced Curtis Harrington's Games off its first release after only two days. Borgia Stick was here for one day, and we're still waiting for Champagne Murders, Banning, and Madigan. And who mentioned Michael Winner?
A girl can't help it
The Great Value Shift (CVS) was a phrase used by a Sydney colleague to delineate what has happened to the Western since High Noon was interpreted as anti-McCarthy. The GVS, from Guns in the Afternoon through EI Dorado, now has to withstand body blows from the Sergios and bounty hunters (their existence was never recognised in America). Hollywood has its subversives too. Killer on a Horse (M-C-M) is the most subversive of all, so far.
The town of Hard Times (US title was Welcome to Hard Times) is one of those vulnerable blights of habitation frequently marauded by the Madman. This Badman (an unspeakable Aldo Ray) rides into (own. knocks off a few bottles of whisky—no openers needed—some broads—even less so though the censor thought otherwise—finally kills Some Objectors and burns the (own. Most of the population leaves town, but we stay along with Blue (Henry Fonda), an ineffectual coward who ought to have saved the town but instead caused saloon girl Molly, a broguish Janice Rule, to get more than her desserts.
Blue insists on staying—he has run too much and he can't go any Further—pledging to rebuild the town into an invulnerable civilised place, We have seen Blue in action already, and our hopes are not high although we know that he will probably succeed. With Molly as a "wife"—there is no hint of liaison—and an orphaned boy as a "son", Blue sets about his mission. But the only civilising forces he manages to get to stay in Hard Times are a backward gunslinger, a poky shopkeeper, and a dubious entrepreneur (Keenan Wynn) and his Wagon of prostitutes.
Blue's intentions are frustrated mainly by Molly, Her only reason for staying is to avenge the Badman To this end she coaches the boy in shooting, and makes him despise cowardly Blue. In one scene Molly makes sexual overtures to Blue; he responds only too keenly, hoping that all has changed, but just as things gel heated. Molly screams, the boy rushes in with shotgun eoeked, and Blue is forced down. This inverted sexual conflict is the most important theme in the film: the man stands for law, order, pacificism; the woman means chaos, egoism and violence.
The more one considers this remarkable film, the more its anti-western essence predominates, both in character and setting. The town itself is squalid, muddy patch surrounded by eharred timber. Depression is relieved only by some relapses into cliche when the miners come to town—and even this is more sentimental than real. The return of the Badman is juxtaposed in the same frame as the only "pure" sexual relation appears to be at the point of consummation. The climax and killing of the Badman solves nothing, with Blue and the boy surviving and ambiguously surviving the still unrebuilt Hard Times.
The writer-director, Burt Kennedy has for once used all his considerable talent confirming his earlier promise. After Killer on a Horse I wonder whether the western can ever remain in a bastion of male superiority. And that leaves only the war film; and perhapes John Wayne will solve that once and for all!