International Film Festival

Penthouse Cinema, Brooklyn.

The festival opening this week at the Penthouse contains an unusual variety of period, nationality and quality. The first three of the following films have been previously gathered together for their shared story of young lovers amidst tragic circumstances.

Los Tarantos (1963) was the first significant Spanish film to break away from the mass-produced Hollywood-style western. Los Tarantos is the name of a dance based on the spasms of the victim of a tarantula spider.' Ancient methods of treating the poison feature in this work by director Rovira-Beleta.

The transformation into black terms of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice makes interesting cinema in Black Orpheus (1959) French director Marcel Camus displays an exciting visual sense with a Carnival at Rio setting, but the film lacks dramatic intensity. Starring Marpessa Dawn and Breno Mello. (TV2 screened this film to inaugurate colour transmission, unfortunately receiving a poorly processed print. The festival print will will be in the original colour).

The visual splendours of Iceland are to the fore in a joint Swedish/Danish/Icelandic film. The Red Mantle. The story is pretty classic Romeo and Juliet stuff, based on a medieval Scandinavian legend, and involving jousting, saunas, and most other things Norsemen are famous for. Directed by Gabriel Axel, with Bergman regular Gunner Biornstrand, Oleg Vitov and Gitte Haenning. "Breathtakingly Beautiful" (Judith Crist).

John Huston returned to the States in 1972 after a decade In Europe to make one of his very best films: Fat City. It centres on a boxer in decline, waiting hopelessly for the second chance "Boxing is only the background to this sensitive, beautifully made and knowing film of naturalistic low-life, of people trying to make a living in spite of themselves and their failures in an impoverished society. It is reflective, philosophical, dramatically intense, timely and superb". (International Film Guide). A film to set the crass sentimentality of Rocky in its place Perceptive playing by Stacy Keach and Susan Tyrell in the leads, with Jeff Bridges and Candy Clark. Editing is by veteran Margaret Booth.

Jacques Tati, the maker of Traffic (1971), is considered by many the doyen of European cinematic humour, often being compared to Chaplin. His screen ego, M. Hulot, is a gangling, affectedly English and therefore very French, well-intentioned fellow, who just happens to have the extraordinary ability of turning the simplest mistake into a fully fledged disaster. Tali's canon is small (5 feature films in 23 years), and Traffic is among his best works. It records Hulot's attempts to take the latest in 'Camping-cars' from Paris to the Amsterdam motor show. Preposterous "scapedes combine with an acute sense of visual humour in a very delightful film.

Alfred Hitchcock made Dial M for Murder (1953) in 3-D, but the fad passed so quickly it was released on conventional film. He himself describes it as "a case of drained creative batteries' — certainly the film is hardly one to remember him by. The plot contains some nice twists, there is a good solid scissors-in the back murder, and a pedestrian Scotland Yard officer triumphs over the slick Americans. For Hitchcock fanatics and the fans of leading lady Grace Kelly.

Marcello Mastroianni stars in Down the Ancient Stairs (1975), a French/Italian film about a psychiatrist whose insane asylum forms both an insulator against the use of Mussolini and a fascist state in miniature. His 8 year seclusion in the hospital in search of "the microbe' which causes insanity, has shut him off from scientific ideas in the outside world and destroyed his perspective on human relationships. The arrival of a woman psychiatrist brings him face to face with political reality and his own sanity. Director Mauro Bologini has a firm command of his themes and an assured talent for style. Well worth the visit. Also starring Charlotte Rampling in one of her better performances.

The King of Marvin Gardens (1973) is the second notable film to combine the talents of director Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson. For my money it is every bit as good Easy Pieces and probably the best offering in this collection. Like Fat City it is in the well-established tradition of American parables, relating the story of an FM disc jockey engaged in mythologizing his elder brother, for himself and his listeners. This brother is in fact only a small time operator in the local underworld; deflation of the myth precipitates the development of the film. A haunted, subterranean quality is evoked by the deserted beach - n - carnival setting of Atlantic city in winter. Bruce Dern and Ellen Burstyn are right on form in the other lead roles.

[unclear: —] Simon Wilson.